Happy End of May, Thrivers!

Let’s get right to it.

Pearl One

I don’t have a thing against Starbucks, per se. I’m just not wild about any fast-food drive-thrus and their artificial ingredients that wreak havoc on our weight and health.

What’s that?

Starbucks isn’t really fast-food? It’s actually in a luxury class all its own?

Well, let’s get quick background on the subject.

Last summer the famous McD featured a Chocolatey Pretzel McSomething, but it’s been replaced.

This coming summer the king of fast-food is bringing us the Strawberry Shortcake McCalories made with vanilla ice cream, strawberry-flavored clusters (whatever those are), and shortbread cookies.

And here’s what’s important to remember, the summer McFrozen is “limited time only” so you and I need to move our caboose. Like, stat.

So back to Starbucks. Their featured summer drinks are the Chocolate Java Mint Frappiccino and the White Chocolate Macadamia Cream Cold Brew.

According to Starbucks’s press release the drinks are available starting in May in the U.S. for a limited time, while supplies last.

See what I mean?

McD’s McFlurry and Starbucks’s drinks are both “limited time only” and we need to move fast or we’ll lose out on this spectacular drink experience.

But my guess is, dig under the surface and you’ll find that the fast-food giants are actually serving “limited time only” desserts as a way to create a habit.

The fast-food peeps are aware that they have “true fans”, what I’m betting is they hope their specialty drinks will tempt on-the-fence customers and the never-evers (like myself) to drive screaming into their drive-thrus for a drink-dessert that’s the living end.

But here are the two pain-points for you and me:

1) Training our taste-buds to love a bowl of plain strawberries maybe capped with a swish of whipped cream is our life-long plan. If our mouths are having a party with the high-sugar and/or high-fat desserts like the McFlurry, the humble strawberry doesn’t stand a chance.

2) Eliminating our habit of stopping at any fast-food is the whole idea. Big Fast-Food wants to obliterate our good habit of cutting them out of our lives entirely.

How to get around the fast-food in your life? Read on. ♥

Pearl Two

You want fun-food? I once told myself, “Hey, no problem, you can have the food, as long as you first study the nutrition count.”

My rule for myself was that if I read the nutrition labels on a product or the nutrition count online then I could have the fun-food.

But somehow that gorgeous pizza didn’t look so awesome when I realized that – holy cow — a slice of Mellow Mushroom’s meat pizza is 530 calories, 27 g fat, 1,370 mg sodium, and 48 g carbs. And who stops at one slice?

The sodium alone is crazy.

Figuring out the nutrition count on donuts, fast food burgers and ice cream is life-changing.

Do you see what’s actually happening? It’s your cavewoman who wants to chow the pizza. But it’s your prefrontal who reads the nutrition info. leading you to make smart food choices.

Get the prefrontal involved and it becomes your decision what you’ll eat and when. ♥

Pearl Three

June’s topic for the month: what cannot be an afterthought in our smart eating lives. Every week we’ll talk activities that require hard-core planning rather than off-the-cuff moves we might normally make.

Today’s topic: we’re heading into summer vacations and planning how and what you’ll eat on the trip needs to be given serious thought.

I’ve been a travel writer for 16 years now, and I never gained weight on trips. Having a solid plan in place and not winging it moment by moment gets all the credit. Whether I was traveling by car or plane, I knew exactly how the food-situation would go down.

Bottom line: Know before you go. ♥

Pearl Four

Books love us and want us to be at our preferred weight.

You are owed an apology. And the Mountains Echoed by one of my favorite authors, Khaled Hosseini, should have been one of the first book-desserts I shared. The book’s genre falls under both “historical fiction” and “domestic fiction.”

Total honesty: if I’d read a description about this title’s plot I’d have thought, “hard pass.” But I’d read Hosseini’s other two masterpieces — The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns – so I was 100-percent in. When I came up with the idea of book-dessert it was because of books like And the Mountains Echoed.

So, that’s my review: 100-percent. ♥

Pearl Five

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” C.G. Jung ♥

We can access our subconscious when we pick up our journal and allow our subconscious to talk with us through the pen. ♥

Have a fantastic weekend, all!

