Do you have a health strategy??

Good morning Strategist! Lu here.

I just wanted to reflect on a post I read yesterday in a private group I am in on FB. It is a good group that is for people who are product users of a company that makes good organic supplements. The post was from a grandmother that was seeking help for her 10 year old granddaughter that weighed 200 pounds.

At first I wanted to go off on the grandmother for ever letting her granddaughter get to the point of weighing 200 pounds. I wanted to rip her up for letting this child become overweight at such an early age. It took almost 24 hours for me to calm down and reflect on what was the real issue here. The grandmother had no strategy for saving this child and she was really asking for help.

Today I am actually proud of the grandmother for seeking a plan; she was wondering if using all organic supplements would be good for her granddaughter and what would be the amount to give her. After all she was just a child.

This is what saddened me. The grandmother did not have any fear of letting her eating get out of control. Our society today endorses fast food, junk food, sugar, salt, and additives as the healthy standard, so when an option to have good health comes along we do not recognize it and fear the end result.

The good thing is the grandmother found a place where she would not be judged, just given help. I am not sure if she got a strategy to improve the health of the granddaughter but at least she is searching.

This is why this page was started. Do you need help finding a strategy for good health? What concerns do you have that we can help with? We will never endorse fad diets, crazy eating plans, drinks that fill up your stomach, or programs that are really scams. To find a strategy that works for you may take time, but time is going to pass anyway, whether or not you take control of your health and wellness.

Have a great day and reflect on what you want on this journey. We would like to hear from all of you.
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Yesterday my hubby and I went grocery shopping for the week but never set foot in a brick and mortar store. It's the new way to grocery shop. I think I can get to like it. 

First, I live in a small town with 3 basic grocery stores. Wally World, Kroger, Harps and a few small independents. When I do go to a store I usually go to Kroger. I boycott Wally World if at all possible. I don't like huge stores, or companies that do not do their employees right. I dont know if Kroger is any better, but I never hear negative comments about the way they are treated.

So with that in mind, we left early Thursday morning and drove to a small farmer's market. On Thursday there were only 2 stalls as Saturday is the big day for FM. I got 3 patty pan squash, a bag of carrots and pepper sauces for $7.00. Not bad! Next we went to the Mennonite farmer's stand. Great produce, but I am not sure it is organic. He is a little vague about that and prefers to say it is from HIS garden. I can relate to that, I don't think he is in cahoots with Monsanto so I just wash all the produce real well before eating. At Farmer Dan's we got peaches, 2 cantaloupes, a huge watermelon, onions, heirloom tomatoes, yellow squash ( I am a sucker for yellow squash) a jar of pickles and a bag of unshelled peas for $25.00. I was so excited!!

We have a community online market that is on Facebook. On Sunday thru Tuesday I can order online all the fruit and veggies for sale from many different farmers in the area. Some are true organic, some are just good people that don't spray their crops. They sell free range chickens (dead and cleaned) eggs, beef, jams, jellies, heirloom seeds, plants and a bevy of seasonal fruit and veggies to pick from. It is shopping without leaving your home. On Thursday is pick up your order day at the local Episcopal church. For $31.00 I got more tomatoes, okra, cucumbers, 2 bags of corn, free range eggs, zucchini and organic garlic. YIPPEE!!!

Since we are vegans, we found this shopping spree delightful. Veggies are so good at this time of the year, and Arkansas farmers have a way with raising local produce. I will miss fresh tomatoes in January as they only taste this good in the summer. But while they are still in season, I will eat them twice a day as long as they last. Now I need to go eat another bowl of red sweet watermelon and enjoy every bite. I LOVE summer.

A Conservative Hippie

After writing and actually having the nerve to publish blog 1, this is blog 2 describing more of who I am.

I was born in 1953 in the delta town of Pine Bluff Arkansas. A medium sized town of about 50,000 that had good neighborhoods, good employment, and just an hours drive to the state capital of Little Rock. I lived in the same house until I was 19 years old, went to the same schools as my older sister and parents for that matter and graduated with fairly good grades in 1971. The oddest thing about my high school education was the high school mascot was a Zebra. We were a very stuck up bunch as most school mascots were the basic wildcats, bears, or a slang word for Native Americans. Not us we were the red and white team called the Zebras.

Growing up in Pine Bluff was good, not outstanding but satisfactory. My dad worked at one of the two railroads and my mom stayed at home. They divorced when I was in college and the pain of that divorce lasted for many years. But I think like many pre -war marriages it just ran out of gas. Married in haste and later regretted it. However, they never regretted having my sister and me.

