146.4 Not Just Any Soy Milk

I switched to soy milk from cow's milk because I was getting painful trapped gas or farting all the time. A friend suggested I might be lactose intolerant. After a few days off cow's milk, the painful gas and farting stopped. It is so not worth all that pain and farting, just to ingest cow's milk. So, now I am off most dairy products. Cheese and yogurt are the only dairy products that do not give me some kind of painful or embarrassing gas.

Dr Ben Kim cautions us to choose our soy milk carefully: "Many brands of soy and rice milk contain polyunsaturated vegetable oils which can contribute to an imbalance of essential fatty acids in your body. As harmless as this might sound, I am convinced that a chronic imbalance of essential fatty acids caused by regular consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils is a major cause of cardiovascular disease."

This jives with what heart surgeon Dr Dwight Lundell says about excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils causing inflammation in the blood vessels, which is what allows cholesterol to accumulate there.

I buy Kirkland organic soy milk. It does not contain any polyunsaturated vegetable oils. It is also made with non-GMO soy beans. This means natural soy beans that are not genetically modified organisms. GMOs are safe according to their creator Monsanto, but harmful according to naturalists like Maria Rodale. I figure, "Why gamble that Monsanto has my best interests and not their financial bottom line at heart?"

After I switched to soy milk from cow's milk, I noticed I did not get hot flashes nearly so often. I am 48 and I started getting hot flashes when I was just 36. My mom was 50 before she finished menopause, so I have two more years of hot flashes to look forward to, yuck. I will take all the help I can get, reducing the frequency of hot flashes! 
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I wore my old UC Berkeley sweatshirt shopping at TJ Maxx yesterday! It had been 10 years or more since it last fit. I was so small back then because there's no place to park anywhere near campus. The campus is big, so I walked more than 5 miles a day in college.

I bought some black dress slacks, two summer shirts and a spring sweater yesterday. Scott took pictures of me in them last night. I will be posting those pictures over the next week. I entered TJ Maxx's drawing to win a $500 gift card!

It's the first day of spring, and it is snowing here in Spokane! It's sticking, too. Everything is lightly dusted with snow. We will still walk the dogs. Good thing we have snow suits.

Yesterday we walked the dogs around the neighborhood. The temperature was in the 50s and we greeted many neighbors who were out in their yards. What a difference a day makes!

I took it easy on the food yesterday because I went overboard at the church parties on Sunday and gained a pound. I lost most of it yesterday. Here is what I ate:

Small bowl of Special K and Kirkland organic soy milk
Leftover baked chicken, onion and carrots
The last homemade oatmeal cookie from the batch I made last month
Salmon patty and steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots

147.8 Shorts and Bacon!

It is very easy to reward weight loss with clothes if you buy them used. I tell you, I am ready for summer! You can't quite tell in this photo, but these plaid things are shorts. They have the cutest row of buttons down the outsides at the cuffs, too. They were less than $2 at the Good Will Store last week. This Danskin tank top was less than $1.

We walked the dogs 2 miles round trip to the post office yesterday to mail in our taxes. All I could think was, "I wish it were summer so we didn't have to bundle up so much!" It was much more fun walking around town than walking round the park. Now that the ice is melted, we have decided to go exploring on our walks.

This morning's weigh-in at 147.8 verifies that yesterday's high weigh-in was because my bowels were full. Still, I am going to drop a few more pounds so that no matter what, I will weigh in below 150.

Here is what I ate yesterday and lost a pound, along with walking 2 miles:

Small bowl of Special K, blueberries and vanilla soy milk

2 slices of bacon

3 Eggs scrambled in bacon grease with onions, mushrooms and red bell pepper

Leftover baked chicken, onion and carrots

If you're panicking because I am eating bacon, then read this declaration by heart surgeon Dr. Dwight Lundell. He says animal fats are healthy and it is processed vegetable fats we should limit in our diets. Here is a quote that summarizes his main points:

‎"Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes... What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods."