Food = Health

Veggies for the week

2012-01-29T16:08:00.001-06:00

Last week by about Thursday I decided I was tired of eating so many salads. Fortunately that feeling only lasted a couple of days and by today I was desiring one again. I'm planning a better balance this week between cooked and raw so I don't get tired of salads by Thursday. Yesterday I made my bean soup like I usually do. Today I made a giant batch of cooked veggies. Actually after cooking it was not so giant, and just filled 7 bowls. My veggie choices were inspired by this clip from Dr. Gregor. His video clips are awesome. They only last a couple of minutes and are very informative. So this clip showed some recent studies that maybe did a better job of measuring antioxidant values in vegetables (I'm not going to try to explain, see the video). I was surprised by the results. I grabbed a screen shot of the result (hope he doesn't mind!):

So guess what I put in my two big pots of veggies: beets, eggplant, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, onions, mushrooms, and garlic. And I threw in some herbs du provence, and some fines herbs and some cinnamon. Note that red bell pepper is really high on the list but Dr. Gregor says it loses too many nutrients when cooked. So I added that to my salad. I love red bell peppers! Here are the veggies are ready to cook up in 2 large pressure cookers:

Here they are after cooking and cooling and dished out into bowls to freeze for the week:

I still tend to overcook veggies in my pressure cookers, so they are soft but they taste delicious. I am not sure there is a cooked veggie I don't like. I doubt you even need the seasonings. Speaking of those, Dr. Gregor talks about spices with huge health benefits but I can't remember it all. I seem to recall cinnamon and cloves and marjoram? oregano is pretty good too. It's in one of the recent videos.

Another cooked veggie I plan to eat this week is baked sweet potatoes. My absolute favorite are the oriental yams. They have purple skin and yellow flesh. They are so sweet I wonder if they are even healthy.

Some interesting posts

2012-01-29T15:26:00.000-06:00

I ran across some interesting articles and emails this week:

PEERtrainer did a survey of dieters from 2011, comparing strategies of those who lost weight and those who didn't. The ones who lost weight changed their eating habits, and eliminated a lot of junk food: "They did not cite "moderation" as the key to their success in 2011." The ones who didn't lose weight were asked what their plans were for 2012. The vast majority of people said, "eat less and exercise more." A take-away message from the article: "So if you are one of those people who are thinking just in terms of exercising more and eating less, we'd really encourage you to look at the habits of the 2011 losers. That means get in the mindset of changing what you eat, and focusing less on exercise as the main path to weight loss." PEERtrainer supports a diet very much like Dr. Fuhrman's. Even if you don't adopt it fully, it can help you lose weight.
Another post from PEERtrainer referred to an article Dr. Oz wrote in the January issue of Oprah magazine. He said that people who track what they eat lose twice as much weight as those who don't. That's significant. This is a controversial topic, and isn't recommended for or by everyone, but it appears to work for some people!
If you have food addictions or eating disorders or disordered eating, or perhaps just sense that you have an unhealthy relation to food and want to improve it, this free set of 9 interviews might be of interest to you from Tara Warner, called "Getting over ED". I heard about this from the Fuhrman forums---Dr. Fuhrman is one of the interviews. I admire her for doing such a great job with these interviews and making them free. Sure she is probably hoping to get some new business from this, and I hope she does.

Sunday Salad

2012-01-29T14:40:00.000-06:00

On the weekdays, my salads are more of a production because they include fruit and raw veggies. On Sunday lately, I've been going simple and enjoying this one:

That's just romaine lettuce, 1/2 avocado, red bell pepper, 1 cup of peas (frozen), and sliced red onion. I add some d'angou pear vinegar when I dish out a serving (too lazy to make a dressing). I LOVE this salad.

Refreshing Veggies

2012-01-28T20:31:00.000-06:00

Yes, veggies are refreshing to us, but I'm actually referring to refreshing the veggies. A guy in the produce section at the co-op was saying some other guy claims he can keep his lettuce fresh for a few weeks! How the heck can he do that, I asked. He chops off the bottom and soaks it in water. So I tried it! The romaine this time of year sometimes looks pretty tired by the time we get it. Same goes for the broccolini, which I really enjoy but it looks pretty pathetic sometimes. Here's a picture showing what I did.

I just cut off the bottoms, and put them in a bowl with water in the fridge (the next time I decided to use a ceramic bowl instead of plastic). It totally refreshed the broccolini! The lettuce was noticeably crisper too. hmm, I think I will go refresh the lettuce in my fridge right now.

Curry GOMB soup

2012-01-28T20:21:00.000-06:00

Following on my GOMB soup theme (Greens, Onions, Mushrooms, and Beans), this week I made a curry version. Last week I made a "spaghetti" version and the week before chili. It's pretty much the same core ingredients, with different spices.

Ingredients:
1 lb dried beans or 2 cans
2 onions, chopped
1/2-1 lb mushrooms, chopped
3 large cloves garlic, chopped
1 red bell pepper (optional), chopped
few large stalks celery (optional), chopped
1-2 bunches collards or kale, chopped
1 can tomatoes
1 Tbsp curry
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp cinnamon
1-2 Tbsp date syrup

Note that the ingredient amounts are not important--you could halve or double each one and it will still taste good, if you like this sort of thing, that is. Next time, I might double the spices.

Even though the picture is kind of dark, I like how colorful the soup is. Here's what I did: Soaked the dried beans over night, then cooked them up for 3 hours. Add the can of tomatoes to the soup. Heat a big fry pan up to hot, then throw on the onions which sizzle and brown. They release enough liquid to keep from burning. Add the celery, garlic, and spices, cook some more. Add the red bell pepper, and mushrooms, cook until soft. The mushrooms release lots of water which self-cleans the pan. Add this to the beans. Pressure cook or steam the greens and add them. Add the date syrup.

"Spaghetti"?

2012-01-22T21:28:00.001-06:00

This was inspired by Spaghetti and GOMB but has no spaghetti in it. Last week I made my GOMB chili, so this week I decided to make GOMB spaghetti. I use GOMBBS as my easy way to remember how to eat healthy. Greens Onions Mushroom Beans Berries and Seeds/nuts. Dr. Fuhrman came up with this acronym. I get my berries and Seeds in my salad, and lots of raw veggies of course. So I aim for my GOMB in my soup--GOMB plus flavorings. This week I was curious to try an old favorite: spaghetti--well, the sauce anyway. It turned out great: the beans are a fine meat replacement, and the collard greens and mushrooms seem a fine substitute for the noodles, for me anyway. I made noodles for housemate. I haven't heard how she liked it.

Ingredients:
1 lb dried beans, or 2 cans already cooked, I used tepary
2 16-oz cans tomatoes or 1 28 oz can
1 can tomato sauce*
few Tbsp tomato paste if you have some (I don't)
italian seasoning herbs
2 onions
1 lb mushrooms
few cloves garlic
1-2 bunches of greens, like collards and/or kale
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1 large carrot or 2 medium, cut into big pieces
1 cinnamon stick
1-2 Tbsp date syrup

*I actually don't buy tomato sauce because I use canned garden tomatoes that can't be beat. I blend a third can of tomatoes in the blender (with the carrot, below) to make my tomato sauce.

Soak the beans overnight if dried. Add the spices, cook for an hour, add the onions and garlic, cook for another hour, add the tomatoes and peppers and cinnamon stick, cook some more. You don't want to add the tomatoes too early because they slow the cooking of the beans. Steam the greens and carrot in a steamer or pressure cooker. Blend the carrot with some of the sauce and add it to the soup--it adds a nice flavor and thickening. Remove the cinnamon stick and add the date syrup at the end. It adds just a touch of sweetness. Since we don't get salt on our diet, the sweet is a nice touch.

I eat my nuts/seeds on my salad, but if you want some "parmesan cheese" for your "spaghetti," ground walnuts make a great substitute. You could mix in some nutritional yeast to the ground walnuts.

Avocado orange dressing and Sunday salad

2012-01-15T16:46:00.001-06:00

I eat a lot of salads during the week for convenience, so don't eat as many on the weekends. I treat myself to other favorite foods like baked oriental yam, essene buds, Texas Rio Star grapefruit, samples of housemate's smoothies, frozen cherries and mangos. By Sunday I'm ready for a salad, but I want something different from my weekday salads. I also have the opportunity to make a real salad dressing which I'm too lazy to do during the week. I came up with a really easy dressing

Avocado orange dressing
Ingredients:
1 avocado
juice of 1 medium orange or 1/2 large
1-2 Tbsp D'angou pear vinegar

Smash the avocado, add the orange juice and vinegar, mix until mostly smooth.

The salad is just lettuce, cucumber, and red bell pepper. Add the dressing. yum.

Cabbage and Carrots in winter

2012-01-15T16:32:00.001-06:00

I've become something of a produce connoisseur but with no formal training, so I don't have the vocabulary or a lot of information to go along with it, just experience. Here's something curious I've learned. We are lucky to get locally grown cabbage and carrots throughout most of our winter. They are grown from local CSAs and stored properly. Well, they seem to get sweeter as winter goes on. I think they are sweetening as they age. It's sort of like fruit, they sweeten and then eventually are too old and rot. I think they are at their sweet spot right now. My salads have been really tasty thanks to the cabbage, and I am eating lots of carrots because they are so good. I think the season for both will end in a month or so, so I am going to enjoy them this month.

Comfort Food

2012-01-15T16:26:00.002-06:00

One of my most favorite salads is also one of the most healthiest. I've not been eating berries much this winter because they are out of season in the US. But housemate started clamoring for fruit salads so I bought the berries from faraway places and was surprised to find that they taste good. Well, I guess I may as well enjoy this extreme privilege to eat berries from chili in winter in Wisconsin. So I'll probably start making this salad twice a week (the days after I go grocery shopping). The carrots and sugar snap peas are just my first course (this was my packed lunch for work). Underneath that is lettuce, red cabbage (locally grown and very sweet this time of year), broccoli, cauliflower, seed mixture, flavored vinegar, some combination of berries and maybe bananas depending on what looks fresh and ripe when I shop (e.g., strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and banana). This is so yummy. So are the carrots. I'll discuss that in my next post. Oh, and I don't just have one of these, I have 3 of them: breakfast, lunch and dinner!

mmm, Chili!

2012-01-15T16:10:00.002-06:00

I was just planning to make my usual weekly pot o' beans, and it turned into a great pot of chili. I always start with Dr. Fuhrman's recommended ingredients: beans, onions, mushrooms, greens, and garlic. The beans I need for protein, calories and lots of other great reasons; the others are great for fighting cancer, plus they add flavor and texture. Then I thought, huh, I could just add some chili powder, tomatoes, corn, bell peppers, and make some chili! I looked up some recipes and saw cumin and oregano listed, so I added some of that too. I thought some lentils would add thickening and maybe make it more "meaty." Here's how I made it. Note: the relative amounts are not that important. I usually just buy a lot and throw it all in. Note: you can halve this recipe. Note: with the spices, start at the low end and add more to taste.

Ingredients
1 lb dried beans, or 2-3 cans (pinto, kidney, or just about anything---I used a mixture from rancho gordo)
2/3 cup green lentils (that's how much and what kind I had)
2 16-oz cans tomatoes, or 1 28-oz can
2 large onions or 4 medium, mixture of yellow and red (why not?)
2-4 cloves garlic
1-2 lbs mushrooms, any type
1 large green bell pepper
1 large red bell pepper
1-2 bunches of greens, e.g., kale, collards, mustard, etc.
2 cups sweet corn (1 bag frozen)
2-4 Tbsp chili powder, to taste
1-2 tsp cumin
1-2 tsp oregano
juice of 1/2 lime
chopped cilantro (few Tbsps fresh, or 1 tsp dried).

Soak the beans overnight. You don't have to soak the lentils overnight. I cooked it in stages because I was in and out of the house all morning. In the morning I rinsed the beans and lentils, added lots of water, added the chili, cumin, and oregano; cooked for 2 hours, then let them sit until later. Then I cut up the greens and steamed them in the pressure cooker (pressure cooker not required, just faster). I cut up the onions and cooked them in a stainless steel frypan---get the pan hot first, then throw in the onions which will sizzle and eventually release their liquid. Added to that garlic, bell peppers, then mushrooms as I chopped them. Throw that into the beans pot (make sure it's big), along with the corn, tomatoes and steamed greens. Add more spices if you wish. Finish off with the lime juice and cilantro.

Here's 10 servings ready for the freezer.

Inspirations from this week

2012-01-14T16:29:00.000-06:00

I managed to find motivation and inspirations from a lot of sources this week:

I was reminded by Linda Spangle in her books (100 days of weightless, Life is Hard, Food is Easy) that Motivation is a choice. And that reminded me of something Sarah Taylor said which is, motivation doesn't just come to you, you have to make it happen, every day. So think "I'm going to do this!" not, "I'll give it a try." Of course, whatever it is you are planning, make sure it's realistic: e.g., I'm going to ride my exercise bike 1 minute per day. Hey, you gotta start somewhere! And by the way, I think these Linda Spangler books are great. I'm going through them with my good friend. We are really enjoying connecting with each other through this venue. We started just after Thanksgiving and it really helped me get through the holidays. Even though I don't have much if any weight to lose, I have some emotional eating issues, for example in how I handle social situations and celebrations. What I'm realizing is that I really do prefer my own food, so that makes those feelings of deprivation and being different fade away more and more. This is a very positive development for me.
In my meditation class, we watched a video by Mingyur Rinpoche, and one of his lines struck me in a lovely way: "You can be happy anytime, anywhere, no matter what your circumstances." That just makes me feel good--it's like he's giving me permission I didn't give myself! And that got me thinking, don't wait until you reach your goals to be happy! Because if you do, you might now know how to be happy then! Not only that, if you can be happy now, it might make it easier to reach your goals! So start learning now how to be happy.
From listening to my Buddhism lectures, I learned about the religious beliefs at the time of the Buddha and how reincarnation was not viewed as a good thing like we westerners might view it (regardless of if you believe it or not). The end of suffering is the end of this cycle. It gave me just a little more insight into the point of Buddhism and meditation. I am a total newbie, but I can glimpse how letting go of both your past failures and accomplishments can be freeing. I have to admit, it gives me stress to attach to either of those too strongly. I see glimpses of how letting go of "I" could be a good thing. I only have glimpses here and there but it's enough to keep me wanting to find out more.
I worked hard this week at my job, one of my goals for this year. So I'm off to a good start. I think it's a good idea to have a passion other than your eating/exercise plan, a passion that really engages you. It could be work or a hobby. For me, when I first became vegan and nutritarian, that was my passion--there was so much to learn and I was loving all of it. Now that I have learned it, it's time for me to find another passion. Food/health/exercise is now a vehicle that allows me to perform my other passions. Also, if you are wondering how to be happy (previous bullet), having something you really sink your teeth into is a great start.
I'm listening to Rob Lowe's autobiography on audiobooks. I listen to audiobooks while preparing food or exercising and saw this was highly rated, and thought it would be fun light listening. Well, I see why it was highly rated as it is very interesting and entertaining, even while jogging on the treadmill, which is saying a lot (ha). This week, I was inspired by his approach to his alcohol rehab. He approached it with the same ambition and competitiveness that he previously approached his acting career, his partying, his friendships and conquests. That is, he was going to be the best abstainer you've ever seen. I like his hutzpah.

What motivated or inspired you this week? If the answer is not much, well, there's always next week!

While doing food prep...

2012-01-07T22:53:00.000-06:00

I spend a lot more time in the kitchen since adopting this healthy eating plan. To entertain myself I've been enjoying listening to audiobooks. I've really enjoy this. More recently I found something else that is fun. I've been getting these catalogs from this company Great Courses for years (not sure why). I've never considered buying them because the prices are usually several hundred dollars. But they are having a 70% off sale right now so I peeked in the catalog to see what's offered. I ordered three courses: Buddhism, old testament and new testament. I've been interested in all three for a while and figured I'd never make the time to read about them so this will be fun to listen to the lectures. I started the Buddhism course and am enjoying it.

Bucket o' veggies

2012-01-07T22:06:00.003-06:00

Sorry the picture is out of focus. I made a bunch of cooked veggies for the week. I filled two large pressure cookers full of veggies. They cooked down, but this is a large bowl too. These veggies fit into 6 2-cup containers and went into the freezer. They taste quite good. Here's what I put into pot #1: eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, yellow zucchini, green zucchini, red bell pepper. In pot #2 went an onion, a bunch of collard greens, and mushrooms, topped with some dried herbs du province and fines herbs. After they cooked up, I added 2 16-oz cans of tomatoes. The tomatoes came from the garden and that contributed a lot to the delicious taste. The collards were just a bit bitter so I added some lemon juice. I was surprised how good the final result tastes. I guessed well what veggies and herbs to use. The only problem is I tend to overcook veggies in the pressure cooker. Well, the greens pot was just right. Next time I will use a lower setting for the veggies pot. I drank the broth leftover from the tomato jars and steaming to reclaim the vitamins lost in the water. It was good. I look at it like drinking a rich cup of tea.

