The one thing that all ‘experts’ on health and eating (whether they’re doctors, nutritionists, or just proponents of the latest fad) seem to agree on is this: colorful, non-starchy veggies are healthy. They go back and forth on everything else, but not that. Of course, most of that back-and-forth could be accounted for if people just used a little common sense—everything in moderation, and the farther removed it is from the kind of diet we were designed for and eating over the last few thousand years, the more you should exercise that moderation. Seems to make sense to me, anyway.

So, yeah: vegetables. Whole grains. Good water. Fruits, whole, not juiced, so they have fiber to slow the blood-sugar spike.

I can’t entirely give up meat and it’s one of those things the ‘experts’ go back and forth on. However, I do recognize that it is a lot harder on the environment than eating a similar amount of vegetables (it takes so much more in the way of resources to produce that meat), and vegetables are better to eat in bulk. So over time I’ve gradually slid into a semi-vegetarian diet. Usually we get a freezer pack of meats from our butcher, which we know are good quality, then once a week or so we take a package out of the freezer, thaw it, and make something with it. Occasionally we have a little deli meat as well, although we’re trying to avoid the ones with preservatives these days where possible. We got some natural turkey breast at the Whole Foods market last weekend, and I was really surprised to discover how much more flavor it had than the stuff from the grocery store. We used one slice at a time in whole wheat wraps with plenty of veggies, so it served as a satisfying bit of flavor.

Although I’m not a vegetarian, I do use vegetarian cookbooks, because they’re a wonderful source of delicious and nutritious vegetable recipes. I particularly enjoyed reviewing The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Vegetarian, Third Edition, which contained a whole lot of fascinating information on nutrition and the like.

I also got a kick out of Food 2.0, by Charlie Ayers, the chef who cooked for Google. It’s got some amazing natural foods recipes in it, including a smoothie recipe that knocked my socks clean off.

Lately I have a new morning routine. While the cats eat their breakfast (which takes a good 10-20 minutes since they eat a raw diet), I leave my meusli to soak. It’s a slight variation on a fantastic recipe from the CIG vegetarian book; I just use dried cranberries instead of raisins (I like the tartness) and plain kefir instead of yogurt (I like the consistency), and I add a squeeze of agave nectar. I do my stretching from Stretching Illustrated or some yoga. I have my meusli, which fills me up better than oatmeal, cereal, eggs, or anything else I’ve tried, and I have some V8. (Yeah, it’s got a lot of sodium, but it’s a start, and it’s better than hot chocolate or OJ.)

I should be better about having veggies for lunch, but I’m lame and often have kefir with agave, more meusli, or leftovers. Sometimes we make a bean salad or something similar ahead of time for our lunches (it’s easy for my husband to pack in a cooler), in which case I might have that. Then there’s dinner, which could be just about anything, but these days is likely to be heavy on whatever produce looks good.

I won’t claim I’m suddenly losing a ton of weight or anything. I still need to get more exercise than I do, as well as eat less (I’m a compulsive over-eater with a wicked sweet tooth). My medications also don’t help—when I got switched from one ADD medication to another a couple of years ago, I suddenly gained more weight than I care to think about, and I have to fight just to keep from gaining more. But at least I have more energy when I eat well, and I know by eating less processed foods and less sugar I’m reducing the chance I’ll develop type II diabetes (which does run in the family) or other, related problems.

Then there are articles like the one that discusses a possible link between chemicals in body products and breast cancer tumors. Chemicals are being found in people’s bodies that probably got there through things they apply to their skin, hair, etc., and those products don’t have to abide by the same strict safety guidelines that foods do. You can’t avoid exposure to potentially harmful chemicals, but you can at least reduce it. I use all natural products when possible (it’s a little tough for me because I’m allergic to aloe, which is in almost everything), buy organic when I can afford it, and don’t use most cosmetics.

I never thought of myself as a health nut, but as I hit my mid-30s I’m kind of becoming one. Maybe I’ve just been made more aware of my health by recent changes in it (like the pains that seemed to be gallbladder problems, but might be ulcers instead). Maybe I’ve just started noticing the quality of life that some of my older friends enjoy, and others don’t, and I’m making some decisions about what I want to be capable of in another ten, twenty, or even forty years.

At any rate, it’s the sort of thing you have to think about sometime, and act on eventually. Otherwise you run out of time.

Today’s book review is of Elizabeth Vaughan’s amazing fantasy-romance Dagger-Star.

