Be Happy! Beat The Holiday Blues

A lot of us think we are the only one who has holiday blues. Nope. It is hard to have perfect holidays ever, let alone every year. It doesn't matter what the cause for your sadness in the middle of all that cheer all over the place. You do not have to endure that sad feeling. There are ways to make yourself feel better.


Before your holiday blues really get going, make a list of little things that make you feel good. If you are on a tight budget stick with cheap or free ones. You don't have to finish you list all at once. You can add to it as you think of more things to cheer you up. Some of the items on my list are:
1. Pet my cats and play with them.
2. Go for a walk on a local nature trail.
3. Walk around a mall and window shop.
4. Tear pictures out of magazines and junk mail to decorate my organizing and storage boxes.
5. Make a special meal just for myself and use a placemat, cloth napkin and candles.


Those are just a few to give you ideas to start your own list of things that make you feel good. Every person is different and their lists will be different as well.  My list goes on for pages because I like a lot of things that make me feel happy and I have been working on my list for years. Your list will be shorter at first, but you have to start somewhere. As your list grows it works better, though. It is easier to find something that will work for your right now when it has more choices. A -35f walk on the nature trail might make me look at the list again for another choice, for example. That would be a better day to decorate my organizing and storage boxes.


Something that I do for the holidays and other times of the year is make someone else happy. Sometimes I do it anonymously and other times I do it up front and personal. It depends on how I feel, the person I am doing it for, and the situation. An easy one is to make or buy a small gift and tie it to somebody's doorknob or put it on the doorstep and leave, or ring the doorbell and leave fast. The gift can be as simple as a poem you wrote or copied off the internet. You could use jokes or pictures or stories too.


Site for Family and Friend Poems


fun stuff for gifts (and to cheer yourself up too)  The blonde jokes are pretty funny.


Doing a good deed is a great way to feel better.  I have that on my list, but I just do it whether I feel bad or not sometimes. One of my easy ones is to pick up litter and throw it away in whatever size area I feel like tackling. Since I ride buses, it is usually a bus stop. This idea is a good one to make sure you have hand sanitizer or gloves for. Sometimes other people start doing it too. That is especially fun.


I am sorry I did not post the strap for your go bag. It required illustrations and I did not have time for them and a friend was feeling down and I shared some of my idea for feeling better with her. That made me think that other people need them too.

Cheap Disaster Recovery Blog Post

I did my first disaster preparedness blog post on water because it is so important to staying alive and healthy. If you do not know what is going on that can kill you faster than not having any water. An example of this is the need to know about an evacuation order. If the electric power was off and you did not have a radio that did not depend on being plugged into the wall you might not find out about an evacuation order in time to stay alive and keep your family alive.


You need a radio that will work if it is not plugged in. There are places online that sell wind up radios for less than $20.00.  Solar powered radios are good as long as they schedule your next disaster in the day time. :-) Some cheap radios have several different types of power systems, solar, wind up, battery, etc.


If you get a radio that winds up it will be preferable to get one that has a handle that folds up out of the way and  it has a handle that is big enough for you to be able to hold on to it easily as you turn it and doesn't bang your hand against anything as you wind. Sometimes you can tell from the pictures on the internet or the reviews by people who have purchased them. If you find the one you want in a local store you can try winding it to see how  well it works for you. I am enabling some ads on this site so some related to radios will probably show up eventually. You can look for them on search engines too.


I have seen instructions for building a crystal radio for very little money and they did not appear to be very difficult or require much knowledge to make the radio.
link to make your own radio cheap, no batteries required
this radio may be cheaper to make


You need a "go bag" in case you have to evacuate and it will make it easier to find what you need in an emergency even if you don't evacuate. I am not suggesting you stay if they tell you to evacuate. On the contrary, if they tell you to evacuate I want you to grab your go bag and go immediately. They do not tell you to evacuate for nothing. You may die if you don't evacuate. Your go bag is there so you can be ready and be the first one on the bus or at the shelter or where ever it is they tell you to go. If you wait there will be a traffic jam and it could cost you your life.  Your go bag lets you beat that.


I think a back pack is the best go bag because it is easy to carry and leaves your hands free. You can move faster and easier that way too. If you are small you may want to do something to keep the straps from your go bag from slipping down on your shoulders.  Some back packs have an extra strap or two that will do this. You can make your own, if necessary.  I will show you how to do this.