♥, Wendy

P.S. Are you new to the Inspired Eater? Welcome!! This blog won’t make much sense until you first read the Aunt Bea post (and you’ll find Aunt Bea on this page to the right under my short bio). On your cell you’ll see it immediately following the first post. After you enter your email address, the Aunt Bea article will be sent to your email’s inbox. If it’s not there, you might check the spam folder. And always feel free to email me at Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll get Aunt Bea right to you!

You know the scoop: I’m an Amazon affiliate. If you buy from a link in my post, I’ll receive money, but the arrangement won’t cost you a dime.

My favorite cold-tote

The best book-desserts on the planet

Flourishing after age fifty is a real thing. Owning your “flourish” allows you
to feel like you belong with the billions of us trekking the Smart Eating Path. 

Pearl One

You’ve tried a million times to lose weight, and are highly skeptical that the micro-steps I share will actually produce results?

I get it.

But consider this: we’re late bloomers. Tell yourself, “Some bloom in their younger years; I happen to be blooming in my second half of life.”

All kinds of blooming applauded!

In decades past, we didn’t know that we didn’t know (about how to lose after age fifty for the long haul).

And for whatever reason, I stumbled upon the map.

But the map doesn’t belong to me.

So — as you continue to bloom — I want you to have and know this map too. And then, spread the word. ♥

Pearl Two

Last month a home-bound friend and I wanted to get together for lunch, but she wasn’t ready to go out to eat. So, it was left to me to bring restaurant meals for us both.

What did she feel like? Mexican? Pizza? Thai? Chinese?

She didn’t really care; I should just get whatever I wanted.

Oh, great. I really don’t love trying to deduce what someone else might like.

But, knowing that Mexican or pizza are not the smartest food choices, I narrowed my options down to: Thai or Chinese?

At that, I turned to Google asking “which type of food is the best for those trying to keep it healthy”?

You know, I totally assumed that I’d find a rather namby-pamby “both cuisines are wonderful in their own special way” type of response.

But that is NOT what I learned!!

I was so surprised to discover that Thai is far and away preferable health-wise to those of us helicoptering our health.

Why Thai?

There are several key differences between Thai and Chinese, like the following:

(1) Thai food isn’t made with heavy sauces, but with light delicate herbs and spices.

(2) Thai dishes are packed in non-starchy veggies like carrots, cucumber, bean sprouts, onions and the like.

(3) Many dishes substitute coconut milk instead of heavy cream for great flavor.

(4) Thai has brown rice as an option which is what I always order.

(5) Rather than fried spring rolls, order “summer rolls” at Thai that clock in around 110 calories each, aren’t fried, and are stuffed with healthy veggies.

My Two Favorite Orders

I have two go-tos that I always order:

• Thai “yum, yum” salad made with tofu. (The word “yum” in Thai means “mixed” or “tossed together.” But in any language this salad rocks!)
• Green curry. I order mine with tofu as the protein and request extra vegetables. (I mean, so good!) ♥

Pearl Three

Back in the day, Saturday morning cartoon commercials were sophisticated thanks to the Mad Men who aimed their laser directly at kids who were too young to see the dangers of highly sugared cereals behind Tony the Tigers, Franken Berrys, and the count Choculas.

Shelby (my sister) and I — thoroughly brainwashed thanks to those ads – couldn’t help but notice that “the other kids got to be ‘coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs’, why not us?!”

So, my mom relented. (Phew, we thought, finally.)

Every December she he wrapped mini-boxes of sugared cereal and stuffed them into our Christmas stockings.

And it wasn’t just sugary cereal my mom disapproved of. We weren’t allowed to have Tang, Kool-Aid, Hostess-anything, Jif peanut butter and so on. (Don’t get me wrong, my mom wasn’t a health nut. She bought all of the Hostess cupcakes and Ho Hos she and my dad partied after we’d gone to bed.)

Then when fast-food began mushrooming across the land, true-to-form my mom wasn’t biting and rarely allowed us to partake.

The woman was psycho.

All that said I want you to know about the book titled: Salt, Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us by Michael Moss. You’ll be stunned at how sneaky and (frankly) immoral the people behind the junk food explosion really are.

