corrado de cesare

Hi Eric,

Eric Hanson wrote:Does anyone know of any foods, herbs, etc. ANYTHING that can help restless leg syndrome?

My mother had the same problem, especially at night.

We solved it with a "food diary". She wrote on a diary every morning the intensity of RLS and what she ate before going to sleep. Food, drinks, sweets, anything.

So my suggestion is to get this habit and at the end of the week analyze data.

The following week you avoid those food you ate before big episodes of RLS. It takes a few weeks to understand what you must not eat. Strong will needed, for this :)

It is easier if you eat 2 max 3 ingredients at a time.

Hope this helps you.

Corrado

Jj Grey wrote:

That cold bottom issue is why some people keep the seat itself next to the wood stove and take it out with them when they go out to go.  Just my $0.2.

Great idea!

Here are the pics

Hello! Thanks for all good suggestions and nice comments.

First, quick answer to Kaarina. We have quite a few of these houses here in North of Italy and they are really unexpensive to buy. We paid less than 15k, with three acres of land more or less. You can find a small one (30-40 sqm) with an acre for 5-10k. A few people from Germany and Holland and a couple from Sweden bought stonehouses in the same valley. So if you are envious, think about it :-)

Second, an answer for Nissa. At the beginning we thought about using the whole house for ouselves. But after realizing that the small part is enough and really enjoyable, we have been thinking about creating small "low-tech bnb" on the same model of our space. I am wondering about creating a net of such small places. So if you decide to do something similar, shall we keep contact?

To Jodie, if you are talking about my house, thank you very much. We fell in love with this stone thing the first time we saw her.


Ok, now to Kaarina again

I am envious, an old stone house! My advice:
- plan like a sailboat: cooking, reading, eating and relaxing can be done in one room.
- invest in a good bed. Woollen mattress, down blakets.
- storage can be created in every nook and cranny
- about every single thing you have, ask yourself: do I love it and do I need it?  

I am envious of your wood house, so we are ok :-))

your first point is always on my mind. I am planning to change our actual dining table for a foldable one, buy foldable wooden "long chaise" instead of a couch, and so on. Our living room is 10x10ft. I want a "japanese" empty room, with a few  high quality pieces of furniture to be stored easily.

We have a wonderful bed, you will understand in the next lines why this was an hard decision, but a very good one.

About storage... at first I thought exactly like you suggest. But then I examined the house and the way it was used in the old days. Our first floor was a one room place when we bought it, but originally was divided in two. One cold area to store the cheeses that the sheperds sold to make a living, and a warm area where they actually lived.
So I divided the two areas again with a double layer of larch and some good insulation (6 inches of polyurethan). Now we have a good storage, warm the house faster and we like the layout. Nothing around, very easy to clean.

About the "do I love it and do I need it", I have another condition... Can I carry it??? Everything must be carried on my back, along a trail which is short but steep and narrow, 15min walk more or less. This is good, makes us smarter I like to say.


About the sauna, thank you very much for your explanation. The question can "I carry it" will be on my mind for a while :-)

I'm posting some photos of the inside, I am still working on it.  I know your stove, very good one. We have a ThermoNicoletta at home, but we love our Jotul 602 (easier on my back, along the trail)

We use the chimney to grill and for atmosphere, the Jotul to heat and cook. Above the stove there's an opening that lets the heat reach the bedroom.

Last two pics are our outdoor dining room and... our sauna/bathroom at the moment, ahahaha...

Hi Kaarina,

I really like your house!

A few years ago me and my wife bought an old stone house on the Alps, a house used for more than 100 years by sheperds and their flocks.
We are gradually moving to this house. This means that we are changing our lives little by little to be able to live there (we still have to work).
So we now spend 4 days at the stone house and three working at home, but we plan to do better.

The house is divided in three parts, we live in the smaller one, the other two were stables, for sheeps and cows.

This part we live in is 130sqft on first floor and around 90sqft on second floor. (I will add some photos)

Organizing the house layout is a challenge, I am lucky I have been a very small boat sailor for a couple of decades too. My biggest boat was a nordic Folkboat, I think you know what I mean.

The stone house sits on a woody mountain slope, at 3600ft above sea and we are 100% off grid. We have mountains well over 13000ft there around.



I am very interested in your sauna/bathroom, because this is the point we are planning right now. Can you please tell me something more about it?


Thank you,

Corrado

Thank you for the links, Mr R Ranson. I found them very useful.

Corrado

Hi,

You could try this:

1- design and produce an expensive, standardized and very appealing RMH
2- design and produce an effective, low cost version of n.1
3- introduce a few low-cost RMH for free in a place where winter is terrible, people is in difficulties and a place which has a lot of media attention (Ukraine?)
4- sell a lot of expensive RMH to rich countries
5- translate and give away free copies of RMH building books to poor countries. Especially in country n.3

n. 4 should finance n.5.

Just an idea  :-)

Pearl Sutton wrote:

My first question is always "Do you HAVE to move that much at one time?" To me it's easier to cut the work by changing the basic problem if possible. I'm good at that.  

This is the first question for me as well. I always have to lift all materials, because no road reaches my house. I have a steep and narrow trail, 20 minutes walk.
People here used to lift materials with mules, I will probably do the same when the real lifting begins.

Working on the roof is easier with scaffolding and pulleys. Or a partially underground house :)

Hi, maybe you already know this guy's work, but I put a link anyway.

I am willing to build one for my 100% off-grid hut in the Alps, 1100 mt altitude, probably this autumn.

https://mb-soft.com/public3/globalzl.html

Mike Lafay wrote:As someone else said, losing weight and gaining weight is easy.

Easy, in that it's like managing money. You want to gain weight, eat more than you need. You want to lose weight, eat less than you need.

Hello Mike. Our body loves complexity (just like nature does). Dollars have all the same effect, but calories and foods have not. Our bank accounts healthily receive dollars at any time of the day, our body does not the same with food.

Mike Lafay wrote:Using fasting to lose weight is in my opinion, a recipe for a disaster. You will struggle needlessly mentally speaking, and the sudden drop in calorie will shock your body, and cause it to enter "survival mode", were it will either not lose any weight, or, when you're back to eating like usual, it will gain all that weight back, and might even store some more just in case its deprived of food again.


It need to be progressive, so that you can adapt both mentally and physically. By gradually eating less and/or spending more calories, you will have far more chance of reaching your goal.

There is a difference between fasting and intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting is not, for what I know, about drastically reducing calories but is about eating in a window of eight hours every day. Or less, if it fits to you.
We send a message to our body whenever we eat something. This is why quality of our food is so important. The "diet" I follow is not restrictive in calories, I just intake foods that are beneficial to me and avoid those that are not. In a window of eight hours, let's say 12 a.m. to 8 p.m. because it's ok for my timetable.

If you gradually reduce your daily calories, your body will slowly enter "famine" mode and not let go a single gram of fat. It will strive on proteins, from your muscles.

Mike Lafay wrote:A good weight loss program also allow you to unwind mentally speaking. Having a cheat meal once a week for instance. Obviously, it doesn't mean eating three days worth of groceries, just maybe going to a party, a bbq with friends or whatever.

Eating more proteins also helps with hunger. If you need to cut something in your diet, it's carbohydrates. Proteins are essentials (some amino-acids at least), some fats are essentials, but as far as I know, carbohydrates are not essentials.

In the end, losing weight is about dealing with a deep seated problem: it takes time, and there's no quick fix. But there are solutions.

I do agree with these final phrases, I would just add that is mainly fats that give the sensation of satiety.

Corrado