I also prepped beans which I'll cook tomorrow. I juiced a 5 lb bag of carrots (about 36 oz) and am soaking a lb of beans overnight in this juice (in the refrigerator). Tomorrow I'll make a pot of collards, onions and mushrooms, and add those to the beans after the beans cook. I'll divide into bowls to freeze for next week. Then I just need to make a salad every day.

This is pretty much my standard meal plan. I'm following an easy guideline, Dr. Fuhrman's GOMBBS acronym: Greens, Onions, Mushrooms, Beans, and Seeds/nuts (in the salad). The extra B is for berries which I eat a few times a week. I add other fruit to my salads this time of year: apple, orange, pomegranate seeds. It's the same as the post I wrote here, without the asian pear. I might have a small bowl of frozen cherries and mangos for dessert when I get home from work.

mango-cherry ice cream

2012-01-05T12:45:00.000-06:00

Today I was messing around with desserts. I confirmed once again that I am the worst baker in the world! I was trying out a "chickpea blondie" recipe that someone posted on the Fuhrman forums. It was okay but, well, I didn't follow the instructions exactly (this is why I'm the worst baker in the world), and it was dry and just not my favorite treat. Then I tried my own variation which was 10 times worse. This had cherries and pinto beans and walnuts and dates. It was a purple gooey glob of so-so. so a few hours later I saw those dates lying around and I can't resist a good date (which is why I don't buy them very often!). So I thought, oh, why not some old fashioned ice cream. Now this turned out good! I didn't measure anything so I'm just guessing below:

Ingredients:
juice of one orange
1 medjool date
1 cup frozen sweet cherries
1 cup frozen mango (vary ratio of mangos and cherries to your preferences)
a few walnut pieces (1/2 oz at most)

blend the date and walnuts and orange juice in a high-speed blender. Add the cherries and mangos; blend until smooth, or not if you want it chunky. Serves 2.

Nutrition and Depression

2012-01-04T19:43:00.001-06:00

This video by Neil Nedley was very interesting. He listed the typical nutritional deficiencies that can contribute to depression. He also argued for a plant-based diet in the process. I'm not going to list those arguments but I encourage you to watch the video if you are interested. I'm just going to list some of the nutritional deficiencies that can cause depression for future reference for myself:

Tryptophan, an amino acid. He also mentioned tyrosine another amino acid. You can find this in sesame seeds, almonds, walnuts, tofu, black eyed peas, and more. Meat has tryptophan too but you need carbs for it to absorb, so don't go on a high-meat, low-carb diet!
omega-3. best source is seaweed or a supplement. Fish are too contaminated with mercury. Flaxseed and walnuts can be converted to omega-3 but not everyone's body does this conversion.
folate, thiamine, very abundant in my veggie-based diet
iron. good sources are avocado, green peas, mangos. Yea, I love all those things!
B12. take a supplement!

He also recommends bright light therapy.

High cholesterol contributes to depression. The most harmful cholesterol is that exposed to air (it oxidizes). The most harmful foods as a result are: custards and ice creams, pancake mixes (!), parmesan cheese, and lard. Why pancake mix? It usually contains dried egg whites which are ground up, so as exposed to the air as you can get. Parmesan cheese is ground up. ice cream I guess is exposed in the stirring process? same with lard creation? Vegan ice creams, while not healthy, are not nearly as harmful as the animal product. Interesting, huh?

Year-end Reflections

2012-01-02T22:58:00.000-06:00

Here are ome things I learned in 2011

1) I learned a fewthings about my job. One is that I canget away with goofing off at work, but I don’t feel good about it when the dayis done. The other is related and hashas to do with my attitude towards my low self-esteem. SometimesI think I’m not good enough to be pursuing my profession and that I’m no longerrelevant and I should free up the space/funding for a younger person (yes, alldumb thoughts but fairly common in my competitive field). I decided that whatever I think of myself, I should still try to do thebest I can, because I feel a lot better about myself after a good day’s work,than after a day of goofing off at work. So my plan for 2012 is to be the best astronomer I can be. And if I’m irrelevant after that, then I willhappily pursue something else.

2) I had my ownversion of a happiness project (the name of a popular book, which I am readingnow too). I read several“positive psychology” and meditation books in the spring and summer. I’ve posted about some of these here. The meditation books were by Mingyur Rinpoche. He is the first meditationauthor that got through my dense brain in a way I could understand. I’d previously learned the concept ofmindfulness but I didn’t learn to meditate. Whenever I tried it, I got bored within a minute, and wanted to dosomething else, and quit. Two things gotme going on finally starting a practice: First, I learned from MingyurRinpoche’s books that meditation is simply learning to being aware of yourthoughts. You don’t have to empty yourmind or reach nirvana, you just have to watch the thoughts go by, and when youforget and then notice it, you say, oops, and the more you say oops, the moreyou are aware. One advantage I noticedabout meditation is that you start to see fallacies in your thinking, forexample, negative thoughts about yourself. The second thing that got me going in my practice was that a tergar practice community started up this Fall in my town with meetings once a weekright across the street from my office! This tergar community is based on Mingyur Rinpoche’s teachings, the sameguy whose books I had just read! I thinkI felt so lucky about this that I jumped in with both feet. I worked on daily meditation and eventually found I can consistently do a 20 minutepractice right after I get up in the morning. I worked up to that, starting with 2-3 minute practices. I’m very happy with my adventure intomeditation and I plan to continue this in 2012. Even though I still feel like a novice, I cansee that it has helped me a LOT already. Our next class module is about meditating on loving kindness. How awesome does that sound?

3) I had the bestholiday season ever. On the outside, itwas no different than any other. But onthe inside I had a completely different attitude than before. I cherished my time with friends and family. I adored our tree full of ornaments fromfriends, family, vacations, full of memories. I considered our tree a piece of art. I enjoyed listening to Christmas music. Contrast that with my cynical attitudes from previous years: I endured my family time; I viewed thedecorating and shopping as dumb chores forced on me by society to boost theeconomy; I viewed the whole season as something to get through and thenget back to my life. What a difference an attitude makes!

4) I learnedsomething about emotional eating. Ilearned what we all already know: I feelworse when I eat the wrong things and overeat for emotional reasons, than whenI don’t. Easy to say, hard to change. But worth trying because each time yousucceed, it gets easier next time. Ialso learned that for me, making certain foods forbidden is a bad idea. Even Dr. Fuhrman says in his books thatnothing is forbidden. I have a goal togo 12 weeks without eating sugar or refined grains because that is the time ittypically takes to break a food addiction according to Dr. Fuhrman. But it’s just a goal. I told myself I can have an occasional treat,as long as it’s with the Eat to Live parameters, that is, under 5-10% of totalcalories. I figure the really unhealthystuff should be well under 5% of calories. I’ve been doing this long enough that a once-a-month treat is enough tosatisfy me. The funny thing is, sinceit’s not forbidden, it loses a lot of its appeal, or maybe the downside becomesmore apparent: e.g., the cookies Iusually crave are actually kind of dry and not all that tasty, etc. I’m about 5 weeks into this 12-weekabstinence goal, and don’t have cravings, but even during this time, nothing isforbidden. If I really want a cookie, Ican have one. This was an importantinsight for me. I’m hoping in 2012, thatnot just my eating, but my behaviors and attitudes toward eating will bemeasured and healthy.

I hope we all have a happy and healthy 2012!

Christmas Tree Salad

2011-12-18T20:19:00.001-06:00

I've been writing more in my journal lately than my blog, sorry. I've got some internal work to do so may go missing more than usual in the next few months. But I wanted to post this salad I've been eating and really enjoying. I call it a Christmas Tree salad because it's green with red (pomegranate) berries that remind me of Christmas tree lights.

Ingredients:
1 head romaine lettuce
1/2-1 lb cabbage
1/4 -1/2 lb broccoli
1/4-1/2 lb cauliflower
1 apple
1 asian pear
1 orange
1 Tbsp spicy pecan vinegar
1 Tbsp riesling raisin vinegar
1 small pomegranate or 1/2 large
1/2-1 oz seed mixture

Chop the lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower in the food processor using the S-blade. Put in a big bowl. Blend the apple, asian pear, orange, and vinegar in the food processor. Add to the bowl along with the seed mixture. Extract the pomegranate seeds and add. Stir. I like this a lot.

Well, if you don't hear from me for a while, all you have to remember about healthy eating is this: GOMBBS

G is for Greens
O onions
M mushrooms
B beans
B berries
S seed mixture

That's what I remember when I'm making soup and veggies for the week. Happy holidays!

today's salad, this week's food

2011-12-04T14:15:00.001-06:00

Today my salad is so good it boggles my mind, because it is simple. I just chopped a head of romaine lettuce, a half lb of cabbage, some raw cauliflower, added 1/2 cup frozen peas, 1/2 cup frozen edamame, a grapefruit, peeled and chopped (okay, a really good grapefruit from Texas called Rio Star), an ounce of my seed mixture, 2 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's D'angou pear vinegar. Now it's true, the high quality ingredients is what makes this salad delish--the good grapefruit, and the d'angou pear vinegar add a wonderful taste sensation that is not sour. Wow. This made two giant salads. I also made a microscopic version for housemate. I'll have these for dinner? --in 2 stages for sure.

Next week, first the first 3 days anyway, my micro salads will have lettuce, cabbage, carrots, satsuma (small orange), asian pear (a honey-sweet apple), small pomegranate, flavored vinegar, and seed mixture. I'm expecting that to be yummy! My roasted veggies will be broccoli, cauliflower, a little butternut squash, a little beets, onion, with chives, sage and basil ('cause I have some in the freezer from the garden), and I'm still working on the marinate, but probably orange juice and no-salt mustard. Breakfast will be light before exercise, a bowl of frozen cherries, blueberries, mangos. Lunch and dinner will be bean soup, micro-salad, and roasted veggies. I'll probably eat my lunch bean soup early because I'll be hungry after exercise. I still have lots of bean soup from two batches in the freezer so don't have to make any this week. Yum, talk about eating like a king. I am amazed that I sometimes go off plan to eat junk because I think I'm missing something. This food is thousands of time better. I wish I could remember that all the time!

humorous bumps in the road

2011-12-03T13:52:00.001-06:00

Here are some funny health-related things that happened to me this week (all my fault!):

1) I gave myself a treat of meditating in front of my gas fireplace one morning. I have a routine to help me remember to open and close the flue, which is to open the flue before turning on the fireplace, and then when I'm done I put my yoga block in front of the fireplace to remind us to close the flue after 30 minutes. That is about the time it takes for the ceramic blocks to cool and to help the remaining unburned warm gas goes up the chimney. I did my usual routine, or so I thought. Later on, housemate said, I see you closed the flue even though the yoga block is there. I said, no I didn't, we need to do that. She said it's closed, and I didn't do it, did you forget to open it? I said, no, I distinctly remember opening it. Come to think of it, I also remember smelling gas when I was done. So either I distinctly remember wrong about opening it (maybe I remember intending to open it), or instead of opening it, I closed it further. It was early in the morning and I was groggy. I find it a little ironic that I managed to give myself CO poisoning while trying to meditate! Thankfully it was only a 15 minute session.

2) I'm still experimenting with my roasted veggie routine--I'll post it when I get it just how I like, probably in another week of experimenting. So I was at the co-op looking for some root veggies to add to the mix and I saw some Jerusalem artichokes. Never heard of them. That never stops me. When I got home I cut them up, tasted them, yum, they taste good even before cooking! They have a sweet flavor. I cooked them up with lots of other veggies, and went and looked them up on wikipedia. It turns out their starch is called inulin (not insulin) and it is not digestible by humans. I think it converts to fructose and that's what gives it a sweet flavor. So maybe the more it converts to fructose, the more digestible it is. Well, that didn't stop me from eating them at lunch the next day. Sure enough, I got a tummy ache for a few hours. Here's the funny thing. I then ate them again at dinner! I was hungry and I was at work and this was what I brought to eat. So I got another tummy ache! doofus... Here is what I wonder: 1) why would anyone eat this twice (besides me)?, so therefore 2) why would anyone grow them or sell them? Maybe over time your body adjusts? Here is a great quote about them from the English planter John Goodyear in 1621:

which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men.

haha!

3) Today I went to my first spinning class ever and it was fun and hard! This is where everyone rides a stationary bike and the teacher leads you in a ride with "hill" and intervals and resting downhill and stuff. Very fun. I walk to the gym and change my clothes when I'm there. Well, I didn't wear or bring a bra (forgot my exercise bra). So I thought, okay, I'll wear a t-shirt and my sweatshirt. I'm just too embarrassed to jiggle in front of everyone, and I would have with all that spinning! So it was a very hot and sweaty ride. I'd better go drink some more water.

4) This week I weighed myself at the gym and found out I weighed 11 lbs more than I thought! Holy cow, my home scale must be wrong. Holy cow, this shows how you can fool yourself. I knew I had gained some weight because I'm wearing larger pant size than I was 6 months ago, but I fooled myself into thinking it wasn't much. I ordered a new scale for home. Today I weighed myself at the gym and realized I had made a mistake last time, and I weigh exactly what I previously thought. Holy cow, I guess you can fool yourself into thinking you weigh too much too! and that means my home scale is accurate too. oops. Ah well, it was good news today.

5) At my meditation class, we usually do a few sessions of meditation and have a little discussion with neighbors in between. This week's topic was meditating on problems. One of my neighbors mentioned the concept of inviting your problems to tea, as a start at befriending them. So I imagined inviting "I hate work" and "I want a cookie" to tea. (I hope no one from work is reading this!). I started chuckling as I imagined our tea party. I also imagined telling "I want a cookie" to take a seat behind "Papers 1, 2, and 3", some tasks I claim I really want to do at work. Well, maybe you had to be there. Just try it yourself.

6) This isn't funny, just happy news. After 3 or more years of very missed absence, frozen organic sweet cherries showed up at my co-op yesterday! I bought all 10 bags of them! I hope more appear. We used to have them all the time, and then they disappeared. We've discussed this on the Fuhrman forums and it seems to be a worldwide shortage of organic sweet cherries. I hope they are back! I ate a half pound today and they were luscious.

Update to my Previous Post

2011-11-28T16:57:00.001-06:00

I got some interesting comments to my last post so I just wanted to respond to them. Lani had a different view of the Weekend Immersion, so please read her comment if you are interested. Wendy pointed out a great post from her blog about the chemicals in food designed to make them as stimulating as possible. I highly recommend reading this and watching the attached video.

Then I also wanted to update you on my roasted veggie experiment. It turned out great! For marinate I used juice from 1/2 orange, 1 Tbsp of black fig vinegar, and a squeeze of no-salt mustard--maybe 1-2 Tbsps? I used onions, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, sweet potato. About 1/4 lb each. Tonight I will use more as I needed more food today. maybe I'll use 1/3 lb each. I think I'll cook it for 40 minutes with the foil, and 20 minutes without. Yesterday I did 30 minutes and 15. Actually that did turn out pretty good. Maybe I will do 35 and 15. I don't want them soggy. or 30 and 20. It might take me a few days to get it right. My seasonings were fresh rosemary and sage. It was really good!

Princeton Immersion, Thanksgiving, soup, and stuff

2011-11-27T17:04:00.001-06:00

I went to Dr. Fuhrman's Princeton Immersion last weekend. It was a wonderful trip for many reasons! It was a great road trip with my friend Suz. We stopped in Pittsburg to see my best pal Gail, sadly, only for a few hours. I worked with a student for a day at Princeton which was very productive. We visited with Suz's parents in Philidelphia. And the immersion was fantastic. It was jam-packed with lectures. Dr. Fuhrman is so energetic and interesting, you really can listen to him for hours. Even better was the food. This is the main reason I go, though I did learn a lot from the lectures. I thought I knew it all by now, but one thing I get out of the in-person lectures is what Dr. Fuhrman is passionate about, and what is less certain scientifically. It helps reinforce what the most important things are to keep in mind. But the food! It was the best I've ever had at one of these events. I think that was in large part due to Chef Martin Oswald's contributions. He owns a nutritarian restaurant in Aspen, Colorado! (called the Pyramid Bistro). He gave a talk on the last day and I have been having fun putting his tips into practice! We got the recipes from the immersion and slides from his talk. They are worth a lot!

So today I'm back from the holidays and putting some of my new knowledge into action. My soup today has Indian spices and I cooked up the onion as Chef Martin described: first you heat up a stainless steel pot until hot, then put the onions and garlic in. They sizzle up, slightly brown, and then release their juices. You don't need oil, and they still gain a nice flavor. Fun, it worked! I did that with the leeks, celery, collards and kale too. Then the pot was looking pretty burned and I thought, this will take forever to clean up. But then I did the mushrooms the same way. Well, they release so much liquid that it just ended up cleaning up the pot. When they were done, the pot was clean. ha! a nice accidental discovery. My soup was just my usual pile of things that I found in the co-op or my freezer. I soaked beans, red himalayan rice, lentils, and purple barley overnight, and started cooking them in the morning. Then cooked up the onions, garlic, celery, leeks, mushrooms, even the collards and kale, like Chef Martin described. Added them to the pot one by one. Oh I cooked up a festival squash in the oven, then added it to the soup after it cooled. Oh yeah, and while cooking up the onion and other veggies, I added some graram masala and curry powder as they cooked. Add the end I added some currants and fresh ground ginger. It made for a nice hearty soup. I froze most of it in single-serving containers. yum. I think I'll have it for breakfast every day. I'll be doing my food prep at night this week.

