Fiber: Not Googled Much
There are some things that just don’t come up in the news too often, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t. That’s why I’m going to offer this post, on a little discussed topic, as a public service. Let’s leave the cyber world long enough to meditate on something that virtually (funny –huh?) nobody talks about…FIBER.
Okay, so probably fiber is not among the highest of Googled words, but great health is something we all are looking for. Often a small change in diet can make a huge difference in our health. That’s certainly the case with fiber, an essential nutrient we often forget about.
In the Standard American Diet (SAD), fiber has become increasingly hard to find. Yet scientific research (Harvard School of Public Health) continues to discover a multitude of health benefits provided by dietary fiber. Including:
- Heart Disease – fiber assists in the elimination of cholesterol and triglycerides and may lower blood pressure.
- Cancer – fiber helps decreases the risk of colon cancer and assists in the excretion of toxins and heavy metals.
- Diabetes – fiber is instrumental in the stabilization of blood sugar levels and slows absorption of glucose.
- Obesity – fiber aids in weight loss by providing a feeling of fullness.
- Digestive Concerns – fiber helps eliminate sluggish bowel and constipation, while supporting beneficial intestinal flora.
Dietary fiber comes from the edible parts of plants which are not broken down by digestive enzymes. Excellent food sources of dietary fiber include, sprouted and un-sprouted seeds, beans, whole grains, Swiss chard, vegetable greens (especially turnip, mustard and collard), cauliflower, broccoli, and most berries.
My suggestion (and I’m not alone here) is to make sure your diet includes a wide assortment of dietary fiber. By all means, supplement if you must (Super Seed from Garden of Life is the best product I’ve found) but get enough fiber. In the days, months, and years to come, your body will thank you in the most wonderful way – improved health.
London and Scotland — Beyond Expectations — Part Six: “Cape May, NJ?”
You may find this to be a strange post regarding our UK travel experience. Strange because this is not even about the UK, and while the S.S. Atlantis (see photo) does rest just off of “Jersey”, technically its hulk was wrecked off Cape May, New Jersey. The ship was made of concrete and you’ll just have to read on to understand the symbolism and connections.
My next “Travel” post will conclude my “London and Scotland — Beyond Expectations” series. It’s with much trepidation that I finish this series. It’s not only because I must share the biggest disappointment of our trip, (click here) but I’m forced to confront something that is not in my nature. Either way, I will find myself writing about it, but first I must share something personal that will help you understand what I mean.
I have this thing that I’ve dealt with my whole life. I love starting things, but I hate to finish them. I’m sure some of you armchair-psychologists-types have me classified and probably think I need a certain drug to set me straight, but let me tell you how I deal with myself in a more natural and satisfying way.
Now that I’ve confessed my problem, you’ll not be surprised to find that in my childhood, I started everything and finished nothing. It drove my parents crazy. Nothing they did seemed to help. My closet was full of evidence that I couldn’t finish anything. It stood as a temple of shame, complete with the icons of false starts: A couple of dusty musical instruments, a football helmet and pads in like new condition, even a golf club or two that had never hit a real ball. My baseball card and stamp collections sat in shoe boxes waiting for sense to be made of them, and a pair of carefully cut out moccasins lay perpetually flat in need of lacing. Behind our house, I had a great ladder nailed skillfully into an ancient apple tree, but never got around to finishing the tree fort with boards to sit on. Once I saved enough money to buy a really cool gas powered toy plane but never actually learned how to fly it.
You get the idea, so many ideas and so little motivation to actually finish any of them. Here is what happened to me. When I was thirteen I loved to sail. Sailing was a huge motivator to me. I wanted so badly to stay at my aunt’s house all summer that I was willing to do anything to stay in New Jersey, just so I could get a chance to sail a couple times a week. It turns out that my parents conspired with my aunt and if I was willing to complete one task, I would be able to live out my whole summer there. Cool! (Notice I’m resurrecting the “cool” of 1973.)
That task was quite a challenge for a 120 pound adolescent, but one I could not pass by. In addition to my normal lawn mowing chores I had to get familiar with a ten pound sledge hammer and break up the hardened mass of concrete that had been spilled the year before. My dad had purchased a sizable “portable” cement mixer which had been pre-owned by the US Army. It could mix a yard of cement at a time and run for hours, if you could get it started. As if to prove how temperamental it was, she was given the name Esmeralda.
Dads stated goal was to produce all the sidewalks around my aunt’s new house and swimming pool. Looking back, I think the whole idea simply appealed to his do-it-yourself / stretch a dollar attitude. This brings us back to my Scottish ancestry and perhaps a joke that you can relate to.
Question: How was copper wire invented?
Answer: By two Scotsmen quarrelling for a penny.
I knew what I was getting into when I said, “Sure, I’ll do that.” But if you recall, starting was not my problem. The next day my dad and I went out to examine the extent of the task which lay before me. “Break this up, load it into the wheelbarrow and dump it over there.”
As he left me, I started a ritual which would eventually consume and change me. My dad suggested that I start with the easy stuff, but heck, I could break that up with a shovel and I wanted to swing that sledge. Six minutes after I started I was through.
Truthfully, I have no recollection of how I felt. Maybe I was defeated by the sheer reality of the project, or daunted by hardest labor I had ever done. But no mater my initial feeling, the next day I was out there again. This time I pounded that concrete with everything I had until my hands were blistered and my muscles were no longer able to raise the heavy hammer.
There was no turning back. Each day I spent an hour or two plying everything I had against the amorphic form that Esmeralda and her handlers had spewed, spilled or flushed out the year before. The progress was slow. Some days I found myself pounding on close to a foot of the hard stuff with only a quarter of a wheelbarrow to show for my effort and on others, I’d clear half a yard of concrete, gravel and sand. Another thing that was changing was my desires.
First I thought only of the reward…sailing. By the time my blisters healed I was focusing on the work being accomplished… effort of the work itself. With half the summer gone, I simply went out there every day for the discipline of work. There was no longer any focus on sailing. That became another category of life, totally disconnected with the work at hand. Even completing the task of cleaning up the concrete and debris was secondary.
It was the work…the steady discipline of starting: gathering the tools, putting on the work gloves, deciding the next step, literally chipping away moment by moment. That became the essence of what I was doing and why I was doing it. There was no greater purpose…it was just the regimen of the work itself.
That’s how I’ve conquered my problem. My personality-default still favors starting, but now I start fresh each day and I begin each task anew. Eventually, the day comes that I find myself starting something (usually that I’ve been working on for a long time) and finish that same day!
Our trip to the UK is a great example of that process. While traveling we are forced to keep plugging away. A new city, another train, different food, renewed accommodations, fresh adventures…joys, longings and trials. Starting and finishing becomes irrelevant and memories become the only meaningful experience. My kind of reality!
So, my next travel post will be my last regarding our London and Scotland trip. It will be difficult for me to write. Sure I’ll start it with no problem. Then, I’ll leave it half written for a few days. That’s when my coping method will kick in…I’ll revisit the task; start again, soon I’ll begin to love the act of writing and before I’m ready…it will be finished and you will experience my memories of Edinburgh.
Second Hint: The coast of Jersey and New Jersey have something in common. That name has something in common with the naming of the thing (animal, vegetable or mineral) which lead to our only disappointment in Scotland.
