I wrote in my Start Walking blog about wanting to fine-tune my fitness activities; but I also feel need to tune-up my diet. (“Diet” as in “the way I eat” — not as in “I’m going on a diet.”) I learned one helluva lot in the first three or four months of this year about how to eat more healthily, & I’m well-pleased with the results — how I feel, & how I’ve integrated it into my life. But still I think I want to dive back in & check what I’m doing against the various founts of knowledge I have available to me.
For one thing, I’ve wanted to get Mary Enig’s book on fats, Know Your Fats, for several months, for comparison with Udo Erasmus’ book Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, as there are apparently a couple of points of disagreement in spite of both writers having an attitude toward dietary fats greatly at variance with popular low fat wisdom (wisdom which is gradually beginning to unravel). Enig wrote something on some website I came across, or perhaps it was in an interview, to the effect that Erasmus was inaccurate about a couple of things in his book, so I want to check on that.
I want also to learn more even more about indigenous edible plants as well as edible weeds (some of which I’m already eating — dandelion, lamb’s quarter, chickweed, common plantain). I want to know more about what kinds of health benefits these plants have, & also just to know more about what they look like, where to find them, when their seasonable & when not. I want to continue our forays to the local farmers’ market & get more of our produce there while it’s running. My food commitment is not only to eating more healthily for myself, but also more healthily for the planet — leaving a smaller footprint, as it were, in the resources I use up. How much petroleum does it take, after all, to get fresh produce to market in Anchorage, Alaska? Especially in the wintertime.
But not to lose that important first focus of consciousness about my diet: what is good for me, what increases my health, what prevents health problems like diabetes.
