Phat Shui for Turkey Day

It has been said that there are those who eat to live and those who live to eat.  But Phat Shui acknowledges and embraces people in the third category: those who live to eat but don’t metabolize.

balancing the nutrient-filled and free space on your Thankgiving plate for optimum mental consumption

• Lower left: Health. This portion of your plate is dedicated to the idea that even on a holiday you are aware of health.  Steamed green beans inform the rest of the dish that you are a healthy choice maker.  I find keeping the green beans on the plate for as long as possible as a visible reminder of this choice is a perfectly acceptable alternative to eating them.
• Lower-middle: Work. If there happens to be a traditional dish provided by a friend, relative or loved one that was not only a labor of love for them to make but for you to eat, place a dollop of  said concoction in this area like a trophy or prize to honor their efforts.  And if any sort of run-off or juice bleeds into other areas, due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, it will most likely hit the green beans.  If you are not doing well at your work, suck it up and shovel in a few bites for good measure.
• Lower-right: Tradition. This is the food that traditionally is high on your list of no-nos.  In the world of the anti-carb this mostly comes in the form of the Spud.  Mashed potatoes, roasted potatoes, and yes Kristen, even Pataki Potatoes.  Placed in this area they now represent Tradition.  A staple, a go-to to get the taste of the trophy dish next to them out of your mouth.  Go ahead, pile them on, the rest of the year they live in shame.  Let them have their day of honor.
• Middle-left: Family and Sharing. Harness this area for better relationships.  If you place like two, three, or more things that are easily sharable here- like crescent rolls, or cornbread-  the lending energy feeds the spirit of the day.  If you end up eating all of them, hey not your fault, no one took you up on your generosity.  And what are you going to do, put them back?
• Center: Self. All other squares influence  concepts in your life.  And your well-being.  This area is you.  Clearly, this is where the turkey goes.  The turkey is stuffed, you will be stuffed with turkey.  Cycle of life.  Can’t fight it.
• Middle-right: Child. Child also means “creativity” as well.  This is where you place the food you primarily intend to play with.  My personal choice is olives.  Olives have holes in them that perfectly cap over your finger tops.  To me, and perhaps Kirk Cameron, putting them on all my digits and waggling my fingers proves the existence of God.
• Upper-left: Wealth. If your finances are going down the tubes, look to this area of your plate.  Place the mostly costly dish on that table here.  Fancy cheeses, or other delicacies. Especially if you were not the one to provide this topshelf goody.  Give yourself a second helping.  Tell the world you deserve riches and you will receive them.  Or at least, get your money’s worth to compensate for whatever you did pay into this celebratory feast.
• Upper-center: Fame. How do you want to be remembered?  This area is for the food that looks so pretty that you don’t even want to eat it.  brightness and presentation is important here.  A good garnish or radish rose, something to detract that you wolfed down the rest of your plate.  Or to keep the abandoned green beans and barely touched trophy dish from being overly apparent.
• Upper-right: Relationships/Marriage. If you are in one of those lovey-dovey relationships where you eat off each others plate, this area is best for placing such ‘Oh I’ll just try a little of yours’ items.   For the rest of us, put the wishbone here.

Happy Thanksgiving.

When you look up from your plate, I hope it is there that you find what truly makes you thankful.

Phat Shui: Diet Starts Tommorrow

This Phat Shui Haiku is dedicated to anyone who has gone out the night before they start a new diet and eaten:

A huge order of Chinese food, 3/4ths of a container of Ben& Jerry’s Chubby Hubby (so you don’t have to say you ate the whole thing), homemade guacamole (made with 4 avocados) accompanied by an entire bag of chips for good measure, fried quesadilla (oh yeah they make them) followed by carrot cake AND chocolate lava cake, sushi for two (eaten by one), large container of movie popcorn plus huge bag of reese’s pieces and diet coke, cheese, lots and lots of cheese…

Or drunken:

7-10 Jamison and Gingerale followed by the mandatory pizza required to prevent alcohol poisoning. 

I will confess to doing all of these things but I’ll leave you to ponder this, did I eat/drink this all in one mighty binge? Or rather how many times have I gone on a diet? 

My Phat Shui Haiku – by White Girl With a Fat Ass

Tummy bursting ball

But diet starts tommorrow

Free for all tonight

Ponder this piece of Phat Shui grasshopper – if one could forgo the pre-diet binge would one need the diet at all?

Phat Shui for Singles

In celebration of Valentine’s day, we shall now explore how the mysterious and illusory art of Phat Shui can improve your love life. Follow these steps towards a love life rich in nutrients and low in saturated fats.

