Graduation Date

This coming week is our official graduation after a year of attending the Institute of Integrative Nutrition.  The official date is December 15th.  We will attend the event via live stream.  I sympathize with my classmates who are on the other side of the world.  For them it will be in the middle of the night.  We were told that it will be recorded so if anyone misses it they can catch it later.  Our on-line community is very much anticipating this ending and many are celebrating the beginning of their post-school careers.  I still don’t know what I will do but since I told myself I was taking December off from all things school and career I won’t worry about it until January.

Food as Medicine

Today I discovered a new website called Nutrition Facts by Michael Gregor, MD.  Here is the link www.nutritionfacts.org  if you are interested.  I keep getting notices and seeing articles with “Food is Medicine” titles and I keep following them wherever they lead.  Dr. Gregor has written a book with a very intriguing title.  It doesn’t mean you will live forever but it focuses on the foods to eat to keep you as healthy as possible.  I have ordered the book.  Let me know if you do too.  I would be interested in your thoughts.  His book is also featured through Blue Zones which I covered in Week 33.

Along that same line, we picked up our copy of The Island Packet which is a local newspaper and in it was an article that caught my eye by Alvin H. Danenberg, DDS.  The title of his article was “We were born to be healthy: Part 6 of 7” and the first paragraph’s heading was – you guessed it – “Food as Medicine”.  He talks very strongly about science showing us that nutrient-dense foods are medicine.  They help all of the cells in our bodies to be healthy.  The trick, as he said, is to be able to identify what those foods are and what are not. Here is a link to the article on-line “We were born to be healthy: Part 6 of 7” . Dr. Danenberg is a Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner & DDS in Beaufort.

A Visit to Asheville

John and I took a road trip this week and went to Asheville, NC to see daughter Margot and Hadley and to go to the annual Biltmore Estate  Candlelight Christmas Evening.  To say it was spectacular is an understatement.  I was prepared to be dazzled but this was over the top.  There were so many trees, more than one in a room, and the one in the grand hall was ginormous as my grandchildren would say.  We went out for a wonderful dinner at Rhubarb where I had the most delicious mussels.  My standard dinner out is a Caesar salad and Mussels when I can get them or a fish dish of some kind.  We spent a day exploring Black Mountain, did some minor Christmas shopping in a wonderful, old-fashioned hardware store, you know the kind with the wood floors and people who have lived and worked in the community all their lives old-fashioned.  A fun lunch at The Black Mountain Bistro and a walk in the sunshine.  As we were leaving I told John that I felt as if I had been on a vacation.  Refreshed, relaxed and feeling much more Christmasy.

Getting Ready for Christmas – Part 2

While in Asheville we bought a fresh cut (5 days) North Carolina Fraser Christmas tree and garland.  We need a pretty small tree for our house here in Dataw so we were able to get it inside the car.  It smelled just wonderful.  We spent Saturday putting the tree up and decorating it with all the pine cones and pecans that John had spray painted silver and gold.  We really had fun doing it together.  It was a bit like it was when we were first married.  We didn’t have anything so we improvised and we both loved the outcome.  We had learned about putting the lights on a different way – vertically instead of horizontally so we tried that too and it actually works really well.  Here’s the outcome.

The finishing touch came to the mantle this week.  For the last 14 1/2 years I have been needlepointing Christmas stockings for my family.  It started when our grandson, Jack, was born in 2001.  We were on our way to Ireland one month after he was born and we were delayed leaving Boston so of course I went shopping.  I saw a needlepoint stocking that I fell in love with, bought the canvas and the wool and started the stocking.  I did not do another one until our granddaughter Libby was born and then I picked out another one.  Much to my surprise it was 18 point which is very small and it took me a year and half to finish it.  At that point Katie and Margot were really giving me a hard time about their stockings so I thought about it and decided to surprise them with their own stockings.  A major improvement over the ones I did for them back in the 70’s.  Then, John needed a new one as his was beginning to unravel.  Finally, I did one for myself and I just got it back from the finisher.  This is the first and only picture of all of them hanging on our mantle here in Dataw.  What a thrill to seem them all together.  You might notice there is something very unusual about the stockings.  No prize for who notices but if you do post in the comments.  I’ll be interested if anyone gets it.  If you click on the picture you can make it larger.

Exercise

A final note from Dr. Gregor (mentioned above).  He recommends 90 minutes of exercise a day.  He walks 17 miles a day which makes my measly five miles look like nothing.  Well, it is better than nothing but really to keep my arteries happy I should walk more.  So, I am making a New Year’s pledge to up my walking game.  I currently walk approximately 100 miles a month.  I want to double that by the end of 2016.  This is not a race.  I don’t have to go fast, I just have to walk and move more.  There is more and more evidence that sitting is really bad for you.  My daughter, Margot, just got a standing desk at work so she is on her feet all day.  Bravo Margot, you are definitely on the right track.  I used to work on my computer standing up at a counter and I am going back to that again.  Make a pledge to yourself to get moving.  Speed is not the object but moving is.  Do it, you will be happy that you did.

As we close in on Christmas remember to take time for yourself.  Eat well, exercise and get plenty of rest.  You will then have the energy to enjoy your friends and family and all the holiday events.  Family begins to arrive here at the end of the week and I can’t wait to see them.

Have a wonderful week.