Next post will show you how to make a strap for your go bag.

Poor People's Disaster Preparedness

You would probably not be reading this if you feel good about how things are going in the country, economy and the world. We have all noticed that there have been a few glitches in the financial sector for a while and Mother Nature has been on a rampage too. I am against a lot of pointless worry. If I am going to worry it needs to do some good. I intend to get ready for disasters.


Most disasters have a certain generic quality. If you are ready for one disaster, you are ready for most other disasters, with a little tweaking for specifics. We all need water, food, clothing, shelter, warmth, a way to eliminate body wastes, safety, etc. That still applies in a disaster, any disaster.


My first step is to figure out how to survive long enough to find out what is going on and have an idea what to do about it. That is the first day or 24 hours. If you are on a tight budget that is a good place to start to avoid being overwhelmed with the cost of it all. Every time you go shopping think of one small item you could use to eat for a meal without too much preparation, especially cooking. If you can't manage a whole meal, get part of a meal at a time.


Water is something you can probably do something about for free. I am sorry for getting ahead of some people here. Lots of people do not know why you might want water in a disaster. You just turn on the tap and water comes out, right? Nope. Lots of disasters can stop water from coming out of the tap when you turn it on. An earthquake, for example, can break the water lines. Cold weather disasters can do the same thing. A radioactive disaster can make it so you won't want to turn on the tap and drink what comes out, depending on where the water comes from. Ok, I'm not here to explain every possible disaster to you. youtube does that. :-p


If you ever drink soda pop, bottled water, juice, or milk and other things besides, you sometimes have nice plastic bottles that they came in. Wash out the bottle and you now have a water container for you to store water for disasters. Free water storage for disaster preparedness is good.


Smaller bottles of water may not feel as satisfying and secure as a 50 gallon container, but they sure are a lot easier to find a way to store. You can put them under the couch, or bed or in the closet or behind the books. Find some nooks and crannies to put them in. You will need more water than you drink because you have to wash your hands and dishes, etc. A gallon a day per person is conservative. You can use less if you are careful. Experts stress that trying to ration water for drinking is a bad idea, but you can save on the cleaning water.


The next problem is what to do if you tap water is not great. I do not like drinking the water that comes out of my tap and I do not want to lug a lot of heavy water bottles around all the time, or pay for them. I like my Mr.Coffee coffee maker. It has a permanent filter that you can get to filter your water. I do not drink coffee, so it is easy for me to dedicate my coffee maker to water filtering only. If you use yours for coffee, you need to decide whether you are going to clean it out in between coffee and water filtering use or get another one. Not every Mr. Coffee coffeemaker will hold the permanent filters. My local Costco has the right kind on sale now. Unfortunately I found that out after I had already paid more somewhere else. It may not be too late for you. They say on the side of the box that a permanent coffee filter is included.


Your hot water heater may be a water source for disasters. It depends on what kind of hot water heater you have. The newer ones do not have a spigot on the bottom, but on the top. That means you will have to have a pump to get water out of them. You must know how to shut off the water going in and out of the hot water heater so it won't go down the drain, literally. If you have a disaster, keeping the clean water in your hot water heater for drinking later needs to be a priority. As soon as you get up off the floor or whatever, go take care of the hot water heater. You need either a wrench that will turn a thing that closes in the water in the tank or a special tool made only for that purpose. The special tool is less likely to walk off, so I favor it, taped to the hot water heater with instructions for use. If the heater runs on gas, you may want to turn it off if the gas is not working, to avoid an explosion.


If you live in an apartment building, you will have to talk to the manager about the water in the hot water heater, and using it in a disaster.


Toilet tanks can be considered a water source for emergencies. I gather they need to be considered contaminated. Even contaminated, they can be purified for emergencies. It is water you don't have to go out and bring home. That can be pretty valuable.


I am not going to cover purifying water for emergency use yet, because that is kind of advanced.  I am starting with the easy stuff for a few days of preparedness first.


Next post will have ideas for places to find non-consumable disaster preparedness items, and links.

Suicide With A Knife And Fork

Refined foods are a fairly recent innovation for humans.  I do not believe they are a good one, either. They are not especially good for anyone, but aboriginal people lack the generations of exposure to them that non-aboriginals have. If you carry aboriginal genes, refined foods can be a slow poison to you. 