Salt, Sugar, Fat isn’t a book-dessert read; it’s just not juicy enough. But once I skimmed the boring first part, this book became hard to put down.

It’s a keeper and here’s why: reading just a page or a day and highlighting your favorite passages will allow your smart eating life to soar.

It’s that good.

And that annoying. Just a few pages into Moss’s book and I was checking the sugar ingredient on everything I thought was innocent like spaghetti sauce, bread, even my favorite whole-wheat bagels.

Salt, Sugar, Fat should be called titled, How Big Food Tricked Us Into Eating Chemicals as a way of Life. ♥

Pearl Four

I’ve shared this book before, but if you haven’t had the pleasure: lucky you because a wonderful story is coming your way! Min Jin Lee’s first book, Pachinko, snagged the Pulitzer’s Fiction Runner Up in 2018 and is proof that aliens live among us (meaning the advanced level of writing is beyond comprehension). Her second book Free Food for Millionaires is a phenomenal read too! ♥

Pearl Five

Have a wonderful weekend all! And I’d love a follow on the Inspired Eater Facebook page and Instagram!

♥, Wendy

P.S. Are you new to the Inspired Eater? Welcome!! This blog won’t make much sense until you first read the Aunt Bea post (and you’ll find Aunt Bea on this page to the right under my short bio). On your cell you’ll see it immediately following the first post. After you enter your email address, the Aunt Bea article will be sent to your email’s inbox. If it’s not there, you might check the spam folder. And always feel free to email me at Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll get Aunt Bea right to you!

You know the scoop: I’m an Amazon affiliate. If you buy from a link in my post, I’ll receive money, but the arrangement won’t cost you a dime.

My favorite cold-tote

The best book-desserts on the planet

Our daily motto: full immersion. Full immersion. Full immersion. Say it often and in time your brain will latch on and begin to make better smart eating choices.

Hi Thrivers,

Fun week babysitting an African grey parrot. So sweet, so smart.

On with the show! ♥

Pearl One

When my boys were young, we moved often enough that homeschooling them seemed like the best plan. Also, as a travel writer destinations and hotels don’t want to deal with media during their busy seasons, but in bleak February they’re like, “come on down!” So, the boys being homeschooled made it easier to travel.

And one son’s personality did not lend itself to the school system. (To put it mildly.)

So, I put one toe on the home school yellow brick road and never looked back. It wasn’t long before I realized that to do a spectacular job, I had to go all-in.

It was time: go full immersion or go home.

Homeschooling my boys became my thing, I even put reading my own books on-hold for many years because reading kid-lit was an enormous slice of our homeschooling life. If we weren’t doing an actual lesson, we were with Laura and Pa watching a railroad being built.

Point is: weight loss and preservation after age fifty also requires full immersion.

I know. I can hear you saying, “look, lady. My schedule is packed. I might be retired but I’m regularly knee-deep in a, b, and c. Full immersion might be a lovely concept for others, but it won’t fit my lifestyle. What else have ya got?”

That’s the thing.

I don’t have anything else. Attempting to live the Smart Eating Lifestyle without calling it a part-time job and living like it’s your part-time job is the only way I know of to preserve a forever-loss.

If you want the Ozempek quick-fix then, of course, you can lose twenty pounds for the upcoming reunion.

But if you’ve had it with losing and regaining the same pounds over and over again, the time is now to fully immerse into the Smart Eating Lifestyle. (Why is “the time now”? Because we’re not twelve, that’s why.)

As I’ve said, follow my bread crumbs. I want to forge a new chapter for women over fifty; one where we create the best, healthiest second half of life as we possibly can. And that starts with learning how to get to your preferred weight and preserve the loss for a lifetime.

I’ve mentioned before that when I caught a picture of myself at my cousin’s wedding, I honestly didn’t know at first who the heavy woman in the red dress was until I saw my very round face peering back at me.