My food plans for the week are soup for breakfast, and salad and roasted veggies for lunch and dinner. The salads will be micro-salads made from lettuce, cabbage, maybe some broccoli and cauliflower, all cut up finely in the food processor; and topped with pomegranate seeds, grapefruit or orange, seed mixture, and flavored vinegar. I love these. The name should be changed from micro-salad to high-powered salad because it is so nutrient rich. Tonight I'll experiment with roasted veggies. I hope I can get this right. I'm going to follow Chef Martin's advice to cover with foil at first so they essentially steam cook (before burning on the outside), then take of the foil to roast at the end. I'll top with fresh herbs. The veggies available now (that I like) are broccoli, brussels sprouts, carrots, onions, leeks, and sweet potato. I'll do a little of each. I am just learning to do this. It would be nice to do a big batch and eat them for several days but I'm not sure how well they will keep. I think I'll start off by just trying to do one day at a time and hope it isn't too time consuming. I will add some flavored vinegar and mustard as marinate. I got some fresh sage and rosemary at the co-op and have some basil from the garden in my freezer. I hope this works!

Well, this post is long enough so I won't go into Thanksgiving much except to say I made apple sauce for my "brother-in law." He had two 18 lb bags of apples! holy cow, we had all the burners going:

It was fun though. I nibbled a lot on the apples. In fact, it was so much fun, we decided to make some for ourselves when we got home. My batch has no sugar in it. I'm not sure what I will use it in as I am not a great dessert maker or baker, the usual use of apple sauce. But, heck, it probably could go in soup.

Here's tonight's quick salad I threw together, which is yummy, as salads always are:

That's got lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, blueberries, banana, small orange, seed mixture, and d'angou pear vinegar.

whew. time to go fold laundry, then start tomorrow's food prep. whew!

Update

2011-11-13T12:13:00.001-06:00

Hi everyone,

I just posted two other posts below this one, so feel free to check them out.

How's your Thanksgiving Challenge going? Mine is going fine. To be honest, I'm not really doing a Challenge with a deadline, I'm just trying to live my life and enjoy my healthy eating as I go. I'm concentrating on work right now. So I'm chugging along with my healthy eating and exercise and work and play. Note that Dr. Fuhrman is hosting a Holiday Challenge if you want to join that. It starts on Nov. 21.

Despite my new emphasis on work, I planned several months ago to attend Dr. Fuhrman's Weekend Immersion which is coming up next weekend! I'm driving out with nutritarian friend Suz. We leave on Wed. Should be fun. Actually I will work with a colleague there on Friday before the immersion starts so I'm looking forward to that.

I've been eating a lot of squash the last few weeks. Okay, I went a little overboard. I think when I get back from my trip, I will just have one squash a week that I'll dump into my soup after I cook both up during my weekend food prep fests. But I have two more of these festival squashes which are really good and they are not too big. I will eat one today, and one on Tuesday. In fact, I am hungry now so looking forward to digging into part of it at lunch time. Here's a picture of it, after baking and cooling:

It's so easy to prepare this way: just throw it in the oven, bake for 1.5 hours at 350 F, let cool, then cut in half, remove the seeds, remove the good stuff and mix it in with your soup our just mash up with some pumpkin pie spice. It's very moist when you bake it in the skin. The skin tastes good too. Lost of people shared their favorite cooking techniques on one of my previous posts here.

Oh, I've also been enjoying pomegranates the last few weeks! I've had them in my micro salads with an apple too in addition to all the veggies. That plus a little lime juice adds a great flavor. This post describes what I've been doing on weekdays mostly.

The Pleasure Trap

2011-11-13T11:05:00.001-06:00

I've mentioned in a few past posts, I am a huge fan of Dr. Douglas Lisle, an evolutionary psychologist who helps us "nutritarians" understand why it's so hard to go against the grain. He follows Dr. McDougall's plan, and works Dr. Alan Goldhammer at the True North Health Center. These are all very similar to Dr. Fuhrman's plan: a whole foods, plant based diet with no oils, very limited refined sugars, and very limited salt. This makes us very different from everyone else!

I had read Dr. Lisle's "The Pleasure Trap" once or twice before, but I finally sat down to watch the DVD over the last few weeks. It consists of 3 lectures. They were probably given at one of Dr. McDougall's Advanced Study Weekends, which are awesome (I've never attended but I purchased the online lectures from the last one and they are really interesting). Anyway, back to the Pleasure Trap, I think the DVD is much better than the book! Normally I prefer reading books, but I didn't get nearly as much out of the book in this case. There are three concepts he gets across in the DVD (and book probably) and I only got one of them out of the book (duh). These concepts are part of his, I think he calls it, the motivational triad, where all animals, including humans:

1. seek pleasure

2. conserving energy

3. pain avoidance

You can see how each one of these can get us into trouble in today's artificial food world.

1. We seek pleasure. We evolved to get pleasure from sweet and high-caloric foods because it helps us 2, conserve energy. Of course, now we have an overabundance of highly addictive sweet, high fat, and high salt food. The Pleasure Trap is a consequence of this. This is: if we don't eat these sweet and processed foods, we get plenty of pleasure from fruits and whole foods, and we have our ups and downs and obstacles and just go along and are sometimes happy and sometimes not. If we start eating highly processed foods and drugs (caffeine, chocolate, sweets, even white bread), we get great stimulation and surges, great pleasure hits. But here is the kicker: we get used to it and after a while, the pleasure from eating these things comes more from the cessation of pain when we are withdrawing from them (e.g., before we have our morning coffee). So after a while, we just have our same ups and downs and aren't getting anymore pleasure than the guy eating fruit and squash and rice and beans. While it might not be easy, we can break this pleasure trap, and eat the healthy diet and get just as much pleasure. To help people break the cycle, you can go to these health immersions that Dr. McDougall and Dr. Fuhrman offer, or go fast for a week at True North, then eat their food for a week, and totally reset your taste buds.

2. Conserving energy. It's good to recognize that this is an intuitive motivational drive. Now we see the problem with fast food drive up windows. Talk about an easy way to get 1000 calories quickly! Our ancestors never had it so easy. This is also why we crave high-calorie foods. We intuitively seek them out. The way to address this is to consciously fill up on low-calorie foods. Fortunately these are usually nutrient-dense, even while being low-calories--things like vegetables of all kinds. After a period of abstinence you can lose your taste for fat. I even find sugar is too sweet for me now. even dates. I love the sweetness in carrots (but then our local carrots are really good!).

3. Pain avoidance. Oddly enough, you would think this is the least related to food issues, but for me, at the stage I'm at where I like eating this way and knowing how to do it in my sleep, this is the issue I am working on, and it's nice to understand better that it's because I'm a normal human that I struggle with this. and that is, social pain! We have a very strong evolutionary motivation to be accepted by our peers and fit in with them. Our egos are designed to tell us where we stand in the hierarchy and who are friends are (I'm paraphrasing and might not have got this right, but it sounded fascinating!). For me, going off plan is never about the taste of the food. I don't like the taste anymore! But I still do it occasionally, and for the dumbest of reasons--because the person in line in front of me is doing it! It's about being one of them. I thought about this at my meditation class last week. Sometimes I look at unhealthy people and I think, I don't want to be like them, and yet, I do. So I embraced them in my mind and I said, I am you and you are me and we are all the same (you tend to have these new agey thoughts when you meditate, ha!). And when I think that way, then I can avoid the food. I realize, I'm not rejecting them when I reject the food. And hopefully they aren't rejecting me, which is what really counts from an instinctive perspective. I think men and women are different on this in some ways in that men are more prone to the hierarchy and have to learn how to do their healthy-eating thing in a non-threatening way to the alpha brother-in-law they are spending the weekend with; and women are more prone to wanting to be accepted and to not offend and we have to learn how to interact in a way that we still feel we are accepted and fitting in. Dr. Lisle describes different ways to respond to other people depending on their attitude. I need to stop writing now, so I'll leave that for you to find out when you watch the DVD.

Final Garden Harvest

2011-11-13T10:42:00.001-06:00

Today after my jog, I stopped off at the garden, looked it over, and decided the collards and kale really aren't growing anymore, so it's time to harvest what's left and pull the plants. We had a couple of hard freezes the last few weeks, and that is supposed to sweeten them up. It appears to be the case as confirmed by my nibbles during harvest. Here's a picture of the collards after one frosty night last week:

Today I cut off all the rest of the leaves, de-stemmed them, stuffed them into freezer bags, and put them in the downstairs freezer. Here's a picture of the freezer:

This is collards, broccoli leaves, cauliflower leaves, and brussels sprouts leaves (they all look like collards); brussels sprouts are in the door (not shown). This is pretty easy to do. As I've mentioned in previous posts, it will be even easier to cook them up, because if you crinkle them with your hands, immediately after taking them out of the freezer, they crumble into small pieces--that is, no chopping! How easy is that?

These are so economical! If I use one bag a week in soup, I think I've got several months worth of greens in the freezer! Dang, we only paid about $10 for all these plants and they give us greens for at least 6 months of the year.

The kale is good enough to eat raw on salads, so I don't usually freeze it. I harvested two big bags of it and hope to be able to eat it over the next week. I will be traveling with a nutritarian friend so maybe we can share it.

we eat good food

2011-11-07T21:39:00.001-06:00

Today I got an appreciation of how much I’ve learned thelast 6 years of being a nutritarian. Aco-worker was curious about my squash and I said “it’s squash mixed in with alittle veggie bean soup.” I gave her ataste and she said, “You must have added lots of spices.” I said, no that’s actually the taste of thesquash. It’s very flavorful. She said, I have no idea how to cook that. I said, I just threw it in the oven for anhour. Someone else chimed in saying youneed olive oil to keep it from drying out, and I said, no, just put it in wholeand the moisture stays in. I think whenthe conversation ended, my friend still felt that squash was beyond her skilllevel (despite her Ph.D. in astrophysics). I suspect she thought you had to do something fancy to make it tastethat good. That was me too 6 years ago. I didn’t realize how good fresh high qualityproduce could taste. I thought you hadto know a lot and put a lot of effort into making food taste good. I relied on restaurants to supply me with thereally good food. I figured, they were the professionals. Now I realize whole foodshold fantastic flavors. Processed andrestaurant foods can’t compete.

It’s good to realize this because I sometimes get the sillynotion that I am deprived because I don’t get to enjoy the same foods aseveryone else. Sure, my food can’tcompete with ice cream for pure stimulation. But pretty much everything else I make tastes a lot, and I mean, a lot,better than what I used to eat.

Winter Squash!

2011-11-03T20:32:00.000-05:00

How did I go so long without appreciating winter squash? Oh my gosh, my food has been so good this week. I've been trying different squashes out. Here's what I bought at the store:

That's festival, red kuri (I think), acorn, and delicata. Today I bought a butternut. The festival, which may also be called sweet dumpling or carnival (I think), was fantastic! The delicata and red kuri were bland. I read in wikipedia that red kuri gets real sweet when ripe so I think I'll let my second one sit around for a month and then try it. Not sure I'll go for the delicata again. The acorn was very good, definitely a repeat. I've had butternut before, will have that tomorrow and I expect that will be good.

Since I am the ultimate lazy cook, here's how I prepared them: put them in the oven at 300 F for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Head of to exercise class. return, turn off oven, let cool, cut open, remove some of the seedy stuff, leaving the yummy stuff, mix that in with soup. The soup I made last weekend and froze in daily containers. This had beans, tomatoes, some grains, lots of garden/local veggies, and some spices. Oh, I also add some grated ginger and pumpkin pie spice to the mixture. Here's a picture of my daily meals this week. At left is the soup/squash mixture.

At right are "micro-salads." This is a bunch of veggies and fruit chopped in a food processor. This week it was usually romaine lettuce, cabbage, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, cucumber, kale, apple, pomegranate seeds, orange juice and fruit infused vinegar. Very yummy. Today for a treat I had the same veggies, but mango, strawberries, raspberries, and banana for the fruit. I had these fruits on hand for a fruit salad I made for housemate. As usual, I ate carrots and kohlrabi while preparing.

I might be boring and eat this way for a couple of weeks. That's kind of what I do.

meetups and thoughts

2011-10-30T20:21:00.000-05:00

My two nutritarian friends came into town on Friday and we had quite the feast:

I made sweet potatoes topped with black beans and greens etc and a dollop of soy yogurt (a recipe from the Fuhrman site). We made salad from Holly's lettuce and pear, my red pepper and a yummy salad dressing from the Fuhrman site. Holly made delicious stuffed mushrooms. Suz brought curried squash on brown rice. I got full eating all this great food. After our feast, we went on a walk at Olbrich community gardens, and then went, where else, to the co-op. That was interesting as we shared many food tips about all our favorite foods, as well as the ones we have to avoid (the cowgirl cookies are sometimes a challenge for me). I got a lot of new ideas from our discussions as we strolled through the store.

Some quotable quotes were "I'm an unethical vegan" and "I'm a vegan on weekdays."

Today I heard a great quote: "The best way to bring someone over to your cause is to have more fun than them." For me, the biggest difficulty about eating healthy is sometimes thinking that I'm missing out on what everyone else is eating. It's all in how you look at it. I just need to think of it as I'm the lucky one, having the most fun eating the best food. Along those lines, last weekend I was out on a walk at a conservancy and a group was roasting marshmallows over a fire and making s'mores. Well, you know how those nostalgic feelings can make you wish you were joining them. Today I was meditating in front of my fireplace (wow, is that ever easy to meditate in front of a fire!) and I was thinking about our ancestors roasting winter squash in their fire. Then I realized, our difficulties in eating healthy usually arise from nostalgia for eating the things we used to eat and drink with our family and friends. Maybe we just need to go back further in time. The last 50 years are a blip on the history of our people. Go back further, and we are talking sweets only on very special occasions. So just let your nostalgia go a little further back in time and you can imagine roasting squash instead of marshmallows, and relishing a good fruit instead of ice cream.

weekend cooking

2011-10-30T19:56:00.001-05:00

It's fall and my food choices are changing with the season. It's winter squash time! Here's what I'm planning to try this week:

And that's just for lunch and dinner. I'm thinking sweet potatoes for breakfast. I made a huge pot of soup using veggies from the garden mostly. This has white lima beans, purple barley, onion, eggplant, collard greens, leeks, mushrooms, 2 cans of garden tomatoes, broccoli, and italian spices. I froze it into several containers to eat during the week. I still have some containers from my last batch of soup so I can have some variation. Here's my plan for the week--don't know if I will like it, I'll know tomorrow--brekky will be sweet potato topped with bean soup--I'm usually hungry after exercise class. Here's an example from today's lunch:

This also has banana, fresh ginger and cilantro. It tasted quite good.

Lunch and dinner will be salad (cabbage, spinach, lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, seed mixture, vinegar) topped with squash, soup, apple, and pomegranate seeds, and probably some fresh ginger. The squash I'm hoping will be easy to prepare, just baking in the oven. I'll microwave it to heat it up. I have no idea what this will taste like, but I expect it will be pretty good. I mean, almost any mixture of veggies and fruit and greens tastes good.

Here's a quickie large salad I made tonight: cabbage, spinach, romaine, broccoli, then some pomegranate seeds, seed mixture, and fruit-infused vinegar.

Here's one of my most favorite treats. I ate this yesterday while making house mate's smoothies. It's just frozen mango, frozen blueberries, and a little d'angou pear vinegar (optional). I love this. It's easy to make thoroughly enjoyable food out of simple ingredients.

Blogs and meetups

2011-10-23T20:59:00.000-05:00

This blog has very appetizing-looking and healthy recipes!

http://www.straightupfood.com/blog/

Yesterday I attended an excellent talk by John Allen Mollenhauer, a lifestyle coach. Wow, I'm tempted to hire him! His website is called Nutrient Rich. He has a free ebook called "Break Free of the Diet Traps!". I downloaded it and looked it over and found some helpful things in it.

Tomorrow I'm going to meet up with some nutritarian friends, yea!

And if I have time I'll attend the Whole Foods supper club on Thursday.

That's a lot of nutritarian socializing. Hopefully that will become the norm!

Checking in

2011-10-20T22:21:00.003-05:00

I'm back to a busy busy schedule at work so it's hard to post on week days. How are you doing on the Pre-Thanksgiving Challenge? I overate 3 days on fruit and nuts, which is not good, but...I'm just observing it for now and letting myself learn the lessons I need to learn. I want healthy eating to be a choice, not an exercise in willpower. I usually feel like eating the most healthy foods in proper quantities. I guess I'm just letting myself be reminded of that through experience.

