Photo source: www.myviva.ca

Now, before I let my tongue loose, I should mention that I have a lot of respect for Tosca and what she did to her body. I think that many of us watching her could use some of that motivation and strength. But is it always so easy and breezy?

As for the show…..
I had mixed feelings about it from the start and when I sat down to watch it I was very skeptical about liking it, simply because I find the industry of bodybuilding a little sickening. On top of that I am not a huge fan of certain reality shows where the only purpose of getting on the show seems to be to get attention and exposure. The principle behind the Eat Clean diet is fantastic, but that’s where my approval and fascination with Tosca begins and ends. It’s great to teach people how to cut out all the junk from their diets and to show them how to cook without poisoning themselves. She has published several books on this issue, even though in my opinion one would be perfectly sufficient, since hearing or in this case reading the same information 3-4 times makes you feel like a child who needs things repeated to him before he gets them. OK, so what is my beef with her then in the show?

First of about eating…..
She advocates eating clean foods and eating them in small portions 5-6 times a day. Again, this is a great idea that has been scientifically proven to give you excellent results if you want to boost up your metabolism. Now she has probably heard it before from other critics, but I am going to say it again: Most of us average Joes can’t do it because we have real 9-5 jobs. We get an hour off (or not) for lunch and we simply can’t eat at work every 3 hours. So we eat breakfast before work, lunch at noon and then supper and snack when we come home. Now, we still can eat clean, but boosting our metabolisms by eating more frequently just won’t happen.
How about Tosca? Does she do it according to what she preaches? By listening to the conversation in the show one can conclude that she doesn’t as far as the volume is concerned. One of her daughters has a very emotional exchange with her in which she accuses her of using anorexic practices to get to where she wants to be. She apparently doesn’t eat adequate, healthy portions in a pre-contest stage. Well, whatever happened to “You can eat to your heart’s content if you eat clean”? And how about “Clean eating is not about depriving yourself”?
Not eating enough carbs will make you irritable and moody, which is exactly the outcome for Tosca. So why does she preach this and doesn’t following it herself?

Now about the beginnings….
This was the part of the show that got my attention and sympathy. I have to admit, she has a likable personality. She appears normal like any one of us, well, except for her body of course. Seeing her on camera wasn’t like seeing any big celebrity, she is much more approachable and normal. She says that the whole thing started with the end of a bad marriage in which she felt unloved and unattractive, so she left and started to do some cardio. Then she met Kennedy who started training her. The impressive thing about it is that at the age of 42 she found enough strength to come out of a bad place and turn her life around. She showed pictures and bits of video from her old life that proved how different her life was from what it is now. And this is great.

How about body image…..
I think it is definitely skewed in more than one way. In the video you see the real Tosca, so you can actually really tell that this woman is reaching a point at which it is no longer OK to do certain things. It’s not the Tosca covered with make-up you see in a bodybuilding competition or the one airbrushed from the cover of a magazine, it’s the real thing. Even though she looks absolutely amazing for her age, she doesn’t seem happy with her body image. There is a scene that I wish wasn’t there and that any self respecting woman wouldn’t want displayed nationally on TV, where she puts on a bodybuilding costume to parade in in front of her family. The costume looks like any swimsuit, I suppose, except for the thong like appearance on her derriere. It would have been OKish had she NOT turned around, grabbed her butt cheeks and jiggled them saying with disapproval “Look at that flab” This part was unnecessary and made me want to run to the bathroom. Why? Well mostly because it lacked taste and viva edited it in a way that made it even more ridiculous. The woman looks amazing for her age and yet she is not happy with herself.

To conclude I will say that there is too much self-promotion going on in the show and off, which makes it look and feel like big money making machine. And, yes, I realize that that’s what this business is and that’s why I don’t like it, because this drive for exposure takes away from the real thing, which is supposed to be educating the public about food.

He likes old and I mean very old movies, I’m more into “the fresh meat”. I like drama and movies based on true events, he finds those highly depressing. We don’t subscribe to the same kind of comedy, I usually don’t understand the humor in his favorite comedies or find it highly repulsive and stupid. He wants to watch only things that educate and while I will gladly watch a documentary, I recognize that movies also have another quality and that’s called: entertainment.

So last night we went searching for a movie. We tried something different this time and decided to each pick a couple of movies that we would be willing to watch and then show them to the other and decide which one out of the bunch would be appropriate for both of us. While we were investigating the pile, he glanced at the shelf and pull out another one and said “Hey look what they have here” He was showing me Our daily bread. I quickly glanced at it and since it was a documentary about food I quickly decided that this is the one I want to watch. So we brought it home along with Smart People.

