Author: Thomas Peters

Keto shimeto

Poke fun if you’re so inclined.

It’s not for everyone, however, ever since I read “Sugar Blues” by William Duffy way back in the 70’s I was aware of sugar’s health issues.

So, Keto embraces a change from burning carbs to burning fat. Very low carbs, high fat plus protein to put the body into a metabolic state called ketosis.

I’ve found out that cutting almost all carbs out of one’s diet is work. The healthy avocado toast, my go to breakfast in the late morning had to be made with keto bread or bagels. I made my own bagels with almond flour, mozzarella cheese, eggs, cream cheese and baking powder. A bit dense but takes good enough to carry my sriracha mayo and fresh avocado.

Most meals seems simpler, meat or fish with keto approved veggies.

Desserts are a challenge and all I’ve enjoyed have to be home-made as far as I can tell.
Here’s three of my favorites:

Drinks include almost any drink that doesn’t have sugar, high fructose syrup or anything that adds carbs. I enjoy fine wines, lemon water, black coffee, low carb beer and on occasional martini:)

I’m staying healthy with a combination of cardio work, Qi Gong, weight lifting, stretching, and breathing work. However, putting real effort into the keto diet has been rewarding.

Next post: Prolon Fasting Mimicking diet for 5 days

Diet experimentation…

Started tinkering last September with ‘intermittent fasting’ that has gained some popularity. intermittent fasting. A co-worker and I challenged each other on how far into the morning we would ‘break – fast’.

Intermittent fasting is a legitimate option they might want to consider, claims a new review in the Dec. 26 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

“The state of the science on intermittent fasting has evolved to the point that it now can be considered as one approach, with exercise and healthy food, to improving and maintaining health as a lifestyle approach,” said senior author Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist with Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

There are two main ways to adopt intermittent fasting into your life, Mattson said:

  • Daily time-restricted feeding gives you a narrow window during which you can eat, usually 6 to 8 hours each day.
  • 5:2 intermittent fasting requires that people only eat one moderate-sized meal on two days each week.

My co-worker (40 years younger than me) is quite competitive and would not eat until 11:00am. I would often give in around 9 or 10am. We both targeted around 6 or 7 pm to eat our second and last meal. I have often completed my dinner by 6 pm for an 8:00 pm bedtime.

For Christmas, JoAn gave me a barbell set and I started a three day a week routine I’ve kept since. The week after Christmas I started a Keto diet. (I know, how ‘California’ of me:)

I plan to go into detail about my Keto diet….and my 5-day Prolon fast I plan to complete tomorrow.

Cheers!

Seems my newest life style change is….

to stop posting on my blogs regularly!

Well, today…I’m back

New awareness about how much monthly income I will see if I retire, as planned, in 2024…has giving me the pleasant realization that if we want to stay in Santa Monica upon retirement – It’s possible!

This blog should start to get busy as a ponder life style changes of my own in the near future. I no longer feel pressure to constantly purge and downsize. I want to let in happen gradually over time methodically.

A spark of joy at the thought of retiring…again…
(retired from steel mill on July 14, 1997)
pops in my head a few times weekly.

To my children, grandchildren and brothers, sisters, and friends back east…
I may not move back to by near you but I sure as hell plan to visit often.
I love and miss you all a great deal…hope you understand this decision.

Creaking blind and night wind

The middle of the night is usually a quiet friend of mine

It calls me … It calls me sometimes

Tonight it’s a creaking blind and a whisping wind

I go down stairs and think…

Seems strange to own $1,000 phone

And hardly ever receive a call

It seems strange, 50 years ago we had a ‘party’ line

The cheapest phone service of its time

A ‘party’ line….. Odd name

You were not invited to a party….no

It just meant more than one family shared a phone line

You could pick up the phone receiver to make a call and hear someone else’s conversation

Of course you were supposed to hang up and wait, but as a mischievous teen I recall breaking this rule on occasion.

