Day 36

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.

Article on junk food addiction

Darryl from the Fuhrman forums pointed us to this fascinating article. Junk food is as addictive as cocaine or heroine. Yikes!

curbing overeating

From March 18 to March 26 I logged every piece of food I ate in CRON-o-meter. It's very instructive to do that every once in a while. It showed me that I take in about 1500 calories per day, with a protein percentage about 9-13%, fat percentage 20-30%, and the rest in carbohydrates. I get the full range of amino acids and tons of vitamins and micronutrients. The real magic is that logging my food intake really curbs overeating. For one thing, the extra effort to add in the food is just enough obstacle to make you stop when you are full. And it gets you thinking that I'll stop now at lunch because I want this treat at dinner. It's amazing how well it works.

Well, now I want to try going solo and not use this tool and see if I can listen to my stomach to curb overeating. I did notice I got hungry between meals using this tool, so I should get hungry between meals without it. That will be my gauge. That's how it's supposed to be, but I got out of the habit of listening to my body because, well, it's enjoyable to eat. But I was reminded in the last 10 days that it's much more enjoyable to eat when you are hungry. Of course, Dr. Fuhrman says this all the time. This is typical for me to learn from experience that Dr. Fuhrman was right again.

Some Lessons Learned

Here are some of the things I’m dealing with now in my journey of healthy eating.

1) One thing that caught me off guard in this transition to healthy eating was that as my body cleaned up, it became much more sensitive to the drugs I used to ingest on a regular basis: caffeine, alcohol, and, the biggest surprise, sugar and refined grains. I never thought of sugar as a drug but now I’m not so sure. It’s so processed I’m not sure I’d call it real food anymore. Dr. Fuhrman says it’s a drug if you feel bad when you don’t have it. i.e., if you get addicted to it. I’ve got to the point where caffeine, alcohol, and sugar affect me very strongly when I ingest them, and then I feel yucky and get cravings the next day for something to perk me back up. So now I’ve given up caffeine and alcohol, not because I felt I should but because I didn’t like them anymore. And now the same thing seems to be happening with sugar and refined grains. They affect me so strongly that I’m thinking I don’t want them anymore. I don’t like the high I get from them and I don’t like the way I feel the next day. For a while I wondered if I was developing an eating disorder, but I think I’m just so much more affected by sugar than I used to be that the effect from it is magnified. I think I prefer just doing without it. Whole dates are a great sweetener, so I don’t need it anyway.

2) In addition, as my body cleaned up, the food started tasting better, much better. Now I can’t imagine anything more delicious than a pomegranate (my current passion). This, plus the large volume of food we healthy eaters ingest on a regular basis, has caused me to start overeating. So recently I’ve been reminding myself that food is nourishment, and it tastes much better when you are hungry. I can make getting my nourishment as enjoyable as possible by preparing delicious meals, and by waiting until I’m hungry to eat them. But if I go beyond that to overeating, then that’s unhealthy. It’s a balance I have to make with some mental discipline, because it’s our natural instinct to seek pleasure, and food is definitely a pleasure. Not only that, we are surrounded by it, day in, day out. Every meeting or social event I attend has food—food I choose not to eat in most cases, but it influences me and makes me want to eat something, even if it’s healthy. Part of it is physical—the sight of food causes my digestive system to secrete enzymes. My poor digestive system gets bombarded with this all day long in this society! Even at home, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen preparing meals I don’t eat, because I don’t eat lunch when my housemate and visitors do, and I’m the resident cook (because I love it). It’s kind of hard to resist nibbling but I find that can often lead to overeating.

Overeating

I overate last night. It started when I ate lunch even though I wasn't hungry. I was very hungry at brekky so had a smoothie and a cup of beans. I like having this for brekky because I usually haven't eaten in a long time and I just exercised. That was about 9:30 am. But then lunch comes too soon. I waited until 12:40 pm to start preparing. Like usual, I snacked as I prepared. Lunch was steamed veggies of all kinds (broccoli, carrots, beets, brussels sprouts, leeks, kale) and vinegar and ground seeds. I had leftovers and 1 cup of beans for an early dinner at 5 pm. Dessert was an apple and orange. Okay, I should have stopped there but no, I had 3 more apples (small anyway), and then some cherry walnut ice cream. Boy was that good. okay, could I fit anything else in? Yep, a banana and some peanut butter (< 2 Tbsp thank goodness). Then I waddled to the hockey game. I was full until noon today. I didn't go to exercise this morning because I was full. I'm embarrassed to admit this. I'm thinking I should go back to logging everything I eat to keep myself accountable, 'cause it's embarrassing to have to write down stuff like that. I don't know why I'm doing this. I think I'm just getting into bad habits. or it's emotional or something. I am going through some big changes in my life, or at least, considering them. Another problem is my mealtimes. I would prefer to eat two big meals at about 10 am and 4 pm. But cohabitation requires me to prepare a big meal at 1 pm. Regardless of the reason, I have to start behaving. As Dr. Fuhrman says, no excuses.

