The Busiest Weekend of the Year

Dining out. A Thanksgiving tradition for some though for our family it was only the second time. My father footed the bill. I guess he and we all had a lot to be thankful for. The Golden Mast is truly extravagant and a lovely drive, even in the pouring rain.

Of course most important is that now I can listen to Christmas music with a clear conscious. A beautiful time of year, with good clean wholesome music on the radio to fill one with visions of God and family. Have you heard Taylor Swift’s version of “Santa Baby”?

I have uncovered the secret of Black Friday. I understand now why, or rather how it invaded Thanksgiving and why its invasion will be beat back. Yes, we are a more materialistic society today than in the past. We have more material. Still Thanksgiving will be held sacred once more.

It is not the sagging economy that is keeping shoppers at bay this most active of shopping weekends. And I am not saying it is not still the busiest shopping day of the year. The incentive to storm the towers of commerce has just diminished significantly.

I believe the biggest incentive over the last decade for Black Friday madness has been technology, namely the flat panel TV (and perhaps tickle me Elmo). Now, most everyone has a flat panel television.

The flat panel television has been revolutionary. Size matters while at the same time it doesn’t. You no longer needed a giant room to have a giant screen. The TV no longer dominates the room, taking up significant real estate and controlling the layout and traffic patterns of your living space. The flat panel can go almost anywhere and takes up no more space then a picture hanging on the wall. A computer station can now cohabitate on a small desk, rather than demanding a desk of its own.

The flat panel was expensive at first. Shoppers rushed to the sales. Then, when the prices came down, larger and larger flat panels hit the market in large numbers, with large price tags, and shoppers rushed for those on discount. New technologies continue to enhance the flat panel televisions but these technologies exceed the expectations of the viewer.

So now most everyone has a flat panel and the Black Friday stampedes have been corralled. That’s just how I see it.

Retailors, please stop opening on Thanksgiving.

I am in shock that Thanksgiving is over and I have yet to prepare to get all the Christmas cards out. I saw a man buying two-hundred Christmas stamps at the post office the other day. Then there is the shopping and the Christmas parties… And the Christmas decorations; our neighbors put theirs up this weekend. We are going to have to bake some cookies at some point and Christmas is less than four weeks away!

I know what you are saying. “What about your diet Phillip? We are all truly concerned for your health and wellbeing.”

It is not a good time of year for weight loss. But Thanksgiving has been more forgiving than Halloween.

The Bulletproof Diet was initially successful for me. I dropped thirty pounds. I gained over ten pounds back. What did I do wrong?

First the weight loss stalled and then I became complacent.

• I ran out of the supplements and stopped taking them. Most important are Magnesium and vitamin D.
• We started eating deserts, again. Homemade bread and even cake did not do much to increase my weight or slow my weight loss. The effects were negligible. Not even store bought donuts made a big impact (thank God) but store bought, processed and packaged, cakes and cookies were really bad. Also the Halloween candy. I blame the children for not trick or treating. I would also note that I do not do the grocery shopping.
• My wife began preparing a lot of rice and potato casseroles. We decreased the amount of fresh vegetables and meat. My wife turned cheap in other words. Particularly we stopped buying the grass fed animal meats. I believe this has had the biggest impact. There is a Doctor Axe on YouTube and he recommends that if you are going to spend extra money with a diet it is best spent on first making sure you are eating the grass fed animal products. It really is that important. Much of the meat on the shelves today is packed with estrogen.
• We have the Bulletproof style coffee almost every morning but sometimes we go without. My wife has it far less than myself. It is hard to find a good price on the Kerry Gold (grass fed cow) butter. Meijer has the best price but I have discovered, over Thanksgiving dinner, that one of my younger brothers buys everything on the shelf when he finds it available. Yes, the Milwaukee area is suffering a shortage of grass fed unsalted butter. Trader Joes has the next best price outside of sales.
• Kim Chi, one of many highly beneficial fermented foods had also been missing from our diet when I suffered my greatest weight gain. We are back into making our own. Kim Chi is recommended for weight loss by many. All traditional fermented food products are recommended for their health benefits. There was nothing fermented on our Thanksgiving table. Check out Cultured Food Life.
• Exercise? My weight loss and gain had nothing to do with how much I was or was not exercising.

I have to make a correction, just one for now, on the Fair Life milk; a product I wrote about previously (higher protein less sugars). You actually don’t get a full half gallon as the proximate size of the container may suggest. It actually is more expensive than organic milk. It is like dog food, price wise. A few years ago we could buy forty, or even forty-four pounds, for about forty dollars. The bag has shrunk considerably year by year. Now the large bag of dog food is only thirty pounds and it is almost impossible to find for less than forty dollars. It is inflation without the inflation via deflation.

Wow! I should get a Nobel Prize in economics for that last line.

And speaking of flat panel televisions and YouTube, my wife and I were watching YouTube on our flat panel the other day. No, not Dr. Axe though we watch many of his videos, We were watching woodworking videos. We were watching a young lady supposedly building a backboard for a bed she had built.

My wife said; “Is this real. Woman can’t build stuff like that.”

I answered with the most obvious response in the most obvious of manner and obvious of tones, “She’s not building it. There is a man off camera really doing all the work.”

“Yeah, must be.” she answered.

It was so obvious, and yes …that conversation did happen. I may be guilty of embellishment and conjecture to the point of foolishness at times in my attempts to entertain, but there are no fictions in my posts.

YouTube is amazing and all that much more enjoyable on the big screen. Many YouTube producers are sponsored. For example, looking at several videos on how to build a bed they will mention their sponsors, in this case mattress retailers. Casper, also recommended by The Great One Mark Levin, was one sponsor along with Leesa Mattress. The commercials before the videos are also amazing productions, providing a storyline and motivation for a product or company. Sometimes we watch them all the way through, even as long as five minutes. Though sitting in front of the television is probably not recommended for weight loss.

Like always, I gain nothing from any individual or organization I may write about here, accept for a few pennies a year I earn and have yet to collect from the advertisements you see on my blogs. I share experiences and thoughts with an effort to entertain and inform. I do not necessarily recommend anything.

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