1. Clean out your fridge. Simple.  Rotten food and expired staples toxify your foodbase with decaying energy. You will then consume and absorb this energy.  No one wants to date decay.  It is also important to identify your foodbase’s ‘Methuselah’  This is your fridge’s oldest item.  Most times it has been there so long you don’t even know when/how you got it.  Methuselah is blocking your foodbase from accepting in new fresher tastes, and often smells, crushing the bloom of romance before it can even bud.
2. Make room/Stock up.  A foodbase that is packed to the brim with Jenga-like stacks of produce and packaged items threatening to fall out every-time you open the door signifies there is no room in your stomach, let alone your heart, for shared consumption.  Likewise, a barren fridge with its pale container of almost soured Milk, and crumb-ridden half a stick of butter does not stimulate the gastric juices.   A dry mouth is not a kissable mouth.
3. Avoid DIET Foods.  While it is important to eat healthy, DIET foods create a negative punishing energy that does not belong in your foodbase.  this is workout food, tasteless food, functional food that you never look upon favorably.  Move these items to the glove box of your car, desk drawer, or office fridge. 
4. Learn New Tricks.  Do you always make your signature dish early on in a relationship to impress your new lover?  How’s that working out for you?  Master some new recipes so that you don’t taint new lips with relationship leftovers.
5. Visualize.  Get rid of any negative labels in your foodbase, this includes both the fridge, cupboards, or pantry.  Pick products that utilize vivid colors. Avoid ugly or funny looking people on labels.  Misery doesn’t need company.  Don’t buy anything that features the number ’1′  in its name or on the packaging.  Single serving foods are for single people.
6. Dinner for two.  Stop using singular utensils.  You can eat with a knife AND fork but you don’t really have to.  Utilize paired eating tools, Chopsticks for instance, instead.  You can’t eat with just one chopstick, they must work together as a unit.  This can also apply to food storage devices.  If you have any Tupperware in your house without a lid, toss it.  I can not stress this enough, lidless Tupperware produces uncoupled energy. 
7. Get your Romance on.  Put your most treasured food item in a featured area your foodbase.  Brownies, ice cream, a fine cheese, succulent cut of meat.   So that the desire to devour this treasure is palpable to you before you even open the refrigerator door.  This will foster a passionate want for this forebode treasure item which will then emanate from your very essence as you make your single way through a coupled world.   If sense yourself becoming desperate, satisfy your passion with the briefest, smallest possible lick, nibble or taste. Just enough to ward off desperation and reignite your passion.  No one wants to date desperate.  

Remember, a key element of Phat Shui stems from the truth that you only think about food all the time merely because you are thinking about food all the time.

Phat Shui

Lesson #1 in the mysterious and illusory art of Phat Shui the method of uncellulite-ing your body by unfattening your mind.

Meditation exercise.  Light a scented candle. Pick a scent that makes you want to eat the candle.  Vanilla is good, my preference is a new ice cream flavored candle that to me smells like love.  As you breath in the aroma, empty your mind and bring forth a body image centered visual memory.  The more embarrassing and humiliating the better.   

Closing my eyes, I picture myself in our neighborhood pool as a teenager.  Swimming my favorite activity because under the water I’m safe from how I look in my swim suit. Secretly, I sneak away from the others. Hovering over a strong jet of water in the corner of the pool, I  place my chubby thigh next to the stream.  The pulsating water pushes my extra thigh-chub to the side and in the center of the concave flesh is a small beautiful section of my smoothed thigh.  What I always imagined I would look like if thin.  Must I swim away?

Yes, swim away Grasshopper.  Blow out your candle and with it blow away the negative emotions of your Phat Shui memory recall.  Take the good from this memory.  Whether it be how far you have come from that sad sack loser, or just how silly this embarrassing moment now seems once meditated on by the glow of an ice cream scented candle. Whenever you catch a whiff of the potent smell of the food fragrance you chose, it will now forever contain the bittersweet odor of humiliation and pleasure.  And center your food brain as to your upcoming nutritional choices.   

some tips: 

Red is the color associated with a charging metabolism.  so paint the bottom of your vegetable crisper red to make your body charge like a bull towards healthy greens.

Polka dots are a power pattern and can heighten pleasure.  place a small piece of chocolate on a polka-dotted plate in the middle of your fridge. This will heighten the pleasure center of your food supply’s base and reduce the amount of caloric intake needed to sustain hunger.

Remember the art of Phat Shui is absorbed like vital nutrients, not chewed-on like overcooked steak.  

Swim away Grasshopper.  Swim away.