creative culinary by PACHI

my story at 52, Dr Clyde 2013

Prologue: Patricia

Here I sit in California, after many weekly flights from Panama to attend Clyde’s Healthy Weight Loss course at Stanford, and with a full conviction of finally finding the person who can explain the real theory behind food. No bad food, no ideal food, just a mix of what the Earth has given us to create amazing tasting dishes that will allow us to look good, feel great, and realize all our dreams in this life now.

I grew up in a bakery home, worked there since I was fourteen in a family that was horrified of fat cooks. Many years before the “freshmen fifteen” term existed I gained twice that much during my first year at college. For the first time I was made to go on a diet. After four years of wearing sweat pants and college t-shirts I finally came back home like I had left. I lost almost all the weight by graduation and have kept it off for most of my life, of course going up and down after three children. Cooking allowed me to go back to what I thought of as a normal weight for me. As a mother, a pastry chef and a baker I needed a lot of energy, and as an individual I also needed to be able go out and dress up when I wanted to.

I have been baking and cooking all my life, and teaching mothers and business women how to cook light and delicious food. My students, most of them between the ages of 30 and 70, all mixed into random groups had the time of their lives cooking and learning about food, and spoke about feeling like they had been to therapy while in class. When I turned 40 I started writing since I was the one who needed therapy then. Now more than a decade later and five published cookbooks I thought I was done with writing and teaching. I would retire. This filled my work “bucket list” until Clyde’s weight loss engineering appeared on my radar. Far from home, at my daughter’s alma matter (Stanford), and probably through being her mother I received this email with Clyde’s class listed. I took the risk of flying from home every week for eight weeks, while planning my daughter’s wedding just a few months away to have the pleasure of being immersed in Clyde’s work; real scientific data to match my cooking.

And here it is, all for you and all the other people in the world who believe there is always a solution

Pachi´s Blog en Creative Culinary