Here is a trailer of the first one for you:

And this is exactly what you get from this movie for about 95 minutes! When it started playing we were struck right away by the lack of any commentary. There was noise, so we knew the volume wasn’t down. Randy proceeded by asking “Did you read the jacket description?” and not waiting for the answer he grabbed the box to read it, after which I heard him read something out loud about the lack of comments in this movie. So that was it. We were going to watch how food is made without anybody telling us “Oh look what they’re doing here is really really bad for the environment!” Strange, considering the fact that this movie won several festival awards.

We never watched it in one sitting. Instead we decided to show parts of it to the little one once he arrived. He seemed to enjoy seeing where the food we eat came from and we’d hear him say on several occasions that he is never eating this or that ever again. So what’s the point of this movie? I’m not sure, because it certainly didn’t shock or inform me.… I realized that you need to first kill a chicken for me to be able to purchase and grill my chicken breast. The fact that big factories spray stuff on my tomatoes isn’t exactly a novelty either, that’s why I scrub them clean before I put them on my sandwich. Did the killing of animals happened in inhumane circumstances? As a matter of fact I did say “Oh that’s inhumane” couple of times during the movie, but now that I think of the movie as a whole, I don’t think it was any more or less inhumane than killing a bug that’s crawling on your dinning room table. The factory workers were just executing their tasks and after doing it for so long it became very mechanical. Of course they didn’t pet the chickens before stamping them with a number, but not petting doesn’t mean being inhumane, does it? So in the end the movie showed the processes through which a pig must go before you enjoy your bacon. And I’ll have you know that they even showed the factory being washed at the end of the day, something that you probably wouldn’t see that often at Maple Leaf Foods Inc.

Now, there was one part which I did not enjoy at all and I will leave it to your imagination as to how they managed to artificially inseminate cows

It was an OK-ish documentary, but I wouldn’t say it’s a major piece on food industry , because it only illustrates that food oriented activities in developed countries happen on a very large scale (humongous green houses and fields for produce, big factories to process meat etc.)

We both had the Miso hungry soup and Thai one on.

Drinking our delicious and very spicy miso soup served with some rice crackers.

And this is our equally spicy and delicious Pad Thai. Now, don’t get fooled by the neatly arranged pair of chopsticks on Randy’s empty plate

This doesn’t mean that I won’t read books about food. Quite the contrary, I enjoy reading such books and every so often I’ll reach for a new one, but on that another time. I did say that generally I don’t believe in diets, which means that there was a point in my life during which I was desperate enough to try out one of those magic diets. It is called the Montignac Method and as such isn’t really referred to as a diet by the author, Michel Montignac. The basis for this method is very simple and logical and its explanation can be found in his most popular book called “Slim Forever the French Way“. First of all get rid of all processed and refined foods such as white sugar, flour and rice and replace them with their wholegrain unrefined versions aka good carbs. Same applies to fats such as fat from meat, butter and dairy that are all to be replaced with their good equivalents from olive oil and fish aka good fats. And proteins should come from lean sources (vegetable or animal). Montignac doesn’t believe in counting calories, but portions should be reasonable and overeating is discouraged. So far it makes perfect sense. But then on top of that Montignac adds on what’s called Glycemic Index (GI for short) which can get pretty complicated and difficult to keep track of.

So what is this GI anyway? First of all, each food is assigned a numerical value and the lower the number the better it is for you. The foods are then categorized into 3 groups: Low GI, Medium GI and High GI. How is it decided what food gets what number? The foods that have the least effect on your blood sugar get a low number and therefore get a green light and the ones that affect your blood sugar and spike up your insulin levels get a red light. The foods that are somewhere in between the two are OK-ish and get an orange light, but you should try to avoid them. So how does GI affect your weight? Montignac says that if we eat the wrong foods that are high in GI our pancreas will secrete more insulin than is required to take sugar present in blood down to its normal level. This is commonly known as a hyperinsulism disorder, which gears your body’s metabolism toward production and storage of fat. This, of course, is a very simplistic explanation of the GI and for a more in depth, scientific approach I would have to ask you to google it.