I wanted to be….. At the party I suppose

But the present saga of the quiet thousand-dollar phone is a different loneliness.

I can understand a teen’s loneliness

Such an awkward stage of life

But at 70 years old, loneliness seems to come I’m a lot of different angles

I knew as a teen, calls came to me to play ball, usually to fill a quota I now imagine

Seems I have many more friends now

But oddly…. Even though it’s my own personal line… I get very few calls

I recently purchased a used cell phone for my business

When I discovered it doesn’t receive or make phone calls… I didn’t get it fixed.

It’s a fine little computer however

I miss playing baseball with neighborhood friends way too much

The Student on the Bus

Taking the Big Blue Bus on Pico in Santa Monica on a Wednesday at 3:45pm in September will include MANY students.

All staff & students ride free with their Santa Monica College ID.

I stood for one mile of my trip to catch a movie. (Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool) Looking at all the young students seated in the seats reserved for Seniors & Disabled Persons. (oblivious to my presence, maybe I don’t look 70;)

Once I grabbed a seat when a student exited the bus, I couldn’t avoid a conversation between two young female students.

These were students of privileged households apparent by their clothes, expensive handbags & Bose wireless headphones on their laps and $1,000 iPhones.

The two were friends (maybe)..hard to tell because one was talking non-stop as the other listened attentively. When the quiet student did eventually talk, she seemed to be blown off or scolded by the talker.

The talker was going on and on about one of her professors. Over and over, she would critically explain what the professor had lectured and say, “why don’t he just shut up!”

My mind was spinning, hearing past conversations about what I feared was the overuse of videos in the classroom compared to lecturing.

If this was the first time overhearing young students complaining about a professor’s lecture, I would be unconcerned. Not the case.

Many screen addicted youth attending our classes don’t seem to appreciate the 8 to 12 years of college and more years of life experiences we professors have been through.

I don’t pretend to know where this is all headed. BUT, it does help explain why I overuse this phrase lately.

“It’s a good time to be 70”

Robert Frank

Morning reading of the NY Times, compelled to stop and read about a great photographer who died at 94 in Nova Scotia. Like me, he had two first names and an eye for shooting people in natural settings. His book “The Americans” had a great influence on me, 83 exquisite black and white photos.

Kerouac wrote the intro to the book, which says a lot about the character of his work. Criticism from Popular Photography magazine made me love his work all the more. “Meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons, and general sloppiness.” The critic said of his work. Wrong from a magazine I detested.

Frank is one of many great photographers dying recently in their 90s. As an undiscovered ‘great’ photographer, I’d love to see 90 as long as my libido is active.

I’ll have to add “The Americans” to my photo book collection in honor of Robert Frank.

Letting the day ‘just happen’.

Approaching each day with this liberating and carefree attitude is new for me.

Just letting the day unfold without much planning and contemplating allows me to be more present and grounded.

Stress levels seem to have dissipated to allow for a flow of most days to be experienced from the initial stretch before rolling out of bed to the sigh of returning to bed.

The days all seem slightly more ‘lived’.

Doing nothing…

One of the books I read this summer, “How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell. The subtitle is ‘Resisting the Attention Economy’ just so you know it’s not condoning laziness. It pointed me back towards more mindfulness. However, Odell helped me understand ‘context collapse’, a term coined by social media scholar, danah boyd (Odell spelled her name without capital letters) and Alice Marwick who’s 2011 study described context collapse as the creation of “a lowest common denominator philosophy of sharing that limits users to topics that are safe for all possible readers. Situations are presented in a way that flattens past, present, and future into a constant amnesic present. The order of events, so important for understanding anyting, gets drowned out by a constant alarm bill.”

A pleasant noticeable outcome for me had perfect timing. With plenty of time off this summer, I was able to pay less attention to the ‘noise’ of daily news and relax and lean into life as it came to me. I watched less screen and engaged more intimately with nature around me. I don’t get hung up with, ‘ am I wasting time?’ I’m enjoying time, a precious commodity for all of us.