some lessons learned while traveling

Progress:

Okay, I’ve screwed up a fair bit on my trip, before and during (mainly before, see previous posts).  However, I think it's worth pointing out all the progress I’ve made in my evolution to being a healthy eater.  In my Standard American Diet past, vacation road trips have always been even worse than at home.   Road trips meant driving long distances while eating home-made chocolate chip cookies, potato chips, and gorp made from peanuts, raisins, and m&ms. That and coffee would keep me awake while we put on the miles.  Then we’d still have meals at restaurants.  Now I don't desire any of that and don't pine over the restaurant food I'm not eating--it doesn't look appealing to me.  That's progress!   I’ve just got a few remnant habits to throw off and I sometimes stumble as I encounter them.  The stumbling points on this trip were 1) feeling like I needed a treat like the cookies and the cherry essene.  To be honest, both of these have squeezed out things I like better. I finally got to eat the soup and spinach I brought tonight.  2) feeling like I need a snack to stay awake while driving. My snacks have just been celery and carrots so healthy, but it is not necessarily to eat all the time. I do feel better when I give my digestion several hours in between meals, just as Fuhrman says. And there’s two of us so we can switch drivers when we get tired. 3)  Travel-mate continues to eat her favorite snack foods: cookies, chips, pretzels, and gorp.  A tiny part of me saw her eating cookies last night and I think made me a little weak when I saw the peanut butter.  For the most part though, I don't wish I were partaking in any of that SAD food, so it is progress.   In a way, I am vicariously enjoying the food through travel-mate without having to suffer the consequences.  I feel guilty about that because I don't want her health to suffer.  

Discipline:

Today's enjoyable pudding reminded me that there are some foods that I don’t want to give up altogether, like nuts and occasional dried fruit (though chocolate is one I do need to give up).  So I have to regulate them so I can enjoy them as treats occasionally. One thing I try to avoid in my life is discipline. I have a negative reaction to discipline due to some personal reasons. But, it’s time to get over that. If I exercised a little discipline then I could have an occasional treat.  Some forbidden foods are necessary—the ones that act like drugs on my body and cause cancer and heart disease. But I don’t want to forbid too much. So I think I just need to come up with ways to make it easier to be disciplined. For example, when I make a delicious sorbet or ice cream, it usually makes 2 servings. So, knowing my weaknesses, I can make them when I know there will be one other person to help me eat them. Similarly for some of the other treats. Only make pie or cookies for big gatherings or plan to give away most. There are two reasons for this. 1) If my attempt at discipline doesn’t succeeed, I will overindulge. 2) even if my attempt at discipline does succeed, I will have to be eating this stuff for a few days and crowding out other stuff that, again, I like better. I really only want one helping of these treats usually (the rational part of me, I mean).

mar. 25 food

This morning we stopped at the flagship Whole Foods store in Austin TX.  It is impressive.  It occupies an entire block.  Here's me dwarfed by it:

It was pretty fun, I have to admit.  They had a raw vegan bar and I decided I was allowed a treat.  It was a chocolate pudding with a nut crust, and it was a nice small serving.  All the ingredients were "allowed" (no oil, salt, okay some agave nectar but it was a treat).    Then I was going to get a juice at the juice bar but the juicer was broken.  Travel-mate got a smoothie and I was asking the smoothie-maker what's a good one and she didn't have an opinion, so I decided oh well, I don't need one since I have my pudding.  Sensing the loss of a sale she suggested one that a lot of people get that's not on the menu.  I don't recall what it was.  It has acai (?) berries in it which are supposed to be one of those wonder-foods.  I said, okay, I'll get it.  And it was excellent.  I'm glad I got it.  So that was my brekky:  the pudding and the smoothie.  more than enough but enjoyable.  The only problem was that the chocolate affected me.   I don't enjoy caffeine buzzes anymore.  I buzzed for 7 hours, then was tired.   So I guess chocolate will have to go off my list of allowed foods.  It's a bit sad but not heartbreaking.  Really, the smoothie was as good or better.  So I think I can survive with other treats besides chocolate.

For lunch we had food from the Whole Foods salad bars.  Mine was salad greens, fruit, peas and edamame:

Travel-mate had roasted potatoes (super salty!), some rice dishes, peas and corn:

For dinner, I finally started eating my now-thawed split pea and carrot soup (from the fuhrman forums, was in my freezer for a few weeks), over spinach.  yummy.  I'll have the rest of that for brekky tomorrow.  and I had some carrots and celery and an apple and a mango (okay, should have held off on the mango).

Tomorrow we start camping for 4 nights, so no blogging.  I got tons of good food from Whole foods.  I'm planning to make "Gorgeous garlic greens soup" from Compassionate Cooks (you have to pay $5 to get the recipe packet).  and a corn chowder if that runs out (with kale, potatoes, onions, corn, soy milk).  I forgot that recipe so will just make it up.   I will have salads and fruit for brekky until they run out.  then I'll figure something out.  we have lots of canned beans and veggies and potatoes and onions, etc.  I forgot to get oranges but have apples and banana.

mar. 24 food

brekky:  banana, arugula+orange bell pepper+d'angou pear vinegar.  it was early, wasn't that hungry.

snack:  carrots and celery

lunch:  fruit salad (strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, banana), cabbage salad.  very good.

snack that turned into dinner because we were so late:  carrots and celery, apple, banana, brazil nuts, peanuts, peanut butter (a bit too much).

mar. 24 food

Start of vacation road trip.  

