Orange Season, Now's The Time to Eat Them

Our tree's oranges are already bright orange

Perfect catch for "Orange" challenge, 52Frames

After almost a half a century in Israel, a unique country that is simultaneously agricultural/nature oriented and high tech, I religiously buy my fruit and some of the vegetables seasonally.

Years (decades) ago I read that fruits and vegetables are healthiest in the season they ripen. And as I remember the article stated that if you try to get around it, cheat, by eating imported fruit from a country in the opposite hemisphere, it won't have the same benefit.

Way back when, when one of my summer babies was a few weeks old, we got oranges very cheaply, so I ate a lot of them. Oranges are a winter fruit. Here in Israel I've learned not to buy them until a couple of weeks after the first rains, so they'll be sweet. The oranges were sweet, since they had been stored well. Suddenly I noticed that my baby had a terrible rash. None of older children had ever had a rash like that. Since the baby was fully nursing, I guessed that something I was eating must have been triggering the rash.

I experimented by cutting out oranges from my diet. Like magic the rash cleared!

In addition, we don't drink juices, even fresh juice. And I certainly don't drink orange juice. One of the last times I drank orange juice was a summer when visiting New York. I had orange juice in the break fast meal after the 25 hour fast of Tisha B'Av. I felt such awful burning in my mouth that since then I'm unable to have raw fruit when breaking a fast. But that's another story and the reason I try to make a good vegetable soup...

19,492 Plus Steps Yesterday, Fitness & Pedometer Tips

I post many of my "steps" on my instagram page,  shilohbatya

Actually, by the time I went to sleep around midnight, I had reached 19,542 steps. Yes, that may be a record number of steps for me. I use the simple "pedometer" app on my phone to keep track.

Except for when my phone is charging, I have the phone on me, so every step counts. My rationale for that is that since every sip, taste or bite of a food counts for adding calories, then we shouldn't be shy about counting those steps, whether to the laundry room, refrigerator or even the loo.

When you're setting up* your pedometer, make sure that it's sensitive enough to count all those very short "walks." Once after a few hours in a museum, I discovered that although I had done a lot of walking, my pedometer had ignored most of it, since they were short walks from picture to picture, exhibit to exhibit.

I know that the 10,000 steps a day benchmark has been pooh poohed as not very significant, but that's not really true. Once you start keeping track of your steps, you'll discover your own personal benchmarks, and for many people, davka, 10,000 steps is a good number to aim for and later top.

As you may know, I'm no youngster, and I'm overweight and not in perfect shape. So managing almost twenty thousand 20,000 steps in one day is quite impressive, as is my average, which recently has been twelve thousand 12,000 or more. Friends ask me how I do it, without damaging myself.

If you look at yesterday's record, you'll see that I was on my feet most of the day, didn't walk all that quickly and only had three "long" walks. And, thank Gd, it all added up.

Below is a more "average day," and you can see that I was quite sedentary for quite a long period of time. Two long walks of about 4,000 steps each, one at a really good pace, made up for two-thirds of the day's step total. That means that I got in over an hour of good physical activity that day.

The key to my approach is to exercise in small quantities, not to strain the body at all. If you're not in good shape, from injury, age, illness whatever, it's very important not to risk injury. But it's also extremely important to maximize activity. For many, that's a very fine line.

One of my big problems is that I hate exercising alone, whether walking, floor or more aerobic exercise. Ironically, I had once been an exercise teacher, and I know what we should be doing all too well. I just need the added socializing to do it. Listening to classes, music whatever does make walking a bit better, but I can always walk longer and more quickly with partners. To help, I opened a small whatsapp group. Our aim is to walk twice a day. Almost always I'm the nudge writing:

"Anybody able to walk tonight/tomorrow morning? Please, pretty please..."

I don't always find someone, but not only does it help me, my friends enjoy it, too. Instead of chatting over coffee and cake, or not seeing each other at all, we really enjoy our friendly walks. There are people who use the walking time to talk on the phone, but to get full benefit, swing your arms and get a "headset" if you're going to have a "long distance partner." One of my walking buddies uses walking sticks to be steadier and give more upper body workout.

What do you do to make fitness more fun and doable?

*You also must get your step length accurate. A good way of doing it is to actually count ten or twenty steps in your head while walking and then check if the pedometer agrees. If the pedometer says you've taken more steps, then increase length; decrease if it doesn't credit you with enough steps.

Getting Old: Ginger Lemon Water, Healthy? Prevent Constipation

Sometimes I feel like I'm counting the days to my next birthday. It's a biggie. What is really on my mind is the health deterioration many people experience between my upcoming birthday,  a new decade, and the following one.

As I pass from middle age into being more "elderly," I have no doubt that my genetic gifts will play larger parts in my health and function. I examine my blood pressure and blood/urine test results to try to guess which parent's genes dominate the "cards I've been dealt." My parents both ended their lives suffering from dementia, though totally different kinds.

There are medical professionals who agree that our genes give a simple "expiration date" for our health and functioning. Of course, it's possible to ruin our bodies, so they deteriorate more quickly. And there are accidents/injuries, environmental dangers and certain cancers beyond our control. It's also possible, though much more difficult, to stretch and optimize our life potential to stay functioning longer and more vibrantly than our genes and family history predict.

From my condition today, bli eyin haraa-not to tempt the Evil Eye, Gd dealt me some pretty good cards. Nobody can honestly call me a "health nut," though I do eat simpler, fresher and healthier foods than most people. The truth is that there are numerous and contradicting definitions of "healthy food." After trying a number of versions, including twenty-five years being a vegetarian and a couple of short tries as vegan and raw food, I now eat a rather balanced, ordinary carnivore diet, on some days rather low in carbohydrates, but I do eat irresistible desserts at least once a week.

Over the years, one thing gets agreement by most or all medical professionals. We have to prevent constipation. Or more simply put:

The "garbage" must be removed daily and best before you eat new food.

Apparently retaining the "garbage*," as I'll call it can slowly poison the system, besides physical/mechanical damage to the affected organs.

My simple prevention is drinking enough water, before bedtime and first thing in the morning. To make the water more palatable and add some vitamins, I add fresh lemon slices and fresh ginger.

To keep the ginger root from going bad, it's stored in the freezer. When I'm home, every night before going to bed I drink two giant mugs of lemon-ginger water and the same first thing in the morning. Afterwards I drink my coffee. And if you're wondering, I rarely wake up to use the bathroom more than once and sometimes not at all.

This works for me. It's also a big reason why I'm on the computer early in the morning. You need a relaxed time after waking for your body to function, get into gear. The necessary relaxation before rushing out is similar to what I recommend to young mothers who are trying to increase their milk. Just the other day, I spoke to a first-time mother, who said that she didn't produce enough milk. I told her to sit in a comfortable chair, put up her feet and either read a good book or watch movies, whatever relaxes.

Besides insufficient water, a big cause of constipation is rushing out of the house soon after waking. My early morning time, drinking lemon-ginger water, answering emails, reacting to facebook messages and blogging is a favorite time of my day. It both energizes and relaxes me. That's not a contradiction. Stressed energy isn't healthy in the long run.

I suggest increasing your water consumption. If you really don't drink any, and teas don't count, then start gradually. Tell me how you're doing. Good luck, and stay healthy. A certain amount of your health is in your control.

*toxins