We’ve got this. I’ll share every micro-step I ever took over the last two decades. Just follow my lead and we can make this happen. But first, commit to the full immersion. ♥

Pearl Two

Put succinctly, being bored when we’re living the Smart Eating Lifestyle is playing with fire. Insert fun into the harder windows of your day. Don’t take boredom lightly. Along with stress and grief, boredom is one of the top three smart eating day-destroyers. ♥

Pearl Three

Topic for July: how to keep steering yourself back onto the Smart Eating Path.

Acknowledging that you will slip into negative eating is the first step in dropping the traditional drama around food (“what’s wrong with me?” “I’ll never be a size 12” and so on). So, you ate the cheesecake. I mean, who hasn’t?

Here’s the new modern-day drama you’re fully encouraged to embrace: grab the ketchup (or salt, whichever’s handy) and squirt the blank out of the offending food that you might inhale. Or take a slice and then squirt it. You have to move fast for this trick to work.

Squirt like your life depends on it. No little blob-squirts, douse the sucker!

The ketchup or salt is doing double-duty for you. 1) Squirting the cheesecake with ketchup means that that particular offensive food is done. Now you can easily throw it away. But 2) the ketchupping action shouts to your brain that life is changing. No longer will we – you and your brain – be at the whim of food. Your brain is always watching, always soaking in what you’re up to. If your brain see’s you decimating negative food often enough it will think, “we don’t like porn-food. Good to know.”

After you’ve ketchupped the last of the cheesecake, wait an hour or two, keep yourself busy, and get back to your happy and healthy food plan (for me that usually means I make my blueberry-oatmeal bowl). And remember, even if you only ketchup the very last bite of cheesecake, you can still call it a win. ♥

Pearl Four

Books love us and want us to be happy.

Summer is for light and frothy books. Who wants to sit at the pool reading the Grapes of Wrath (awesome page-turner, by the way). In honor of summer, I highly recommend Lisa Scottoline’s — rhymes with fettuccine — memoir-funny books.

The books are a LOL-hilarious and a very frank peek behind a successful writer’s curtain. Also, they’re best read in order. 🙂

• Why My Third Husband Will Be A Dog: The Amazing Adventures of an Ordinary Woman
• My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space
• Best Friends, Occasional Enemies: The Lighter Side of Life as a Mother and Daughter
• Happy and Merry
• Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim
• Have a Nice Guilt Trip
• Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?:True Stories and Confessions
• I’ve Got Sand In All the Wrong Places
• I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere But the Pool
• I See Life Through Rose-Colored Glasses ♥

Pearl Five

And as we’re getting stronger and more resilient in parts of our lives, we need to acknowledge and high-five ourselves when we pull off something wonderful like getting the colonoscopy we’ve long ignored or taking a new route to see clients so you don’t drive by your (once) favorite donut shop. Throw a little internal party for yourself as in, “wow, look at me. I haven’t had a chip or a cracker in a year!” (Large parties allowed too.)

Thank you so much for everyone who follows me on Facebook and Instagram. Very appreciated.

I would love it if you’d share a post with family, friends, even doctors. 🙂

Have the kind of weekend where you stop and appreciate how cool and accomplished you are.

♥, Wendy

P.S. Are you new to the Inspired Eater? Welcome!! This blog won’t make much sense until you first read the Aunt Bea post (and you’ll find Aunt Bea on this page to the right under my short bio). On your cell you’ll see it immediately following the first post. After you enter your email address, the Aunt Bea article will be sent to your email’s inbox. If it’s not there, you might check the spam folder. And always feel free to email me at Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll get Aunt Bea right to you!

You know the scoop: I’m an Amazon affiliate. If you buy from a link in my post, I’ll receive money, but the arrangement won’t cost you a dime.

My favorite cold-tote

The best book-desserts on the planet

How to find the treasure in your next binge or overeat.

Pearl One

When this smart eating hack occurred to me, it practically knocked my flip-flops off.

Let’s say you overate a little bit or maybe you overate a lot of bit.

Right here, at this feeling-gross-moment, is where the treasure lies.

I understand that you don’t feel good, but pull out your journal and write an email, a letter, or a journal-essay to your future self.

Feeling yucky-you can save future-you from more binging down the road. Of course, this method isn’t 100 percent, but it will go miles in addressing overeating or an actual binge. (It’s also an amazing habit to embed. Overeat? Write about it.)

