hotpot chili

I made this in my hotel tonight and thought it was very good. I got this recipe idea from Lynne on the Fuhrman forums, especially the pineapple addition. Hers has more ingredients for a bigger batch. This has to fit into a hot pot so I cut out the mushrooms and onions. Feel free to add those in too.

Ingredients:

1 green bell pepper

1 shredded carrot

1 small potato (optional, I just had one that needed eating)

1 16 oz can tomatoes

1 can red kidney beans

4-8 oz pineapple (8 oz is to much for most people but I love pineapple)

1-3 tsp chili powder

other spices you might like (I added some cumin, fines herbs, and pumpkin pie spice)

Cut the bell pepper, carrot, and potato into small pieces so it will cook faster. Add everything to the hot pot but the pineapple and and beans, and cook for 20 minutes on medium setting. Add the beans, cook some more. Add the pineapple. Cook until tender, probably 30 minutes total.

Here's a picture after dishing out 2 bowls:

more thoughts on Dr. Fuhrman's Life Plan

I'm still thinking about incorporating Dr. Fuhrman's Life Plan, where only 90% of your calories need to include his healthy foods, and 10% can be off-plan. I think I still want to avoid sugar and refined grains as much as possible because I don't like how they affect me. And I think it's easier for me to just stay on plan all the time rather than keep track of when I'm off it. So I think overall I will probably follow the 100% plan, but there's three areas where I'll allow myself to relax:

1) If I eat more nuts than I'm supposed to, let those count as the 10%. The 10% amounts to 1000 calories a week. That can be some fun overindulgence. Fresh-ground peanut butter can fall in this category (I like it with a banana). It's not as healthy as raw nuts, but Dr. Fuhrman doesn't forbid it.

2) Every few months when I get a cupcake craving, just go for it, eat one, and then stop there and don't worry about it.

3) Every few months if I find myself at a restaurant and there is some reason I can't just be my usual crazy self and bring my own food, or maybe I really want to eat the food there, just go ahead and do it, and don't eat too much of it, and don't worry about it.

That sounds like a pretty good Life Plan for me.

more thoughts on fasting

I was studying my nutrition book tonight and just happen to get to the place where it discusses Feeding and Fasting (by coincidence, this is 3 days after I tried a fast). The first 4 hours after eating is the Absorptive State, where dietary nutrients are absorbed. Glucose is the body's major source of energy.

Then from 4-24 hours is the Postabsorptive State. Here dietary nutrients are no longer absorbed. The body's source of energy is supplied by the breakdown of store energy, primarily glycogen supplied by the liver (about 75% of the glucose is supplied this way). Also some fat is burned. "Some scientists believe that maintaining the human body in the postabsorptive state may have health benefits." This is based on studies of monkeys and rats that show that calorie restricted (not starved) animals live longer, and look younger and healthier at a given age than the normally fed animals.

From 24 hours to about 1 week is the Acute Starvation stage. Here I think body fat supplies most of the energy, but muscles (lean tissue) also contribute to the production of glucose (by supplying amino acids, lactate, and glycerol). Ketosis also starts up. This is where the muscles, brain and kidneys can convert fatty acids and some amino acids to glucose.

Then you go into Prolonged Starvation, where the body relies on fat and ketones for energy.

During my 48 hour fast, The first 36 hours were fine. There were 2 night's sleep in there so lots of rest. I felt much weaker after that. That must have been when the liver-stored glycogen ran out, and the Acute Starvation phase started. I didn't enjoy this phase and can't say I have any interest in repeating it, unless I have some health reason and am in a position to completely rest during the fast. My muscles felt tired for a day after I started eating. They must have been depleted of energy even 24 hours after I started eating. Also I wonder if I lost lean muscle mass. I don't want to do that. I guess I'll have to reread Dr. Fuhrman's fasting book. I don't recall what the benefits of fasting for more than 24 hours are if you are healthy. I can see where 12-24 hour fasts are probably beneficial, and doing a daily fast between dinner and breakfast of, say 15 hours, is probably beneficial. That sounds good enough for me.

Oct. 3

Now the business portion of my trip is done and I'm on vacation. yea!

We had brekky at the B&B. Today I didn't want the home-made peach cobbler and blueberry bars because I didn't want the sugar and probable butter (not vegan). I was satisfied to eat the very nice fruit (strawberries, bananas, pears, and more) topped with my sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. I also finished the can of soup I had opened yesterday so it wouldn't go bad or to waste. That was good.

Lunch was 2 carrots, an apple, and lots of almonds, walnuts and raisins that my friend Gail brought (no salt). We went mountain biking so I didn't worry if I ate a few more nuts and raisins than normal.

Dinner: 2 carrots, a salad with lettuce greens, sweet peas from a can, a green pepper from our garden, and some orange vinegar. okay, not gourmet, but I was happy eating it. Travel companion liked it too. Dessert was an orange.

Comment on the organic vs concentional produce: I find that organic carrots taste so much better than conventional. Fortunately, the grocery store we stopped at had organic carrots and they are really good. (another comment: I love carrots). I also got organic apples and they were good too. I was pleasantly surprised since the store had very little organic produce. Fortunately the salad greens are organic too. Tomorrow's berries are conventional (blueberries, raspberries), as are the oranges.