From 1990 to 1992, I went to MIT. From ‘90-91, I shared a dorm room and slept in the top bunk. The floor was linoleum over concrete. One morning I happened to fall from the top bunk and landed on my ass. From then on, I have always had mild problems with my tailbone and my neck. In ‘92, someone hit me on the side of my head—just in front of my right ear—during an argument, hard enough to knock me over. That sent the neck pain from mild (and almost negligible as long as I didn’t sleep with a pillow) to killer. There were times when it hurt so much that I’d lie on my back with my eyes closed, and the tiniest movement made me sick to my stomach.

I got physical therapy; the first physical therapist helped, but when she left the hospital and I got a different one, she wasn’t able to do much. I was told that the occipital nerve at the base of my skull was pinched and inflamed; that I held my head forward of where I should which was causing stress on the muscles in my shoulders, neck, and head. A doctor put me on oxycodone for a short while; it didn’t help a whole lot, so I took it once a week to at least give me a short break from the pain. Kind of, a little time to recharge and recoup my ability to handle the pain. The doctor tried injecting some stuff in the back of my head, but it burned like hell and didn’t help.

Then my mother sent me a video she bought at Kripalu. It was called yoga for pain relief, or release, or something like that. I tried it. And little by little, the pain got better. I came to understand from talking to a physical therapist that this made a lot of sense—the pinched nerve was being released as the yoga stretches lengthened and stretched out my vertebrae, so the inflammation reduced. I was learning to hold my head back where it should be again (yoga teaches proper posture), so the muscles in my shoulders, neck, and head weren’t being stressed. However, I made the mistake of telling the doctor I was seeing that yoga had made a huge improvement, and I got shunted into the category of hypochondriac and shown the door. He was an older guy, white, male, heavily steeped in traditional American medicine. Never mind that the yoga stretches were simply an ideal form of at-home physical therapy—it wasn’t within the tools of the American doctor, therefore it was bunk.

That’s okay though—it helped far more than the doctor had, so I didn’t mind that I wasn’t seeing him any more. Eventually I got to the point where, although I still have to be a bit careful with my head and neck, they don’t hurt from day to day. I have to make sure to buy living room furniture that has good support; no people-eating soft couches and cushions. I find that plain wooden chairs, particularly those found in restaurants, often give me headaches and hurt my sacrum.

Nowadays, my sacrum is the real problem—that point at the base of my spine that I landed on when I fell out of that bunk bed almost 20 years ago. It has all the earmarks of sciatica. My last doctor just said “get exercise” when I asked him about it, which wasn’t entirely useful, but this last week I was reading a review copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Stretching Illustrated. It has a stretching course to use if you suffer from sciatica, so I’m working with that now in addition to going to the gym most nights.

A lot of people who haven’t worked with yoga think that it’s something hard. This isn’t surprising—photographers love to show us the most complex and fascinating-looking poses that leave us saying, ‘I could never do that!’ Yoga instructors love to show those stretches too, because it shows how accomplished they are, and it’s an implicit promise: ‘I can show you how to do this too!’

Truthfully, however, yoga can be one of the gentlest, easiest exercises you’ll find. Sure, there are some tough, impressive yoga stretches out there, but those are something that you work up to, if you do them at all. Many yoga stretches are designed to nurture the body, and can be adapted easily to injuries, weight issues, etc. Yoga: the Iyengar Way is one of my favorite resources; it includes detailed photos and hints, as well as ratings of each pose’s difficulty so you can find the easy or hard ones. Yoga for Wellness is another good find, since it is designed entirely around the idea of using yoga to heal an injured body. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Yoga, Fourth Edition will also give you a good place to start; it includes many variations to help make the poses easier or more challenging as necessary.

Luckily many new doctors these days are open to such ‘alternative’ and natural treatments as yoga. They recognize it for what it is: a legitimate form of stretch therapy that can be practiced at home or with a teacher, that doesn’t require the expense of a physical therapist (many health insurance plans cover a very limited amount of physical therapy, and that’s assuming you’re insured). Look around, and find a yoga instructor who has experience with injured clients. If your instructor insists that there are no detrimental yoga poses, keep looking—a good instructor, like those books I list above, will know the limits of the poses and how to determine your body’s limits as well.

