What did YOU do to bring in the New Year? I went to a small family gathering earlier, and got home around 10:00. It's the first time I've ever seen a party die out early at my brother's house! Dude must be gettin' old!

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Ok, now where was I? Oh, yeah, having a lot of DRAMA going on in my life. I finally got on SSI after a year of fighting with Social Security. GOOD THING. My now-ex beau told me he did NOT want me to have hip surgery because he wanted me to give him that money to pay his bills and remodel his house! BAD THING I rented out my house while I was living with him on the off chance that I would not get SSI, and the renter wants to buy it. GOOD THING? I moved out in with Mom, but my belongings are still at the ex's. GOOD & BAD! I cannot take any more!

I have been majorly stressed, and have never been so depressed in my life. Just had to shut everything out, but I think - or at least hope - that the nightmare is coming to an end. I am still in the wheelchair, and that's the main reason for my depression, but I have finally come to terms with it. I picked up my beads this past week for the first time in 6 months, and have managed to whip up a few things, made plans for others, put up a website to start selling online, and am rebuilding my business. GREAT THING!!

I still have the nutritional research to do - Heavens, how old is THAT blog - and I have to learn how to let Mom talk about what she would do with whatever I'm making without getting upset with her.

Anyhow, HI Everyone!

My future step-son brought his girlfriend and one of his buddies over, and we grilled out. Steak, baked potatoes, and a salad. He did a good job on the grill. All in all, it was a great meal with one exception: too much fat. Which leads me to the reason behind this post. Regular readers know I'm into nutrition, and now that things are beginning to quiet down, I can get back into my studies. From a previous post, The Game of 20 Questions about Nutrition in which I posed several questions I had about nutrition for the start of my research, and since today's post has to do with health, let's start with the question from that post: What foods provide the most healthful benefits?

Medium-Rare, Please

Beef is high is cholesterol. (That gunky white stuff what clogs your blood veins.)
Trim off as much visible fat as possible before cooking.
Top Sirloin is rated B+ for nutrients.

Obviously, protein from the steak, carbohydrates from the baked potato, and vitamins & minerals from the salad I just polished off were essential to a healthy diet. I, however, cannot eat a dry baked potato, so I added a tablespoon each of butter and sour cream. I also added 2 tablespoons of Green Goddess Dressing to my salad. Delicious, yes; nutritious, no, and that is where the meal goes wrong. There's too much fat in my meal.

According to Calorie Count.About.com (2010), "Top Sirloin Beef has a grade of B+." Beef contains very little sodium and no sugar, along with the necessary nutrients: niacin, phosphorus, selenium, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, and zinc. This steak has several good points. The only bad thing is that beef is "high in cholesterol." (Calorie Count.About.com, 2010). Follow the links at Calorie Count.About.com under "Nutritional Analysis" to learn more about the good and bad points of beef.

The steak was 6 oz., when I only needed 3. Now, you may be thinking, "But it's only 3 extra ounces, and where's the harm in that?" Well, folks, to paraphrase a cliche, too much of a good thing, when you break it down, can indeed be bad!

Calorie Count.About.com (2010) provided the nutrition facts for a 3 oz. serving of Top Sirloin Beef. (Remember, I ate 6 oz., and not the 3 oz. serving, so I just doubled everything.) Here's the Original Nutritional Calorie chart. I'll leave it to you to do the math.

"Beef, Top Sirloin Serving Size: 3 oz., (after removing fat) Amount Per Serving Calories 158 Calories from Fat 47

% Daily Value* Total Fat 5.3g (8%) Saturated Fat 2.0g (10%) Polyunsaturated Fat 0.2g Monounsaturated Fat 2.2g Cholesterol 76mg (25%) Sodium 56mg (2%) Total Carbohydrates 0.0g (0%) Protein 25.8g

Vitamin A 0% • Vitamin C 0% Calcium 1% • Iron 16% " (Calorie Count.About.com, 2010)

The potato was medium - and a good choice for carbs to provide energy. However, I added butter and sour cream - both high in fat - which leads to fat in the bloodstream, and on the body. No doubt I just ate more fat than what the nutritional guidelines say we are supposed to eat. For me, it's 19g of fat (polyunsaturated and monounsaturated) per meal, or no more than 30% for the day. (The steak I ate provided for 20% of my total fat allowance for the day.) Even the salad was good. Had I just added pepper and lemon juice instead of a fat-filled dressing, it would have been even better as far as making a healthy choice.

We hear so many times that it isn't what we eat that makes us fat, but how much. I believe that thinking is just so incredibly wrong, and here's why: If there is fat in everything that a person eats, it leads to high cholesterol, which leads to high blood pressure, and eventually heart failure. So, with some additional - and preplanned thought - the meal I just finished could have been much healthier if I had stopped to think about my health. I was hungry because breakfast was at 8:00 this morning, and it's now almost 4:00p.m. Hunger and overeating is often the culprit behind poor food choices, but that should not be the reason a person uses to eat whatever he or she wants - yours truly included! Breaking things down like this helps me better understand the benefits of making wiser food choices. Now, I'm not going to get into telling you what you should and should not eat here. I'm just pointing out some facts.

