Fruits And Vegies

I have really been boosting my consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables this year.  This is part of my plan of losing weight through eating a healthy diet.  But really, I am simply eating more of food I have always craved like medicine.  I first began to notice this with blood oranges.  I first read about them in 1997 during the winter in a Globe and Mail article.  I was intrigued and fascinated.  A red orange.  When I tried some I was hooked.  They tasted like some kind of berry fruit mixed with orange, and I craved them like anything.  Perhaps because they were kind of, well, sexy?  Blood orange.  An image of passion and heat and warmth.  Red like blood.  I brought once a bag of blood oranges to a pot luck lunch at a place where I used to work.  Almost no one had heard of them nor would try one, and one, a squeamish female with a bit of an attitude, said, "Ewwww!" when I said they were blood oranges.  Not for the delicate.  I have since learned that it is probably due to their unusually high vitamin C content that I find myself jonesing for blood oranges by late December, when they become first available.



I have found this about other fresh foods.  Broccoli for example, and Brussels sprouts.  They are crammed with vitamin C.  As are strawberries, kiwis, and persimmons.  These in particular are foods, fruits and vegetables that I must have every winter.  As though my body has trained me to reach for what is good for me.  I stuff myself with these wonderful foods and I feel strengthened, invigorated and renewed.  Since increasing my intake I find it also interesting how my cravings for sugar and fat have really plummeted.  Which suggests that proper eating and a healthy diet (not dieting) is at least as much about what we do eat as what we don't.
      And for the record, having been eating this way for almost a year, I have already lost around twenty-five pounds.  Giving up butter and severely cutting back on cheese, butter, bread and peanut butter hasn't hurt me either.  I'm not going to live for ever, but I am going to live, and ever!