Just Eat Real Food. Period.

But really?  Wanna hear what folks ask me more'n anything?  It's not about raising 39 kids, but rather,  "How do you stay so thin?  What's your secret?

Ain't no secret, I just eat real food. A plant based diet.  No meat ever, very few animal products other than dairy like greek yogurt or cheeses, and I'm cutting way back in this realm.

Not food that comes in a box, prepared with chemicals, not fast food, very rarely a restaurant meal, but everyday low on the food chain.

I'm not thin anymore, I'm regular.

Yesterday I had a big bowl of granola with rice milk and a banana.  OK, two bananas, I have an extraordinarily big appetite.  Lunch was a huge cantaloupe, I ate the whole thing by myself, plus a carton of greek yogurt for protein.  Supper was whole wheat pasta with grated cheeses, herbs, onions, olive oil, tomatoes and black olives.  A snack after church for me was an entire pineapple cut up.

Bet you can't eat an entire pineapple.

CW loves pasta and had instagrammed that picture last night.  I grow some to-die-for onions. Nando'd picked us a bowl full of what I'd planted in February.

Somedays I eat a couple squares of dark chocolate, or a sandwich for lunch, somedays I eat piles of whatever fresh vegetables or fruits are available, piles that'd shock you at their size, like I'm a lumberjack or something, such as my mongo heaps of Swiss Chard.  Sarah suggests I serve it on a bed of brown rice, but that takes too long to cook, and I usually wait until I'm starving and thus childishly impatient.

I drink gallons of water and a pot of coffee each day.  Unsweetened herbal teas in the winter.

This is how our bodies were originally intended to be fed.  Maybe not this much food, but I expend a ton of energy each day.  I need high-octane fuel that's found in the plant world.

When tomatoes are in, the kids and I love to slice 'em up, top each slice with grated pepper jack cheese, black pepper and sea salt, and we each eat huge platefuls as a snack.

I weigh 126-129, depending on if I've over-indulged, which I'm free to do if I wanna.  Sarah weighs five pound less and looks a billion times better, because she's young, lithe and lovely, versus me being old and raggedy, but I've so earned this privilege.

I'll break my own rules and eat a Krispy Kreme if I want to, or salt and vinegar potato chips, (love 'em) but not often.  I don't crave them often, I crave a bucket of freshly picked blueberries - a five gallon work bucket, not some prissy pink tiny thing.

I eat ginormous bowls of popped on the stove in olive oil popcorn almost every night, with sea salt and nutritional yeast, parsley too, if I've grown me some.  Some nights I'll steam a pile of squash and eat it before bed.  In desperate winter months I've been known to eat a can of beets, yet the newest BPA research on store-bought cans has now discouraged me from doing that so much.

I dumbly once bought into the low-fat craze until I realized our body deeply needs the good fats for brain functioning, so I prefer full fat sour cream and cheeses.  Marketeers replaced the fat with chemicals.  Dang boys, gimme the fat instead.

I believe that I eat very, very well.  I also think that others might not want to eat as I do, and I just can't understand that.  Sarah says I'm wrong, that her generation is better at it than mine which is probably true.

But seriously women of the world, we've sadly all bought into the worldview espoused by the media regarding svelte physiques and youthful sophistication, where women end up with eating disorders and body dysmorphic problems.

Body dysmorphic disorder is a type of chronic mental illness in which you can't stop thinking about a flaw with your appearance — a flaw that is either minor or imagined. But to you, your appearance seems so shameful that you don't want to be seen by anyone. Body dysmorphic disorder has sometimes been called "imagined ugliness."

Why do we do this?

Why can't we all just appreciate our uniqueness?  All, I repeat ALL women are beautiful.

We just need to eat plants for better health.