So, what foods provide the most healthful benefits from the meal I ate? With the exception of the butter, sour cream, and high-fat salad dressing, everything else was a good choice. I could have filled up on the salad instead of having an extra helping of the steak and cut the fat content. I will have to begin measuring sour cream and butter if I want to use them on my baked potatoes, or find a different (i.e.: healthier) substitute, such as Butter Buds and plain yogurt mixed with fresh dill and chives. As for the salad dressing, I'll just have to pick up a bottle of lemon juice the next time I'm at the grocery store.

I'll give you the healthy benefits of the salad I had in my next post.

What did you eat today?

Ah, Friday. The weekend is here, and so am I. Back to Opera Community. It's been a very long year, full of changes, challenges, and upheaval from my usual state of being. Life took over, and I literally did disappear for a little while from my surroundings. Not the best vacation I've ever had, and living in total seclusion because I was having a tough time was probably the best thing I could do for some personal reflection. I think a mental break down would have probably been better. (Ok, I'm kidding!)

Anyhow, since my last post (7,January 2009), this is what I'm dealing with: Christmas of 2009 was not spent with my family. Instead, I spent it with my fiance's family, but I am already getting ahead of myself.

In January, classes picked up, got tougher, and I had no time for blogging. I should have jumped in at least once to let everyone know that I wasn't going to be available for awhile, and I'm sorry I didn't. Community support would have probably made my life just a bit easier to deal with the things that happened.

I earned my Associate's Degree in June, 2009, in the middle of taking my mother on vacation to Illinois to see a friend of ours who had not been doing too well. While we were there, my hip slipped out of place, and I had to start using a wheelchair. I didn't get to see a local surgeon until the middle of July, and was told that I needed a double hip operation. It absolutly sux to be without insurance, but that hip operation is still in the wings, until I can raise $50,000, or get approved for Medicaid. I am really hoping Obama's health care plan comes through, because insurance companies discriminate against pre-existing conditions.

One of my brothers told my mother he wanted to put me in a nursing home because I couldn't work, and he didn't want her supporting me. That was in August. I had asked my other 2 brothers & my kids for help with getting my house set up so I could live there, not one of them showed up. My family literally abandoned me! Mom and one friend came over to do what they could, but I had to make sure I could do this at-home living on my own, because there is NO WAY I am going to go live in an assisted living home!! Every time Mom came over to help, she would complain about it, but she was the one volunteering to help, so I finally told her to just stay away.

By the end of September, I'd decided that it was time I moved - wheelchair bound or not - so I moved upstate, and no one in my family knew I had left except for my mother. I had had enough. I called a friend, and we went to N. GA. for 3 months. I lived in a neighborhood where only the landlord spoke English, no one bothered me, and I was literally cut off from the world. No internet, no television, not even a radio. Lots of time to think! All I had to entertain myself was a few bags of beads I'd brought with me, and few books. I had no intention of coming back for the rest of my stuff, and had left my house in shambles from a frenzied packing. I literally just quit caring about everything, because everyone (with the exception of the Opera community) had stopped caring about me. Life is hard sometimes, but darn it, when your family abandons you, who can you trust? I had lost it all.

I decided to come back at the end of October. I was tired of being out of my element, and if my brother who wants to put me in a nursing home wants a fight, I'm going to give him one he won't soon forget!

The night I walked back into my house, I took one look at the mess I'd left behind, and started throwing things in the trash. It took me a month of working 8 hour days, but I got rid of 65 trash bags full of junk that I did not want, need, or love. Have to love my Mom, shopaholic that she is, but most of what went out was stuff she'd brought in to decorate my house. Who needs 150 ceramic roosters, 25 handbags, or 20 hot plate tiles? And that was just the first of a lot of what I considered JUNK. I took 2 bags of clothes to the church, gave a set of dishes & mixing bowls to my youngest brother, (remember, his house had burnt the summer before), and got my house in order.

Mom was the only one who knew I came home in the middle of the night, but she called my oldest brother, and he came over and apologized - every day for a solid week. My youngest brother apologized too, and then rented a rollback for all the clutter I was getting out of my house. As for the middle brother and my kids, there's been nothing. I'm hurt, but I know who loves me.

One month later (November, 2009), and I'm engaged, and living with my fiance. We knew each other 30 years ago when we were teenagers, and I am happy. We had Christmas with his family, not mine. We're holding the Easter family dinner for his family at his(our) home for 100 folks, and I am the queen of the castle!

I've finally settled into a routine, have my schedule up for times to work on my crafts and times to blog, and will be back blogging on a regular basis. Have missed you all, and will be around to say hello when the house is more settled. Until then, have a great day!

This is an open invitation to Opera community friends and members. I am collecting positive comments for the month of January. Please stop by and leave one or two (or 31 if you're up to the task!

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