Diet for a Second Life: The Best Protein

By Food Blogger Ruth Gantman

As we age, our digestive systems are taxed. It’s best to eat simple and clean. Clinical research and author Dr. Neal Barnard suggests we eat no more than four different foods at any one sitting to reduce stress on the digestive system. We, as Americans, are saturated in offerings of animal protein and, according to Colin Campbell’s 30 year definitive China Study, the best source of protein that matches our own would actually be human flesh. So Jonathan Swift’s 18th century social satire A Modest Proposal not only would solve the economic problems of the Irish lower class, but also has a nutritional base. (Gasp)

Maryl Found: An Extra Hour in Her Day

I recently attended a seminar titled, The Art of Less Doing, which is about how to be more productive and spend less time doing fewer things.  There were a number of automation tools proffered that could take the rest of the year to integrate into my daily or weekly agendas.  So I started out slowly with a change that I knew about but needed someone standing over me to do.  As a result I estimate I got an hour back each day.

Second Look: Amour's Emmanuelle Riva

She wowed audiences in her first move role in Hiroshima Mon Amor and thrilled moviegoers no less in her most recent in Amour. Her breakout performance, directed by Alain Renais, was in l959; fifty-one years later, Michael Haneke chose her to play Anna, a dignified music teacher and devoted wife who is mercilessly debilitated after a stroke. For that performance, Emmanuelle Riva received the Oscar nomination for Best Actress. If she wins on February 27, 2013—the night of the awards ceremony and her 86th birthday, she will be the oldest person in any competitive acting category to take home the Oscar. (For the record, Christopher Plummer, 83, won last year for his role in Beginners.) By any measures, Emmanuelle Riva, who grew up in a small village in eastern France where she worked as a seamstress before she traveled to Paris to study acting, is a star with an exceptional career but she hates both words and applies neither to herself.

Maryl commits: To New Year Results Not Resolutions

 Here we are feet back at the starting line, with a clean slate in hand, heart in the right place, head on straight ready to start the yearly cycle over again. At least in our second lives we don’t have to repeat the folly of our past New Year’s resolutions that may have pictured a slimmer, richer, smarter, more caring and newly promoted vision of ourselves but didn’t quite capture our innermost dreams and desires. Whether our goals were honestly honed or not, barely half of us will still be working toward them halfway through the year. But I’ve got three new tactics to beat those odds for 2013. 

Caryl takes: Dr.Frank Lipman's Two-Week Detox

Everything you need--minus cat and candle 

Gwyneth Paltrow isn't doing it this year but I am. She's concentrating on the Superfoods but I'm taking the cleanse. I  start this Monday, which for me marks the first day of MY new year. It takes me a couple of weeks to get back my equilibrium after the hullabaloo of the holidays. By the second week of January, I am as calm as I am going to get.  And, my desire to detox and my willpower to reboot my body is at its peak.

Shake ingredients come in packets to mix with water.  

I am a I am a believer in cleanses as long as they're not the flavor of the month kind. Remember the Master Cleanse that was made up of homemade lemonade, maple syrup, water, and Cayenne pepper? Crazy, huh?

Maryl got: Arm Candy in her Stocking

Actually I got two bracelets in my stocking this year and another as a gift from Caryl (along with a leopard tunic to match). I have always liked receiving jewelry for Christmas and my husband has nicely obliged over the years. Specifically rings were my real delight, and he took several practice runs before the actual engagement ring showed up one Christmas morn. But something's happened with my penchant for rings. 

Caryl pleads: "Give me a light" to see clearly in 2013

Three days into 2013 and already I am feeling like the "man who stood at the gate of the year".  Do you know what I am talking about? Can you guess who asked: "Give me a light that I may tread into the unknown"? The final months of 2012 were bleak with a devastating natural disaster here on the East Coast, unspeakable crimes at home (Newtown, Ct.) and abroad (New Delhi, India) and my own dark night of the soul. Following Superstorm Sandy, my 83-year-old friend in Cambridge, England sent me a poem made famous by George VI in his Christmas speech  in 1937 (and later in the movie "The King's Speech) . Darkness abounded that season as well. The British empire was not only on the cusp of a new year but another world war. The king, hardly a compelling speaker, quoted from a poem that his daughter, then princess Elizabeth, had given him.  The poem was titled "God Knows", and it was written by Minnie Louise Hawkins, who taught economics in the first half of the of the  20th century.