Raven's Roads
Living an interesting life: the travels and musings
of motorcycling author Linda R. Moore

Jan 31, 2007

Thinking Out Loud: Bran good!

It takes me a while to get round to doing things I don’t enjoy. Over the years I’ve filled out so many forms for immigration and the like that I’ve become quite formophobic, so the health insurance application is still an ongoing project. I can only take so much of it at once. Yet even so, working through the bazillions of questions, it strikes me how blessed with good health I’ve been these last few years. Apart from checkups, I’ve needed a doctor a grand total of once…and that was almost ten years ago. (If I don’t hurry up it will be more than ten years ago.)

Yes, I gripe at the questions. I seriously have no idea which doctor I saw and what his or her specialty was and by the way what was the name of that sickness anyway? Fred? Sally? John? I just don’t remember. I wonder if people take more notes than I do over the years, because it’s very peculiar that I am required to list ten years of ailments (or lack thereof) on the form, and incidentally they could use making the squares a bit bigger, too.

But I didn’t come here to talk about medical forms, and I’m sure you’re quite happy about that. I came here to acknowledge that I’m healthy, but it does give pause for thought.

The particular insurance I’m applying for takes the younger of the two applicants as their basis. Because I am the younger of our “we,” we get the rate for 36 year olds. Cool. But because I’m fat, we get the surcharge for that. It’s given me a rather interesting financial incentive to lose weight, as the very tactful insurance agent gave me the numbers that I should shrink beneath to not be surcharged.

So, now that I’m actually thinking about weight loss again, even though it seems impossible, I know that it isn’t. While I was working out at the gym, I read a copy of some fitness magazine or another, and in it there was an “Un-Diet.” They didn’t call it that, but that’s what it was. (Actually, it was the “lose eight pounds in January” bit that caught my eye, but they put that there to get me to open the magazine, and I’m sure they’ll be very happy that it worked and I’m a mug.) Anyway, for each of 31 days there was a tip and a checkbox and the idea is that each day you try something new and at the end of the month you have 31 ideas, some of which work for you and some which don’t. And by the way you will probably have lost some weight. How cool is that? It’s fun to try new stuff.

This interesting packaging of Sensible Eating arrived just at the time when my mind was full of “Gee, I’d like not to pay an extra $50 per month for that health insurance, thank you” and “I’m quite healthy but this could change in a heartbeat” amd other stray thoughts. Tomorrow’s hint is “eat more fiber.” Okay. Today’s was “eat less sugar.” They said that if the first three ingredients on any given product happened to be sugar, then skip it for the day. I went down to the supermarket and picked up a whole grain loaf and then got to the cereals and I had one heck of a job finding something where sugar of some form was not part of the first three ingredients–even the granolas. I eventually settled for bran something.

In case you didn’t know this, ingredients are listed on packaging in the order of most-of. For example, if there are more raisins than anything else, raisins will be listed first. This isn’t a perfect guideline, because the things with chemical names are often listed last because there isn’t much of them…but they’re still all chemically and yuk.

Bran is a funny thing. My relationship with bran ended round about 1984 when Grandad passed away. He had been ordered by the doctor to eat more fiber, and he got to eat these hard sticks of bran as a cereal that were, frankly, quite nasty. So it wouldn’t have been my first choice. And deep in the back of my mind “bran” is still equated with “only because the doctor told me to” and “icky brown stick things.” But hey, it was the first cereal I found without sugar as a top three ingredient. And of all those little voices in my head, “Save $50 a month” rather superceded any feelings of nose-wrinkling.

And then Don and I swung by the fast food joint, because I forgot about the sugar thing, because I’m human and fallible. I got these nuggety things, and they must’ve been absolutely packed with sugar because immediately after eating them I wanted to eat and eat and eat, and was craving sugary things.

Fast food bad!

But instead of eating tons of sugary things, I ate a bowl of the bran stuff, and lo and behold it stopped the cravings dead. And that was a very interesting thing to discover. OK, I can’t very well carry bran and milk around on my bike (unless I want sour cream or butter) but–wow! I found an off-switch. And it tasted good. And better still, it means “raven” in Gaelic–woo-hoo!

I tell you, it’s never boring around here.

So by the time I eventually mail out those forms, having finally given up on ever locating last year’s insurance numbers (they’ll have to make do), I’ll have discovered a) bran and b) the off switch and c) something to talk about this week.

Bran good!