Marching Into The Peace Corps, pt 10: Drowning On A Dry Kitchen Floor

In the last two segments, I have talked about dietary factors from my own hard experience. You can’t learn everything the first half a dozen diets around, but you can learn where you screw up and take the learned lessons into the next diet.

This time around, I have brought with me into battle the acute awareness of cholesterol and hidden salt traps. Most women know about water retention and the bloated feeling, but cholesterol isn’t something we normally “feel”. Now I know what the RDA of cholesterol is, I know I need to measure it. The lower my “bad” cholesterol, the shorter my journey becomes to the finish line.

Last diet around, I learned about the value of lemon in your water . It seems bitter or sour foods stimulate the liver to produce bile, and that helps to remove bad cholesterol and fats from your body. The process is a bit scientific, but worth reading up on. Water can also be dangerous if you’re not careful!

Two diets before, I brought in the knowledge of vitamins and essential fats that do a whole host of wonderful things for your body. They reduce inflammation (I discovered this with my carpal tunnel/overuse syndrome by accident), pick up your mood by feeding it “good” fats it needs, and naturally curbs your appetite. They also help lower triglycerides and bad cholesterol as well as lowering your blood pressure. They also help to prevent blood clots. There is a whole laundry list of positive effects omega-3 can do for our bodies.

There are diet fads I’ve decided they are worse off than they claim to be. For instance, if you’re to believe the information about red wine, well then there are some caveats you need to think about.

By now, every woman has heard of what’s called the “French diet”, which claims French women are not fat and nor do they get fat. That’s a lie and I bet it’s a creation of the wine manufacturers to boost sales figures. French women aren’t fat because they eat fresh, healthy foods, they do drink wine, but they also move! France has a good transportation system and many take advantage of it, plus if you’ve ever noticed, they have a lot of bicycles and they rollerblade in a special section of the city on Friday nights. They move, and that’s why they’re not fat. We jump in our cars, drive to Burger King, and we drink four ounces of wine and wonder why we’re not getting skinny!