Unzip a Banana

Unzip a Banana was a catch phrase for a British TV ad campaign in the 1960s. To this day I cannot peel a banana without thinking, “Unzip a Banana.”

For cyclists a banana has to be one of the most convenient foods you can carry on a ride. It is the perfect size and shape to fit in your jersey back pocket, and comes with its own bio-degradable wrapper. (Its skin.)

An important source of Potassium, the banana is one of the healthiest fruits. Vitamins and minerals are abundant, offering vitamin A, a full range of B vitamins are present with Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, vitamin B6, and of Folic Acid.

There is even vitamin C, with minerals Calcium, Magnesium, with trace amounts of iron and zinc.

About a 100 calories for a small banana to 140 for a large nine inch one, with 36 grams of carbs, it is a good source of energy to take on a ride.

Whenever I went on a long ride, I knew I would need to carry enough fuel for the trip, my choice was often a double-decker sandwich. Three slices of whole grain bread, one layer of butter and cheese, the top layer a sliced banana.

A whapping 600 calories, enough to get me through a long ride. I used cheese or whatever was available at the time. I would sometimes substitute jam or peanut butter.

I cut the sandwich in half, and tightly wrapped the two pieces separately in cling-film so they wouldn’t crumble and fall apart in my pocket. Then I placed both halves in a zip-lock bag.

The sweetness and moistness of the banana made the whole thing very easy to eat. It was cheaper than Energy Bars, and packed a lot more fuel. (Calories.) I find some energy bars are either dry and tough to get down, or tend to melt and get sticky. Plus energy bars may contain certain processed foods and other undesirable ingredients.

I always try to keep bananas on hand, but try not to buy too many at once as they tend to ripen and quickly go soft. If they a over ripe they just end up a mushy mess in your pocket when carried individually, and if this is the case then the best way to carry them is in a sandwich as I have just described.

Another little tip, when you peel a banana, start fom the stem end. You will find you get less of those stringy bits that hang from the side of the fruit.

What is your favorite food to carry on a long ride?

Have you tried "Dave's Bread Pudding?" 

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Maintaining weight, eating right and feeling good

Six years ago, in 2015 I decided to make a concerted effort to not only lose weight but to maintain a healthy level. I wrote about it here on this blog. I will be 86 in three months’ time, and I now weigh 150 lbs. The weight I was in my teen years.

Key to maintaining this weight has been the practice of weighing myself every morning on rising from my bed and keeping a daily log. On reaching my eighties, I found it amazing the small amount of food I needed to take in daily, to maintain my current weight. Only 1,250 calories a day.

On a typical day for breakfast, I will eat a bowl of cereal, sometimes a cup of boiled rice, with blueberries added, or two eggs with a slice of sourdough bread.

Midday, a glass of A2 milk, and a hand full of nuts, or maybe two boiled eggs. Sometimes a protein shake made with milk and eggs added.

Evening meal, cheese, and crackers with fruit. Or for a cooked meal fish and a vegetable, or maybe a shrimp and vegetable stir-fry.

On occasions we may eat out at a restaurant, and a typical meal will be a thousand calories in one sitting. I can practically guarantee when I weigh myself the next morning, I will have gained three pounds, which is not a problem as I will be back down to my 150 lbs. the next day, two days at the most.

If I did not religiously weigh myself and log my weight each day, it would be easy to gain a few pounds each day and before I would know it, I would be 10 or 15 lbs. overweight. This daily logging of my weight is an essential part of the weight loss and maintenance regimen.

In 2016, year after my initial weight loss success, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle became even more important. Here I am six years later, and I am still managing my condition well.

I occasionally have a tremor in my right hand, but not all the time. It does occasionally affect my speech and I stumble over certain words, but it has not affected my walking or balance yet. I view it as an annoyance rather than a disability.

The other big change I made four years ago in 2017, I stopped eating meat. I came to this decision not because I believe meat is inherently bad, but the way meat is produced today is not good.

Animals are raised in a small space, where they have no exercise, and just eat. This cannot be healthy for the animal, so can it be healthy for me to eat the meat of the animal?

The animals are fed genetically modified food, given growth hormones to make them grow in as short as time possible, and antibiotics to prevent them from becoming diseased due to the unhealthy conditions they live in.

I now eat a mainly plant based diet, and apart from that I eat wild caught fish and shrimp; I feel farm raised fish is no better than other forms of meat. I buy only free-range eggs. So where do I get my protein, everyone asks? You can get protein from plants, but I eat such a small amount, how can I possibly get enough?

It is true, most protein comes from meat, and our body turns those proteins into amino acids, which we then build muscle and neurons in the brain, etc. I take plant based amino acids in the form of supplements.