So we have eliminated bad carbs and bad fats and we are only eating lean protein. We are also constantly consulting a list of foods to verify whether or not we get a green light with the GI police. Doesn’t seem that difficult so far, but then there is more. You also have to make sure that you don’t mix certain foods! You either eat carbs with protein or protein with fat or just high-fiber carbs alone. You can’t eat carbs with saturated fat from meat, because that will stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin which will trap the meal’s fat in the body as stored fat. So, for example, your breakfast can be either carbs such as rye bread, wholewheat bread/cereal with protein such as fat-free cheese/cottage cheese/natural yogurt, skim milk OR protein such as eggs, fish, meat, poultry with fat such as bacon, cheese, sausage. Same for lunch and dinner: if you put some meat on your plate, don’t accompany it by rice, eat it together with veggies and if you have high-fiber carbs don’t add meat to it, have it with veggies. That’s not all… Bread can only be eaten in the moring, forget about bread for lunch. Certain foods can’t be cooked, because cooking them will raise their GI and we don’t want that to happen : raw carrots are ok to eat, because they have a low GI due to their fiber, but the moment we cook them the fiber is no longer present and the carrot turns into a useless high GI starch. Pasta should also always be cooked al dente. And the list of things to keep in mind goes on….

Now, the most important part of this method is the fact that you can’t really get off it. Most people treat diets as if though they were a temporary thing. They get on them and then they get off them. They not only get off them, but they also go back to their old eating habits.  Montignac or not, if one is overweight or obese and they change their eating habits to loose weight, it is only natural and logical that the moment they get off their diet and go back to their normal style of eating that their weight is going to crawl back! One doesn’t have to have a PhD in nutrition or biology to understand that if we come back to the wrong way of eating our bodies are going to respond to it in the same way they did the first time around. Unfortunately, most people use diets only for a period of time, after which they sit back and relax with their plateful of steak and fries, which according to Montignac is heresy!

So, I did try this Method. Am I still on it? Not to the full extent, but I didn’t go back to my evil ways either. I do keep the principles in mind when I eat. For example, I learned to recognize the GI of foods and now avoid the high ones. I’m also not consuming any bad carbs or fats, which is referred to by some as Clean-eating. But as far as the combination of foods is concerned, I ditched it. Instead, I keep my portions reasonable.

Did the Method work for me? Yes, it certainly did. It was a pain in the derriere for 7 months or so, but it did help me shed all the unnecessary weight. I should point out though that I used it along with daily pilates sessions.

Like anything that makes it to the media, this Method received both negative and positive criticism so please use your own common sense in learning about it.

I’ve been encountering various sources online or off that claim that Raw diet has a lot of benefits to our well-being. So I’ve picked up a book called The Raw Food Detox Diet by Natalia Rose. I can’t say that I am going to go all raw, simply because it seems extreme and I don’t think that my family would be willing to follow into my footsteps, especially the under-aged part of my family. I picked up the book more for the recipes than for the actual “diet” itself so I can’t really comment on the diet.

I did try out my first recipe from this book and I have to share it here because it’s absolutely amazing. It’s called Green Lemonade and it was a perfect recipe for me to try given I had recently purchased a Juice Maker and hadn’t really gone beyond using one fruit at a time (oranges, apples, grapefruits) to produce some juice.

Here is the recipe for Green Lemonade from the book:

• 1 head romaine lettuce or celery
• 5-6 stalks of kale
• 1-2 apples
• 1 lemon
• 1-2 Tbsp fresh ginger (optional)

Preparation is pretty much self explanatory:

Process all veggetables in a Juicer.

I have to say that *I* was plesantly surprised when I had my first sip of this Lemonade, because I was half expecting it to taste awful due to its green color, but the lemon and the apples really cover up the green taste. Randy on the other hand really hated it and screwed up his face at the first sip, so I guess it takes a certain appreciation for the raw stuff to like it.