Oct. 2

Today I tried out the "Life Plan" where 10% of your calories can be off Dr. Fuhrman's eating plan. So at breakfast at my lovely B&B, I decided to try a little bit of the homemade fruit crisp and granola. Well, the fruit crisp tasted like butter which meant it wasn't vegan, so I didn't like that I ate a few bites of that. Also, I don't know if I want to get back into eating sugar. I don't like how it affects me. The granola was good and didn't seem to have too much sugar or oil. I didn't have much of it. I think tomorrow I'll just eat the fresh fruit (which was very good today) and top it with my own raw sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

Lunch was at a brewery where there were no healthy options. I brought some soup in a small container and used that to dip the pieces of my salad I was willing to eat. I also ate an apple and orange I had brought. That was plenty.

Dinner was a really big and good salad at a restaurant that had a few vegan options. The salad probably had more salt and oil than optimal but it was pretty good. I probably could have eaten half of it and been satisfied. Dessert was a delicious vegan four-berry crisp, which we shared 3 ways. That was good. It didn't taste too sweet either and was mostly berries (probably a lot of sugar though).

I bet more than 10% of my calories were unhealthy today. How do you know? It seems like work to keep track. I suppose you could plan to stay on-plan except for one meal out per week. That would be relatively easy to keep track of. In some ways, though, I think it would be easier to be an extremist (100% on plan). My salad was good, but not as good (to me) as the ones I make at home. In this case I was being treated by my hosts, in exchange for giving a talk this afternoon, so it was convenient that I obliged them and ate the food. I guess the 10% rule was good for tonight's situation. I'm not in this situation often so it could be a 1% rule if I wanted.

Dr. Fuhrman's Life Plan

I was briefly listening to Dr. Fuhrman's Eat to Live audio tape (studying for my Nutritional Excellence Trainer certificate), and was reminded of the Life Plan, the plan you can follow when you are healthy and at your ideal weight, which is the situation I am fortunate to be in. So in the Life Plan, Dr. Fuhrman says you only need to eat 90% of your calories as healthy food. The other 10% can be whatever you want. He says the typical woman should eat 1500 calories a day, and the typical male 2000. So that means I can eat 150 calories of unhealthy food per day, or 1000 calories per week. Now that's a fair amount. My unhealthy obsession is still the cupcake. There is this restaurant in my town that sells what look to be really good cupcakes. They are small. I can find out how many calories they have but I bet it's less than 500 a piece. So I could eat a cupcake (or two) a week! Or go to a restaurant and eat 1000 calories once a week. Maybe I should try this out. Then I wouldn't get into that weird psychology where you say, oh I want to splurge today and go back to eating healthy tomorrow, and then you eat a whole bunch of unhealthy stuff because it will be forbidden tomorrow, instead of just eating one little cupcake.

Oh, Dr. Fuhrman suggests a good way to track your 10% off-plan calories. Write it in your calendar. Then you know how many days you have left until you earn your next splurge. He also says that after a while you probably won't even want this stuff. But as long as you know it's not forbidden, you won't be as likely to binge when you go offplan (thinking, okay, I'll start over tomorrow but in that case I'd better eat all the good stuff I missed).

Fasting review

Today I ended my fast at 4 pm. That was about 48 hours after starting. I was definitely more tired and low-energy today. I was tired driving so didn't think that was so safe (I'm on a road-trip with a companion). I only drove 2 hours, and that was after working 2 hours, so I needed a nap. After driving I napped and felt fine, so I could have worked it out with better planning. Still, I'm not sure you should drive after fasting more than one day. Driving on day 1 seems fine.

After settling into our B&B, I decided it would be good to end the fast. I was tired and weak, and wanted to get some food in my body so I'd have energy tomorrow. I didn't want to start breaking the fast tomorrow when I'll need energy right away. Plus I need to eat more tomorrow and get even more energy for mountain biking on Sat. For breaking the fast, Dr. Fuhrman recommends steamed zucchini or other easy-to-digest vegetables. Well, I didn't have the energy to go out and get veggies to steam (in the microwave), so I just ate an apple. It's not like I fasted for 10 days, and need to learn to digest again. It was just 2 days. A few hours later I had half a can of soup: Dr. Fuhrman's Morrocan chickpea soup. Beans aren't the easiest thing to digest, but it was a small amount and I feel fine. I'm not eating again until breakfast so there will be plenty of time to digest the beans. Then I think my options at breakfast will be oatmeal and fruit. Lunch and dinner will probably just be fruit or salad, because I'll be at restaurants. But I'll bring another can of soup and eat that at the office if I need to. Then tomorrow night, I plan to go to the grocery store to get food for the weekend. If I need to eat then, I will.

Oh, so what do I think of fasting? I don't know. One day is easy. Two days is kind of painful for me. I don't like feeling tired and weak. You definitely have to stay home and do nothing after day 1. I could see fasting from 6 pm one day to 7 am 1.5 days later, so 37 hours. That feels good and cleansing I guess, and doesn't impact my life too much. I could see skipping meals on travel days when you are just sitting on airplanes or in the car and not doing much, and there is no good food to eat anyway (unless I bring it myself). I could see skipping meals when you are out and about and there is no good food to eat anyway (unless I bring it myself). So I could see incorporating shorter fasts when it's inconvenient to eat anyway. That means you can get away with less planning. But if I'm doing something physically active, I need to bring food.