The "M" Word

Central Asian Diet Plan

Many famous diets are named after their place of origin.  For example, there is the South Beach Diet and the Mediterranean Diet.  Where we live, we have the Central Asian Diet, or the CA Diet.  The CA Diet is a combination of factors which when put together cause a weight loss situation.  The following lines will detail the CA Diet and their claims to results.  Just remember, with all diets the results are not typical, except maybe the CA Diet.

1.  Regular Sauna activity.  We all know that saunas are good for your system because you sweat out the impurities in your body.  Well here in CA you don't have to join an expensive club or even sit in a smelly room with half naked men, all you have to do to experience the CA sauna is walk outside.  That's right, part of the CA Diet is living in constant sauna like conditions.  All day long your body is detoxing by sweating out the impurities in your body.  This of course is the first part of the diet because detoxing before starting any diet is important.

2.  Green tea.  This actually goes along with #1 in cleaning out your system.  For those of you who don't know it, green tea is very good for you and actually does have weight loss capabilities.  Read the labels on your diet pills and you will see green tea extracts on many of them.  Now for those of you who don't like green tea, it's OK the CA Diet has a solution for you.  Drink it anyway!  You see drinking tea is a key part of the culture here and if you don't drink it you will offend someone.  Consider a support group.  When you go to a neighbors house you have to drink the tea or you will seriously offend a core cultural value of hospitality.  This peer pressure will cause you do something you don't like and cause you to conform to a more healthy life-style.

3.  Drink lots of water.  Sure other drinks are available here, but water is the key.  Now there are two ways for you to use the water in a CA Diet.  One is drink filtered or bottled water in abundance.  This will of course help you in the sauna like conditions and rehydrate you when necessary.  The other aspect of the water that can be part of the CA diet is catching a bug from drink unfiltered water.  Of course this is not near as desirable as the other aspects of the water part of the diet.  Yet, it does have a weight loss aspect.  If you happen to get a hold of some non-potable water then you will experience one of the rapid weight loss moments that are common here.  At this point, get your movie I-pod ready because you will be spending a lot of quality "me" time all alone.

4.  Fruits and Veggies.  Fruits and veggies are in abundance here and should be a regular part of your CA Diet.  Again, there is a double quality to your fruits and veggies intake.  If you eat a lot of these at home where you can soak you veggies in filtered water then you get the traditional benefits of a high fruits and veggie diet.  If though, by some chance you try a piece of fruit at the bazaar or eat some at a restaurant then get the double effect.  First you get the effect of the nutritional aspect of fruits and veggies.  Second you get more of that "me" time described above because you just hate food washed in less than clean water.

5.  Finally, you get the low-meat diet.  That is right, this is not the diet for those of you who have to meat at every meal.  Meat is easy to be found, but the quality is definitely not USDA.  The end result is eat less meat, more rice and veggies.

The overall effect of all five of these key ingredients of the CA Diet is weight loss.  Of course that weight loss will vary depending on much of these five you combine at any given moment.  So far, my weight loss has totaled 6 lbs in two weeks.

Maybe you want to come and experience the full benefit of the CA Diet.  It may not be South Beach, but they don't call our city the Big "D" for nothing. (I think I am done now, must go get some of that "me" time.  I think I will watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy next.)

Now this is funny!

Feeling Blue?

By Strider

A few years ago a container of humanitarian aid was donated to the organization I was working for. We distributed a lot of aid in those days to many people who were suffering from the ill effects of the very destructive civil war. The contents of the container surprised us somewhat. It was a twenty foot container stuffed completely full of Fruit Loops Cereal. Not your normal flour, oil, and beans mix. Normally we had a very strict policy on humanitarian aid that was donated. We never used it for ourselves or our families but since no one here in Middle Earth eats cereal or even knows what it is we gave ourselves- and our children- several boxes each. We noticed that the Fruit Loops had a big sign on the front of the box saying that this box contained the new 'Blue Ring'. We ate it up. I wondered why someone would donate an entire container of Fruit Loops. Who in the West thought, 'Hey, let's send a container of Fruit Loops to feed poor hungry villagers'? It was an odd thought.

Several days later we had our answer. Our children ate the cereal gratefully and gladly. They then went to the toilet in due course and what resulted literally glowed bright blue. I am not exaggerating! Bright blue that looked as if it would glow in the dark. Well, there seemed to be no other side effects so we kept giving it to our kids. We also distributed it to the nation as we could. I remember one hospital was especially grateful for us donating cases of the stuff for their patients. I am sure that whoever donated the cereal was just getting rid of a mistake by giving it to a country with no litigation options.

We were grateful to be singing the blues.