still figuring out how much to eat

It's weird. I used to know how much to eat. I stopped when I was full. I was overweight because I was eating unhealthy food. Then I started eating healthy food and lost weight. As I ate more healthy I needed to eat more. So I got in the habit of eating a lot. Then I learned from Dr. Fuhrman to eat more beans and nuts and seeds to grow muscle. So I've been doing that. But those expand in your stomach, so now I'm getting overfull. This week I'm trying to regulate it better. Yesterday and today I only ate two meals. This is mainly because I was busy and was only cooking for me so went on my own schedule.

I find after my morning exercise class, I like a big breakfast. A smoothie and a cup of beans is very satisfying and also follows Dr. Fuhrman's recommendations of beans, greens, and nuts & seeds being a good high-protein meal after exercising. Yesterday I had that at 11:30 am because I had a later exercise class. Then I didn't bother with lunch and had a lovely giant salad for dinner about 5:30 pm. And then had a few carrots about 7 pm. That was good.

Today I had my smoothie and beans at about 9:45 am. Then I had a big lunch/dinner at about 3:30-4 pm. This consisted of a few carrots, some leftover veggies and black bean hummus (from Monday's lunch), and collard greens & beet & onion & seeds cooked up (yummy!). And a small apple and small orange. That was too much. I'll try to remember that tomorrow.

I did kind of like the 2 meals per day though. It takes several hours to get hungry when you eat the beans and nuts and seeds. But I don't know how to fit that in my normal schedule when I'm cooking for house-mate too and eating lunch at 1 pm, which is too close to brekky. I guess I just need to make a smaller lunch.

sept. 23

late brekky at the co-op: 1/2 small dal (yellow) watermelon--though it was bigger than usual. then my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I had gotten a peach and some blackberries and pistachio nuts too. I ate the peach and some nuts. Definitely didn't need that!

late lunch: smoothie with mango & blueberries. very creamy and good. used a fresh mango (then froze overnight). ate the blackberries I got at brekky. and 2 small apples. and more nuts. okay, now I was really full. I'm eating way too much fruit today.

early dinner: okay, not hungry but I have a meeting tonight. ate some veggie pot with fresh frozen sweet corn. and then kept eating the sweet corn.

today I ate way too many sweets and have a tummy ache as a result. my body is pretty good at telling me when I'm overdoing it. Now I just have to listen to it!

sept. 06

brekky: smoothie, some frozen sweet corn

lunch: 2 ears of corn +avocado butter, black bean & corn salad, collard greens+onion+beets steamed in pressure cooker (good).

snacked while making housemate's smoothies and juicing some collard greens+beets+carrots+spinach+salad+celery+lemon+apples---basically veggies left in fridge before going out of town. This juicing was time consuming and didn't produce a very delicious result. I only like to eat stuff if it's delicious. I don't think I'll get into juicing veggies. I liked the cooked collard greens much better. and I would have rather eaten the apples then have them in this juice. I froze the juice into 12 oz bottles. They'll come in handy when I'm in a hurry. Like next weekend when I'm only home for 24 hours. hmm, I wonder if they could make a decent soup broth. oh, I snacked on some frozen bananas while making the smoothies.

dinner: black blean salad and the collards from lunch. then ate frozen sweet corn for dessert. I ate way too much of the frozen sweet corn! it's like a popsicle. I have been overeating way too much lately. it's strange that I haven't gained weight. I think it just goes out the other end, but it's not healthy and it wastes food and money. I need to change my approach and wait until I'm hungry to eat. Ever since I've been trying this regular meals with no snacking, it makes me behave strangely. When I ate the Standard American Diet, I never really overate. I was overweight due to what I was eating, but I didn't pig out like I do now. It's weird that now I'm inclined to pig out and I'm still thin. Okay, tomorrow I'll try to just eat when I'm hungry...

