What the Foehn!

Oil on paper by Mary Payne foehn also föhn  (fn, fn)

A warm, dry, and often strong wind coming off the lee slopes of a mountain range, especially off the northern slopes of the Alps. A foehn is a katabatic wind that warms as it descends because it has dropped its moisture before crossing the mountain range and is put under greater atmospheric pressure as it moves downward. Various local names are also used for foehns (such as chinook in the Rocky Mountain regions), Meltemia in Greece, A foehn can cause sudden and dramatic increases in the temperaturefrom 10° to 20°C (50° to 68°F) in a few minuteswhich can cause snow to melt rapidly and even trigger flooding.  My friend Bruce B. sent me the above definition today and it seems to sum up not only the hot wind that sucked every morsel of moisture from the garden, toppling pots and moving the terrace furniture from A to B ....... but also my winter and spring before my trip to NYC and I don't mean the weather but my mood.    These last months of beautiful spring weather found me even more lethargic than I had been before in the winter.  Since I had felt this way for a while I had my blood tests done and my MD gave me the thumbs up on their results.   But still I was lazy and unenthusiastic.  So what to do?   I have to say that I eat a pretty healthy diet.  I don't touch junk food but love desserts, and bread and fruit.  For years I haven't eaten much butter or fat because we all KNOW THAT IS DEADLY.  I drank skim milk which is a non- food and pretty disgusting as it is pasteurized and homogenized and little resembles the original product.  I ate toast and butter and jam for breakfast on most days and was pretty addicted to Splenda as a sweetener.  I went so far as to have friends bring it to me from the States as we can't buy it here anymore.      Being married to a former wine merchant, I drank at least a glass a day maybe more depending on if I am out with friends or just enjoying it with K here at home.   I ate some squares of dark chocolate almost every day.   And since Monsieur loves pasta and risotto I have been eating that at least twice a week this last year. I ate free range chicken and good quality meat when I ate it, not often. ON this diet,  I have gained ten pounds in the last five years and that is not funny.  A girl my size can go up a dress size with five extra pounds and then you have to buy new stuff.  I felt like a girl in a painting I own but at least the extra flesh looks sexy on her.                                                             Tamara Lempika copy by Mary Payne A well kept secret is that when I was in college I was first a nutrition major.   I started that with three years of chemistry and two years of microbiology before I dropped out of the program.  I dropped out because my "nutrition" teacher was still using white flour ,white sugar and Crisco to cook with and I considered that old fashioned and outrageously unhealthy for an "expert".    I was a girl who was brought up using whole wheat flour, margarine ( yes we all were duped) and honey as a sweetener. We even kept our own bees for a while when I was around 8 years old.  We were Adele DAvis adherents before she died at 70 of cancer.  Somehow  I thought she would live past 100 and my beliefs were challenged when she died "young" and I dropped some of my strict behavior about food.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelle_Davis   But always in my mind is the idea that we owe it to ourselves and whatever gods there be to try to look after our bodies as much as we can.  This JUne, after seeing my brother in NYC,  who looked great and had lost 15 pounds without even trying, I decided to take a further look at nutrition and health and see  what new information was out there.  And specifically to take a look at what Dave was doing around diet.   It turns out:   DAve wasn't eating WHEAT, GRAIN, MILK, BEANS, POTATOES, CORN, SUGAR OR MUCH FRUIT.    He was eating LOTS OF BACON, EGGS, grass fed MEAT, SALAD, VEGETABLES, SAUSAGE, FISH, CHICKEN,  CREAM, BERRIES, BUTTER , NUTS and occasional fruits.      It seems he is trying to eat more or less like a PALEOLITHIC MAN.   And so his regime is called the Paleo lifestyle.  He had been on it for 5 months when I saw him and he had no body fat and he was as lively as a gerbil and very enthusiastic about his diet.   I have been trying this new way of eating for a month now with some exercise.  I will let you know in the next posts what it is about and what I think up to now.  Yes, the  Foehn is blowing through my life and lets hope it clears some of the cobwebs out of my brain and dries up a few of these fat cells.   If so , it would be welcome .