One of these deadly refined foods is alcohol. For most aboriginal people, drinking alcohol is like trying to run a Volkswagen bug on jet fuel. It rots out your insides and your brain. You get diabetes and need to have limbs lopped off as you get gangrene. Heart problems and strokes are part of the results of drinking alcohol for most Aboriginal people.

White sugar and white flour are not a lot better for Aboriginal people than alcohol. They may not cause damage as quickly as alcohol, but eating that kind of junk is almost as deadly in the long run. Whole wheat and other whole grains are a more natural aboriginal diet. We have had those as a part of normal diets for many generations, unlike the refined carbohydrates. Potatoes and corn were domesticated by Native Americans and are complex carbohydrates that are much better for aboriginals' health.

Meat that is full of hormones and antibiotics is not good for anyone, but is even worse for aboriginals. It is expensive to eat organic meat that is free of the bad stuff, but medical care is even more costly.

Dairy is not good for a lot of people who are not even aboriginal. Many people are lactose intolerant, but a higher proportion of aboriginals have this problem. There are lactose intolerant remedies to help lactose intolerant people eat dairy without bad effects. Health food and even groceries often carry them. Not everyone is helped by the enzyme drops for lactose intolerance. Low fat powdered milk does not cause me the problems that whole milk does, but I only use it in foods most of the time. Mozzarella is a comparatively low fat cheese and cheese substitutes are available in health food stores.

This blog post is a real bear for me to write because of the emotional issues involved for me. I have told other Native Americans about this before. I expected the answer to, why we have such a problem with alcohol as a group, would be well received. It was by a very few. Most said the idea of a genetic predisposition to problems with alcohol would be used as an excuse for more prejudice. The logic of this escapes me. The Drunken Indian cliche is kinda hard to combat when you see it live and in person so much. The only ones who escape this reality are escaping reality.

Scientists discovered something they call a "thrifty gene" that many aboriginal people have. The good part about it is that people who have it make it through famines more often than those who don't. When a thrifty gene person does not get enough to eat for a while, their body sort of shifts gears and becomes more efficient about burning food/fuel. More work can be done on less food, or even stored body fat. That allows enough work to be done to get more food to survive the famine. Someone without the thrifty gene will simply become too weak from lack of food, to work to get more food to survive, and they die.

The bad part of the thrifty gene is when someone with it eats refined foods, including alcohol, it messes up our insides and we get diabetes, heart trouble, strokes, high blood pressure and alcoholism. People without the thrifty gene can eat all the refined foods, including alcohol, because they have had so many generations of people eating those refined foods that their bodies tolerate them. This does not mean those refined foods are actually good for people without the thrifty gene.

I see no reason to feel inferior to people who can tolerate refined foods, because their ancestors spent so many generations consuming things that were bad for them, that their bodies are not as hurt by the refined foods any more. It does not seem like a good reason for people who do not have the thrifty gene to feel superior to people who have it either. I can see their point about people who have the thrifty gene trying to catch up on exposing their bodies to refined foods, especially alcohol, in one generation.

I figure I have the thrifty gene. I do not consume refined foods much. This is better for anyone, but close to essential for someone who has the thrifty gene. I have come to prefer whole grain flour to bleached and brown rice to white, etc. I don't drink alcohol. I have eaten those things in the past, but it has been a long time since I ate a lot of them. I am not a diabetic, and my blood pressure is low. I am slightly overweight, but will be within my correct range shortly.

There are some tribal groups that are making a great effort to return to their healthy traditions. I feel this is a matter of common sense. This is not a bad idea for anyone, to eat things that are good for them, whether they have the thrifty gene or not.   If you have genes from an aboriginal people, refined foods will make you very sick and probably kill you early. Please take care of yourself and stop consuming the foods and alcohol that will kill you. Think of the seven generations before you and the seven that will come after you. You are not only hurting yourself when you consume things that are bad for you.

I wanted to give you links about the thrifty gene but found that scientists are arguing about it now. The message still applies. We know that refined foods, and alcohol are bad for aboriginal people so we should not consume them. Osiyo.

What Kind Of Fuel Does Your Body Run On?

A person who bought a new car and drove it out of the showroom without knowing what it ran on would probably not be your candidate for making a good decision.  You are doing the same thing if you do not know what your body needs to function well.