It looks odd now looking back over growing up in another slower era. Our food was raised in the backyard for the most part, anything else was bought at the corner grocery store and never from a big chain grocery. My mom cooked all our meals. Going out to eat was not an option until many years later. We didn't watch too much TV because TV in the fifties had only 3 channels. When we got PBS my dad would not watch it as it did not have ads or Garry Moore. So I grew up on Lucy, What's My Line and Red Skelton all in black and white. My dad was a little cheap (maybe conservative), so no color TVs for us although my granddad repaired TVs and offered several times to get us a good deal on a color one. That was not happening with my dad, as all TVs were free from my grandfather and even fixed for free. We spent our hard earned money on the basics and the rest was saved. I wished I was better at following that advice from my dad.

My college years were  the best part of my educational life growing up. I went to a small state school, and decided to be a teacher. ( I really wanted to be a geologist but failed the Math. Oh well, I still like rocks, I just teach my kiddos about them.) I loved my small school and again we had an original, one of the kind mascot, the Boll Weevil. Yes, a nasty little bug that Monsanto has eliminated from the cotton fields thanks to their nasty pesticides that has given us a large increase in cancer. But neverless, another one of the kind mascot.

After surviving college,( and having a really good time), I set off on my own to teach the masses and I just about have accomplished that. I have managed to teach preschool, kindergarten, first, second, fifth, sixth, seventh, and special ed. It has been fun, and I enjoyed all ages. One thing about teaching is it is never boring and no two days are the same. Getting bored is easy for me and that is probably why I am blogging so I will have something to do.

I always do things late in life. I am fashionably late to events, late to church, late to dinner. So it just fitting that I was late getting married and having kids. I did not get married until I was 30 and had kids in my late 30's. Having kids late in life keeps you young and on your toes. When most of my facebook friends from high school are posting pictures about their grandkids, I am posting pictures of my two graduating from college. I actually have one married off ( my baby ,my son) so I may get to post some pictures of grands in the near future and tell about how AMAZING they are.

I was not raised in a true conservative household, but more of the work hard, pay your dues, don't ask for anything that you did not earn background. I think I became more of a conservative when I had kids and wanted them to have  a work hard, pay your dues, don't ask for anything that you did not earn philosophy. But my HIPPIE life of the 60's and 70's comes through every once in awhile by going back to the raising your own food, taking care of the environment, don't throw stuff away that you can use again ideology. I just always disagreed with the free love and drugs thing of the hippies of the 60's other that they were pretty cool. So I guess I am considered a conservative hippie, and that is ok with me!

This is enough about me for today. I am off to juice!! Organic of course.

My Journey Restarted

I am not a blogger, but as I vocal as I have become on a few matters lately on this journey, especially health, I think it is time. A little about myself. I am a special ed teacher, mother of 3 grown kids, 2 dogs and 4 cats, and I have a husband too. Age wise, I am about ready for the big check from Social Security but I think I will work for a while longer! I get too bored easily to quit at this time.

 The purpose of this blog was to spread the good news about the many opportunities for good health for our families and us older guys and gals. My family has not always been health nuts. It took a major surgery for me to make me realize something in our diets and lifestyle needed to change and quick.


 My Recent History May 2010:

I had to have open heart surgery to replace a closed aortic valve in my heart. It was a devastating blow to me as I had always eaten healthy and tried to walk daily but I knew something was wrong with me. I went to the family doctor in February 2010 believing I had an allergy to nuts (when I ate almonds it seemed to made my heart race ) but what I found out it was something I had never heard of, I needed an aortic valve replacement. Major surgery, major down time, and a major blow to my ego! Thankfully my heart was in perfect condition besides that pesky little aortic valve. After a quarter of a million dollar surgery later, I got a brand new On-x mechanical heart valve that I will carry in me for the rest of my life. My new valve and I get along pretty well and it just keeps on ticking. Still it took over a year after surgery to feel normal again. I started searching for answers to getting my health, energy and drive back at 58 years of age, and it took another year to find a good supplement company that had the same ideas of being well as I did. I did not want any instant fixes, crazy shakes, and non organic ingredients dragging me back down to the years before my heart surgery. Thanks to finding and taking pure organic products, eating healthy and exercising, I have my stamina back and feeling pretty chipper.