As I mentioned before, one of my goals for the challenge is to optimize my protein intake. I'm trying to get stronger at the gym and want to help that with my food intake. I'm monitoring my food intake with cronometer. Now this is just something fun I'm doing so don't feel you should have to do this also: Following Dr. Fuhrman's food plan will provide you with plenty of all your necessary nutrients. But it is instructive to see what foods have the highest protein. I can see where I can tweak to get more protein. For example, I can cut back my raw carrots a bit and replace them with sweet peas. I love peas so that's easy to do. The other thing that's very noticeable is that fruit has a lot less protein per calorie than green veggies (leafy or otherwise). But fruit has a lot of other healthy nutrients so it should be part of the diet. I find 1-1.5 lbs per day of fruit is a good amount for me. I've been eating veggie bean soup and also putting edamame in my salads every day. The combination of the soup, edamame, and lots of green veggies in the salads gives me about 14% protein which is good for building muscles. I could optimize it more but I love me carrots. Today I got some mediterranean pine nuts from Dr. Fuhrman. He recommends these and pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds for optimal protein after a workout (along with beans and veggies). I'll add those in to next week's salads.

The Runner-Up(s)

2011-10-16T21:46:00.001-05:00

Jan and Jerry. Here is their report:

Afunny thing happened when I took my brother Jerry under my wing to help himlose weight...I lost weight too! He ended up losing more than 40 pounds on the"greens and beans" diet. And he got off his diabetic medications! Ilost only a few pounds but I reached a milestone weight that has been eludingme for a good long while.
Jerrydutifully texted me his weight and his blood sugar reading every morning. Thatgesture, I believe, helped him to keep his weight and health goals first andforemost in his mind. Those daily texts also provided him with accountability. I taught Jerry the acronym G-BOMBS (aka GOMBBS) to remind him what foods to eatevery day. It is such a simple but powerful and effective concept...eat thesesix foods and regain your health. It's all about greens, beans, onions,mushrooms, berries, and seeds! And teaching Jerry about healthy eatinghelped to reinforce the information for me.
Thisis not to say that it was all easy...there were temptations and slip-ups andother obstacles along the way. Accountability and keeping it simple....that'sthe combination that led to a successful outcome.
Weboth have more weight to lose and this six-week challenge was a great start.Thanks, Barb!

And the winner is...

2011-10-16T21:44:00.002-05:00

Diane Watkins!

Oh, this was soooooo hard! I don't like being a judge and selecting a single winner. So many people did really well. Congratulations to all of you. Here is Diane's final report:

I discovered the Eat to Live program in June and immediatelyembraced it. I did extremely well the first 3 weeks, then found it difficult tocontinue. We were traveling a lot with my husband’s work and I found itdifficult to find the foods that I needed in restaurants, which was our usualway to eat on the road. So, I was looking for help staying on the diet when I found yourchallenge. This was exactly what I needed to help me adjust to the ETLlifestyle. I chose to set my goals as learning to organize my food and life tofit the Eat to Live program and staying on the program throughout the 6 weeks,specifically healthy eating at every meal and every snack.
I feel that I have met these goals, although I am still learning andevolving. I found it easiest to get into a pattern of eating that supportsthese healthy eating goals. While the foods eaten change, the pattern hasstayed the same. I eat a fruit salad and fruit juice for breakfast, a largegreen salad for lunch, and a homemade bean or lentil and vegetable soup orsteamed vegetables for dinner. I sometimes add beans or a sweet potato to thelunch salad to keep me from getting hungry again before dinner, but I usuallyeat my beans in the dinner soup. I also have a green juice in the afternoon,when I have time to make it in the morning, and green tea or water during theday. I will occasionally snack on some homemade low-fat hummus with snow peas,nappa cabbage or other vegetables. I’ve discovered a few excellent no-oil saladdressing recipes. My favorite is tangerine juice, lemon or lime, and vinegar.The hardest part of the challenge is to not eat late at night, when my husbandhas his late night snack.
I wake up each morning hungry, for the first time in my life. I wasnever much of a breakfast eater in the past. And I am usually ravenous by dinnertime. But I can honestly say that I have not had any problems with cravings,which is also unusual. The fruit satisfies my sweet tooth; but I am used toeating a lot of salt. I will admit that I cheated a few times in the beginning,adding salt to my soup, but I have gradually adjusted my salt addiction and amdoing better now. I am slowly getting healthy. Although I have a long way to go totruly regain my health, I can honestly say that I am a lot better off now thanI was only 6 weeks ago. I have a heart arrhythmia and an autoimmune diseasethat have severely limited my movement and energy levels in the past. Gettingmy health back is my priority right now, because I had truly lost it. I need toturn that around quickly. I believe that the Eat to Live program is my bestchance of regaining a healthy body. The autoimmune disease manifests itself in very painful skin lesionsthat make my life difficult. The Eat to Live program these past 6 weeks hashelped, I have only had one new lesion in the last 6 weeks, and the old lesionsseem to be improving, although not fast enough to suit me. It seems to me thatimprovement is directly related to my consumption of green juice. The more Idrink, the better they get. I also had a bad episode of A Fib during the challenge. This is notunusual, actually only having one is probably a great improvement. In the past,I have had bad episodes regularly, sometimes weekly, so one in 6 weeks is animprovement. I have increased my nut and seed consumption and that seems tohave helped. My blood pressure is good, without medication and I have more energythan before, with the exception of the week of the A Fib episode. I have alsolost some weight, although I promised myself I wasn’t going to concentrate onmy weight during this challenge. I wanted good health to be my goal.
I have made quite an improvement, although I still have a ways togo. I will be joining you on your next challenge and look forward to a lifetimeof healthy eating. I appreciate your running this challenge and supporting us.The Vitamix has been a nice incentive, and I do need one; but I know that I ama winner either way. I really feel that a Vitamix would help me drink more vegetablejuices and this challenge has only intensified my longing for one. I have beenmaking juice in my regular blender, but I have to strain it. The entire processtakes a lot of time that I don’t really have in the mornings. The fruit juiceis easier, since I can drink it without straining, and it seems to blend a lotfaster. I have been struggling to figure out how to afford a Vitamix, we arevery strained financially and It doesn’t fit into our budget. I am putting iton my Christmas list, however, in the hope that we might manage it. My husbandand I talked about getting one for my birthday, which is only a few days away,but decided that we just couldn’t make it happen right now. Thank you for this challenge and your support.

Pre-Thanksgiving Challenge!

2011-10-13T22:37:00.001-05:00

Hi everyone,

We had so much fun doing the 6-week challenge, let's do another one! Sorry I don't have a vitamix to offer this time. Let's just share our successes and struggles, inspire each other, and win good health.

Here's my idea. From Oct. 14 (tomorrow) until Nov. 23 (day before Thanksgiving) is 40 days which is 2 days shy of 6 weeks. Let's try to eat healthy for the next 40 days, and then we can each decide for ourselves how we want to celebrate on Thanksgiving. Maybe you want to splurge a little or a lot, on healthy food or a few bites of the traditional stuff. It can be guilt-free if you plan something reasonable, and eat healthy for the next 40 days, right?

Let's think of goals for ourselves and send in updates when we feel like it. I'm trying to get stronger at the gym, so in addition to eating only healthy foods and not overeating (my forever top two goals), I will try to eat the foods Fuhrman recommends for building muscles: edamame, sunflower seeds, mediterranean pine nust, beans and...I'll have to check his latest post to make sure I got them all.

okay, let's go.

ps, I'll post the winner of the last challenge on the weekend.

Good night!

day 42!

2011-10-12T21:34:00.000-05:00

This is the last day of the 6-week challenge! Congratulations! I'm eager to choose a winner for the vitamix, but I should give people at least a few days to send in their progress reports. Send them to bwhitney@chi-squared.org. Here's my progress report:

My goal was to eat only healthy food and don't overeat. I started the challenge early so mine lasted 48 days. I misbehaved 5 days out of 48. On four of those days, I overate on fruit and nuts. On one day, I ate some unhealthy food too (darn it!). So I achieved my goals for 43 days out of 48. That's good but I think I can do better. I'm ready for the next challenge! My goal for that challenge is to optimize my protein as I'm trying to get stronger at the gym. And of course, to eat only healthy food and don't overeat.

I think I will start a short Oct. challenge, and then do monthly challenges until it gets old.

MIstakes are good--haha, that typo was not intentional

2011-10-11T17:12:00.000-05:00

My kid friends that were visiting and a dream I had last night reminded me that kids learn almost entirely from making mistakes. As the 6-year old was shaking my salad to stir it, I could see the future, and sure enough, there was a spill. I dreamed I was in a car with a teenager and he took this turn too tight and I could see the future and we rolled over--very slowly, nothing dangerous, but how were we going to explain this to the person we borrowed the car from? I thought, what a weird dream. Then I thought, kids learn from making mistakes. So do we all. So let's proceed with our learning.

Hey, I just noticed that my previous post was my 1000th post! Isn't that something.

Day 41, winding down!

2011-10-11T14:06:00.000-05:00

I've started getting updates from people on how they did. The stories are inspiring, and they are not without their struggles. It will be fun to share them with you. You will see the many different goals and victories and obstacles and it's all good because we are just trying to achieve better health.

I've thought more about my weekend splurge. I realize I have just been using visitors as an excuse. When I think about each time I did this in the last year, none of my visitors expected me to eat their food. Most were more interested to try my food than have me prepare theirs. Last night, the kids visiting me helped me with my food prep, and they were astounded that I was planning to eat all that salad in one day. I gave them an apple and they made their own fresh squeezed orange juice. One of the girls said, "I wished I didn't like chocolate like Barb". So you see, they like me to be this way. I just used them as an excuse. There was no pressure. Boy the excuse machine is so clever!

Today I saw some nice looking home-made oatmeal raisin cookies at a talk, and thought "I could restart tomorrow!" Oh boy. The first few days are always tough because of that one. Then I thought, maybe I could make some of my own nutritarian oatmeal raisin cookies. Another interesting thing I realized today is that I wanted those cookies only about 15 minutes after hearing this nightmarish health story from a friend, due completely to diet. You'd think that would be more of a deterrent, wouldn't you?

In some ways, this journey we are on is very easy--the food is good, we feel great eating this way, our health and energy goes up. There is no rational reason on earth not to eat this way 100% of the time. So then why is it so hard sometimes? I don't know. Because we are social. Because we don't react well to forbidden foods. Because sugar, fat and salt are addictive and excite our pleasure centers and taste really good and call to us---the funny thing is, even after we have lost our taste for it. Oh, I guess smokers go through this too. They physical addiction wears off long before the psychological.

Is it Day 40?

2011-10-10T21:18:00.001-05:00

Only 2 more days of the challenge?! Let's see, we started on a Thursday, so it will end on Wednesday! Well, you can start sending me your progress report whenever you are ready. Send it to me at bwhitney@chi-squared.org. Let me know if it's okay to post it. I think people will enjoy hearing how others did. It's especially helpful to learn how you solve your problems, and how you learn from your mistakes.

I started my challenge a week early so I suppose I could say I finished it on Friday. I suppose that's a good thing because I unexpectedly stumbled on Saturday, with my desire to eat my guests' food. For 6 weeks, I behaved quite well except for a couple of days on my vacation when I overate nuts and fruit, and then on last Thursday when I did the same. But on Saturday, I wanted to eat everything they ate, just because they were eating it, even though I didn't like the taste. Can someone explain that one to me? I stumbled last summer with visitors too. I have visitors again today but I'm okay. I'll have to be more cautious next time.

Besides being busy with the visitors, on Sunday I did food prep, biking in the outstanding weather, and harvesting the garden. I made a nice soup from garden produce and beans, which I'll have all this week along with my salads. I harvested a bunch of greens and brussels sprouts from the garden and froze them. It was a fun day. And it was very fun with the visitors. Then today was back to work and exercise and more visitors tonight. whew. So I'd better get back to them.

Should we do a new challenge? I'm thinking monthly challenges might be easier chunks to handle--for one thing easier to count the days, and a month might seem more doable for accomplishing a goal.

Day 36

2011-10-06T22:00:00.000-05:00

I had an interesting experience today. We have a family visiting us and, well, you can fault me for this, but I just decided to give them the foods they like. Weird thing #1 was grocery shopping and buying all this stuff I used to buy in my previous life, over 6 years ago--cereal and milk and ham and cheese and bread and cookies and ingredients for a spaghetti dinner. Trying to remember what the ingredients were, and searching for this stuff was as confusing as when I was first learning where the tofu and tempeh was. I made the dinner just like I did before I changed my diet, with no regard to health. Weird thing #2 was cooking meat, and then not being able to test it to verify I had the right flavorings. But I was told it was good. How can you go wrong with lots of fat and salt and meat and seasonings and cheese and butter? It is easy to cook this way. The bread was drenched in garlicy butter. Of course, that was a hit. One of the girls just wanted the garlic bread and noodles without the sauce--drenched in butter and parmesan cheese. Weird thing #3 was my reaction to the food. Part of me wanted to eat it. I know the spaghetti sauce tasted really good and I wanted some, but I don't want to eat animals. I know the garlic bread tasted really good but at the same time I was grossed out by the greasiness of the butter and it does have an overpowering smell. Wierd thing #4 was cleanup. Boy did that take a lot of soap. I was thinking, it would be good if you could do a similar cleanup to your blood vessels after eating this.

Unfortunately, a reaction to all of this was that I overate on my foods. I didn't eat regular meals at mealtimes, just ate randomly. I ate too much fruit, too many nuts, too much essene bread, a few turkish figs (they were good), what else, carrots, some cabbage, edamame with d'angou pear vinegar and chopped walnuts (that was good). I made a nice ice cream from a banana, cherries, walnuts and grape juice. I discovered that frozen mangos and peanut butter is a nice combination. Maybe that was weird thing #5. ha. Okay, so I have something to work on in my next challenge: Dealing with visitors. This was a problem for me several times this past year. Well, tomorrow is a good opportunity to get started. I get to watch them eat my old diet all day long. I will behave. I can do this.

Day 35

2011-10-05T19:41:00.002-05:00

Quick post before going observing (I'm an astronomer...).

My oatmeal (see yesterday's preview) turned out awful. The food warmer must be hotter than a slow cooker, not colder. The oatmeal was burnt! yuck. so I threw that out.

I nibbled on carrots, sugar snap peas and a little fruit while making lunch and dinner. Oh, here's something that turned out great: I took some beans and grains from the freezer--a batch of just beans and some kamut, barley and wild rice cooked up, bland on it's own--and added a mashed baked sweet potato (which I decided later probably wasn't needed), some curry powder, cinnamon, and sliced grapes. This was great! curry powder, cinnamon and grapes is a great combination and will turn a bland dish into a yummy curry dish.

Then had big salads with the usual local and garden produce: massaged kale, cabbage, lettuce mix, spinach mix, jicama (okay, that was from Mexico), yummy yummy asian pears! (from California), yummy kiwi berries (from California), red bell pepper, sunflower, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, d'angou pear vinegar. okay, that wasn't such a local salad after all except for the greens.

gotta run, see you tomorrow!

Day 34 of the Challenge

2011-10-04T22:24:00.001-05:00

wow, only 8 days left! Then we start a new one because I'm in a groove and want to stay there! I'm not perfect, but I'm doing pretty good. Today's foods were similar to yesterdays. I made a big salad from kale, cabbage, salad mix, spinach, D'angou pear vinegar, sweet red pepper, jicama (part of one), 2 nectarines, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds. That was divided into 3 bowls for the 3 meals. Then two small bowls of beans and greens from the freezer, and a baked sweet potato and baked beets. Then I had some carrots and part of an asian pear when I got home. Oh my gosh, asian pears are yummy! I heard someone rave about them on the Fuhrman forums so I bought some and they have a very interesting flavor, almost honey like or vanilla like. I put the rest of the asian pear into tomorrow's oatmeal. Check out my new toy! And it was only $10:

Here it is next to a coffee mug for scale:

I was thinking for a while that it would be nice to find a small slow cooker to cook oatmeal in. Well, I was shopping the other day and came across this cute food warmer. It's meant for dips and things and it says it's not a slow cooker, only a warmer. But you don't really have to cook oatmeal so I figure it will work. We'll find out tomorrow! Oh, I should add cinnamon to it. It's got a little under 1/2 cup oats (41 g), 4 chopped walnut halves (9 g), and a small handful of raisins (10 g). But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Today's food totaled 1503 calories; protein 53 g (11%), fat 22 g (13%), carbs 298 g (76%), fiber 75 g.

Time to get some shut-eye. I exercised hard today and I'm sleep deprived.

some useful tips from PeerTrainer

2011-10-04T06:41:00.000-05:00

I thought these PeerTrainer daily email tips were useful:

How to Eat Healthy at a Party
Creating an Environment of Thin
The Three Bite Rule

Actually, I think I will add to this post as more come up, so I don't make a new post each time.

day something

2011-10-03T22:28:00.004-05:00

wooey, life is busy when you return from vacation! I gotta go to bed and get up early so this will be quick. I took a picture of today's food but I'm too tired to download and post it, sorry.

