How to break a LONG Fast?

[Dave Sinkus]

I think you can easy into the non-greasy fatty stuff and eat what you eat but start with smaller portions. Don't gorge or try to get it all back at once.

Also, there's no problem with fantasizing about the beef stew, unless there is a particular outfit you keep fantasizing the stew wearing

[Robert E Lee]

Hey, Chris P., that's a good post!

Refined sugars are terrible--they're pretty much a drug with calories attached. I had started to put on some weight a few years back (not that it was all that bad in my case, I was 6'/145 lbs, but it was slowing me down). So I told my wife to quit buying soda--2 Cokes a day is a bad habit. Now I treat soda as a treat, so I maybe have a couple per week. I'm much more likely to grab a barley soda. I didn't use to think Coke from a can was all that sweet, now it tastes very sweet to me. I've since stabilized my weight at about 175 lbs, with only a little evidence of my adult suds habit.

The key is that I am pretty active in my day-to-day activities as a painter (or in the case of today, I'll be working on a wood floor).

Jason, 6'/145 I don't you have a (big) problem.
Bob

[Jason Roehl]

Bob, 6'/145 wasn't the problem--it was that I had shot up about 20-25 pounds in about a year. Putting on an extra 15+% of your body weight in a year is generally not good... It's especially not good if it's concentrated in one area of the body--much of my gain was around the middle. I've since been able to get some of that weight to relocate to other areas and change from blubber to muscle, so I'm not really concerned.

Part of what I'm getting at though is that the refined sugars are bad not just in terms of weight gain, but other effects they have on the body. Substitue in more fruits and vegetables, drink more water (most people are chronically dehydrated and don't know it), and you'd be surprised at how much better you feel and how much more energy you have from day to day. Get yourself healthy, then it doesn't matter so much if you have a few extra cookies and such over the holidays (he says, wiping the crumbs from his beard...).

[Ted Shrader]

Russ -

Good luck on the recovery. Hopefully the diagnosis will come soon.

What Doc Abele says is good info. But I know what you mean about craving something (stew). For me it was KFC. Oddest thing is, I never eat KFC anyway, go figure. Eating progressed normally after a dose of the Colonel. Your craving is a good sign.

Ted

[Russ Filtz]

OK, now the problem is my beef stew SUCKS! Kind of bland (which is good I guess). Each component tastes like it should, beef, potato, carrot, but overall just doesn't have that stew taste. Got to be missing something. Only thing I added other than a little salt/pepper was a bit of Worcestershire and paprika that was called for in the recipe. Not very much either for a whole pot. Didn't have any bay leaves though and it called for that.

One thing is I didn't have any stock, so I just used water. Maybe a bullion cube, but don't those have loads of salt?

[mark page]

Not going to speak much of food and the medical aspects of what to eat, how much to eat, etc. What I do know is no-one cooks like mom & dad, or grandma, used to cook. I can follow a recipe exactly and it just does not taste the same. Of course those folks are all gone now, but I can still taste the food in my mind.