July 29

Brekky: 1/2 visitor smoothie. grapefruit

Lunch: the usual this time of year: leftover beans&greens from yesterday; steamed broccoli, cauliflower carrots and new potatoes; corn on the cob + avocado butter. I had 3 pieces of corn! usually have 2 but there was an extra...it was all local and delicious (except the avocado). yum.

snack/dinner. dinner was one long snack. let's see, raw carrots & peas, some grapes, last of the beans&greens (1 cup), 1/2 musk melon, an apple. it was all good. the musk melon was really good, from a local farm. the apple was really good. those are hit and miss these days. I probably shouldn't get them this time of year since they come from so far away, but I want to make cabbage salad tomorrow so I bought some today.

It doesn't seem like too much food but I overate. I'm still in this weird indulgent phase. I stopped at the grocery store and almost bought a cookie. It attracted me because they were freshly made, plus there's the nostalgia factor. Then I thought, I don't even really like these cookies, and I don't like how I feel afterwards, and remember how chocolate affects me? oh yeah, I thought. so how about brazil nuts instead? (talking to myself is like talking to a child). I thought, okay--but then there weren't any brazil nuts. so I was fine and moved on. At least I'm being rational about it. I know if I indulge, where does it stop? do you ever get satisfied? no. it's better to stop before. but I'm still wondering, why am I wanting to to be indulgent? I've got some slightly stressful life issues going on but I've had those before. Maybe I should just think of something else to be indulgent about. I do have an idea though. I buy too much food, especially too much fruit. I shop every few days so I'm going to think about how much groceries you need on that time scale and ration it better. It will save money too, and make it easier to transport on my bike.

busy and overeating

It's been hectic the last week. I went on a trip, hosted a visitor, gave a sermon at church, and right after that went to the airport to pick up another visitor who will be here all week. All the traveling and visitors have been work-related so I'm working too. I've felt like splurging food-wise. I'm not sure what drives this. True, I've been feeling some stress and I'm sleep deprived. But it also seems to be part of a cycle where you eat well for a while and then want to splurge. And it's partly outside influence---being in close quarters with people who eat very SAD (Standard American Diet) food does influence me. So I'm not sure what the main reason is, or maybe it's just a combination of all those things. We went to a restaurant on Friday and I brought my own food but the restaurant had a lot of vegan options. I was wondering if maybe I should allow myself a nice splurge of vegan food at a restaurant. I have a $50 coupon for one restaurant that has a lot of vegan options. Friday night I drank a sip of wine from a very good bottle my visitor was drinking. It tasted good and I could feel the effect immediately and wasn't sure I liked it. plus I knew I'd feel yucky the next morning. So I didn't want more.

So for the last 3-4 days, I've been debating with myself about whether or not I want to have a planned splurge. I think it's okay since I haven't eaten unhealthy food in a few months, but do I want to? that is the real question. I don't feel so great after a splurge. In the meantime as I've been debating, and this is where I'm getting to after all this rambling, I've been overeating the fruit. I ate a whole watermelon this weekend. I ate some cherries and grapes at 11 pm last night. Okay, in the grand scheme of things, that's not so bad, but I don't feel so great. Too much sugar, even if it's fruit, makes a a little groggy the next morning. Just an observation. I hurt my foot on Saturday so don't plan to exercise much this week so I think I'll try to eat proper amounts of food this week. I'll try to get back to logging my meals too. This week's visitor is easy to host and he enjoys eating our food. He loves the avocado "butter" on the corn on the cob--says it's way better than real butter. Now there's an open-minded chap.

Anyway, the past few days I've been eating our usual kinds of food this time of year: fruit for brekky (cantaloupe, watermelon, or grapefruit) or smoothie (had one sat. morning), corn on the cob and veggies and leafy greens and beans at lunch, too much fruit at dinner along with leftover veggies, and not enough greens at dinner.

back home

Let's see if I can recount the last several days:

On Wednesday, we had our last breakfast and lunch at Dr. Fuhrman's Health Getaway. It was yummy of course. Then we took the shuttle to Miami and stayed in a hotel near the airport. Gail and I shared a can of VitaBeanaVegaMin soup. Gail informed me that that name is a take-off from an old "I Love Lucy" tv show.

