Longevity, Icaria, Health and my other blog

I've been reading up on "Blue Zones", placesin the world where people tend to live longer than average lifespans, this weekend after an interesting report on Weekend Edition Saturday about the Greek island of Icaria, where the life expectancy rate in 90+.

Pretty interesting stuff about their lifestyles & diet. There's also been a lot of reporting on other areas of the world where life expectancy rates are high, and I read and blogged about those, too.

If you want to read more, here's the link to my other blog, "My Mediterranean Diet".

Hope you all had a good weekend, my friends.

I Hope This Goes Well

After once again having icky guts, I have once again gone back to making a concerted effort to eating healthier. Between the two, I have lost 8 pounds in the last week! Yay!

So, what am I doing and what am I hoping to continue to do?

The Mediterranean Diet - it's not like the South Beach Diet or Atkins or anything like that. In fact I would rename it "The Mostly Vegetarian's Guide to eating very healthy". It sort of build on the Food Pyramid idea with modifications. Basically, the Med. Diet consists of 8 servings of whole grains (whole grains very important, none of this enriched wheat flour poop), three veg, two fruit, two legume, two dairy, one nut or seed on a daily basis. Other healthy additions to the daily diet that are strongly encouraged are water, one healthy caffeinated beverage, herbal teas, and a variation of herbs, spices and other flavinoids, especially garlic, and the moderate use of healthy oils like soybean, canola (rapessed) and especially olive oil. If you want to lose weight, you cut back on the whole grain servings and eat more veg. Once a month you can have pork or red meat, or have tiny servings of them once a week (I skip this part). And up to three times a week you have eggs, fish and poultry, prepared in healthy ways. (I skip the poultry part.) Since this is mostly how I eat anyway, it's easy enough for me to follow. Except for this one little caveat: sweets are to be eaten every once in a while, like once a month at most. Ugh. The horror. So try to avoid the chocolate chip cookies, the French fries and the delicious snack crackers (like Cheez-Its. Cheez-Its are so scrumptious) and instead focus on fulfilling my Medit. Pyramid every day.

I created this little chart after reading "The Meditteranean Diet". Making an effort to write everything down and keep track helps me figure out what to eat when it's meal time or snack time. It works really well, when I follow it--I just get stuck on the snackies part. That's my weakness. That's also the thing that ends up upsetting my stomach--and I'm really sick of feeling icky every few months, so I gotta stick to it this time!