Eat to Live = Nutrient Dense Foods

The foods featured in this eating plan are unrefined, nutrient dense foods that contain maximun nutrients per calorie. Foods such as leafy greens, vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts and seeds are the backbone of this way of eating. Other foods such as dairy, meat, fats salts and sugar are discarded or allowed in limited quantities only.

Eating for health, rather than for fun is something I needed to work on. While I may love to eat certain foods such as icecreams, cakes, chocolates and hot chips, the aftermath of eating these foods is quite frankly, not worth the discomfort.

Asthma, headaches/migraines, obesity, lethagy, depression are all made worse by a bad diet. Now having changed my basic foods, I find I get fewer bouts of depression and headaches. Dairy was always a trigger for my breathing difficulties and I can only eat these products in limited quantities, if at all.

Luckily for me I changed to a vegetarian diet over 20 years ago. This was funny because I had always been a big meat eater and a avoided vegetables at all cost. How things have changed. I now love green veggies and cannot tolerate the smell of meat cooking. Just contemplating eating the greasy flesh makes my stomach churn.

Fruit is by far my favourite food ever. I love it fresh and raw. The only fruit that's improved by cooking, in my opinion are apples, laden with spices. Cooked in this way, they are a taste of Heaven on Earth.

Beans presented a much bigger problem. After following a raw food diet for some time, I could not get my head around eating large quantities of beans. But time and practise helps with all things. Now I quite look forward to a plate of bean stew, or soup. Given that the weather has been cold here lately, beans have played an important part in my diet. As the days get warmer, I guess I will eat more salads. My favourite salad features avocado and is topped with grilled portobello mushrooms. this was my one big cheat when I was a raw fooder. No matter what the weather was like, I would always feel warm and cheered after eating this combination. Other bean products like as tofu and soy milk, are ok in limited amounts.

The huge amounts of leafy greens required on this diet is rather alarming. I mean, how can I eat a pound of cooked greens as well as a pound of raw ones? I would have to hire an extra stomach from somewhere, lol. Nevertheless, I continue to try to reach at least part of that total.

Nuts and seeds, needed for the goodness of their omega 3 fatty acids, are something I struggle with. Even soaked, they still present problems with my digestion. One thing I have noticed with being Seriously Sixty, is that I cannot take the liberties with food that I once took. I am prone to constipation and I have to be somewhat careful when it comes to eating large quantities of nuts.

This plan also realises that we live in the real world, where copious amounts of food is ever present and much of it is great tasting junk. So allowing 10% of total daily foods to come from non-recommended sources, makes life interesting. Most of the time I don't want the built in cheat, but it is nice to be able to indulge in my own addiction, peanut butter. Sometimes I add in some brown rice to my dishes, but only 1/2 a cupful at a time. This adds the fibre I need to help my sluggish digestion.

I wonder if I am alone in this, but I think, study, read so much about food and I spend very little time in actually eating it. Now that really is food for thought.

* Includes other non-starchy vegetables like tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms etc.