Just wanted to share an image of the book I’m using as my navigational guide to lowering those important numbers crucial to health: weight, waist measurement, blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar. Since Dr. Greger promotes a plant based diet, note that the title is spelled out with assorted berries and not chicken nuggets and M & M’s.
I haven’t read his first book How Not to Die because I’ve always been more focused on “diet” rather than “dying” and must have skipped right over it while I was perusing the latest non-fiction books at the library. Dr. Greger’s original book dealt with what he calls The Daily Dozen which covers the most nutritious foods to eat (fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds) to help you attain the highest degree of health. In How Not to Diet, he goes over all those healthy foods and then adds about 300 hundred pages more to cover 21 Tweaks specifically for weight loss.
But before I expound about the virtues of vinegar, I need to put an end to the rumors that I lost my job and I’m now retired. I did not lose my job permanently and I’m not retired yet. The funny thing is, when I tracked down who started these rumors, it was ME! I am sorry I wasn’t clear about my status when I wrote why I was starting this journal. I’m just laid off, like millions of others, but I’m looking forward to being “The Greeter” when we open our Lambertville office, hopefully, on May 18th. My new assignment will be to meet the patient at the door, take their temperature, ask a few questions, and then escort them to the chair. I think this will be both helpful and fun, but it also means I actually have to be at the office on time – every single day!
To get in the “write mood” to talk about the easiest tweak you can do to accelerate weight loss, I am sipping 16 ounces of water flavored with two teaspoons of mango flavored balsamic vinegar. Just two tsp with each meal helps flip the switch in your body from storing fat to burning fat. Exercise does the same thing but exercise also ramps up our appetite so the body will want to replace those burned off calories asap. The human body is designed to store extra energy (fat) and it does it very, very efficiently. It wants us to always have an ample supply of fat on hand (packed all around the abdomen for easy access) in case there is a food shortage. This was strategic planning for survival for the last 100,000 years. Today, we might have a shortage of toilet paper, but not food. We also might be facing a shortage of chicken/meat in the near future due to processing problems, but since a plant based diet is much healthier, that could actually prove to be an advantage!
Vinegar has been used for centuries to treat obesity. Before insulin was developed to treat diabetes, vinegar was consumed with meals to improve insulin sensitivity. As a matter of fact, vinegar at the end of the day has been found to promote lower blood sugar readings in the morning. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial mentioned in the book resulted in a loss of about a pound a week over the course of the three month trial. This trial was conducted with 155 overweight men and women eating the same diet and getting the same amount of exercise. Only the people who were in the 2 tsps of vinegar with their meals group lost that pound a week. A pound a week just by incorporating vinegar?! This is the one Tweak I’m trying to be consistent about using because it’s so easy. You can use any type of vinegar, but I’ve found the flavored balsamic ones to be quite pleasant. Salad dressings made with two tsps of vinegar work perfectly, too, except that without added oil, it slips off the lettuce! My neighbor, Cheryl, told me about a fabulous dressing she had at a restaurant in California and I managed to make a passable facsimile. It’s just 1/4 cup of hummus, mixed with two tsps of vinegar, a shot of Dijon mustard, a bit of salt, garlic powder (another of the Tweaks) and black cumin (another Tweak). Since beans and greens are two of the top foods Dr. Gregor recommends, this dressing packs a powerful punch and honestly is very tasty.
To sum it all up – I weighed in today at 124 pounds, down about 8 pounds since March 22, 2020. I’ve also lost 1/2 inch on my waist. This is amazing because I’m just trying to eat more of the recommended foods along with a little less of what I normally eat and by adding in some of Dr. Greger’s Tweaks. (Fruits and vegetables are very filling but don’t have anywhere near the fat and calories of my “normal” food.) I am changing my eating habits because I decided that “diet” and “die” have more than just three letters in common. I have always had a goal to live to be 100. But I want to hit that 100 mark with enough sense to know that I did and then be able to dance a little stiff legged jig to celebrate!
Let me know if you decide to try the two teaspoons of vinegar at every meal challenge. I would love to know if you start “waisting” away, too!
All in a Day's Walk 