fattening foods

You don’t have to be rich to live a rich life.

You don’t have to be rich to live a rich life.

Once again it is the time in the seasons is to start getting ready for bathing-suits and the beach, by shedding those hibernation pounds in a hurry. After all the call of the wild is announcing to everyone it’s time to strut across the sands of those local beaches in your new swim-suits. Of course the number one problem with our human biological clocks are that our body’s pounds have increased slowly over the long fall and winter months, and with the arrival of spring our patience seems to be wearing thin. Partly due to frustration that we’ve allowed ourselves to gain weight, the other part is that we now see time as our new enemy.

We know in the back of our minds that we shouldn’t have gained all that weight…but a few extra pounds doesn’t make enough of a significant impact on our mind in calling us to act. Why should we act or take action when we don’t feel our health waning, when we don’t see any health symptom that screams, “Take some action, your unhealthy and may be damaging your health, or shorting your longevity.” Every time I look in the mirror I don’t hear my doctor saying, “You should lose weight”, as some good advice given to preserve my health. I don’t feel food greed nipping at my heals. I see a person who wants to live how they want too, and a person who wants to look like some advertisement. In fact the last time I went to my doctor’s office he never mentioned my weight issues. He just quietly raised his eyebrow as I stepped onto the scale then went on doing what doctors do, silently recording what I already know. I have gained weight.

What is it that doctors do? I thought, aren’t they supposed prevent disease; heal diseases, besides being upstanding citizens, and community pillars? Aren’t they just people willing to my dirty work so I can keep on doing / living the same way I choose too? It is my life, I tell myself while shove onto my doctor the responsibilities of preserving it.

Truth is doctors treat people all too often for health symptoms caused by diseases that people have, created for themselves. Not all illnesses are avoidable, but it is undeniable for the most part that some modern illnesses are avoidable, and some of those are caused by our own doing? Let’s face it we live our lives in a vacuum of self-imposed ignorance because we enjoy the things we do, healthy or not? Often times we feel that doctors will find cures to whatever our lifestyles have or will create, hoping on future cures to those feelings of illness and manifestations of illness themselves or those symptoms of potential diseases. So we don’t worry about our habits getting in the way of being healthy. The younger we are the less attention to health we have, and sooner than later we are stuck with lifestyle additions that we also claim are the ways we enjoy living our lives. But never has modern medicine ever prevented disease. Just like a Pap smear or any mammogram ever prevented breast and cervical cancer, they help doctors diagnose diseases early. Prostate exams, chest x-rays and annual physical don’t prevent disease, they help find it early. Is this the practice of medicine, or a production line peace of mind through testing, building our false impressions that we have little to change; because nothing was found; therefore no real need to change any effects to our lives, or how we chose to live them. Because there is always still time, mortality mocks us in thinking there is time to still change our choices?

Now days we all have access to stats, just as doctors have medical stats and research on the latest studies within the medical industry that points to unhealthy lifestyles as being more costly to treat a variety of preventable health issues? The internet is full of these studies. Like the stats–the costs to Medicare is 50% more every year to treat an obese American compared to one of normal weight. Or the stat that only 20% of medical patients are normal weight. Doctors know that fat produces a variety of hormones, peptides, and enzymes that can have a wide-ranging impact on anyone’s health. Overweight people have increased risks of diabetes, dementia, cancer, sexual dysfunction, heart disease and strokes. If just losing weight reduces all of these mentioned diseases from happening to a lot of people, don’t doctors then have a responsibility to help society prevent disease, or are they just there to pick-up the pieces to our train wreck lifestyles until humpty dumpty can’t be put back together again?

Doctors must have a deep sadness, seeing people waste away their lives while reducing quality of life in fighting some illness / disease of their own making / of their own past choices? Doctors can’t choose for us on how we should live. But should doctors also be health consultants? Therefore shouldn’t they be educators, offering advice to people, being more in their faces to the effects of health and their patents lifestyle choices? I’m thinking there is some thin-skinned people out there just waiting for the opportunity to then sue the crap out of a doctor. It’s kind of like winning life’s lottery you know, the hell with the truth behind science being presented to us. How dare you! Because what I would imagine a supper doctor or a supper human hero would look like and act like, is a doctor helping people prevent health issues because of the studies and statistics within the science that prove what they are fully statically aware of.

Doctors aren’t super heroes though; sadly they are just managers of decay.