A doctor’s input is important, and you should absolutely see one first to find out the limits of what you can safely do. But then it’s time to take charge of your own health, and stop waiting for a pill, surgery, or injection to solve everything that ails you. I was lucky to have a great mother who thought of me when she saw that video and sent it along, probably saving me years of pain. Now that you know about this stuff, you can get what you need for yourself.

This morning I posted a rave review of Tosca Reno’s Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook. Why rave? Because it’s one of the first healthy-eating cookbooks I’ve tried that caters to those of us who are addicted to high-flavor foods, rather than bland, uninteresting stuff. Yeah, I know there’s a huge market for the latter, so I can’t in good conscience mark books down for catering to it, but damn it’s so good to find a book that caters to people who don’t want to sacrifice an awesome variety of tasty foods in order to be healthy!

We have at least three more book reviews coming out this week, two of which are also cookbook reviews. Stay tuned for a review of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Cookbook, among others!

Seriously, Tosca’s books have helped us enjoy our healthy eating enough that we’ve been able to keep up with it. And that’s great, because it’s helped me immensely. Finally one of those medical scans showed something; my gallbladder is contracting sluggishly. Not a clear-cut case of it needing to come out, so instead of referring me directly to a surgeon my doc is sending me to a gastroenterologist for another opinion. Eating so well using Tosca’s suggestions and things we’ve derived from her books has made me healthy enough that I can actually indulge in a treat now and then—like a small serving of chocolate bread pudding from the Ghirardelli cookbook—with only mild repercussions.

I’ve always had trouble getting myself to eat salads. They’re too much work to make interesting (i.e., include a variety of ingredients); they aren’t very good; etc. I have a new way of handling that, though. I prep some ingredients early in the week. For example, we take some hothouse (seedless) cucumbers, wash them, and run them through the food processor’s slicing disk. Then we stick them in airtight plastic containers in the fridge. I shred or slice some carrots, or buy them pre-shredded, and do the same thing with them. I’ve also started buying baby spinach instead of or in addition to lettuce, because it doesn’t go bad as quickly and it’s really good. Instead of buying large tomatoes I buy small pearl or grape tomatoes.

Anyway, this makes it much easier to toss together a salad quickly that contains plenty of interesting and delicious ingredients. I often add a few nuts or cubes of cheese; you can chop those in advance and store them too. And of course a small amount of dressing works wonders, too. Now you have a salad with lots of flavor that takes just a minute or two to create, no chopping necessary. And since you have containers of cucumber, carrot, spinach, and tomatoes on hand, you can easily toss a handful onto your plate any time you have anything else as well.

With all this need to eat healthy & low-fat lately, I’ve been experimenting with ways to keep meals interesting, easy, and good for me. Here’s my breakfast cereal recipe:

• 2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
• 2 cups mixed-grain hot cereal of your choice, or a mixture of whole grains of your choice (such as rye and barley flakes)*
• 1/4 cup toasted milled flax seed
• 1/3 cup unprocessed bran (oat or wheat)
• 1 cup unsweetened dried fruit, chopped if necessary (I like tart currants or mixed berries)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans (or other nut of your choice, walnuts or almonds should work well)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup raw cane sugar (optional)

Stir well and store tightly closed. If you don’t expect to go through it quickly, store it in the freezer. When you want breakfast, put 1/2 cup of mix in a microwave-safe bowl, add 1 cup water or skim milk (I prefer the milk), and microwave for 2 minutes 30 seconds on high, or until done (depends on the microwave). You can also do larger or smaller amounts as long as you keep the ratio roughly the same (2 parts liquid to 1 part cereal). Make sure the bowl is large enough to accommodate the bubbling up of the cereal!

If fresh fruits are in season, consider chopping some and adding to your cooked cereal.

I find I need a tiny bit of sweetening (the dried fruit and small amount of sugar), but you can leave it out if you want to. Another alternative is to leave the sugar out of the recipe but add approximately one teaspoon agave nectar to the cooked cereal; agave nectar is a very slow-absorbing natural sweetener with a low glycemic index.

If you want a quick, easily-transported lunch, make a batch of this the night before, chill in the fridge, and toss a container of it into your lunch box; it’s very good cold.

Variation 1: Add 1 tablespoon cinnamon and 1 1/2 teaspoons allspice.

*As long as they’ll cook in the microwave in roughly the same amount of time as oats, they’ll work. This is why I use pre-packaged 5- or 7-grain multigrain cereals from the hot cereal aisle, because they’re usually designed with quick cooking in mind.