 So thanks to an open heart surgery this journey has taken us to becoming an vegetable loving, heart healthy eating, organic buying family. We are really just the new normal family that hates GMOs, fad diets, junk food and being lied to about what is in our food.

 Don't all of today's families sit around the dinner table bashing GMOs and discussing how to eat raw and organic? Join the new normal, we all think you will feel better and live a lot longer!!

Looking at the Past, Praying for the Future

ON a warm early fall day in 2001 I was driving to work when over the radio the announcer said that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Being half a country away, I thought that pilots in NY need to be more careful and blew it off as a small plane getting off course and colliding innocently into the tower. Then before I got out of my car another report was coming across the airwaves. I remember the people on the radio trying to get the correct facts and not being used to going live with anything but sports, hearing sheer terror in their voices.

By a few minutes after nine, we had gathered around a television in the teacher's lounge trying to make sense of what was happening. It seemed planes were falling literally out of the sky. One teacher started to cry and we all wondered if WW3 had begun. Who was doing this was our first question, then why.

The why is still not answered to my satisfaction. How can we as the strongest country in the world fall prey to a small number of terrorists and not see it coming?? Have we become so blinded with politcal correctnes that we are inviting groups to come on in and take over. It is like if someone stands up and says enough is enough, that they are mean and uncaring and we should just lay down and take it.

The Eagle is not feared anymore. People come across our borders illegally everyday.We allow drug lords to camp out our Southern borders and wreck havoc with the safety of our citizens along the Rio Grande.

Even worse the 9/11 Memorial scheduled on Sunday at ground zero, there will be no religious leaders there, no firemen or first responders. I am not sure what Mayor Bloomberg is thinking but he AINT no Mayor Giuliani. The first responders are what saved many lives, running into a chard rubble saving whoever they could find. And to not include God on a day that we sought God to help us is unthinkable. Oh well, we may hurt someones feelings mentioning God and that is not good.

Our country is in a sad state of events. We have lost our pride. We are losing our grip with reality. At this rate in 10 years, we will cease to be the proud country we once were. We will be bowing down to other foreign powers hoping they don't kill our citizens, call in our loans and take away our rights because they may offend them. Our forefathers must be rolling over in their graves. We need to pray daily before it is too late for our once powerful and free country.

Rescue Cats

So many stray cats and dogs in the US end up in kill shelters that give them a week at best to find homes or that is it. It being the death penalty. In the US alone 12,000 animals, dogs, cats, rabbits, ferrets, snakes or what ever pet that is dumped at a kill shelter are put to DEATH each DAY. This is needless because we do not have mandatory spay and neuter laws in the US, The government will not shunt down the puppy mills or police pay for pets breeders. Most animals from Puppy Mils are stressed out, undernourished and anti social to say the least. It is all the ASPCA and the humane society can do to be the police for animals in the US.

The donation button below is one to help save a kitten from a shelter on the east coast. Rescued because it had a terrible past, Mia is now ready to have hip surgery to save her hip. There is an orgainzation 10th life willing to do the surgery at a huge discount of $600 from the original cost of $1600. The rescue group will need to raise the $600 soon. I donated a small amount to help Mia through Paypal. I hope the $600 is raised soon to give this death penality cat a chance at a good life. Give any thing it will help.

Football Season is Here

Even though it is 96 degrees outside the football season in the South is in full swing. What is it about college football that is so much fun? Watching football on every fall afternoon is so ingrained in my DNA that I have passed my love of the game to my children.

I love the loyalty that college fans have for their team. Wearing school mascot shirts, temporary tattoos on cheeks and decorating vehicles in school colors is part of the fun of college football. Our love of tailgating, including elaborate food served off of huge grills, flatscreen TVs and RV decorated to the hilt is as much fun as the actual game. Families and friends gather before the game to celebrate and cheer their team to victory. The pregame tailgate is a tradition for many families that set mood for the big game.

Luckily the team I follow is a great team. Being the largest school in one of the smallest state make a perfect combination for faithfull following. The Razorbacks of the University of Arkansas has an almost cult following for hogs fans. Our cheer called the Hog Call is heard from one end to the state before during and after games during the fall. Even seeing a fellow hog fan in another state is grounds to break into a hog call as we greet Hog fans all over the world.

Another season started today and hopefully it will a great season full of fun and team rivalries for fans to enjoy as records are set and dream seasons are made. Saturdays are made for memories, enjoy the season while you can.