So ask yourself this question; why are those healthcare costs so high? Or is it the greedy of doctors, drug manufactures, or treatment centers and insurance companies who just jack up the prices on the poor old sick people for the sake of profiteering? Or is it you and I who just don’t care about health until its withdrawal in our lives, in which case we all then become the greedy consumers struggling to cling onto life even after a life time’s worth’s of self-abuse, living according to our impression and definitions of what living the good life really is? Ask a 100 people and get 100 different answers. None of which considers quality of life as living a healthy life.

When it comes to healthcare Americans have an addiction to the religion of the healing power of doctors, hoping they would play the part of being the universal saviors of the sick, curing everything and every symptoms of our own self-inflicted lifestyles. Despite of our lofty expectations of doctors, who asks their doctor how can we best avoid illnesses?

Would we listen to our doctor if they insisted that we should lose a few pounds to become healthier, exercise more, stop smoking, and limit our alcohol consumption, stop using or abusing sugar….. Or would we just hear—Blah, Blah, and Blah? Only willing to act if it means we are actually seeing the light at the end of our potential lives, and then only willing to act to avoid or prolong what is 100% unavoidable. Is that quality of life? More than not people would blame those courageous doctors who would tell us to lose weight or anything like that as being educated killjoy’s to our enjoyment.

Somehow I’m hearing the song in the back of my mind by the rock band Kansas, All we are is dust in the wind and all of our money doesn’t another minute buy.

If Americans would only self-educate to live a healthier lifestyle, and lose those extra pounds by practicing some self-denial, what great heights could we all personally yet achieve, and how much money could we all have, or have to give away to charity’s, or leave to our loved ones when we actually do leave our mortal coil behind?

How much more waste could we remove from the treatment of the sick, being able to then treat those who don’t have the financial means to seek treatments to illnesses on their own? How much more would medical treatment be available to all, if what is a now being a wasted resource, isn’t wasted?

Life is full of choices, both big and small, choices that we make not always knowing the outcome beforehand but evaluating the odds. Shouldn’t we then choose more carefully?

It’s true that 100% of all of us will die at some point. It is the choices that we make, and at times the smallest of choices that will determine the quality of life we will yet live in all of life’s stages going forward.

If we Americans lost some extra weight, most of the healthcare crisis would disappear.

Choosing to eat 30 calories less per meal would total up to about 100 calories per day, some 36,000 calories per year (based on a 2,000 calorie diet those 36,000 fewer calories not eaten would be a total of 18 full days’ worth of less food eaten in that year.) think of the impact on the world that a small personal choice could have in providing healthy food to the hungry, or how much money would be left in your pocket? More money in your pockets because of less doctor’s visits, less illnesses, and less wasted on excessive food eaten. Think of the everyday impact, not just on those days that you go to the beach sporting a new swim suit.

Whose responsibility is it, to our life, our health, and the expense having to spend providing healthcare for ourselves? We need to stop thinking that the axis that the world spins on runs right through the top of our own heads. Life is all about those smallest of choices that can lead to the biggest of personal impacts—and some of those choices could even shake-up the world?

You don’t have to be rich to live a rich life or be able to richly impact another’s life beyond their own abilities. You just have to be willing to make that choice.

With gas soon to be $5.00, We need a beer Czar!

With unemploymentt at too high of a range, oil prices too high, and gas going to the unexpected $5.00 per gallon. We the people, need the answers to these problems that say “genius!” Okay! Maybe that’s just a bit over the top. But solving problems and making life better all in the same time isn’t too much to ask? I say a car in every driveway, a chicken in every pot, and affordable green energy for the nation. Just to kick the nations in the oil-producing world in the nuts real hard! Enter into the mix the need for the beer Czar!

First I must say, being under employed these days I’m offering my services to the government for the future job of being the beer czar. Why do we need a beer czar, you ask? Well we have plenty of czars who do… Well it slips my mind as to the exact excused that the government uses as why we have czars in the first place. Maybe it sounds socialistic, and the government kids, like the sound when they say czar? But who really knows? I’m only interested in the position because it pays on average $120,000.00 per year for all of the other czars out there. So why should the beer czar work for less? Besides that’s better pay with benefits then any job in the non-government sector. When we have a Nintendo czar / video game czar, in the government already. Don’t we need to round out the entertainment / czar’s positions in government?