Today I had a baked sweet potato and some small baked beets spread over 3 meals, salad spread over 3 meals, and a beans and greens meal spread over 3 meals. The beans and greens were some cooked beans and grains from the freezer, added to that garden produce: collards, leeks, broccoli, eggplant, mushrooms, basil, rosemary, parsley, tomatoes. The salad was massaged kale, cabbage, red peppers, nuts and seeds, D'angou pear vinegar. We went to a favorite store to buy frozen fruit for housemate's smoothies and I always snack on the many fruits they have available to snack on. It amounts to about 1 serving of fruit because it's just tiny samples. It's fun. I also ate a plum that I bought. Tonight I overate on carrots. I have many weaknesses and one of them is eating during food prep. I just really like to do that. Rather than fight that battle right now, tomorrow I will just reserve a bunch of carrots to eat during food prep. Since I'm gone all day, I prep my food the night before.

Good night, sleep well, have a great day tomorrow. Have a great goal, obsess about it, be proud of it, plan to achieve it, enjoy the journey. :)

Total calories today 1641 (more than enough), protein 68 g (12.3%), fat 24 g (12.5%), carbs 327 g (75.3%), fiber 84 g

Day 32 of the Challenge, and Napoleon Hill

2011-10-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

I got home from vacation and the vita-mix is here! I wish I didn't have to open the box but there is probably a receipt I'll want to keep. Now I realize most of you won't win it and I'm sorry about that. But as you make continuous improvements to your health, you will be winning the most valuable award of all! And for those struggling, I've been inspired by this audiobook called "Napoleon Hills Keys to Success." I'm actually surprised by how much I like this. It's kind of old-fashioned in values and a bit "American-centric" so non-Americans might be a bit put off sometimes (but only sometimes I hope). and yet, well, I did grow up with these values so it does speak to me. Plus it presents some very positive values that were missing in my upbringing and that makes it much more appealing to me and adds some healing to some old feelings. Anyway, getting to my point, here is a quote from the audio tape: "Every adversity carries a seed of an equivalent or greater benefit....Defeat may be a stepping stone or benefit." Look at your obstacles and defeats, not as failures, but as the seeds of even greater success! Seriously. This is absolutely true. You will learn more, you will have more insight, and by solving your problems, you will discover new things. So if you have not done so well on this challenge, take that as an opportunity to benefit, yes, benefit from this experience and sow the seeds of success. (Plus, you can do better on the next challenge!).

In fact I will have some learning and future successes to sow based on my modest overeating today. On weekends I tend to let myself eat in a less ordered way to provide contrast with my more structured weekday meals. I think that's okay, though perhaps I should revisit that.

This morning I had yummy oatmeal wtih oats and raisins soaked overnight, heated in the microwave, let sit while showering, then added frozen cherries and blueberries and heated again. Yum!

Then I just ate haphazardly from about 11 am until 5 pm. I was doing major food prep, 6 frozen smoothies for housemate, freezing lots of garden collards, and fixing tomorrow's meals for me and housemate. oh, I did make a nice salad:

This had fresh local spinach and cabbage, really good local red sweet pepper, edamame, nuts and seeds, and D'angou pear vinegar. Just a simple salad but very yummy because of all the fresh local ingredients.

Then I ate a ton of carrots, and also went crazy with the frozen mango which I love, and nibbled on the smoothies. I also had some kiwi berries. Those were yummy. and some sugar snap peas. Those were not great. They haven't been great for a while. It's not the prime season for them I guess and I should stop getting them. I did keep track of everything I put in my mouth and it came up to more than my usual amount of calories. But tomorrow's meals will be less than my usual amount--not on purpose but my fruit isn't ripe yet so tomorrow is lacking in fruit. Today made up for that so I guess it just averages out. I will go shopping tomorrow at a store with lots of fruit samples so I plan to score some there. I will post tomorrow's food tomorrow so I don't confuse myself or you. Here's today's summary:

Total calories 1762, protein 52 g (10%), fat 28 g (14%), carbs 359 g (76%), fiber 74 g.

The NEXT Challenge

2011-10-01T21:40:00.000-05:00

Okay gang, tell me what you think of this. Our challenge ends after day 42, or Oct. 13 at midnight. I will send a vita-mix to the lucky winner.

Here's the thing: I want to keep going. I'm going to the November immersion and want to continue the streak. Then after that we have the holidays. I want to get through those with as little harm as possible. We're talking Oct. 13-Nov.24 for the second one, and then Nov. 25 - Jan. 5 for the third. Then in the new year, everyone else will be dieting and it won't seem so hard to eat healthy. Plus after 3 challenges, we'll have such great habits, maybe we won't need more (ha, I wish. I think we'll always need extra motivation since we're going against the society's grain).

Here's an idea we came up with on the Fuhrman forums. How about everyone who wants to join contributes a small chunk of change ($5? $10?). Once we know how many entered, we decide on a gift or just pool the money and give it to the new winner? Or divide the cash between 3-5 winners? I know in this challenge I will have a hard time deciding who the winner is! If we do a money pool, who should decide who wins? I don't mind doing it, and I'm happy that it's hard to choose because it means a lot of people are making great progress! And of course, the best reward of all is your health! Alternatively we could have a small jury decide but I don't want to pile on the work for myself or others. Please send in your thoughts and ideas!

Back from vacation!

2011-10-01T20:56:00.003-05:00

I returned home to a healthy garden. woo, lots of collars, kale, brussels sprouts, eggplant, and broccoli! Lots of overgrown green beans too. The green beans were extremely productive this year. We even have some bell peppers now--they got off to a slow start. We had lots of over-ripe cherry tomatoes and some ripe ones too which I ate right there. I also ate some frozen cherries as a treat. So I updated my calories. Tomorrow I'll get my food logs in synch with my daily report so I'm not editing the next day. I'll have to figure out what to prep and what to freeze tomorrow. I don't want to spend too much time in the kitchen but I do need to prep a lot to make the weeknight prep easier. I want to go on a bike ride too. or maybe a swim.

How are you doing? It's day...31 today!

Quick meal ideas from Connie

2011-09-30T22:46:00.000-05:00

Connie is an entrant in the 6-week challenge and sent me this email:

I don't like the creamy dressings so this fits the bill for me.I boil some red beets and save the juice. Mix the juice with favorite vinegar and about a quarter cup of pure fruit juice. I used apple-grape. I have used pomegranate. Pour that over the beets. I add sliced onions, a few whole cloves, a verysmall clove of garlic tooI then add a bit of water to cover. Pickled beets from my youth. I love the juice so much that I use it for my salads.The other quicky is I put a package of frozen organic - no salt - veggies with a container of no salt organic veggie broth. I added what spices I had on hand and other left over frig veggies. In about fifteen min we had a great dinner. Sure beats not eating right when you are in a hurry. Fast hot soup on a cold evening.

This sounds interesting to me. I will give it a try.

The 100% club

2011-09-30T22:02:00.000-05:00

We often discuss on the Fuhrman forums whether it's better for us to go 90% or 100% nutritarian. Dr. Fuhrman's life plan allows for 10% excursions once you attain health and appropriate weight. I don't think he intends for that 10% to be the worst foods like cheese and ice cream, but even those are allowed rarely. I really think this is an individual choice. For some people, making foods forbidden makes them more desirable, and increases the cravings. For others, eating just a little bit opens the floodgates. It probably depends a lot on how you look at it. For me, both those feelings can occur. Overall though, for me, it seems 100% is much easier than 90%. There is much less deciding involved, and studies have shown that having too much choice and making too many decisions is exhausting and weakens your willpower. Now 90% might make life easier for other people I interact with and might make me more sociable and less of a standout. But I don't think I can handle it. It is easier for me to go 100%. Plus, I've found people don't care as much as you think when you do funny things like not eat, or top a plate of lettuce with your own fixings, or bring your own food. Also, if I'm 100% most of the time, on a daily basis, then if something really unusual comes up, it's no big deal if I decide to partake. I just have to remember that these unusual events need to be limited to only a few times a year (and that remembering is kind of a hassle so again, it's easier to just stay on plan and have fewer decisions and fewer things to remember!). Like I said, this is a very individual choice. My main point is that even though it might seem counterintuitive, 100% is easier for me than 90% and I'm kind of surprised by that as much as anyone else. Emily discusses something like this in her latest Diseaseproof post.

Sept. 30

2011-09-30T21:13:00.000-05:00

Day 30, last day of September, only 12 days left of the Challenge, and then someone wins a vita-mix. I'm hoping it will be waiting for me when I arrive home tomorrow.

Just an aside, it's 9 pm, I finished dinner a while ago, cleaned up the "kitchen" and closed it down (turned out the lights), brushed my teeth, am not the least bit hungry, and yet, I'm sitting next to someone who is eating gorp, coke, and chips. It's not the food itself than makes me want to eat, but the fact that someone else is eating makes me want to eat too, even though I'm not hungry at all. I wish everyone would just eat 3 meals a day and stop tempting us nutritarians! oh well, this too shall pass, as soon as the crunching stops. :)

Anyway, tomorrow's food is same as today's except the jicama is kind of rotten so I threw it away. I must have picked a bad one. Anyway, I had a little more of everything else so it ended up being about the same number of calories for tomorrow. It's kind of weird how I pick the right amount of calories. I guess over time you get good at it.

total calories 1461, protein 66 g (14%), fat 22 g (13%), carbs 280 g (73%), fiber 87 g.

PEERtrainer advice

2011-09-29T23:37:00.000-05:00

I get PEERtrainer's tip of the day in email and I often find them very interesting. Today's email said that daily logging of food is a key to successful, longterm weightloss. It doesn't matter how you do it, doesn't have to be fancy or calorie counting, just logging what you ate. It helps you from deceiving yourself and shows you your potential pitfalls. The email is posted here.

That reminds me that another thing they recommend is daily weigh-ins. They admit it's controversial but they find it works for a lot of people. I don't recall where I saw that posted, sorry.

Day 29

2011-09-29T23:24:00.000-05:00

Today I got to squeeze in one last, and of course fantastic, mountain bike ride before leaving Moab. That made us late getting to our destination, so after preparing tomorrow's meals and showering, I'm ready for bed. We stopped at a Whole Foods in Denver. wow, I do love my fresh produce. It's expensive, but it sure is good. I got enough for the next two days which will get us home. I also got some sugar snap peas and carrots that I ate tonight--I updated yesterday's post with the new numbers. Here's tomorrow's meals:

I guess I didn't feel like oatmeal. It's all salads again. Starting from the bottom: romaine lettuce, cabbage, balsamic vinegar, broccoli, jicama, red kidney beans, banana, figs, strawberries, nuts and seeds. and a pound of carrots divided between the three meals.

Total calories 1472, protein 58 g (12%), fat 21 g (12%), carbs 288 g (75%), fiber 98 g.

Day 28

2011-09-28T23:28:00.000-05:00

Today was a fantastic day of hiking, mountain biking and sight seeing. I'm whipped so will write this quickly and get to bed! Tomorrow we start driving home again, so no more mountain biking, very sad. I could spend a month here mountain biking. This is the mecca (Moab). I was hungrier than usual tonight, after all the exercising so bought some sugar snap peas at the grocery store. They were crisp so I was hopeful but they had a funny taste. I was hungry so I ate a few handfuls and then threw the rest away. The local produce lovers must get their produce from the farmer's markets. I got a pomegranate yesterday that turned out to be half-rotten. However, they have some organic honeycrisp apples that are really good. I'll finished those along with all my produce tomorrow. I got a giant head of romaine and a giant jicama, and had bigger than normal portions of cabbage and cauliflower left so I just made salads for all three meals tomorrow. They consist of romaine lettuce, cauliflower, cabbage, balsamic vinegar, lime juice, cilantro, spring mix lettuce, 2 giant apples, a giant jicama, nuts and seeds, and black soy beans. The giant things brought up the calories to something reasonable. [Edited the next day: I got some carrots and sugar snap peas at Whole Foods and enjoyed them immensely before eating my late dinner, so here is an updated calorie intake]:

Total calories 1567, protein 68.5 g (14%), fat 21 g (11%), carbs 302 g (75%), fiber 113 g. wow, lots of fiber, 41g just from from that giant jicama.

Tomorrow we will hit a Whole Foods in Denver. I'm looking forward to getting some good produce there.

Day 27

2011-09-27T23:39:00.000-05:00

Hi all, not much new to report. same old, same old. Had an awesome mountain bike ride in Moab. Hope to repeat tomorrow along with a nice hike in Arches. fun!

Today I supplemented what I had planned to eat with an apple and peach, increasing my calories to 1455. That made me feel much better--I was very hungry this morning and it makes it harder for me to sleep. Clearly 1272 calories is not enough for me. 1400-1600 seems about right. Tomorrow's meals are almost a repeat of today's. The best fruit in the local store to me looks to be the honeycrisp apples so that's what I'm eating. Surprisingly the store had jicama so I got to include that again in tomorrow's meals. It's a gigantic one. I think the bigger ones aren't as sweet. But it's still good. My broccoli went bad so I threw it out. I tried some conventional carrots from the store and didn't like them. So I haven't got a good carrot since California. Whole Foods may be expensive but their produce really does taste better. I wonder if most people in the US have never tasted a good carrot. They don't know what they are missing. Okay, after that blathering here are tomorrow's meals.

brekky: oatmeal with apple and raisins and nuts and seeds. mmmm, can't wait.

lunch and dinner: salad with romaine, spring greens, cabbage, cauliflower, jicama, lime juice, cilantro, apple, nuts and seeds, chickpeas.

snack/emergency food for mountain bike ride: small handful of raisins. I almost never feel a need to eat during exercise, but since I'm in the desert riding alone I may as well be a little cautious and bring a little food. Water seems to me to be way more important and I will bring a lot of that. But the food could give me a boost if I'm feeling tired on the way back.

yikes, time flies, time for bed. let me know how things are going for you. oh, here's tomorrow's food summary [edited later to reflect the extra sugar snap peas I had after dinner, and I had forgotten to add in the romaine]:

total calories 1585, fat 26 g (14%), protein 58 g (12%), carbs 305 g (74%), fiber 84 g

Day 26

2011-09-26T22:41:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone! I have a good internet connection tonight. Still on vacation, still makin' my salads. The grocery stores I've been to the last few days have not featured large produce sections. The organic produce is pretty limp so I've been choosing conventional. Today's lettuce was very good. I chose organic carrots because they looked reasonably fresh but they are tasteless and I don't feel like eating them. Apparently organic produce varies a lot in quality too. Maybe I'll try some conventional carrots and see if they taste good. Or just stick with the apples. Most stores are stocking the fresh honeycrisp apples and they are very good. Here's tomorrow's meals.

brekky: oatmeal and apple and nuts and seeds mixture (walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, hemp seeds). The oats and chopped apple are soaking in water overnight. A few minutes in the microwave and then sitting for a while, will make it luscious. As usual, I will eat in the car while companion drives.

lunch and dinner: salad made from: green lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, jicama, big honeycrisp apple, cilantro, lime, nuts & seed mixture, can of red kidney beans, 1/2 avocado. Tonight I used my last jicama. I will miss those. I love them!

Total calories planned for tomorrow is only 1272; fat 27 g (18%); protein 54 g (14%); carbs 225 g (68%), fiber 70 g. This is similar to the amount of calories I had today and I suspect it's not enough. I would have had more today but I didn't like the carrots. I'm just driving today and tomorrow so pretty sedentary. If I get hungry I'll eat an apple.

day 25

2011-09-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

Slow internet connection here. will try to post once and then be done. Yesterday’s food described in my previous post was very yummy. The oatmeal was my best ever. Unfortunately today and tomorrow’s hotel doesn’t have a microwave so no oatmeal for a few days. Fortunately, I like my salads just fine. Today’s salads have lettuce, cabbage, jicama, a big pear, nectarine, banana, can of chickpeas, cherry tomatoes, 1 oz nuts and seeds (walnuts, hemp, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds), lime and cilantro. No rhyme or reason, just the produce I liked best from the grocery store. I’ll be running out of the good California produce in a few days, but I’m seeing honeycrisp apples in the grocery stores so I think I’ll stock up on some of those yummy fruits.

I had a couple of entertaining thoughts yesterday. One was about the Food channel. I like watching the food channel. I like how they turn cooking and eating into entertainment with contests and silly races and exciting plots and music. It cracks me up. I was thinking, wouldn’t it be fun if they had nutritarian shows? We could have several segments on being a nutritarian road warrier. I’d be willing to do a show. Haha. But everyone does it differently and it’d be fun to see how different people do it. We’d learn so much from each other and we’d be portrayed as cool dudes and dudettes and feel like role models instead of weirdos. (I care less and less about that as time goes on!).

My other thought was that I have a couple of security blankets and I secured both of mine yesterday. My two security blankets are my food scale and carrots. I feel safe and content when I measure my food. Then I know I’ll be getting enough calories. Is that goofy or what?! I also really love my carrots. Total goofiness. The reason for this neurotic behavior is my weird nutritarian diet, which requires planning and preparing most of my meals from scratch even when on the road. I want to feel I will have enough food tomorrow. When I feel I will, I relax and I’m happy with the quantities. Very silly but if it works, I’m not going to worry about it.