I decided to do this post because of a joke. Sometimes I joke about chocolate being one of the basic food groups. I discovered that people really believed that it is one. I can agree with the sentiment, but not the information. In this blog post I wish to help you learn what your body needs to run on. Experts agree that there are a set of basic food groups.  They don't all agree what these basic food groups are. They all get the same foods into their basics.  They just arrange them differently and differ on how much of each you need.


The USDA used to have food arranged in a pyramid, they still have some pictures of this around.  They are trying to switch to MyPlate instead. USDA site about MyPlate The groups are fruits, vegetables, protein, grains and dairy. How much you eat of each group depends on what you want to achieve with your eating. Examples of what you might want to achieve with your eating are weight loss and muscle development for athletes. People who want to lose weight usually eat less fats, sugars and carbohydrates. More detailed site on nutrition


You can eat less fats by cutting back on oils, fatty meats, drinking low fat milk and low fat cheese and low fat yogurt.  I like to substitute low fat yogurt for dairy that is much higher in fat like cream cheese or sour cream. It is easy to thicken yogurt by draining liquids out of it by placing it in a strainer or on several layers of cheesecloth and letting the liquids drip into a container.  You can use the nutritious liquids from the yogurt in soups. That is a way to get used to the change from cream cheese or sour cream.


Most desserts have a lot of sugar in them.  You can look at the label on them and see how much sugar they have in them. If it does not have a label, you can look at the links in my previous post about exercise to stop holiday weight gain and find the calories in the food.


A lot of sugar in your coffee or tea can add up to more calories than everything you eat and get you fat in no time. I am not a fan of artificial sweeteners because studies show that people who use them regularly usually gain back any weight lost within a year. They have also been shown to be related to cancer. http://www.foodpolitics.com/tag/artificial-sweeteners/


Honey is one of my solutions to this problem.  Honey has the same number of calories per teaspoon as sugar, but it has three to five times the sweetening power, so you can use 1/3 to 1/5 the amount of honey as you would sugar and get the same sweetness. Stevia powder is 16 times as sweet as sugar, so I use it some.  When I cook with it I use half sugar and half stevia powder- that is using a brand that adds bulk to the stevia powder so that it has the same volume as the sweetening power in an equal volume of sugar.  In other words, if you need 2 cups of sugar you can use 1 cup of stevia powder and 1 cup of sugar. You really need to know what you are doing if you completely substitute stevia powder for sugar because sugar does other things besides sweeten in a recipe and you have to allow for all those changes as well. I mostly don't risk it. There are plenty of sites on the internet for recipes low in calories.


For those who don't know, stevia is an herb and a tiny bit of it sweetens as much as a lot of sugar.  It is hard to calculate how much to use in a recipe because you have to account for the difference in bulk between the stevia and the sugar. I only use straight stevia powder in things like dry cereal and milk, coffee or tea.


Now for carbohydrates. There are a lot of fad diets that cut out carbohydrates entirely. I do not like them, unless you are using a nutritionist. They can cause you to start burning up parts of your body that you will need later, and I think they are dangerous. I do not think they work well either, but cause people to go off their diets entirely and even gain weight instead of losing.


My favorite approach to carbohydrates in weight loss is to simply change the kind of carbohydrates I eat. I  stopped eating refined carbohydrates (carbohydrates that have had a lot of unhealthy stuff done to them,) and eat complex carbohydrates, like potatoes and whole grains, instead. People often think of potatoes as fattening, but that is only because of all the fattening things people usually put on them. This is where I especially like to use low fat yogurt to replace the fattening stuff. When I had more weight to lose, I used to put butter substitute powder from the grocery store on the potato and low fat yogurt. I also use fresh basil from my greenhouse. Sometimes I put legumes and vegetables on the potato instead. When you are creative, you won't miss the fattening stuff as much.


I am heartily sick of writing about weight loss, etc. by now but have one more bit to tackle on the subject before I move on to other things. Aboriginal people are not ready for refined foods. If you have genes from an aboriginal people, refined foods will make you very sick and probably kill you early. I wish to write about this next, and then I believe I will begin to write about ways to cut back on your living expenses.

Shop Until The Pounds Drop

Many of us are defeated in our weight loss plans before we get to the grocery store check out.  Once you have a lot of  calorie-loaded non-nutritious foods surrounding you at home, you are in trouble on any kind of weight loss plan.