I guess when president Obama said “we can not afford to fall behind the Europeans and the Chinese with green energy research.” It struck me! Well it may have been that bio-diesel truck in front of me. The exhaust smelled like french fries, instead of the usual sick diesel smell. Going past the brewery at the same time gave me the subliminal message to get some beer-batter fried fish and chips. Imagine that! Toxic gases could inspire me to get some fattening foods, net alone give me the idea of the beer czar. Or is that why we refer to those gases as “Toxic?”

Look Germany is Europe’s main source of green energy used in their electrical grid. But at what cost to their economy? In fact, recently they said they will no longer support their green energy through solar electricity. It was not worth the cost, they said. So for America to take the number 2 spot on green energy is somewhat easier. But  what about using beer as the source of future energy? It is green! It has a solar component to it as well. After all the barley and hops are grown in the sun. We may be behind Germany with the beer purity laws, but give us time. We need a beer czar first.

Re-engineering the internal-combustion engine is the first step. The cost of doing this should be easy. But finding the money to do this should be easier still. finding extra money for this among the wasteful spending dollars not yet spent in government. No one is looking, so with beer no one cares. Instead of spending good cold cash on some muslim country that will only find some reasons not to sell oil to us, and or curb oil production to raise prices, or just finding some new reasons to hate. You know some crazy outrageous accusations calling us all “the infidels!” You know who they are… wink, wink. I don’t see a need to spend money on putting our balls into a vice and then letting some other country who hates us put the pressure to us. Ya! We may be tough.. but that is needless pain to endure. Why pay for the self-abuse in the form of buying oil, from people who call us Infidels? No matter if it is individually or as a country. The beer czar would reduce foreign oil consumption, thus reliving the pressure on our country’s balls and economy alike.

With grain alcohol mainly made with corn. We are only cutting into the food supply. Cows = beef, chicken = take out food, and pig = pork bacon, they all eat corn. But if we are going to make alcohol from our grain it will rise the price of meat. So I say let the whole world hear the roar of our muscle cars engine, let the alcohol be the life blood of transportation, and with beer there is no such problems. Who eats barley? I mean barley as some food stuff on your diner plate. Not in this country anyway. We as the Germans, make beer from it. After all meat is meat and man has to eat. So lets put beer into our cars tanks, and let the beer wash down our meat that we eat. A win, win in anyones book.

As the beer czar I would have to regulate it. Some would be for fuel and some just for enjoyment. Beer fuel would be safer to use then gasoline. When there is a car crash and a leak from the fuel tank, one spark and poof. But with beer being the fuel of the future, people would just run for empty containers to hold the spilling beer. More like a keg’er on the highway. What about slipping on some icy roadway, ending up down the hill aways? Stuck with no real rescue and with nothing to eat but salty crackers. What to do? Tap the beer gas tank and wash down the salty crackers. Alcohol also keeps people from freezing in the cold you know. That’s why those High mountain dogs, the ones with those kegs of hard alcohol around their necks. Trained to find the strangers and give them something to keep from freezing to death. You know the ones? Of corse the alcohol would keep them from remembering that the dog would also try humping their legs while they sleeping off the alcohol. No such problem with beer in the gas tank.

The beer czar’s main job would have to be, tasting the different blends of course. With brewery showing up in Boston and Colorado, and all up and down the west coast. Building a brewery is much easer then a refinery for gas. Quicker as well. No need for the EPA to over regulate the brewery’s of the future. Hell The unemployed with a few classes could produce their own fuel on the kitchen stove in their own homes. Giving them the transportation fuel to get to work. At a lower cost then gas. If you don’t have a job to go to, you could drink the extra beer… not while driving of course. Just looking out for the poor among us. Now I’m sounding more like the president. So I’m right for the Job!

With all the crazy stories coming out of washington DC these days. Going green for our energy needs. You know! Solar power or future fuel from green slime algae. Would you rather put that soon to be $10.00 per gallon gas into your gas tank, or that green slime biodiesel? Who really knows how expensive that’s going to be? What does that green slime biodiesel smell like anyway’s? I would rather smell toxic gases coming from the truck in front of me that smells like beer batter fish and chips. So filler up with Coors. Not the light stuff! Regular… for this hot rod! I could use the extra octane in my tank. Besides I like the sound of kicking those oil-producing country’s in the nuts real hard, with the roar of my engine. Beer in my tank and the sound that their cracking nuts make! Now that’s true green energy!

Help a guy out and let your public official know, “We need a beer czar!” Might as well be me!

Thanks for your support! All the best.