Nov. 13-15

I've been eating pretty healthy but too much of it at one time. Still working on that overeating thing. Let's see... oh yeah, I made a great hummus on Friday. Brekky was smoothy and some hummus and cooked veggies (broccoli, carrots, rutabaga, cauliflower); that kind of merged into lunch while preparing it. I had this for dinner too, along with a pomegranate and too many nuts (brazil, pistachio), and orange, and probably more, an apple? This doesn't seem like so much but I really ate too much of all of it at all meals, and then overate the nuts at dinner.

Yesterday, I snacked while making smoothies for housemate, mostly on grapes. I made her a really good cherry chocolate shake for brekky. I decided I don't want smoothies next week. I think want beans and greens for brekky next week. Then I made "healthy" cupcakes. I snacked on those while making them (mostly on the frosting, yum). Then I had 2 of them in the afternoon. I might post about this separately. I don't like how the chocolate and/or sweetness affected me through today. I followed that with a pomegranate which didn't taste nearly as good as usual. Shows what sweets do for your taste buds. I had some veggies and hummus and an apple and orange. I didn't get too full but still probably overate.

Today I had a pomegranate for late brekky, hummus and veggies for lunch (ate too much as usual). I don't know what dinner will be, maybe I'll splurge on another pomegranate, for fun. I don't think I'll be very hungry after the hummus.

Chocolate Cupcakes!

I am normally a lousy baker. Yet today, not only did I bake something good, but I invented the recipe, and it worked the first time! That's just not how the world is supposed to work. I used some Fuhrman recipes as ideas, but those recipes are more complicated and make larger batches than I want. I didn't write down what I did so exact measurements are uncertain. When I make these again, I'll update the recipe. Here's a picture, showing a 1-cup measuring cup for scale. These are small cupcakes, which is good!

Ingredients for the cake batter:

1 large carrot, peeled and cut into big pieces

1 medium beet, peeled and cut into big pieces

~7 medjool dates (remove pits) (I don't recall exactly how many I used)

1 cup regular oats or oat flour (maybe only 3/4 cup if flour?)

1/2 cup frozen sweet cherries

3-4 Tbsp Dr. Fuhrman's cocoa (I don't recall exactly how many I used)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1.5 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup raw cashews

1/3 cup chopped walnuts

Ingredients for frosting:

1/3 cup raw cashews (don't recall exactly)

2/3 cup raw macadamia nuts (don't recall exactly)

~7 medjool dates (don't recall exactly)

1/2-1 cup water

1 Tbsp shredded coconut (unsweetened) (or was it 2 Tbsp?)

3 Tbsp cocoa powder (don't recall exactly)

1/2 tsp vanilla

Okay, here's what I did. I recently got a vita-mix 5200 delux blender which I love. It has a dry-blade container. I used that to turn the oats into flour. You can just use oat flour or any other flour you prefer. I'm not sure what 1 cup of oats converts to in flour--it might be 3/4 cup. It doesn't really matter because you'll just add enough water to get the appropriate batter thickness.

Now blend the carrot, beet, dates, cherries, chocolate, cashews, vanilla, and ~1/2 cup water until smooth. Taste it for sweetness. If it needs more, now is the time to add more dates so you can blend them until smooth. Add the flour, baking soda and powder; blend some more (doesn't take much) and add water as needed to get a normal cupcake batter consistency (sorry if you don't know what that is. it's kind of thick but not too thick). If it needs more chocolate flavor, add more cocoa. Add the walnuts and pulse until they are just mixed, not pulverized.

Pour the batter into cupcake wrappers in a cupcake pan. This fit perfectly into a 12-cupcake pan (I can't believe how perfectly this experiment went). Bake at 350 F for 30 minutes. Turn off the oven. I let it sit in the oven for another 30 minutes because I really had no idea if it was done. So maybe it could be baked for 40 minutes, and then taken out to cool. What I did worked perfectly (somehow).

To make the frosting, combine the ingredients in the blender and blend until very smooth--just keep that blender going--it will even get warm. You can start with fewer dates and cocoa and add to taste. Start with less water and add as needed for the right consistency. I refrigerated this to let it cool (and thicken some more).

I went off to yoga class while the cupcakes and frosting cooled. When I got home there was one missing. Housemate is usually more disciplined than me so I thought that was hilarious--she didn't even wait for the frosting. I frosted them and I ate 2 and housemate had her second. Housemate really liked them. This is impressive because she normally prefers m&ms and chocolate bars, the really sweet stuff.