So yesterday I saw a kitchen store and stopped in and got a food scale. will post my calories when my internet connection is fast again. buh-bye

Sept. 23 = Day 23

2011-09-24T00:37:00.001-05:00

Again, hardly any time to post, quick update. I've been overeating the delicious local fruit and nuts here in the agriculture valley of California. I'm relearning the phrase Dr. Fuhrman often states, "No excuses." oops. I've been making excuses--it's fresh, it's local, I never can get fresh pumpkin seeds or brazil nuts in Wisconsin! Wow, fresh nectarines, fresh grapes, so good! Well, it doesn't mean you overeat them. gotta remember, no excuses. Besides that bump in the road, having a great time. Here is tomorrow's food:

Brekky will be oatmeal with nectarine, banana, hemp seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds (1/3 oz total). I hope it tastes as good as I'm imagining! I'm soaking it overnight so I just have to heat it in the microwave for 1-2 minutes I hope.

Lunch and dinner: salad consisting of romaine lettuce, jicama, cherry tomatoes, black beans, cilantro, lime juice, and more of the seeds (2/3 oz). If I need more food than this I have more fruit and carrots.

Tomorrow we move on to a new location. Goodbye to fresh local produce of every kind and Whole Foods, spectacular scenery and traffic jams. Hello to mountain biking!

Day 22

2011-09-23T00:17:00.002-05:00

Long day of driving, nice scenery, great fruit at a fruit stand, best grapes I ever had (both fresh and ripe, not a combination I usually get in Wisconsin). Now it's time for bed. How was your day?

Day 21

2011-09-22T00:33:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone, I know some of you are doing well, others not so well, on the 6-week challenge. I feel for the strugglers. I made some mistakes today and will try to learn from them. Here's today's lunch at "Cafe Glacier Point" (we're sitting on very comfortable rocks, not in a real cafe).

I couldn't finish it because I was full, because....we stopped at this fruit stand, and got some really good fruit. and some fresh brazil nuts, and some dates! uh-oh! Here I am already digging into the grapes, which were yummy.

So were the peaches. Unfortunately I ate too many brazil nuts and dates. I rationalized the nuts saying I don't eat as much nuts as Dr. Fuhrman recommends so it's okay to eat more today, and they are fresh and not rancid like the ones I often get in Wisconsin. Okay, that actually made some sense (I'm a clever girl). Dr. Fuhrman recommends at least 1 oz of nuts per day. I usually prefer eating less most of the time and then more on occasions. For the dates, I was rationalizing that they might be fresher in California. As it turned out, the nuts were better than the ones I get in Wisconsin and the dates were pretty much the same, as they are dried fruit after all. Anyway, once I started eating them, it was hard to stop.

So what should I have done differently? hmmm. The nuts were great, I don't regret eating them but I ate too many, past fullness. One or two dates would have been enough but I ate several more. I'm not that huge a date fan because they are almost too sweet for my tastes. On the other hand, eating them makes me feel like I got a treat and that's a nice feeling. So how do I prevent myself from overeating them next time? Maybe I should decide how much I will eat before I start eating them, dole them out, and put the rest away. And maybe I should wait until mealtime to eat them. Then it's more of a ritual. I do like Dr. Fuhrman's idea of eating only at meal times. Well, I'd like to think I'll do better next time so I'll give it a try!

Day 20!

2011-09-20T23:47:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone, it's Sept. 20 which means day 20 of the 6-week challenge! I'm on vacation and have very little time to post. I'm still eating my salads as posted a few days ago. Only the last two days I've been using cherry tomatoes, jicama, and fresh figs as my "fruit" on the salad. Oh man it's good. I stop at a Whole Foods every night and get excellent fresh produce. I'm in California so most of the produce is fresh and local. I'm getting great fresh baby carrots, along with everything else. Tonight I thought I got some blackberries but they never showed up in my bag or receipt, so somewhere they got lost. bummer. Well, tomorrow I can get some. Okay, I have to go and prepare tomorrow's food and then get to bed! We're visiting Yosemite this week and didn't get a place in the park so we have long drives every day. Not very good for the environment...

How are you doing? Tomorrow is the half-way point! That's plenty of time to get back on track if you struggled, or to keep the momentum going if you are doing well. If you are doing well and can keep this up for an entire 6 weeks you can really learn to change your habits and preferences this way.

Have a great day today and tomorrow!

Day 18

2011-09-18T23:31:00.000-05:00

Today I overate a bit, with that second sweet potato after dinner. I got more hungry than usual before lunch and dinner and I think it made me overeat at dinner. The sweet potatoes were pretty small so it's no big deal. I'm not sure I like sweet potatoes in my salad and I also prefer them baked in the oven to steamed in the microwave. So I think I'll drop the sweet potatoes and save them for when I get back home. My salads were same as yesterday. Tomorrow we arrive at our destination and will have Whole Foods nearby all week so there will be no problem getting healthy food.

Here's a picture of me and my yummy salad at Great Basin National park:

How are you doing?

Day 17 of the 6-week challenge

2011-09-17T22:44:00.002-05:00

Hi folks,

I'm on vacation so don't spend much time online. We're having a fabulous time. Today was a fabulous mountain bike ride and hike in Salt Lake City. We've been here 2 nights with a Whole Foods near our hotel. I was thinking today that I should take advantage of Whole Foods. They have a "Health Starts Here" program based on a whole foods plant based diet! In their prepared food section, anything labeled as "Health Starts Here" is vegan with no oil, and less salt (hopefully). I was thinking today, I could save time and get a lot of meals from there. Then I ate my salad. It was soooo good. That is the problem. I love my salads so much. I brought oatmeal with me and I haven't eaten it yet because I prefer the salads! Here is tomorrow's:

This has, let's see if I can remember, cabbage, romaine lettuce, baby bok choy; some veggies cooked in the microwave: broccoli, sweet potato, zucchini, and mushrooms; cucumber, seed mixture, chickpeas, jicama, strawberries, blackberries, pear, balsamic vinegar. I've heard of jicama for a while and finally saw some in this Whole Foods. I love it! It's less sweet than most fruits and more sweet than most veggies. I also nibbled on really good fresh sugar snap peas while prepping. I've been eating tons of carrots so I actually got tired of them and won't have any tomorrow. I'll probably be craving them again when I get to the next Whole Foods.

I hope you are doing well, and if not, it only takes 4 days to get back on track!

Day 15!

2011-09-15T23:16:00.000-05:00

Two weeks down for most of you.

It's only day 2 of vacation and we're having a great time already. Yesterday was a long drive but I slept and ate my meals as a passenger, and listened to audio tapes while driving. It was very relaxing. Today we had a shorter drive, and lots of fun mountain biking and hiking in between rain showers. We stopped at the end of the day at a co-op which didn't have great produce except for a giant bag of spinach so I got that. That's enough to get me through until tomorrow. We walked by a vegetarian restaurant that looked fun. I'd eat there for a treat. But it was late and we just wanted to get to the hotel and relax. And I"d actually like to eat really clean during this 6-week challenge, and save my treats for later.

I'll post tomorrow's food which is similar's to today's food but I remember it better because I just made it. Tonight we're in a mini-suite with a great work area:

Here's tomorrow's salads:

That's lots of cabbage, lots of spinach; some broccoli, zucchini and mushrooms cooked up in the microwave, a red bell pepper, apple, pear, peach, nectarine, seed mixture, and red kidney beans. I think that was it. And that is the end of my food except for carrots and a little cabbage. Tomorrow we'll be near a Whole Foods so I'm looking forward to a whole new batch of produce.

How is your day going?

The Big List of No Oil Salad Dressings

2011-09-14T21:54:00.001-05:00

This is a great resource from Healthy Girl's Kitchen: Her big list of no oil salad dressings includes recipes for all of them!

Day 14 of the 6-week Challenge

2011-09-14T21:49:00.001-05:00

Two weeks into the challenge, and the first day of my vacation. I forgot to bring my food scale. At first I was disappointed, then glad. I'm tired of measuring my food. I know how much to eat. If you aren't sure, you can measure your food. I think it's great to do for 2-3 weeks if you've never done it before. If you are trying to lose weight, it gives you an idea where most of the calories come from; and if you are trying to build muscle by working out (the only way to do it), it helps you see where the higher protein foods are (green veggies, beans and nuts, not fruit).

Now everyone handles food on vacation differently. I prefer making my own food to trying to find something in restaurants, and my travel companion doesn't want to waste time in the restaurants either. You can make good time on the road by eating in the car. So it's sort of like camping only we'll be staying in hotels this trip. Here's my food for a few days. At right is an electric cooler, which plugs into the car electrical outlet. Picnic basket has utensils. The other bags (insulated) have today's food and some extra food that didn't fit into the cooler.

Oh, and can't forget the beans:

Today's meals were

Brekky: salad and baked sweet potato. That's the last of the sweet potatoes for this trip because I won't be cooking, except maybe oatmeal. The salad was: cabbage, kale, bok choy (a bit too strong tasting), lettuce, broccolini, sweet red pepper, pear, peach, apple, zucchini, mushrooms, edamame, peas, seed mixture, and that really expensive sweet balsamic vinegar. That's like sugar, definitely something to eat in small quantities. I made a giant batch and split it into 3 big bowls (8 cup size!) for each meal. Here's my breakfast:

Lunch was salad and carrots. Dinner was the same. That's kinda how it's going to be on this vacation, the same old thing every meal. But the salad fixings will vary. In fact, it's fun to see what I can make up from the different stores I visit.

Day 13

2011-09-13T22:24:00.003-05:00

I don't have much time to post, packing for my vacation. Yeah, I know I shouldn't advertise that I'm going on vacation. Well, someone will be staying at my house. Does that ward off the burglars?

I'm hearing from people doing well today. Way to go!

Today's food was

Brekky, after exercise and dentist: sweet potato, lots of raw carrots while prepping lunch and dinner.

Lunch: my usual salad as of late: cabbage, kale, summer squash, Italian fry peppers (best red peppers I've ever eaten), peach, pear, apple, seed mixture, balsamic vinegar. I did more taste tests on the vinegar. I now have 4 bottles. As it turns out, the most expensive is to die for, the cheapest is pretty lame. The taste correlates with price (darn!). Looking at the label, so do the calories and sugars. So that all makes sense! The really expensive bottle is awesome. In might start buying that as my reward for good behavior. I suppose that means I have to use the cheap bottle after I misbehave. Anyway, the salad was luscious with the expensive vinegar and the ripe fruits. Everything on the salad except the vinegar and seeds is local and tastes really good. I also had some greens and beans.

Dinner: same as lunch, salad, greens and beans. and a small box of blackberries. a few cherries, a few carrots.

Total calories 1501, protein 49 g (10%), fat 17 g (10%), carbs 315 g (80%), fiber 80 g.

Vitamix has shipped!

2011-09-12T22:09:00.001-05:00

Soon the vitamix will be in my hot little hands. Then I'll ship it off to one of you. Getting excited?

Day 12

2011-09-12T21:04:00.002-05:00

Hi everyone, darn it, just got some disappointing news about a family member's diagnosis. so I'm bummed right now. I guess I was counting on better news. Here's what I ate today:

brekky: sugar snap peas, beans and greens. I was in the mood for beans and greens after a hard workout. I was already a weakling before I broke my elbow last winter, but I am even more so now. But I'm happy to be doing something about it. I harvested a ton of collards from the garden since I'll be gone for a few weeks. I froze a bunch and used the rest in my beans and greens. For the beans and greens, I cooked up the collards, an onion, and eggplant from the garden, some basil, then added a serving of beans and grains from the freezer (thawed in the microwave), a can of (garden) tomatoes and some no-salt seasoning. Really good. here's the collards:

smashed down into ziplock bags for freezing:

Lunch: I hit a home run with this salad I invented the other day. wowsa. Today's was even better. kale, chopped and massaged (in my hands), marinated in really expensive balsamic vinegar (and boy is it good--I'm still having fun taste testing vinegars, got a few new bottles today), add cabbage, yellow summer squash, red bell pepper (these are just what's local and in season right now), and the part that makes it really really good: fresh ripe local peach and fresh ripe local pear. YUMMMMMMMM. Had that with my last 1.5 ears of sweet corn for 2011. I savored every bite.

Dinner: the rest of the beans and greens. the rest of the salad. a bowl of frozen mango (didn't need it, but wanted it and it was good). One more chore to do, harvest the basil leaves and freeze like the collards:

Okay, the garden can grow back while I'm gone and I'll be ready to eat more fresh kale and collards when I get back.

Total calories: 1626, protein 65 g (12%), fat 12 g (6%), carbs 351 g (82%), fiber 87 g.

Forgot my nuts and seeds again, oops. I had more calories than usual which was a surprise. I was thinking it was fairly low-calorie food but I did eat a lot of it. I could have held off on that second serving of beans and greens at dinner. oh well, no big deal I don't feel overfull. Notice the higher percentage of protein compared to yesterday when I had more fruit.

Day 11, 31 to go

2011-09-11T20:25:00.002-05:00

I'm in pre-vacation mode, which means, eat what needs to be eaten before vacation. So I started out with some frozen bananas that for some reason I think should be eaten now and not later (maybe I really just wanted them). I had those and frozen cherries, chopped up, for brekky. Wow was that ever good, like ice cream:

I also had some chopped cabbage and carrots because I'm so used to having salad or cooked greens with a meal. I'm actually not a big fan of fruit only for brekky despite my having had it the last few days in a row.

Today and tomorrow are the final days of sweet corn. So I bought six and shared 3 with housemate, so we each had 1.5 ears for lunch and will have the rest tomorrow. Then the corn stand will be gone. I savored those corns. It is so good. I also had a salad made from cabbage, sweet red pepper, summer squash, edamame, peas, and vinegar. I also had a peach.

Dinner was a yummy baked oriental yam topped with pumpkin pie spice and more salad. Then...I couldn't resist the bananas and cherries so had another bowl. Good thing I ran out of bananas.

Total calories 1509, protein 40 g (8%), fat 11 g (6%), carbs 347 g (86%), fiber 67 g.

I wouldn't call this a maximally optimized nutritarian day, but I tend to allow that one day a week. I didn't eat any nuts or seeds. tsk tsk. Notice how the protein is lower since I ate relatively higher proportions of fruit, less beans and no nuts or seeds. My fat is quite a bit lower too without the seeds. I'll have some tomorrow.

How to lose a lot of Weight

2011-09-10T20:35:00.000-05:00

Just got this email from PeerTrainer on what to do when you need to lose 50 or more lbs. Might be useful to some of you.

If you are struggling

2011-09-10T20:15:00.004-05:00

I tried to do Dr. Fuhrman's 6-week challenge last Nov and tanked almost immediately. Something about the challenge sent me off in the wrong direction. Maybe it was my Miss Behaving streak. I suspect that this has happened to some of you on this challenge. Here is a suggestion, I'm not sure if it's helpful but here you go. What if you change your goal to: get back on track. Use the next 32 days to learn how to do this right, to try it out in all situations, experience the obstacles, figure out the solution, get better, and by the end of this you know what to do. We can start a new 6-week challenge when this is over and you can roll into it ready to go and knowing what to do and enjoying doing it. Anyone have a vita-mix they want to donate? haha.

Day 10 of the Challenge

2011-09-10T20:01:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone, this is actually my 2-week point in the challenge since I started early. I notice that I might appear to be pretty strict with my 6 week challenge. Part of the reason is time--it takes less time to make simple meals from beans and greens and salads. The other part is I guess I am looking to reset and seal my healthy habits. Dr. Fuhrman says it takes 12 weeks to change habits and break addictions so I am looking to do this for 12 weeks (well, hopefully forever). I want to lose my desire for SAD sweets so am even avoiding the sweet nutritarian food, except fruit. But I should think about making some nice dishes when I get back from vacation. I came across a nice spaghetti recipe when I was looking for a pesto recipe in my last post. I have a ton of recipes on this site and then there's Dr. Fuhrman's recipe site. So when I get back from vacation, I should try to start making a nice meal on the weekends. Since it will be winter by then I won't have mountain biking and kayaking to distract me.

Here's what I ate today.

Brekky: small bowl of frozen fruit--banana, cherry, mango--before yoga class (was out of fresh, went grocery shopping after yoga). carrots and cabbage when I got home to tide me over to lunch.

Lunch: 2 giant corn on the cobs, delicious as usual. Tomorrow is probably the last day for fresh sweet corn so I'll do a repeat then. sliced tomato from the garden. some more carrots.

Dinner: giant salad with kale, collards (massaged), cabbage, cilantro, parsley, yellow squash, fantastic local red bell pepper, cucumber, edamame, mango, and balsamic vinegar. more carrots.

total calories 1400, protein 47 g (9%), fat 18 g (11%), carbs 301 g (80%), fiber 68 g.

Easier than Pesto

2011-09-10T19:36:00.000-05:00

I've got two giant basil plants in the garden and winter is coming, so it's time to start harvesting them. I used to make pesto but that was work. Today I just brought in half of one plant, shown here,

pulled the leaves out, stuffed them into a plastic bag,

and put them in the freezer. If it's like spinach and other greens, you can crumble them while they are frozen and it even saves time chopping. So hopefully I'll have fresh-frozen basil throughout the winter.

Sleeping on the Job

2011-09-10T13:05:00.000-05:00

Since I don't do caffeine, I occasionally desire a nap--fortunately that doesn't happen too often. It's amazing what a 10-15 minute nap can do to revive a girl. I have a yoga pad, blanket, pillow, eye mask, and earplugs at my office. Okay, that is overkill. Minimum equipment needed is just a yoga mat and you can nap anywhere with a floor.