On Thursday morning for breakfast I had two more cans of soup. I still had them leftover from my trip out, plus they gave us a free can at the Getaway. I also wanted to empty my suitcase a bit. Well, I'm so glad I ate two cans because after many delays, I arrived in Chicago at about 5:30 pm, about 10 hours after breakfast when you account for the time change. I bought an apple and banana and that satisfied me for a while. But I missed my connection so had to catch a bus home and didn't arrive until 9:30 pm. I was dreaming of banana walnut ice cream on the ride home. When I got home, I ate a bunch of carrots and a smoothie. I guess I wanted some greens more than the ice cream. I'm now getting the greens from my garden so will probably have this smoothie a lot.

Then on Friday morning I had my banana walnut ice cream. Oh, then I went grocery shopping and ate lots of delicious fruit---cherries, blackberries, and some brazil nuts. For lunch we had fruit salad (the usual strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and banana). Then for dinner I had a smoothie at a friend's house. They thought I was weird. I don't care.

Yesterday I wasn't home much, had a smoothie and cherries at brekky. Lunch was a big salad (lettuce, avocado, red bell pepper) with cashew-mango dressing, extremely yummy. At dinner I was at a barbeque and didn't make time to prepare food for myself. I nibbled on strawberries, spinach and tomatoes. I was still hungry when I got home so made a fruit and veggie platter (carrots, celery, apples, red bell pepper) which we dipped into the rest of the mango-cashew dressing. It was good.

Today I had a smoothie for brekky, and a half a cantaloupe and a kiwi. I finally had some time to cook something so made some carrot-lentil soup (from the Fuhrman recipe site: I used 2 cups red lentils, 3 sweet onions, and carrot juice made from 5 lbs of carrots); and cabbage salad and had that for lunch. For dinner, I kind of pigged out. I had more of the soup and salad, then an apricot, a kiwi, then made some cashew dip (cashews, water, date sugar blended up), and dipped a banana into that. It was yummy, but I ate a lot of cashews. I think I have a problem with sweet things triggering me to overeat. The soup is very sweet with the carrot juice, and I think it's a problem for me. So even though the Fuhrman plan has many delicious tasting soups and dressings and desserts, and I can handle them at the Getaway where the meal ends and the food is no longer available, when I'm at home, I don't handle them as well knowing I can just go to the refrigerator and eat them. So my food logs will probably return to less sweet and more boring things because they don't cause me to eat well past fullness. Plus, from what I'm learning about nutrition, it's harmful to spike your system with sugar and insulin, and I can definitely feel the spikes when I eat these sweet things. So, I'm sorry that my blog won't be full of delicious sweet things, like we ate at the Getaway.

june 17

busy day. brekky was half cantaloupe, some cherries, and a carrot.

lunch: it was really good but I ate too much, because I prepared too much and I didn't want them as leftovers. bad planning. I made veggies, greens, & seeds. I snacked on a carrot and some spinach while preparing, oh and on the berries as I made fruit salad for housemate. They were really good. California berries are really good right now.

dinner, out and about: smoothie, beans from a few days ago, a few pieces of watermelon at a dessert potluck. Then at home, some cherries, peas, carrots and spinach, and an orange. that was a bit too much again, oops. I have been working out a lot this week, but still. It's wasteful to overeat, and not healthy.

Speaking of overeating, let's talk about gas for a minute. People think beans give you gas. I've found this week that eating 1 cup of beans a day doesn't give me gas if I don't overeat. And not eating any beans, but overeating gives me gas. So gas is a good indication for me that I'm overeating. Housemate will say, "this is more than I wanted to know."