Researchers found out why that happens.  Your stomach makes an enzyme that affects your brain.  This enzyme causes your brain to steer you to foods that have a lot of calories in them. This is a very recent discovery, but it was known some time ago that hungry people will spend more money than those with full stomachs. I had a personal adage from a while back to, "Never shop on an empty stomach." ( Compulsion from stomach hormones to buy junk food)


There are steps you can take to fight against the tyranny of your stomach over your brain. You already saw the above one, "Never shop on an empty stomach." If possible, eat before you leave to go shopping.  You can buy something to eat in a shop or cafe' that has fewer calories than other things or you can take along something and eat it before you go into the store. I have put some oat/whole wheat crackers, dried seaweed pieces, nuts, and dried fruit in a zip lock bag in my pocket and taken along a bottle of water to drink with them. The foods I just mentioned were chosen because they are nutritious, don't take up much room, I like them, and they don't have many calories. I can fit a whole meal into a small shirt pocket with those foods. If you are not used to eating dried foods, it would be a good idea to check on portion sizes first. You will get a horrendous stomach ache if you eat too much. They expand when they contact the liquids in your stomach. Eat the dried foods very slowly, chewing them well, with plenty of water and they will fill you up.


Always use a shopping list and stick to it. The displays at the end of the aisles and by the checkout stands are planned to make you buy things you don't need. This often also equates to calories you don't need. The whole grocery store is planned the same way.  There are researchers out there studying how people shop, teaching grocery store managers to lay out their store to encourage impulse buying. It is no accident that you have to go clear across the store when you only need a carton of milk. Site about watching your shopping habits
This is designed to make you spend more money and maybe get fatter


I have known about the science of encouraging shopaholics for a long time, and some of it still ticks me off. If you were not aware of this, I hope it makes you angry enough to stop falling for it. Your puny bank account and expanding waistline are not all your fault. You were pushed under that freight train of commercialism.


It is unfortunate that many readers are likely to have little idea of what to put on their shopping lists to fight the bank account slimming and waist widening effects of commercialism.  I do not wish to insult those who already know the basic food groups, etc. It would be failing those who do not know, however, if I do not do a post on such things.  Next post will be on basic nutrition.

Write Off The Pounds

It is very difficult to lose weight if you have no idea what it is that causes you to eat, even when your body does not need for you to eat.  A food diary helps clear up some of that mystery.  I was very reluctant to keep one, but the price for my diet counselor made me pay attention to her.  If you decide to use a food diary, it may save you $300.00 to $1000.00 a month. Counseling only can start around $300.00 and go over $1000.00 if diet food delivery is included.


Some of the useful things I have learned from a food diary are that I binge on food sometimes and why I do it.  I can often tell when I am getting ready to binge now and know what I can do to prevent a binge or lessen the damage. I know what foods cause me the worst problems with weight gain and what foods will keep me from feeling deprived of my favorites. An indirect benefit of a food diary for me is that I am able to avoid the urge to binge most of the time now.


There are some excellent sites on the internet to help you with your food diary. Particularly helpful sites are:
This one has the USDA nutrients data base and printable food diaries
This one is by family physicians and has a BMI calculator
http://weightloss.about.com/od/caloriecounting/qt/hiddencaloriesaddup.htm


Experts recommend newbies keep track only of the foods consumed because they are easily confused and overwhelmed.  Keeping a little bit of useful information l is better than nothing.  If that works  it is always ok to get more elaborate, with nutrients and possible emotional and social triggers for binges etc., later.


A good  food diary is useful to give you a record of where, when, what time, who you are eating with, and how you are feeling when you eat.  By looking at your food diary you can see what causes the eating that made you gain weight. You may be eating from habit, boredom, loneliness, or from being upset about something. Looking at the pattern in your food diary will tell you what causes you to eat more food than your body needs to run on. This gives you a chance to plan your eating in the future so not only will you stop gaining weight, but will be able to lose your excess weight.


Even if you do not think that you are ready to make much of a change in your eating habits and behaviors, you can use the information in this series of blog posts to gain less, during the holidays, than you would otherwise.
"A pound of body fat equates to approximately 3500 calories.  So if you have a calorie deficit of 500 calories (meaning that you burn 500 calories more than you eat each day) you would lose approximately one pound per week."  (Nitty gritty site for serious dieting information)  The opposite is also true - if you eat 500 calories more per day than you burn, you will gain about a pound a week.  Every pound you don't gain during the holidays is one less for you to lose later.


I want to write about how to keep the pounds off while you shop, before you even get it home, next.