It has worked for me because during my last annual physical exam, when my doctor did extensive blood work, not only were my protein levels normal, but my heart, liver and kidneys were, “As those of a 25-year-old,” in the words of my doctor.

I also take supplements for my gut, and others that are anti-toxins for my joints, organs, and others to repair neurons in by brain. It is the fact that neurons in my brain are dying that has caused my Parkinson’s, and my diet, exercise, and the supplements I am taking, at least appear to be slowing the process down.

I also cut back on vegetables that are in the “Nightshade” group. Tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, and potatoes. I have not cut these out altogether but limit them to once or twice a week. The result has been that my arthritis pain in my shoulders, hips and knees has ceased. My wife has had similar results.

People sometimes ask if I miss eating meat, and yes, I do remember the taste of a nice juicy steak with fries. But I enjoy feeling good, and being pain free a whole lot more. And growing old sucks a lot less.

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Exercise and Aging

Exercise is good for you…. Right? Everyone knows that. But is there such a thing as too much exercise, especially as we age?

The more I read on the subject, coupled with actual changes I am experiencing, the more I am convinced that you can “Over” exercise.

Especially when you really start getting up there in years. In less than two months I will be 85. I am both physically and mentally fit. For the last five years I have maintained my weight at 150 lb. (68 kg.) (My racing weight as a teenager.)

The only medication I take is a low dose for my Parkinson's, but I do take a lot of supplements. I still hold on to my mistrust of Doctors, Big Pharma, the Food Industry, and Government of course, only because they allow the aforementioned to operate with impunity.

I like and respect my own doctor, but trust him? Hell no. I go in for an annual physical, when he does blood and urine tests. But if he prescribes any medication, I research it thoroughly, and invariably find the side effects of said medication is far worse that the condition it is treating.

One has to be their own health advocate. It is my body, so only I get to say what goes in it, and what I do to it. The great thing today is all the information I need is right there on-line. Yes, there is a lot of miss-information too, but one must be selective in what one reads. But on reading several articles saying the same thing, one has to accept there is some truth to it.

In recent years, one of the things I have learned about is Free Radicals, and in particular Oxygen Free Radicals. With my limited high school science knowledge, I will try to explain in simple terms. Atoms are made up of a Nucleus of Protons and Neutrons, and electrons orbit around the Nucleus.

An Oxygen atom has two electrons orbiting the nucleus, and six more electrons orbiting outside that. A Free Radical atom has one or more of these electrons missing. It then “Steals” an electron from the atom next to it, which in turn steals one from its neighbor, setting off a chain-reaction of wholesale electron thievery that can actually cause cell damage.  

Free radicals are a natural occurrence, and the body has a defense mechanism in the form of antitoxins that repair the damage done by free radicals. Our bodies produce these antitoxins using nutrients from the food we eat.

The problem is as we age, we stop producing these antitoxins and the free radicals are left to ravage our bodies and our brains. It is the reason we become old, get dementia or become more susceptible to cancer and other diseases.

Glutathione is an antitoxin the body makes naturally and is known as “The mother of all antitoxins.” This is where the supplements come in, and it is here I wish it were it that simple. Glutathione taken orally, rarely makes it past the digestive system. However, the body makes glutathione from amino acids, Cysteine, Glutamine, and Glycine. By taking these supplements, the goal is to help my body produce its own Glutathione.

When we exercise to extremes, especially endurance exercise, which cycling can be if you ride far enough and hard enough, we actually produce free radicals. This is not surprising when you consider intense exercise means we are taking in 10 to 20 times more oxygen than we would while resting.

Our bodies are processing all that extra oxygen as it goes from our lungs to our blood-stream, to our muscles. I ask myself, is it any wonder a few little electrons get lost along the way? A young fit athlete can handle this, even a fit fifty- or sixty-year-old might be okay. But when we get to our seventies and eighties, time starts to catch up fast. I for one have come to respect my limitations.

I ride a moderate pace around 15 mph. pedal a low gear at around 72 rpm, and never ride to the point of exhaustion, or even to the point of being out of breath. Apparently, the worst thing an aging athlete can do is to exercise infrequently, then exercise hard. Weekend Warriors beware. Slow down, if you are like me, you have nothing to prove to yourself, or anyone else.  

If you Google “Exercise and Free Radicals,” or click here there is much info on this subject.

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Mediocrity

I sometimes feel our society is drowning in an ocean of mediocrity. Crappy TV, crappy music on the radio, and crappy movies shown at my local theater. Not to mention junk food being fed to us.

The sad thing is there is good music and good movies being made but you won’t hear it on your radio or see it at the theater. Why? Because music you have to really listen to fully appreciate, or movies that make you think, do not appeal to the masses.