may 10

I strayed today...wah

brekky: smoothie

lunch: well, I was working all morning on our remodeling project at church. I didn't bring a lunch. It was 1 pm. I was tired and hungry. The woman who brought lunch for us is a really good cook. She made home-made pizza which I didn't eat because it had cheese on it and I'm vegan. No problem. Then she brought in a baked vegan sandwich. I forget what it's called --bread (white pizza dough) with tomato sauce and peppers and mushrooms baked inside. well, I couldn't resist. And I was touched by her generosity. It was good. But it went straight to my brain like sugar and made me hyper. After I left I wanted more so went to this place that makes really good vegan baked goods and got a chocolate chip cookie and a cupcake. I only ate half the cupcake, but the frosting was good--light and sweet. Then I buzzed for a few hours. I did a bunch more manual labor at home, hauling dirt around. Then I had a normal dinner, baked sweet potato and a bunch of fresh spinach from the garden and a carrot and orange. Now I have a tummy ache and I'm really thirsty. really thirsty. I drank 3 glasses of water and I'm still thirsty. There must have been a lot of salt in something I ate. When am I ever going to learn? Okay, if I were a SAD eater (Standard American Diet), this wouldn't be so bad. But it makes me feel like crap to eat this stuff now. I wish I would stop. Oh, here is an interesting article that relates to this. If you scroll to the top of the page to the "toolbox", you can print it out. It's about a book, "The End of Overeating," by David Kessler, former commissioner of the FDA. He talks about how addictive salt, fat and sugar are and how restaurants use that to their advantage by serving food loaded with these things.

apr. 26-27

Let's see, yesterday I was still at the conference in the morning, so had lentil soup, orange and kiwi for brekky.  Got home in time for lunch and had a smoothie.  Then I had a banana, and some more fruit and some brazil nuts, about an oz, and some peas.  I probably had more because I was overfull.  Dinner was a baked sweet potato and steamed broccoli and cauliflower.  I probably had some fruit too.  Then I had about 3-4 oz of brazil nuts while watching a movie.  I definitely overate at both lunch and dinner, well past the state of fullness.  

Today I had a smoothie for brekky.  Lunch was steamed kale and sweet potato sauce.  But again, I ate well past full.  I kept on eating peas and corn, and an apple and I made a baked beet and frozen blueberry pudding.  It wasn't that great so I'm not going to write it out as a recipe.  I also had some prunes.  Then I still felt like splurging so at dinner time I bought some vegan chocolate chip cookies from my co-op.  They are the relatively healthy kind with whole wheat flour and coconut and canola oil, but still, I had about 10 of them.  Blech.   So that was my dinner!   Well, I guess that satisfied my splurge urge.  

I hope I can get to sleep tonight after eating that chocolate and I hope I don't feel too crappy tomorrow.  oh boy...

apr. 23

today I didn't plan very well and it led to erratic eating that almost got out of control.  I had those silly fears about getting too hungry.  and I was indecisive about what I wanted.  I think that contributed to over-eating because if I know I want something really good for my next meal, I'll limit my current meal intake to a normal amount knowing that I'll have a great meal a few hours later.

At 6:30 am I worried I'd be too hungry during exercise class, so I ate 0.5 oz brazil nuts even though I wasn't hungry.  I'm not sure that is the best thing to eat before exercise class.  An easier to digest fruit would probably be better, like kiwi.   Anyway, then afterwards when I got home at 9:30, brekky was my usual morning smoothie.  

Then I needed to prepare a lunch quickly for the road.  I thought about salad but thought it would take too long to make dressing.  So I made a mango-spinach smoothie.  I thought, that's not going to be enough so I just started nibbling on things, berries, carrots and celery.   Then I forgot to bring my lunch with me!   which made me glad I nibbled.   

I got home at 4 pm and was hungry and ate my smoothie and then just kind of continued and I guess it became a long dinner.  I made a salad with an apple-sweet potato dressing, peas, red bell pepper.  I ate more peas, and then 2 bananas.  I finished off the berries from yesterday (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries--yummy).  Ate 0.5 oz brazil nuts (thankfully that did not lead to more).  And then I made some cherry ice cream---a bag of frozen cherries, a banana, and some juice blended up.  I ate the whole thing (it was good).  By now it was about 6:30 pm and I stopped.  I was overly full but not uncomfortably so, fortunately.

I'm sure I ate more calories than I needed but at least I stopped at some point.  And I ate more fruit than is normal.  I was discussing overeating with someone on the fuhrman forums and he asked me, "what are you thinking when you do that?" and I thought that was a really good question.  I'm not sure what the answer is.  I'm not sure I'm thinking at all.  I just want to eat and I tend to shut down my thinking.  

I've been thinking of trying to have 1 serving of grains a day.  I think I'd like another calorie source that isn't fruit and nuts.  Starchy veggies (sweet potatoes, potatoes, beets) are good for that too.