Now before you go and spend your $4.95USD let me give you my 2 cents. The main idea in the entire production, which I might add doesn’t seem like an elaborate production at all, but a cheap set-up with couple of home cameras, is quite simple and logical: “Food Matters, therefore you are what you eat.” This is not a revelation, we have heard it all before and any half intelligent person can come to that conclusion by themselves. Even my 8-year-old child understands that if he eats candy constantly, he will not feel or look good at the end of the day. So the makers of this video had to spice it up a little bit to get attention and interest from the public. I have to say, in my opinion, the title of this film is somewhat deceiving. From a title that screams FOOD, I was expecting more talk about the actual food. Telling me what I should eat versus what I shouldn’t, maybe how to put it all together, or why certain foods are no good for you. However, there is very little of that. Instead there is a lot of talk about the pharmaceutical companies. What do pharmaceutical companies have to do with food? Well, according to The Teachers*, if everybody ate well there wouldn’t be anybody sick and no need for medication. What’s more they claim that your doctor doesn’t always have your best interests in mind when you go to pay him a visit. What the Doc is most concerned with is that you go to the drug store and get your prescription filled because these 2 entities: the Medical Profession and the Pharmaceuticals work together to keep each other’s existence. As a consequence many drugs have often times been miss-prescribed causing unnecessary deaths! Sounds far-fetched ? Yes, to me too. At this point I was sitting there and listening and not believing my ears. They tried to soften this part a little bit by constantly repeating that they don’t really mean that you should quit going to your doctor, but that you should take him with a grain of salt. Instead of blindly believing your Doc you should pump yourself full of vitamins because that’s the new cure for the world’s diseases, including cancer. That was another revelation in the video: You can apparently cure your cancer with injecting a highly concentrated vitamin C into your system! Well, hello! If that’s the case why are people still dying of cancer? Bring on the vitamin C! Not so fast. Let’s not forget that the Medical Profession is against curing you from your ills and they will not try such a silly and easily available procedure on such a serious illness. They want to keep you buying the drugs that instead of helping you will make you worse and therefore will keep the Pharmaceutical companies afloat! Imagine, if it took just vitamin C to get rid of cancer they would cease making all that money off the poor patient. Cancer is only one of many ills that can be cured with a high dose of a vitamin. They also have an easy program for Heart Disease, Depression, Diabetes and Mental Illness! They even provide a program to Detoxify and Rejuvenate your body! All for an additional fee of $79USD per program, of course! Sounds familiar? Yup.

After more in-depth study of available data on this subject you will find out that there is more to it than purchasing the videos. If you are a person suffering from cancer and you find the promotional videos enlightening you will need to do more than just buy the videos, because obviously it’s not a home type remedy and you can’t try it by yourself. To participate in one of the programs to cure cancer (Gerson Therapy) you will need to dish out a whooping $4.000USD per week to enroll! You will arrive somewhere in Mexico in a clinic and will be fed 13 fruit and veggie smoothies per day, given multiple coffee enemas and various supplements, such as potassium, vitamin B12, pancreatic enzymes, thyroid hormone, and liver extracts which can prove dangerous and fatal. Who is robbing you now, you ask?

Like I said, the premise of this video is a very smart one, not a revelation, but true nonetheless. The society is going down the drain with the way we eat, stuffing our stomachs with fried, over-processed goods. Now teach those people to stop being so dependent on Macfatty burger, next teach them to replace it with fresh foods and you are on your way to a healthier society. But wait, that of course would earn The Teachers little money

*That’s what these people call themselves on their website.

Criticism and Details of Gerson Therapy:

• American Cancer Society
• National Cancer Institute
• Cancer Research UK
• Science Based Medicine

Essentially, this is what the movie is about. But it’s also about the reasons why some will not succeed out there. They leave their country of origin and search for the proverbial manna somewhere else. They do not, however, completely abandon their roots. Quite the contrary, they bring their origins with them wherever they go and that’s why those people are destined to fail. They don’t want to become somebody else in the target country. They are not willing to change and no matter what anybody will say I am convinced that that change is not only necessary, but without it there is no going forward. A new language means a new way of thinking, new understanding of who we are. Once this is blocked we will continue to think the way we thought in the country that oppressed us, so what’s the point of leaving it in the first place if we will continue to be oppressed ? The whole point of leaving, is to have a better life, no? A better life means a life without the oppression. Maintaining contact with family, with language, with friends, with traditions etc. is all fine, but we cannot lock ourselves in the cage of this fake patriotism out of fear that we will not succeed because we sound/look like foreigners! People do succeed just about anywhere, but they have to let go and let themselves succeed. Sometimes that means going back to school in the target country and yes this means spending more time at getting where we want to be in life, but losing 4-6 years is always better than thinking that we cannot succeed on our own and sticking with our own kind out of fear! We don’t need to be so freaking scared of others!  In many cases the other is more welcoming, accepting and forgiving than our own kind! This conviction that we have to surround ourselves with the sameness is erroneous, because if we do just that, we will never know the otherness and as a result we will never learn, we will never evolve beyond that which brought us into this world. We do not stay who we are at birth for the rest of our life, we can let culture nurture us into what we want to become. The past defines our origins, not our future. And even though we can never forget where we came from, we can create new possibilities and identities. The past does not have to define who we will become.