Thrivers, we are in the zone of creating real change for ourselves.

Write at least a paragraph to these questions (this is not the time to be word-stingy).

• How do you feel – in your body — right now? (Ex: Stomach ache, want to throw up etc.)
• How do you feel emotionally at this moment? (Ex: I’m so mad at myself. I was doing so well around food and I messed everything up for what?! Margaritas and chips? Wendy’s note: try to keep in mind that you’re normal.)
• If you’re mad at you, what do you tell yourself at this moment? (Ex: I’m so dumb, what’s wrong with me, why am I so weird around food? etc.)
• If your internal voice is harsh and critical, where do you think you first heard this type of criticism? (Knowing is important not for blaming purposes, but so that we can address the criticism at its roots.)
• At that, stack the times in your adult life when you’ve been responsible. Stack at least five. Then do something you couldn’t do as a kid: talk back to the voice who called you names.
• Write at least three paragraphs on what you’d say to the voice who called you an airhead, again, all in your journal only (“I was twelve!” “I was still learning in life!” Who calls a child an airhead anyhow?!”).
• What you most want for future-you (give at least three ideas).
• What do you want future-you to know: (Ex: that it feels awful to overeat because. . .)
• Do you know specifically what triggers you into eating too much?
• How can you address the triggers so they lose their power?
• How do you wish you’d responded instead of overeating?
• How can you make it more attractive (from Atomic Habits) to stay the Smart Eating Path? (Ex: I can always keep my favorite healthy food on-hand, not get overly hungry, not talk to that combative family member on the phone when I’m too close to the binge food etc. etc.).
• Can you write suggestions re: what you wished you’d done instead of overeat?

The essential idea is to teach future-you about how terrible it feels to give in. And then give strong ideas that would better than overeating.]And last, revisit your letter as often as needed. Keep it front-and-center in your daily. ♥

Pearl Two

I can turn any food into a “bingeable.” Acknowledging to myself that I’d always use food to comfort, celebrate or numb-out is just how I’m built.

As you know, it’s cake over wine every time.

Acknowledging that I’ll always default head-first into food is an annoying thought, but I also know more about myself and can therefore handle the overeating tendency that much better. ♥

Pearl Three

June’s topic for the month: what cannot be an afterthought in our smart eating lives.

Today’s topic: we’re heading into summer vacations and planning how and what you’ll eat on the trip needs to be given serious planning.

I’ve been a travel writer for sixteen years now, and I never gained weight on trips. Having a solid plan in place and not winging it moment by moment gets all the credit. Whether I was traveling by car or plane, I knew exactly how the food-situation would go down.

Bottom line: Know before you go

Pearl Four

Our book-dessert slot!
You are owed an apology. And the Mountains Echoed by one of my favorite authors, Khaled Hosseini, should have been one of the first book-desserts I shared. The book’s genre falls under both “historical fiction” and “domestic fiction.”

Total honesty: if I’d read a description about this title’s plot I’d have thought, “pass.” But I’d already read Hosseini’s other two masterpieces — The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns – so I was all in. When I came up with the idea of book-dessert it was because of books like And the Mountains Echoed

So, that’s my review: 100 percent. (And again, my apologies.) ♥

Pearl Five

If you haven’t yet read Aunt Bea, just shoot me an email: Wendy@WendyIrvineWriter.com! 🙂

♥, Wendy

P.S. Are you new to the Inspired Eater? Welcome!! This blog won’t make much sense until you first read the Aunt Bea post (and you’ll find Aunt Bea on this page to the right under my short bio). On your cell you’ll see it immediately following the first post. After you enter your email address, the Aunt Bea article will be sent to your email’s inbox. If it’s not there, you might check the spam folder. And always feel free to email me at Wendy@TheInspiredEater.com and I’ll get Aunt Bea right to you!

You know the scoop: I’m an Amazon affiliate. If you buy from a link in my post, I’ll receive money, but the arrangement won’t cost you a dime.

I am not an expert, a doctor, a surgeon, a nurse or a nutritionist: the information within TheInspiredEater.com is based solely on my personal experience and is not intended to be used as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. ♥