Me???? Scrapbook????

Through the years I have always been one to take pictures, save memorabilia and toss it all into a box.  My collection  of pics, etc. has no rhyme or reason.  Yet, deep inside I have always felt that these things were just too precious to toss.  Actually, quite a few of the pics have found their way into albums, yet drawers and boxes full of them still seem to abound in our home.

Recently, (and I fear it's due to the aging process) I find myself wanting to organize these items so that our children and grandchildren will not be clueless when they look at them in years to come.  And while I've never been particularly interested in family trees, (that's my sister's thing)  I do want my children and grandchildren to know who their ancestors are and how they lived.   This family has a rich heritage and fascinating history.  The stories are worthy of documenting in some form.

I am pretty much in awe of some of the scrapbookers I have encountered.  Some of the scrapbooks I've seen are literally works of art.  I would love to be so creative.  However, my scrapbooking is mostly functional with a little room to endulge my artsy side, such as it is.  I've found that I enjoy creating pretty pages with lots of meaning.  Going through the the pictures and scraps of paper I've collected over the years has brought back many fond memories.  I'm excited about sharing them with the younger generation of this family.

My grand-daughters are my frequent scraping  buddies.  When they come to visit we almost always end up creating a page or two.  Usually those pages will consist of pics, etc of their parents when they were young.  It's a great time for me to share funny little stories with them that add a bit of interest to the whole scraping session.  And I get one or two more pages completed in the process.  It's all good.

I have collected all loose pics, etc. into one tote, and my goal is to eventually have them all in scrapbooks.  No, my scraping style is not fancy like some I have seen.  I can't color coordinate an entire scrapbook.  I do well to manage a page at a time.  But someday I'll have the job completed, and I expect to have hours of enjoyment looking through them either alone or with someone else.  I know you can't live in the past, but the past has made me who I am presently.  So I embrace the past, relish the present and anticipate the future. 

To those who started young compiling scrapbooks of notable events in the lives of yourselves and your children, I commend you!  What a great past-time.  Wish I had had the foresight to do that.  But from my late start, I say, "carry on".  One day you will look back and be so glad that you did.  It's the story of your life dressed up in pretty paper, brads and ribbons.  What better way to present it to future generations!

Revisiting What Works

I confess..... I have been a major slacker.  I have lost ground in my fitness goals due to plain, outright laziness for the past 2 months.  Don't ask me why, but I seem to fall into this same rut every few months.  I am faithful to my low carb eating and exercising program for 2 or 3 months and then....Bam!!   I revert back to my old habits, telling myself that 'at my age it shouldn't matter' or 'this just isn't worth it' or some other lame excuse for my slackery.


After a few weeks of the old, bad habits, I begin to feel tired, listless, achy and in generally poor health.  Then I begin to relate very closely to the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:24.  Although I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking about physical fitness, the concept still rings true.  I do what I know I should not do (eat junk, get lazy)  and I do not do what I know I should, (eat right, drink plenty of water, exercise).  It is, however, some consolation that Paul had struggles too.  Yep....Paul and I;   both wretched, both forgiven, and neither ready to chuck it all and give up.

So I am revisiting the things that have worked for me in the past.  As I chug my water and fire up my treadmill, I look forward to feeling like a million dollars in a week or so.  Granted, I will probably look no different, but I will embrace the feeling of well being that I know will come with this return to healthier habits. 

Not My Favorite Subject

I have been putting off writing this post for some time.  It's hard, you see, to write about eating habits and the effects of them when I have such a problem with them myself.  I am a carbohydrate craver.  I love em, and every time I eat them I want more.  So I have a love/hate relationship with food.  Can any of you relate?  Ice cream and macaroni and cheese are my comfort foods.  Chocolate pudding with a healthy (read large) serving of vanilla ice cream in the center of it can make everything alright.  Well, at least for a few minutes.  After that the realization of my chronic failure in self control kicks in and I start 'kicking' myself emotionally.  I suspect that this issue haunts many more of us than we could ever imagine.  It ruins health, robs us of energy and destroys our self-esteem.  Yet, as I look around at people in general, I see that the majority of us are in the overweight category.  How can this be?! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

My feelings for some time is that there is something in our food,  (notice I didn't say something in our diet), that is exacerbating this problem.  And we are now finding out that high-fructose-corn-syrup is almost certainly a contributing factor.  Dr. Robert Lustig has studied the effects of this food additive on his patients and explains how it affects the human body in the link above.  I think the food industry will do just about anything to make a buck and since sick people are big money in many different ways, no one cares to challenge them.  So we just blame the victim, in this case the fatty. 


Now, I'm not saying that overweight people are not to blame.  We do have to take a lion's share of the responsibility for the shape we are in.  However, the wealth of conflicting information does not make this an easy task for the majority of us.  Just google HFCS or any diet information and you will get several hundred pages of info that will support just about any viewpoint you choose to take on the subject.  No wonder many of us throw up our hands in defeat and carry on trying to enjoy life as much as we can in whatever state of health and fitness we find ourselves.


The answer?   I wish I had one.  My best advice is this.  Do your homework on how different foods affect the body.  This is especially important if you have a metabolic problem like diabetes or insulin resistance.  If you are over 40, try to understand how your hormones are working, or not working in many instances.  If possible, find a doctor who will take the time to help you learn about your hormone levels and assist you with optimization of your existing hormones and possibly discuss hormone replacement with you.  As a side note here, I believe that synthetic hormones carry much more risk than bio-identical hormones.  Learn as much as you can about both before agreeing to replacement therapy.  Try to eat the best food you can afford including lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.  Stay away from concentrated carbs as much as possible.  Concentrated, meaning sweets and pasta, breads and pastries.  And drink plenty of good, clean water.

Do I do all this?  Not nearly enough.  I tend to do well for days and sometimes weeks, then fall off the wagon and binge on something totally bad for me, like ice cream.  I drink way too many diet soda's and not enough water.  I don't workout nearly often enough.  And I don't do hormone replacement therapy.    But I do keep trying.  I hope that counts for something.  Without that, I'm sure I would be pushing 300 pounds.  So I'll just keep on doing what I am doing and hope that at some point my cravings will disappear and my energy level will increase to the point that workouts will be fun instead of a drag.  In the meantime, will someone please tell the food industry to stop trying to kill us and instead, try to help us become healthier?!