Mike,
I couldn't agree more about the pill popping etc and I come from a family of medicos, my mother a pharmacist, father a dentist, one brother a research scientist working mostly in pharmaceuticals another is a heart surgeon, I have several more but I'm sure you get the picture.
All of them are rational about the proper use of drugs and tend toward using as few as possible.
I personally think it's best to really shop around for a doctor, you are trusting them with your health and as such it's important to be happy that they really understand what's going on with you and are not just prescribing things for your immediate symptoms.
My doctor takes a very holistic approach, we spoke for over an hour at my first appointment with him going over all sorts of things, physical as well as psychological in a sense. He took the time to get to know me and my life, things that were weighing me down and things I wanted to do. He took the time to explain to me the various things that my body was doing and how they related to each other and how they could be resolved. My previous doctor simply said, here take these and these and you'll be on them the rest of your life etc etc
So shop around a bit if you can, ask questions and get a full understanding, if they don't seem to really care go elsewhere.
Jeff,
certainly try the vegan option, as you put it, but it's better not to think of it that way. Better to "try this food I've not tried before" or try "hey that looks interesting........., oh bugga me it tastes damn good too.
We tend to eat what we are familiar with all the time, I know I had a habit of going to the supermarket and just walking the same path through the shelves picking up the same stuff I always did, quick and straightforward and done.
But now I really shop, made somewhat more difficult because I can barely read the labels, my German isn't too good, and buy things I've never had before and then go home and learn how to cook with them. I've had some disasters but I've had more delights.
And you are so right, you are in a wonderful city for experiencing all sorts of foods.
Sepo,
I think I understand why you ask, I remember thinking, Vegetarian ME!? are you nucking futs what the hell am I going to eat!!!
And here I am in one of the most meat eating countries in the world where the vegetarian dish on the menu is roast pork, but it's vegetarian because the pig was grain fed.
It took me a few days to get my head round it but I gave it a try, I started with some boring basics, steamed or roasted veg, salads, fruit and so on but fairly quickly got adventurous and started looking for recipes on the net. Pretty soon I had started cooking for myself for the first time in more than a decade and it was fun and tasted bloody good. I've been traveling the world for work for the last 20+ years and have eaten some of the best and some of the worst, but pretty much I had become bored with food and it was only something to fill the tank, so frozen pizza and such were pretty common or a hotel breakfast of bad scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages then nothing for lunch and a giant steak for dinner. I think you get the picture, irregular crap fatty food.
So what do I eat now.
What I don't eat, but I'm not strict on this, I will eat them happily if I'm out but choose not to at home, is really just most animal fats and sugar, so generally I don't eat meat or chicken or use butter or milk or cream etc in cooking.I do eat cheese, yoghurt and fish.
I mainly avoid additives, so most things I eat are fresh or prepared or packaged in a reasonable way, sundried tomatoes in olive oil, tuna in sunflower oil, tinned or bottled things that don't have masses of salt or sugar in them etc but again I'm not that strict on that, if I feel like it I will buy it.
Anyway I have learnt to cook and I do love chillies and spicy food so I make a lot of curries now from scratch and they are pretty damn good, eating one as I type this, but I eat a huge variety of things.
A typical day now would start with 2 or 3 slices of toast (made from good bread from the bakery that makes it's own and uses none of the 19 or so additives that go into factory bread) topped with chopped tomatoes, chillies, spring onion or shallots drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil and a good dose of pepper and a light sprinkling of chunky sea salt. I can chop and mix all those bits in the time it takes to make the toast.
Lunch varies a lot depending on how busy I am, sometimes last nights curry, sometimes a quick tuna salad, sometimes grilled cheese on toast, sometimes a sandwich from the local shop.
Dinner is always different, I often cook salmon fillets, well cooked they can be better than an expensive steak. Sometimes I'll make a load of roast veggies and have a simple green salad with them other times steamed veg. Tonight as I said is a curry, made with loads of onions and spices with the main bulk being potatoes, zucchinis, chickpeas and mushrooms. I could have done it with fish or prawns or langoustine but tonight I was cooking with chickpeas for the first time.
I use lots of different fresh herbs and things, I like spicy but I often cook non spicy too. I snack quite often too, cashews and almonds, bananas and whatever other fruit I can get here, christmas cookies full of sugar (but I don't eat them all and nothing else).
I guess I have succeeded because I am enjoying myself and not trying to "Diet" I still enjoy a good drink, unfortunately I still smoke, but that will go soon enough (nothing beats a Doc that says enjoy your smoke for now and we'll deal with that later) mainly it's a lifestyle change and not penance to suffer through. And I've managed to work my cooking in with my work and travel, but that's a whole other story
Sorry, didn't mean this diatribe to be so long but it's sort of hard to put a simple answer into words.