Of cabbages and kings... Cashews, BP, maple syrup, et all

I've been pretty busy lately, dabbling with multiple things. I've made a Dex+ ketchup, which my daughter says tastes too much like tomatoes (?!); it does need a bit more zing. Not ready for prime-time yet, but it's promising. It tasted better warm than it did after chilling down. I'm close on some other new recipes too; wish there was more time in the day!

A montage of thoughts...

Hypothermics and the Beach

I started trying to do Hypothermics (get colder to burn more energy). It has been a slow adjustment. No more steamy showers. :( Coming off the steam wasn't too bad though. The first few doses of cold water were a different story. Took about four days to go beyond just getting my back cold. However, it's definitely easier now; well, physically it is. Mentally, I still strongly object to the cold water. Physically, it's much less of a shock now. I also have been wearing lighter clothes, and when driving, I run the AC full-blast the whole time. Brrr!

Then after the first week of cold showers, I promptly went to Florida for a week. Direct sunlight is in direct conflict with this plan, but I didn't want to wait until after vacation to start! We ate Dex+ style on the trip, although I ate more than usual anyway. My DH loves to cook; even the sandwiches were killer, especially when I made the bread. My dog now loves the Frisbee like never before, and will leap into the air, plunge her whole face into the salt water, and endure a mouth full of sand to catch it! :) We had great fun! It was a great place for star gazing; we saw the Milky Way very clearly. I was up a couple pounds when we got home, then lost that plus more within two days. To be fair, my feet had swollen unexpectedly on the last day because of deer fly bites while packing the van to go home. Wish I'd had bug spray! There have been too many changes in routine lately to have any real read on Hypothermics yet.

Maple; how the mighty have fallen...

A bit of disappointing news, and my apologies for some misinformation: I found out that I misunderstood my maple syrup reference, making maple not such a great thing. The document lists the glucose:fructose ratio as 5.6:1, which sounds great! The thing I missed was that this number did not include the glucose and fructose that was combined as sucrose. The syrup contains 99% sucrose, making the amount of free fructose and glucose so small that it doesn't even matter. :( So in reality, maple syrup is pretty much as unhealthy as plain white sugar. What an important study, not. Again, sorry for that; I should have read closer before using that data.

Cashews and BP: a beautiful friendship

Roasted Cashews: I like salted and unsalted mixed together.

In the last few weeks, my blood pressure readings started bouncing around. What? I've been doing so well! Low fructose, good cholesterol, loosing weight, eating fiber. The only thing I could think of that was really different is that I'd run out of cashews. Out of convenience, I've been keeping a stash of cashews at work, and eating them for lunch most days. Probably 1/2 cup or so, sometimes adding an apple. I ran out, and had been eating some mixed nuts, sometimes a Dex+ item, etc. Could it really be the cashews? Google says yes, it could. There are studies. Also, I started eating them again, and my bp smoothed out and went down. Very interesting. I'm much happier eating cashews regularly that I was taking medicine. Now I have a real excuse for eating tasty nuts, or whatever they are. :)

Good times!

My family is embracing Dex+. They are eating less at meals, and commenting that they are too full to eat more, even when it's something that is usually tempting. Fiber really seems to be a key too. We had Benefiber in our water or milk last night with our pizza. I'm looking into what foods have the most fiber per calorie, and plan to start serving those more too.

This concludes my musings this Independence Day morning. I need to go start some dough for rolls, play a little Guild Wars, buy some fireworks, shuck some corn, and start making another batch of Greek yogurt to make frozen yogurt with. I have fresh cherries to put on top. :) Happy 4th of July; remember those who helped make your nation a place to be proud of, and enjoy some fireworks!