Preparing for vacation

2011-09-10T12:30:00.000-05:00

18 cans of beans. hee hee.

Yummy Salad

2011-09-09T20:49:00.001-05:00

I make salad every day and this one was so good I want to remember it. It includes kale and collards because I'm going on vacation next week and want to trim down the plants in my garden before leaving. I think what makes the salad good are the combination of pears and mango and the kale and cabbage. It's a great combo. Apples would probably work in place of pears.

Ingredients for 3 salads:

cabbage, 277 g or 3 cups chopped

kale, 168 g or 2-3 cups chopped (or however much you want, this is just how much I picked from the garden)

collards, 41 g, or 2 big leaves (or however much you want)

1 medium cucumber chopped

1 medium yellow summer squash, chopped

1 large pear or 2 small

1 cup chopped mango (I used frozen)

3 Tbsp balsamic or fruit infused vinegar (not sour)

1 oz seed mixture or chopped nuts

How easy is that? combine everything. I made this the night before because I don't have time in the mornings. Well, that's okay for the kale and collards because they marinate overnight and are more tender. Oh, and an important thing I do with the kale and collards is I mashed them, or massage them, with my hands after chopping them--that helps tenderize them also. Oh, you de-stem them too before chopping.

Day 9 of the 6-week challenge.

2011-09-09T20:39:00.002-05:00

Woo hoo, day 9 starts to feel substantial, almost into double digits. If you lasted this long you've probably lost toxic hunger, and are feeling good. Your taste buds have probably re-sensitized and fruit and veggies are starting to taste really good. Just think, it really only takes about a week of truly healthy eating to start feeling good. So if you are struggling, maybe you should reset right now, and in a week you'll be right there with the rest of us.

Today I had the same old thing but my salad was really good! Wowsa, I'm making this again. I think I will have to post this as a separate recipe, which I'll do next.

Brekky: greens and beans, salad (after exercise).

lunch: baked sweet potato, salad.

snack*: carrots and sugar snap peas.

dinner: greens and beans, salad.

*egads, I had a snack. Dr. Fuhrman doesn't recommend snacks! Well, tough noodles. I was much happier riding my bike home at 7 pm having had the snack then I have been the last few weeks. I eat lunch at noon and don't get dinner until 8 pm. Lately my bike ride home has been tired and hungry. Tonight I was back to day dreaming on my bike and enjoying the ride. Plus this way I don't have to stuff myself at lunch in order to make it until dinner. I'm not going to worry about this "transgression."

I didn't weight my carrots and sugar snap peas so my calories are just a guess but they are probably within 100 of correct. By the way, I don't eat just a few carrots, I eat about a pound. We're getting local carrots again (hopefully for the next 8 months) and I just really like them.

Total calories: 1392, protein 50.5 g (11%), fat 16 g (10%), carbs 288 (79%), fiber 68 g.

Day 8

2011-09-08T22:08:00.002-05:00

Today I switched to my Fall schedule: food prep the night before, exercise before work, breakfast when I get into work. So I eat a more substantial breakfast. Here's what I ate today.

Brekky: greens and beans, salad made from cabbage, spinach, lettuce, red bell pepper, cucumber, yellow squash, peaches, apples, seed mixture, balsamic vinegar.

Lunch: baked sweet potato and salad.

Dinner: greens and beans, salad. carrots, sugar snap peas, and kohlrabi while prepping tomorrow's meals.

I'm running low on fresh fruit so my total calories were a little low. I feel satisfied right now, hopefully won't wake up early hungry.

Total calories 1352, protein 55 g (12%), fat 21 g (13%), carbs 265 (75%), fiber 70 g.

People often ask me how I get my protein: from vegetables, beans, and nuts and seeds. In Dr. Fuhrman's Healthy Times newsletter #42, Fueling the Vegan Athlete, he gives a table of estimates of protein requirements. The estimates are about 0.7-0.8 g/kg/day for sedentary individuals, 1.5 g/kg/day for endurance athletes, and closer to 2 g/kg/day for strength athletes. That is grams of protein per kg of body weight per day. My body weight is 125 lbs or 56.8 kg. So today I had about 1g/kg of protein. Another estimate of protein requirements from the table gives 12-15% of calories for all individuals from sedentary to strength athletes--note that athletes will naturally increase their protein intake by eating more calories. I had 12% today. I've read elsewhere that 5-10% of calories is sufficient (World health organization maybe?). I think I get enough. I exercise daily but I'm not an athlete (I am just a wannabe).

I hope your day was successful!

Day 7 of the 6-week challenge

2011-09-07T21:38:00.000-05:00

One week down! Here's what I ate today

Brekky: a bowl of frozen fruit while making a bunch of smoothies for housemate: banana, blueberries, mangos. and a ripe peach. and some sugar snap peas and carrots. and cherry tomatoes from the garden. and some tastes of smoothies.

Lunch: oriental yam and salad (cabbage, salad greens, spinach, cucumber, yellow bell pepper, apple, seed mixture). I actually didn't have time for lunch, ate the yam right before a meeting and the salad had to wait until about 4:30 pm.

Snack: I was surprised to see fruit at a presentation where we usually just have cookies and cake. I didn't even consider if I was hungry and just had some but in fact I kinda was since I hadn't eaten my salad yet, so that was fine. Then I had my salad after the presentation

Dinner: greens and beans, and salad, some carrots and sugar snap peas.

total calories 1463, protein 47.5 g (10%), fat 16.5 g (10%), carbs 311 g (80%), fiber 68 g.

The last few days had some emotional turmoil and some situations where in the past I might have strayed off plan or overeaten but the 6 week challenge has me happily focussed on reaching my goals. My desire for that is higher than any triggering desire to stray. Let's hope it stays that way. One day at a time!

Tejas' update

2011-09-07T21:22:00.001-05:00

Here's an update on the progress of one of the Challenge participants, Tejas:

For almost one week, I stayed good to my plan till dinner time. Even dinner time was much better. The good thing is that we are doing this s family. We have green smoothie.
In past 10 years, I gained 25 lbs.
I never liked SAD food and I used to eat lacto vegetarian diet (except that cooking oil was so cheap in US that I think I started to overuse it).Worst part of this weight gain was that I thought it is natural. I am already eating very healthy food and it is part of aging process (to get fat) and motherhood.I had really high triglyceride (wheat and rice and large portion size) In back of my mind, I was bothered by my extra weight but had no strong resolve. I tried for a week or so few times but would give up very soon.In beginning of this year, I got smart phone. I started to read many blogs related to food, well being etc.First four months I was blown away by information shared by various doctors and bloggers. Intellectually I knew that I need to do something but blogs finally motivated me enough to move on from my previous experience of fear of failure.I started to incorporate more and more raw food in diet. I would loose weight very fast but I can easily gain 5 lbs on Saturday party food.
As I started to learn more about my body, I started to work with my family as well. I am fortunate that I do not have any health issues in my family and I would like to keep it that way.In past 3 to 4 months, I lost only 15 lbs, but my lipid panel report shows much better numbers.My kids drink green smoothie at least 3 to 4 times per week.Our salad consumption is gone up 4 times and oil consumption is gone way down.
I am happy with progress we made as whole family.My typical day has no grain or oil till 6 pm. During dinner, I do eat very little wheat or rice (2 or 3 spoons) .My only problem is that I want to eat after 9 pm (some fried snack).I have these snacks for kids (school, day care)./ these are healthy crackers or bars, but they are still something that I should not eat.
I am participating in this 6 week challenge to get rid of 10 lbs and that will put me in my ideal weight range.In addition to all the blogs I follow and read, I also stumbled upon this book. Does anyone else know about “Dr. Richard Fleming”?Please do share your experience and story.

Thanks Tejas! If you want me to post your progress report, let me know. It's not a requirement, you can just add a comment to the blog occasionally.

Day 6

2011-09-06T21:09:00.004-05:00

Here's what I ate today. You can kind of see a pattern developing. The corn season is ending, but I'm still loving the oriental yams. Soon it will be pomegranate season!

Brekky: frozen fruit (mangos, sweet and sour cherries), fresh ripe local peach (yum), big handful of spinach. carrots and sugar snap peas while prepping lunch and dinner.

Lunch: baked oriental yam, salad like yesterday's (cabbage, salad mix, spinach, apple, patty pan squash, red bell pepper, broccoli, scallions, seed mixture, cilantro, orange juice).

Dinner: greens and beans, same salad as lunch except I got to the store and got some balsamic vinegar. much better with vinegar! Not only that, I did a taste test.

On the left is Lucini balsamic vinegar of modena which I think cost $1.76/oz (I didn't keep the receipt). On the right is Spectrum Organic balsamic vinegar of modena coming in at $0.38/oz. I'm surprised to report I preferred the cheap one. It had a more fruity, tangy flavor though it was just a slight bit vinegary. I don't like vinegary balsamic vinegar (sorry if that makes no sense). The lucini was very not-vinegary which I really like in a balsamic vinegar. It describes itself as full-bodied and balanced which I agree with, but it seemed to lack flavor to me. My tastes may vary day to day so I'll try the comparison again. Also it might be that the spectrum brand goes better with apples. Lucini might go better with tomatoes. I'm going to buy some more vinegars and keep playing with this. It is fun. I'll have no trouble consuming all of them as long as they taste okay.

I had some kohlrabi for dessert.

Total calories 1501, protein 59 g (12%), fat 20 g (11%), carbs 300 g (77%), fiber 79 g.

A Helpful Realization for Me

2011-09-06T16:34:00.001-05:00

I hope that I learned something useful about myself recently. I could wait six months to verify that it works and then post it if it's successful, but I'll go ahead and share now and then if it doesn't work, I'll have to submit a correction post.

This year, on the occasions that I strayed from healthy eating and then came back, I wondered: why was it so easy for me to be a vegan for the last 6 years but it is sometimes difficult to be a nutritarian? Both involve denying myself a category of foods. In fact, being vegan involved a complete 100% abstinence from certain foods whereas being a nutritarian just involves mostly abstaining (that turned out to be a clue). Interestingly, this year, I strayed for the first time in 5.5 years from veganism, about 3 times. That's because I gave myself permission, since Dr. Fuhrman allows for a small amount of animal products. I didn't follow his advice as he intended since I ate ice cream, one of the worst foods you could eat. But that straying clued me in to something.

Before I strayed from veganism (first time Nov. 2010), my vegan logic when choosing food was, 1) is it vegan? 2) if not, what's something vegan I can eat? I have a clever clever brain (as do you) and all of my cleverness was applied to finding something vegan to eat.

As a nutritarian, because there is some leeway and you can eat an occasional cookie and still be healthy, sometimes my clever clever brain, which loves sugar, will go all out to argue why it's justified. It is a powerful force when my clever clever brain goes all out to convince me of something. It is too smart for me. It will just keep on arguing until I am convinced.

If I were to decide that for me being a nutritarian means eating only health-promoting food, then maybe my decision process will be like the vegan one. 1) Is it nutritarian? 2) if not, what's something nutritarian I can eat. no arguments. And then my clever clever brain, which is a powerful force, can go all out applying itself to finding me good nutritarian food to eat.

So I decided I want to be vegan and nutritarian, which for me means, no animal products, and no disease-promoting foods (that is, 100% healthy foods instead of 90, 95, 98%). It's just easier that way.

I'm not saying I'll always be vegan and nutritarian but I want to be now and I hope I will be forever.

Dr. Fuhrman's weekend immersion

2011-09-06T15:42:00.001-05:00

The early bird pricing for Dr. Fuhrman's November weekend immersion ends on 9/15/11. I'm going to this and I want my friends to go too, so that's why I'm telling you about it. For purely selfish reasons.

Day 5, Labor Day

2011-09-06T08:36:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone, how did all those labor day family celebrations full of those foods that used to tempt you go? (okay, maybe they still tempt you but that can change!). I was home only long enough to fix a quick breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here's what I ate.

Brekky: a little bowl of frozen fruit, then went to a wonderful yoga class. I didn't want to eat much before that. had some blackberries afterwards.

Lunch: 2 gigantic ears of corn. Our corn stand is going away so we got 2 ears instead of one. I savored each bite. It was yummy. also had some sliced tomato and raw veggies--no time to make a salad so I just chopped of a hunk of cabbage (our local cabbage is that good right now!), some carrots, sugar snap peas, and kohlrabi. I forgot to snap a picture at the beginning, but here it is nearly at the end.

Dinner: salad made from cabbage, lettuce, spinach, cucumber, red bell pepper, patty pan squash, yummy small apple, seed mixture, a little orange juice. Everything was local except the seed mixture and orange juice. I was out of vinegar, hence the orange juice. This salad would have been perfect with a fruit infused vinegar and some chopped walnuts. I'm hoping to get both soon because we're now getting really good local apples and this salad will probably become a daily staple. I also had 2 servings of my greens and beans.

I haven't been eating enough nuts/seeds. When I get some walnuts I'll remedy that.

Total calories 1498; protein 58 g (11%), fat 17 g (10%), carbs 316 g (79%), fiber 75g.

6-week Challenge participants

2011-09-04T21:04:00.002-05:00

(updated Sept. 6). Hi everyone, we had 56 people express an interest in the 6-week Challenge! I didn't get goals from 2 people, as you can see below, so it's possible they changed their mind or I lost their info--it was hard to keep track of everything. It's not too late if you just forgot. I'm impressed! I hope we all can have some fun with this. Posted below are your screen names and my synopsis of your goals. Please send any corrections if you have them. I haven't received my vita-mix yet but I assume I will by the time the challenge ends.

Thanks for participating and please post, send mail, give advice and encouragement to each other.

screen name	short goals
ReeRee	Finish Eat to Live, Follow Eat to Live, plan, pray
Ginger	re-focus
Tejas Jain	loose 10 lbs
Jenjenwh	break the 200 barrier, exercise every day, size 14
Jen4short	get healthy, lose 10-20 lbs
Healthy Girl	plan, exercise, record for 7 weeks
mberkovitz	rekindle enthusiasm, let go of overeating, find peace with that
Dru262	get rid of the figs & dates & desserts, return to basics
nuway2health	lose 14 lbs, exercise 2-3 times per week
Jitka
linda5sons	identify inflammation triggers, increase recipe repertoire for son, regular exercise
Tina Brandenburg	eat 100% nutritarian, get creative with exercise (knee injury), lose at least 5 lbs
PamelaNY	continue eating 100% ETL, no eating after 9 pm, become aware of fullness and stop eating before full
KatieScarlett
KristiW	go 6 weeks without overeating
Rovercon	lose 20 lbs, exercise to 4-5 times per week, stay on plan, lower BP
Chewydaisy	strict ETL 6WP
Suz	exericse 5-6 times/week, stick to 6 week diet, stop eating when full
Dokken	Strictly follow 6 wk. plan and do not overeat
Bonnie S	exercise a minimum of 4 times per week, ETL six week plan at about 90%, stop snacking, omit the junk food
veggieteach	lose 6 pounds eating vegan to get to 159
JJS	adhere to weight loss plan; start exercising
Patricia	eat nutritarian 100%, more greens; improve diet of young child
otnetty	stictly adhere to 6-week plan; walk a mile, eventually twice a day
stoerkel	lost 10 lbs; 95% ETL/EFH by the end of the challenge
Tess	follow ETL; exercise 5 days/wk starting with 15 min; journal food, exercise and feelings daily
Okra	stop eating before full; always be prepared; don't eat trigger foods
Livewell	lose 20 pounds, workout 6 days a week and get more firmly settled in the universe of Nutritarianism; move away from food addictions
lightweight	sticking to eating on ETL-approved foods
Carole
Peggy14063	Follow ETL; enlighten others; support my sister
thomjane	follow ETL; exercise 4 hours/wk
yumikat	follow ETL; exercise 4 times per week; lose 10 lbs
Bemily	make healthy choices when eating out/ETL
Vgtrian	90% 6WP; exercise twice a week
charflower	cut out processed foods; exercise more
Diane S.	lose 12 lbs, complete transition to nutritarianism
Pippi1	6WP while taking on stressful job
Joann	6WP
dwatkins	prepare, eat well no matter what my schedule is, improve my health
Booberry	get healthy, ride horse like the wind
Ali123.	lose 20 lbs, walk to and from work + 2 good workouts on weekend
Janeen	continue eating healthy; make no rude remarks to family about unhealthy eating; make green juice 4xs/wk; exercise; gain 3 lbs
Laurenstyle	lost 10 lbs; workout at least 5xs/wk;Learn to appreciate the journey of ETL and step into my power letting the health transformation open me up to other new changes in career, relationships, spirituality,etc..
Trudy	stay off all white flour and sugar free for 6 weeks
Ttujill	follow a healthy diet, lose 10 lbs, and influence my husbands diet to hopefully enable him to lose 10lbs as well
WildHorses	lose 8 pounds and also feel great along te way!
marcid	exercise 4 to 5 times per week; go to bed early enough; ETL 6WP faithfully; lose some weight
Exona	just focus on me and the goal of better health....with no compromising (learn to deal with social events)
Carol1one	Follow Eat To Live, the 6-Week Plan
Willow	complete Dr. Fuhrman's six week program
AmandaB	overcome emotional, habitual, and addictive eating habits; lose 25 lbs; inspire others
kkeener	strict ETL
KathyColdHands	ETL 6WP; exercise vigorously 4-6 days/week; lose 20 lbs;
Rachel	lose 30 lbs
minirunner	stop eating sugar and overcome binge eating

Greens and Beans soup

2011-09-04T20:48:00.000-05:00

I often make beans and greens soup but today I made greens and beans soup. I want to not do any cooking during the work-week so all I have to do is prepare a salad every morning to split between lunch and dinner. Then food prep takes only an hour and I'll have all my meals for the day. It's repetitive but it doesn't bother me. So I went to the garden and harvested a ton of greens: greens from the broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, collards and kale plants. whew. and some herbs. and an eggplant. and I combined those with all the veggies in the fridge that I normally cook, more eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms and onions. and combined those with the beans and grains I was cooking. Here's how I did it.

