Something else about diet

   I hate this word 'diet'. When people tell me about diet, I immediately imagine pieces of sour grapefruit and a bland vegetable soup with nothing in it but fresh cabbage or sauerkraut, that's what we ate at my time in my old country. I remember when my husband told me that he was going on a diet and asked me to cook a vegetable soup for him. I tried to make it taste better so I put some hot pepper in it. Very little, just to flavor it. My husband was so angry at me. He told me that I ruined his diet soup, so I had to cook it again without hot pepper in it. My husband was eating this soup for a whole day and no matter how often he ate it, he still felt hungry, so at the end of the day he told me he could not do it any more and fried himself two eggs with butter, as he could not stand this diet.
   In my country I tried to starve myself in order not to gain weight. It was easy as we did not have a lot of food and people knew how to maximize what they had and stretch food so it lasted longer.
  I know my mom did that too just differently. If she did not have enough food she would drink some tea with sugar and a piece of bread with margarine. Not the best diet. I did not like margarine and I eliminated sugar from my drinks after my first son was born though I did not know that sugar is bad for you at that time. I just felt it 's better to put less empty calories into my food.
   Here in Canada I see another problem. If you do not have a lot of money, cheapest food is not the best in quality and has lots of preservatives and just dubious chemicals that do not do anything for your nutritional requirement. Some people I know just go and buy some pizza for lunch and leftover of it might serve as a dinner.
    I do not spent a lot of energy now as I am not working and do not have to jump from my bed and run to catch the bus. But I still want to eat good affordable food and not to feel malnourished and not to gain extra weight. I am used to eating small portions but I still need those portions though here in London, Ontario I have to walk quite a distance in order to get some affordable food as close to my place on Dundas street there is nothing but pizza places on every corner and I cannot treat pizza as a regular meal. There is a small grocery store close to Adelaide St on Dundas but it's not cheap at all. I still don't know if butter is really bad for you as olive oil is expensive, nuts are not cheap either. My friend in Toronto (where you can find a lot of cheap food places by the way), she does not eat meat or fish, just vegetables and fruits and nuts. but for me such diet does not feel right and I think that counting calories is the stupidest thing that was invented by food industry to distract us from food quality and prices. I don't know anything about organic food but prices on that are overwhelming. Best I can do is to buy organic eggs sometimes, not often.
   Market in London is not cheap but sometimes you can buy some groceries on discount or some fruit salads that you can eat as it's easy for me to buy a ready made salad than regular fruits separately and make my own with one hand in use. Other salads I just do not like, though I eat tomatoes when I manage to buy the good ones.
   Right now it's the right season to have tomatoes and prices are not bad. In winter they will be more expensive and rather tasteless. In winter I prefer cabbage salad or may be some salads from a jar. Though those from a jar are not cheap either. They started to sell boiled peeled beats in a vacuumed package in Dollarama. I find it very convenient for a beat salad and it costs one dollar and 25 cents for a half-kilo of ready for anything product. Very nice.
  

Not to pick up extra weight

  When you are older it's usually hard not to pick up some extra pounds, especially if you are good at it. For me through all my adult life it was always easy to gain and hard to drop. Now, when I cannot even exercise with lots of strength like running or swimming because my blood pressure medication makes me weak and robs me of my energy whatever is still left in me, I have to be more creative. Of course I can walk and I walk as much as I can every day, but when it's time for lunch, I have to figure out, what to eat and what I have to forget about completely from now on. My diet has to be completely different from a regular person who gets up and goes to work every day. I cannot do it any more, I am retired, may be for good.
  I cannot say I like the situation but what can you do? If you cannot kill them, join them, or something like that. Well, I came from culture with lots of potatoes, meat, fish, fried, smoked and lots of it consumed every day, every meal. I did not have a lot of appetite when I was a child but boy-or-boy I have it now! I can eat my breakfast and feel hungry in an hour. I like bacon, fried potatoes with eggs and sausage, smoked meat and fish. I don't eat a lot but I can eat often enough to compensate those small meals. And you know what? Never mind what you eat between meals, even if it is a cracker with cream cheese or jam, you still add some pounds, whether you like it or not. The only thing that will add  nothing is a piece of orange or some other fresh fruit or veggie, like apple or cherry and may be cucumber or tomato but no dressing with it.
  Right now I am trying to drop to become 65 kg, as this was my weight at 25 and I think that's the only weight that may be helping me to control my blood pressure at 65.
  May be I am mistaken but let me try, then we'll see. I still need like 4-5  pound to loose to bring me to this weight, but for some reason my body does not want to do that. Other than starvation I tried everything. And I do not want to keep me hungry, as it's not going to hold in the long run and I need to drop the extra pounds and  keep them there.
   Vegetarian food make me feel like a cow in the field, but without meat, it's easier to keep your weight off . I stopped eating sugar, but that did not make lots of difference. Now, what's next to go? I still have a sausage in my freezer and some chicken bones. And 2 pieces of chicken breast. I hate chicken breast, -please, don't tell that to starving kids in Africa!