I have to say though, I do not think this is very healthy, and it should be reserved for special treats. Dr. Fuhrman says that when you grind up whole grains into flour, it becomes a processed food. It has a higher glycemic index and gets absorbed more readily, affecting your blood sugar. I got a buzz from the chocolate and concentrated sweet (and probably the flour too). Even though the dates aren't refined sugar, they still affect you when you eat a bunch of them. I snacked while preparing it (especially on the frosting! gotta clean out that blender container!), and then had 2 of the cupcakes. They are small but still had a big effect on me. When you get a buzz from eating something, it's acting like a drug. I still feel the effects. I wonder how I'll feel tomorrow. I gave 4 cupcakes to housemate, and froze mine. I may have to donate mine to housemate out of fear that I will misbehave.

Even though this should only be eaten on special occasions, it's good to know I have a recipe I can turn to if I crave a cupcake. And it smelled good. I think the best thing about baked goods is the smell.

Nov. 12

brekky: smoothie; beans & brussels sprouts

lunch: was fixing housemate and collaborator lunch, ended up nibbling on their food, plus an apple even though I wasn't hungry, so I should have not done that. I probably ended up have a bowl's worth of food--it was a medley of vegetables (potato, corn, peas, carrots, green beans, beans, edamame, ground macadamia nuts).

dinner: delicious pomegranate. snacked while preparing cabbage salad. then ate a bowl or two of that and a bowl of beans. I believe I overate. Boy is that cabbage salad ever good. wowsa. I added currants and updated the recipe because I think this is a good addition.

greens, beans, and beet sauce

Ingredients:

a bunch of collard greens and/or kale or other leafy green vegetable

1-2 cups beans

1 medium to large beet

2 Tbsp sesame seeds

1/2 leek or onion

1 Tbsp blueberry vinegar

chop and steam the greens. I cook for 3 minutes in the pressure cooker, or 20 minutes on the stove (30 minutes for collards). Chop and steam the beet, and leek/onion. Combine the beet, leek/onion, seeds and vinegar in the food processor and blend until smooth. Combine everything in a big bowl. Yum. This was really good with red beans cooked in carrot juice. But it's probably good with these beans too.

Nov. 10 & 11

These were good days. Let's see, yesterday I was gone from 8 am until 11 pm so brought my brekky and dinner with me. Brekky was smoothie, beans, and carrots. Actually that was lunch. I had a long yoga class, then went to campus, and went out to lunch with a group where I ate my brekky. I made a new batch of red (kidney) beans with carrot juice and onion, that's all, and it was soooo good. This is a great combination. Dinner was a gigantic salad and a pomegranate. It took me 45 minutes to eat it and I still felt rushed. I need to reserve an hour to eat this meal!

Today's brekky was same as yesterday, smoothie, beans and carrot. Dinner was a new beans, greens, & seeds recipe that was oh so yummy. I guess I'll call it greens, beans and beet sauce. I also had a fabulous pomegranate, an orange and a carrot, and 6 brazil nuts (yum). I think I overate on the greens and beet sauce, because I prepared too much and already started preparing tomorrow's food so didn't want leftovers (bad planning). We'll see if I'm hungry at brekky tomorrow. That's the test of whether I ate too much.

Nov. 9 food

Today was a good day. I was hungry at breakfast time, which is a sign I didn't overeat yesterday, so that's good! I eat a late brekky after exercising and 3-4 hours after waking up. So I should be hungry by then.

Brekky was my usual smoothie and beans, at 10 am. This seems to be my pattern right now. It's already prepared so I can eat it right when I get home.

Lunch was a snack of carrots and celery while preparing lunch for house mate. That was actually good to have because I had a lot of work to do and lasted until 6 pm for dinner.

Dinner was a delicious pomegranate to start off with. I'm planning to have one every day this week. Yum! How could I not discover this before? Then I had lots of collard greens and kale, steamed in the pressure cooker with a chopped beet and leek. I added ground sunflower, pumpkin and hemp seed and a Tbsp of vinegar. It was good. I ate an orange for dessert while making juice for house mate. I wasn't hungry but it was good. Plus I won't be eating brekky until noon tomorrow! So I don't mind being a little extra full right now. But I don't feel overly full.

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.