Last night I juiced 5 lbs of carrots and a bunch of celery added them to a pound of beans, 1/4 cup of purple barley, 1/4 cup of wild rice, and 1/4 cup of kamut (wheatberries), and soaked them overnight. Here's the beans and grains before adding the juice (kind of pretty):

Cooked them up this morning for 3 hours. Here they are cooked. This was yummy. I had to exercise discipline to not eat more than 2 bites of this:

I picked two lbs of greens from the garden, two lbs!

How am I going to cook up all these vegetables? Use the food processor! That shrinks them down.

Add some herbs from the garden: basil, parsley, thyme, rosemary (chopped in the food processor)

Added 1 lb of eggplant, mushrooms, 1 green zucchini, 3 medium onions (like I said, whatever was in the fridge that could be cooked).

I cooked these up in two pressure cookers. Two! This was my crazy soup.

I dished them out into 20 1-cup servings. 20! I ate two today, housemate ate one. I figure I'll eat two a day, one for lunch and one for dinner.

I saved two for tomorrow, and froze the rest. This will last me until I go on my vacation. This is loaded, I mean loaded with greens. And the odd thing is, it tastes quite good. Even housemate liked it. I was pleasantly surprised.

Here's the nutritional information for 2 servings: 327 calories, 17 g protein (17%), 2 g fat (4%), 65 g carbs (78%), 16 g fiber.

Day 4

2011-09-04T20:26:00.002-05:00

If you have been successful so far, it's probably getting easier by now. If you haven't, get going right now and in just 4 days, you'll be in the same boat. 4 days won't make much difference. I'm talking to you SZ and maybe a few more people.

Here's what I ate today.

Brekky: 1 lb of fresh strawberries. I'm proud of myself for waiting from Friday night to Sunday morning to eat them, as I had planned. I did hide them away in the back of the fridge to help myself out. Man, was that good. then a big ole' fresh peach. had some spinach too.

Lunch was late and I was hungry so no salad was prepared. got my daily fresh-picked piece of corn on the cob and cooked it up, along with some raw veggies--carrots, kohrabi, sugar snap peas---and sliced tomato. and another handful of fresh local yummy spinach. oh, and I ate some cherry tomatoes when I was in the garden harvesting greens.

Dinner was a greens and beans soup which I'll post about next, and a baked oriental yam (I'm in a very enjoyable rut here) sprinkled with pumpkin pie spice. and a small about of frozen mango for dessert.

I forgot to eat seeds/nuts today. That's because I didn't make a salad which is where I add my seeds. Dr. Fuhrman just posted on his diseaseproof blog about how important it is to eat nuts. I'll eat some tomorrow. So my fat intake was quite low today.

Total calories 1401, fat 10 g (6%), protein 52 g (11%) carbs 308 g (83%), fiber 73 g.

Day 3

2011-09-03T20:22:00.003-05:00

I hope everyone is doing well on the challenge, and if you aren't, it's not too late! You can get on track and still reach your goals. Please don't be discouraged yet if you got off to a rocky start.

We have over 50 entrants to the challenge! I think this is a good number. It gives each of you a pretty good chance to win the vita-mix. I'll post more when I finish putting your info into an excel spreadsheet.

Saturday can be a challenge for me when I'm home more and doing more food prep. I think knowing I will post here makes me behave! So I did behave and here is what I ate:

brekky: some frozen fruit, mangos, cherries, blueberries, and some fresh local spinach. One reason I'm liking the frozen fruit is that I bought a bunch of fresh blueberries from Michigan (not too far from here) and froze them to make them last longer. They are really good! And I love mango but don't get good fresh mango here in Wisconsin. I ate a light breakfast because I had a yoga class.

Lunch: big ole' salad. It's a sign of Fall that we now get local spinach and lettuce again, both requiring cooler temperatures. I got a bunch so I just made a huge salad to split between lunch and dinner. All ingredients were local except the seeds and vinegar: cabbage, spinach, salad greens, cucumber, patty pan squash, yellow bell pepper, tomatoes, seed mixture. I also had corn on the cob. I ate a few grapes, carrots and sugar snap peas after yoga, sort of a finish to my brekky. Here's lunch.

Dinner was the rest of the big ole' salad and a small baked oriental yam (sweet potato). and a big ole' ripe peach (yum!). and a few more carrots and celery and kohlrabi. I did some soup prep, making carrot and celery juice. I'll post about that tomorrow.

Total calories 1424: 56 g protein (12%), 22 g fat (13%), 285 g carbs (75%), 71 g figer.

I was surprised to see I lost 2 lbs this week. I didn't go hungry, just didn't overeat. My average caloric intake over the last 7 days was 1446. I gained about 6 lbs this summer from my deviations from healthy eating. I bet it was less than 10% of my total calories but they were very unhealthy foods, not at all what Dr. Fuhrman recommends for your 10% allocation of less healthy foods. It really is true that that stuff just goes right to fat on your body. I wouldn't mind converting that fat to muscle as my BMI is reasonably low (18.8). I had a good workout yesterday that should have helped.

Forks over Knives

2011-09-02T22:26:00.001-05:00

This movie is good for motivation even if you've read all the books and know it all. It makes you say I wanna be on this team! that's the plant-based whole foods diet team. yes! This is the cool team. This is the team everyone will want to join eventually and we are at the forefront. Say yes to transforming your health and life.

Day 2!

2011-09-02T21:01:00.000-05:00

I'm posting while watching "Forks over Knives." I know, I shouldn't multitask! I figure I know it all already. I'll let you know if it's good motivational material. It's fun to see pictures of Campbell and Esselstyn as young men.

Here is what I ate today, very similar to yesterday.
brekky: frozen cherries, blueberries, mango. raw carrots and kohlrabi. ate this while preparing the day's food.

lunch: same beans, greens soup as yesterday. salad made from cabbage, cucumber, yellow squash, cherry tomatoes from the garden, scallions, seed mixture. baked sweet potato (actually it's an oriental yam and it seems sweeter to me---really good!).

dinner: large ripe peach at the co-op after exercising. It was fantastic. Then at home, I had the same salad, beans and greens soup, and a piece of fresh sweet corn. Here's a picture. That's tomorrow's peach just for show. I had already eaten tonight's at the co-op.

Everything I ate except the frozen berries was locally grown. and ever so good!

Total calories 1486, fat 17 g (10%), protein 60.5 g (12%), carbs 308 g (78%), fiber 79 g.

How you doing?

Day 1, how's it going?

2011-09-01T21:53:00.001-05:00

Hi everyone! I had a fabulous day off from work today where I exhausted myself hiking and mountain biking in the heat and humidity. I think I'm overflowing with sun happiness and endorphins. Does anyone else get all happy from being in the sunshine?

Here are my food logs for the day.

Brekky: some frozen fruit while making housemate's smoothie. (yummy bing cherries, sour cherries, mango, blueberries). It quickly frosted over in the humidity:

some raw veggies while making lunch and dinner (I'm still eating brekky here). (carrots, kohlrabi, sugar snap peas, celery):

Note: it's probably not good policy to eat while preparing food but I'm allowing it for myself during breakfast because, well you choose your battles and I'm not choosing this one right now.

Lunch and Dinner were 4 course meals (prepared during brekky). I forgot to snap pictures. The courses were: 1/2 baked sweet potato, beans and greens, salad, and peach or nectarine. The peach and nectarine were at perfect ripeness and were super juicy, yum.

The beans and greens were prepared a few days ago from beans, wild rice, barley, kamut (wheatberries), eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, collards, kale, herbs from the garden (basil, cilantro, dill, oregano, chives, thyme), mushrooms, mustard (salt-free). These will last through tomorrow.

The salad would have been perfect with tomatoes instead of apples, so I will do that tomorrow. It had cabbage (local and really good), apple, cucumber, spinach, basil, yellow summer squash, broccoli (from the garden), seed mixture, and balsamic vinegar. Tomorrow I'll do the same but with tomatoes from the garden.

Total calories 1415. fat 16 g (10%), protein 57 g (12%), carbs 291 (78%), fiber 75 g.

Challenge motivation

2011-08-31T22:30:00.004-05:00

Hi everyone, The 6-week challenge starts in 2 hours. Here are some motivational thoughts that help keep me on track:

1) I live in my food universe. There is infinite variety of delicious foods to choose from in this universe. I will be satisfied and happy if I stay in this universe. Today I watched a friend eat a big ole' burger and fries. It did not compute. :)

2) Now is as good a time as any to get started, regardless of our current circumstances. Once you are healthy and thin, you will have circumstances too and that won't stop you from continuing to be healthy and thin (I hope). I'm happy to see a lot of people doing the challenge even though circumstances during the 6 weeks are not ideal (vacation, parties, restaurant plans, hanging out with old buddies). That is life!

3) I am most likely to stray and overeat when I'm tired. Maybe I should just go to bed early if I'm tired. I consider that a luxury! more satisfying than eating!

Tomorrow I'm taking the day off. When I get back in the evening, I'll post the challenge participants and brief goals--unless there is objection to the latter. I'll also post my food logs since some people like to see an example.

I think I will go experience the luxuriousness of bed now.

Challenge starts in 27 hours!

2011-08-30T22:15:00.002-05:00

Well, some of us eager beavers started already.

So far I have 26 participants though I don't have all the info for all of them. I will post all the participants (screen-names) on Sept. 1 so you can check to see if I missed you.

If you have any questions, please comment to any post or email me at bwhitney@chi-squared.org. If you want a review of the challenge, you can just scroll back to read some posts, or go directly to these posts:

http://veganbarbie.blogspot.com/2011/08/6-week-challenge-for-vita-mix-heres.html
http://veganbarbie.blogspot.com/2011/08/join-my-6-week-challenge-and-you-are.html

I wrote some tips for beginners here:
http://veganbarbie.blogspot.com/2011/08/tips-for-beginners.html

Some people like me to post my daily meals so I am fine doing that during the challenge. For fun, I can even log my food with cron-o-meter. Talk about making me accountable! Just note that I consider my food to be pretty boring. I like it, but I don't do anything gourmet. During the week, I throw together my meals in the morning before work, and during the weekend I'd rather play outside than cook. I like veggies a lot and stay away from the sweet treats. I link to other blogs (below at right) that show much more thrilling recipes. I love healthy sweet treats and would like to convince all my nutritarian friends to make them for me on special occasions but I'm not interested to make them myself. I'm looking forward to eating great food at Dr. Fuhrman's weekend immersion in November.

Add your comments/progress reports to any post and I'll note them. I get an email notification of each comment.

Eating Healthfully when traveling

2011-08-30T20:30:00.001-05:00

Excellent travel advice from Carrie on Vegan:
http://www.carrieonvegan.com/2011/08/29/4-ways-to-eat-healthfully-when-traveling/

I've got several posts describing what I do when I travel:
http://veganbarbie.blogspot.com/search/label/travel%20logs

Guidelines for Healthy Nutrition and Weight Loss

2011-08-30T20:21:00.001-05:00

Howard at Lifestyle Power developed this graphic that describes how to eat healthy. It looks pretty good. What do you think, is it useful for you?
http://lifestylepower.blogspot.com/2011/08/guidelines-for-healthy-nutrition-and.html
His blog has lots of good information and links to articles, including a recent show from CNN called The Last Heart Attack.

fun Oatmeal recipes

2011-08-30T17:26:00.000-05:00

This is from Healthy girl's kitchen ,who I believe is joining our 6-week challenge, yea!
http://healthygirlskitchen.blogspot.com/2011/08/breakfast-duel-green-smoothie-vs.html

Today's food

2011-08-27T22:00:00.002-05:00

In case this helps newbies starting the 6-week challenge, I'll try to log the food I eat (like I used to). You can let me know if this is useful to you or not. Here's what I did today.

Brekky: went on an early-morning bike ride. stopped at a bakery. don't worry I didn't eat anything there--my friend had something or another. I could have gone to the co-op next door for some fruit but I got distracted by a flat tire. ate a large peach and some raw veggies when I got home.

Lunch: yummy salad, super yummy corn on the cob, yummy tomato. The salad had cabbage, spinach, summer squash, cilantro, edamame, tomatoes, bell pepper, balsamic vinegar, and seed mixture.

snack: kiwi, raw carrots and sugar snap peas

dinner: lots more of the lunch salad, small baked oriental yam (these are the best sweet potatoes!). dessert: small bowl of frozen blueberries and mango.

Tips for Beginners

2011-08-27T20:42:00.002-05:00

Some people starting the 6-week challenge have not read or finished Dr. Fuhrman's healthy eating books. I highly recommend reading either Eat to Live or Eat for Health. I think until you ingest the information, you will not understand fully what healthy eating really is and what it can do for you. In the meantime, here is a set of posts I've written in the past on healthy eating that might help guide you a bit as you get started:
http://veganbarbie.blogspot.com/search/label/healthy%20eating

Here's another link Jim sent me today that could be very helpful for someone starting out:
http://www.21daykickstart.org/
It's a program to try healthy vegan eating for 21 days.

Also you may be motivated now but if you need a little help later, here are some posts about motivation:
http://veganbarbie.blogspot.com/search/label/motivation

Week -1, post your progress here!

2011-08-26T21:41:00.001-05:00

Some people, including myself are starting the challenge early. Add your comments below on your goals and progress.

I will post in the comment section too so we're all on equal footing. My screen name is "kneecap" by the way.

My goals for the 6-week challenge

2011-08-26T21:14:00.000-05:00

Here are my goals:
Eat health promoting food, not too much. Don't eat disease-promoting food.

How to do this? I like Dr. Fuhrman's 6 week plan, described in his book Eat to Live and this blog post. Another healthy plan is Dr. McDougall's Maximum Weight loss plan, described in his book, and in this newsletter. Both of these can be modified if more calories are needed by adding additional grains, starchy vegetables, fruit, and nuts and seeds.

I misbehaved several times this summer, enough to say I'm not "walking the walk." So I want to reset and I want to stick with this forever. From my experimentation this summer I learned that I'm not missing much. Sure, some things do taste really good (the most unhealthy things), but most of it is not as desirable to me as my healthy food. As Laurie, a famous nutritarian from the Fuhrman forums, puts it, she likes to live in the universe of nutritarian eating. She looks for all her food and treats and desserts in the nutritarian universe, and doesn't venture into the SAD (Standard American Diet) universe. I've always liked this concept and would like to adopt it as mine.

6 Week Challenge for a Vita-mix--here's the plan!

2011-08-26T20:43:00.002-05:00

Okay, I got feedback from readers here and on the Fuhrman forums and the eat-to-live yahoo group and here's the plan I've come up with:

1) Set a goal or goals for yourself. You might want to pick something you think you can reasonably accomplish, or maybe you want to take on the world. I recognize that the same goal can be easy for one person and hard for another. We're all at different levels with different challenges.

2) Send me your name and a screen name (which could be your real name if you want), and your goal(s). I will post the screen names of everyone participating, along with your goals. Send this info to my email address: bwhitney@chi-squared.org

3) For accountability, try to post a comment here on the blog once a week, stating your progress. I won't be strict about this, it's just a goal. You can post every day if you like.

4) At the end of the challenge, if you want to win the vita-mix, send me via email a short essay (200 words max) describing how you did in the challenge (remind us of what your goals were), and why you want the vita-mix. I will probably have a hard time deciding between lots of entries and will have to do a lottery because I'm sure you will all have compelling stories!

5) I would like to post the winning essay and maybe excerpts of others. I will ask you for permission before posting. I will give runner's up the option to not let me post excerpts of your essay but I will require the winner to let me post their essay. :)

6) You can start anytime between now and Sept. 1. I know several people on the Fuhrman forums started today! I'm starting tomorrow.

7) I will try to post often during the challenge. You can post your progress as a comment to any of my posts--probably the most recent will be easiest. I am going on vacation for 2.5 weeks during the challenge so I might miss some days.

8) Please post you progress here rather than or in addition to other forums you are members of (Dr. Fuhrman's member center, or the Eat-2-Live yahoo group).

9) The winner will have to pay shipping costs for the vita-mix. I hope that is okay.

Let's have some fun!