One of the goals of lifestyle medicine is to make the easy food choices be the healthiest ones. Our culture surrounds us with cheap junk food—from vending machines to grocery stores to fast food restaurants. Using food as our medicine (as recommended so long ago by Hippocrates) will bring us long-term health, according to the six global studies referenced by Dr. Hans Diehl during the video presentation for Session 2.
Since many of the participants in our CHIP class are taking the 5-Day Jump Start Challenge (eating only fruits and grains for the first two days, the samples this time focused on breakfast foods. We tasted steel-cut oats cooked with raisins and cinnamon, and brown rice topped with fresh blueberries and blackberries—delicious!
Jim, one of the cooks, demonstrated for the group how he uses his favorite cold weather kitchen appliance: a rice cooker. (His favorite warm weather appliance is a smoothie maker.) Jim likes Basmati rice and Jasmine rice. His “recipe” calls for one quart of rice and one quart of water. Since he rinses the rice grains twice before adding them to the cooker they are wet and require less water.
He chooses the whole grain setting on his rice cooker and in about one hour it is ready.
He also said that you can leave your rice in the cooker all day so it’s hot for evening, or let it cook during the night and wake up to the aroma of steaming rice for breakfast.
What I learned from Session #2
It was a new thought for me that my personal health goals may not be the same as my doctor’s goals for me, so it’s really important to communicate well.
What I Choose Today
I choose to be wear my pedometer and be intentional about maintaining a level of activity in the “somewhat active” and above categories.