Just as junk food gives a body instant gratification, so too does junk TV, music and movies. And crappy TV and other entertainment is destroying people’s minds, just as surely as junk food destroys bodies.

The sugar or salt on junk food only gives a person fleeting pleasure while they are actually eating it. The moment they stop eating they are craving more.

So too with entertainment, people are constantly listening to music through ear buds because they are not actually listening, it is just background noise.

It is not difficult to eat healthy, it is not even expensive, however, it does require a conscious effort to research, choose and prepare the right food. It is not difficult to find decent entertainment either, it just takes a conscious effort to seek it out.

Some people might even find benefit if they removed the ear buds while running or riding their bikes and simply listen to the sounds of nature, or even just enjoy the silence. Plus, they would have increased awareness of their surroundings, thus increasing their safety. 

About six years ago I dropped cable TV. I got tired of paying a premium for 150 channels and finding nothing worth watching. All I have now is an Internet connection, and my TVs connect through Wifi.

I switched to Hulu and Netflix, together with Amazon Prime that comes with my annual subscription. Between the three I can pick and choose what shows I want to watch. More important I can watch them when I want to, I am not tied to the TV channel’s schedule.

I also subscribe to NBC Sports Gold / Cycling, which means I can watch all the Spring Classic Bike Races, and the Grand Tours in my big screen TV.

It is one of the best things I ever did, it is costing me a fraction of what I previously paid for cable. And I have found there are some great movies being made that never make it to the movie theatre.

I never have a TV on unless I am actually watching it. Only occasionally will I play background music, and never when I’m driving, I find it distracting. If I am not consciously listening, I prefer silence.

I find by constantly listening to, or watching something but not paying attention to it, desensitizes the mind. We develop a habit of "Not Listening," and we never fully appreciate what we see or hear.

Like all mediocre art and entertainment, it appears good at first glance. But look deeper and there is no substance. It is important to me what I feed my body and my mind.

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Dave’s Bread Pudding

When I started racing in the 1950s there were no protein bars, the food we carried in our jersey pockets while racing, or musette bags on long training rides, was prepared at home. One of my favorites was my mother’s bread pudding.

Many bread pudding recipes turn out so soft that you need a spoon to eat them, and too wet and sloppy to carry in your pocked and eat in your hand. This bread pudding could be cut in handy size pieces, wrapped in grease proof paper or aluminum foil, and would not fall apart in your pocket or your hand as you ate it.

However, it was moist like a pudding, rather than dry like a cake. Therefore, easy to chow down while riding. I can pretty much remember what went into it, having watched my mother make her bread pudding for many years, long before I even got into bike racing.

The main ingredient was left over stale bread, milk, eggs, butter, etc. like any cake or pudding, but what proportions for the ingredients?

There was only one way to find out, actually put one together, bake it and eat it. Maybe my mother was looking over my shoulder as I assembled it, because it turned out exactly as I remember.

Ingredients:

8 cups white bread, cut into ½ inch cubes. If you can crumble the bread further into breadcrumbs, even better.

3/4 cup raisins.

3/4 cup brown coconut sugar, (Substitute regular brown sugar.)

4 cups whole milk.

3 Large Eggs.

2  Tablespoons Coconut oil. (Substitute butter.)

4 Tablespoons Cocoa or cooking chocolate.

1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

Directions:

Mix the cubed or crumbled bread thoroughly with the raisins, then place in a greased dish, to fill the bottom of the dish to the halfway line. (Grease dish with additional coconut oil or butter.)

Place all the other 6 ingredients in a blender and blend. If you don’t have a blender mix thoroughly by hand.

Pour the liquid from the blender over the breadcrumbs to cover the bread completely, but not excessively. Use a little extra milk if it doesn’t.

I used a fairly large oven proof casserole dish, 10 in. x 10 in. x 2 ½ in. deep. It took 8 cups of bread (About 12 slices.) to half fill the dish. If you use a smaller dish, discover how much bread it will take to fill the dish to the halfway line, and scale back the other ingredients proportionately.

The pudding will rise slightly as it cooks, hence you only fill the dish halfway. But the dish needs to be deep enough that the uncooked pudding is at least one inch deep, or it may dry out in the center.

Place the open dish in the center of the oven and bake at 375 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, or until a knife pushed in the center comes out clean. I baked mine for 55 minutes, a smaller dish may take less time.

Allow to cool, then refrigerate. The bread pudding should be hard and crisp on the outside but soft and moist on the inside. Cut into handy size pieces, and wrap in aluminum foil, or place in a zip-lock sandwich bag.

A good size piece like the one pictured above should be good for 50 miles. Your mileage may vary.

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