A Few Notes on Food
Follow the link in the right hand column, just under our picture, labeled ‘April Meals’ and you will find listed our daily meals and snacks for the month. We are not fanatical about diet, but try to get varied and healthy foods. Isabel does all our cooking, and she doesn’t seem to know what a can-opener is for. Almost all the food is fresh, made from ’scratch’, and prepared with loving attention to detail.
Unfortunately for many people, such a time-consuming preparation is not always possible for them, and the talent to produce healthy and delicious foods may be lacking as well. I wish I could offer a simple solution for them, but there is really no substitution for quality. Restaurants are not the answer, even good restaurants. If your food was prepared the way Isabel prepares ours, it would take at least an hour from the time you placed your order before you could eat. Restaurants can rarely operate that way and stay in business; today’s lifestyles are too hectic to allow people the luxury.
Here in Mexico, people are accustomed to readily available fresh foods. Most people shop daily, buying the food a few hours before they consume it. That food was probably brought to the market early the same morning, and may only have been harvested the day before if it is local produce. Of course a wide variety of imported foods are also available, and we must assume those are not as fresh, but still they are kept in good condition.
It is easy to gain weight, even when fasting 24 out of every 48 hours, if you eat junk foods. A few years ago a man made himself sick (he developed a fatty liver) just by eating nothing but McDonalds food for 30 days. Fast food is like television, it caters to the mass appetite with trash. To say that ’sugar is bad’ or ‘fat is bad’ is to miss the point — a little sugar, and a healthy proportion of fat will do no harm — it is the overindulgence in these things that leads to obesity. Even a McMucker burger won’t kill you if you eat only one per month.
Food proportions are also an important factor. It is easy to over-eat, especially when the food tastes great. There are two techniques I’ve found helpful to overcome this natural tendency — first, drink plenty of water before your meal (and pretty much all other times too!) — second, eat slowly. Gobbling down food allows you to eat well past the ‘full’ feeling and into the unhealthy ’stuffed’ range. If you eat slowly you can enjoy the food better, and your body has time to develop the chemical signals that tell your brain you are full. Most weight-loss diets fail because they ordain fixed amounts of food, and leave you feeling unsatisfied. Intermittent fasting allows you eat until you are full (but not beyond!) and places no restrictions on what you eat, so long as it is healthful food.