Brekky:  wasn't hungry.  (see yesterday's post).  Drank some juice from the fridge to finish it off.

Lunch:  this was really good.  yesterday I was just cooking up vegetables and I steamed brussels sprouts and asparagus.  added some D'angou  pear vinegar and no-salt seasoning and put in a tupperware bowl.  It went into the ice chest this morning and I just ate it cold for lunch (you call those things salads!).   it was really good!    Also made a huge batch of cabbage salad yesterday (half a cabbage left in the fridge).  had some of that too.

Dinner:  cabbage salad, apple, banana.  1/2 oz brazil nuts, 1/2 oz pumpkin seeds.  house mate had broccoli and cauliflower that I cooked up yesterday.  she doesn't like it cold so didn't have it for lunch.

I didn't eat a lot today but that's because I ate so much yesterday.   It will probably be a few days before I resume normal hunger patterns.   It's embarrassing to admit I sometimes can't control my eating.   I didn't used to have this problem.  I just can't handle concentrated sugar anymore I guess...?

mar 23 food

I was a bad veganbarbie yesterday (it's mar. 24 now).   I was preparing food for my vacation, and decided to make some (healthy) banana-raisin-oatmeal cookies from leangreenmama's blog.   She warned at the end, avoid this recipe if raisins are a trigger food.  Boy was she right.   I ate them all!   (I wish I didn't have to confess this but I'm trying to be honest about failures as well as successes).   I'm not even that big of a fan of these kinds of cookies.  They are just okay to me.   It's funny, I felt a splurge coming on on Friday.  On Saturday I splurged on the red beans and rice, and on Sunday, on these cookies.   So here's my food log for yesterday:

Brekky: smoothie

Lunch:  red beans and rice, kale and sweet potato sauce (without the nuts--it's better with the nuts but I wasn't hungry enough)

afternoon splurge:  entire batch of cookies (1 cup oats, 2/3 cup raisins, 2 large bananas, 2 oz walnuts).  

Late Dinner:  believe it or not, I still ate.  I was cooking all the food so as not to waste it so had a baked sweet potato and 2 baked beets.

I was uncomfortably full at bedtime.   Still full when I woke in the morning.   Oh, and here's the other funny thing:  I had just posted on the Fuhrman forums that using this cron-o-meter program to track my calories keeps me in line.  I jinxed myself!   oh well, practice makes perfect, time to get back on the horse.  sigh.

mar 21

Today I pigged out.  I don't feel guilty about it but I do feel more full than I'm comfortable with.  

Brekky:  smoothie, 0.5 oz brazil nuts, apple.

Lunch:  small apple.  3 large bowls of red beans and rice.  Three bowls!   It was good and I couldn't stop...this is a new recipe I made up this morning and I like it a lot.   very easy too.  and somehow I managed to eat a couple of small carrots too.

snack:  yes, a snack after all that.  well, I made cherry essene and wanted to try it.  had 2 servings.  It was good.  I'm going to take it on vacation.

Dinner:  guess what, I wasn't hungry!  I had a couple of small carrots, and some peas and corn.  

Nutritional info:  Calories 1905, protein 69 g (13%), carbs 365 (73%), fat 31 g (15%).

I should have done some weight lifting with all that protein I ate.  

 

cherry essene

I pretty much followed strix's instructions but I'm putting them here for easy reference.  well, I changed it a bit.

Ingredients:

1 cup kamut.  soak overnight, then sprout (seems to only take a day + a few hours) (after soaking and sprouting, it was closer to two cups).

1/4 cup dried cherries

1/4 cup raisins  (strix used 1/2 cup cherries but mine aren't that sweet so I split it with raisins)

1/4 cup walnuts

2 tsp vanilla

some freshly grated nutmeg

Soak the cherries and raisins in 1/3 cup water.   Then blend everything in the blender.  I added the soaking water too which helped it blend.  It takes a while to get the blender to start mixing it all--lots of smashing with the plunger.  But then you get a nice smooth batter.  Spread it on parchment paper on a big pan.  I baked it at 250 F for about 45 minutes then let it sit in the oven for another 30 minutes while I ran to the hardware store (I love the hardware store--those guys are so helpful!).  So alternatively I might have cooked it for 60 minutes if I were at home to watch it.  But this worked fine.  Oh, if you have a dehydrator, that's probably better and then you can keep this "raw", but I don't have requirements for raw (feel free to convince me otherwise).

Here's the batter spread out:

After it baked and cooled, I cut it into 11 pieces (servings).  

It wasn't super-sweet but I think it was just right, a nice flavor.  

Nutritional info per serving:  Calories 105, protein 3g (10%), carbs 19g (71%), fat 2g (19%)