OK Now the week long Royal Show is over for another year, I can finally get back on track. Yesterday I went to the markets and stocked up on mushrooms, greens, beets and sweet potatoes. I still have some leftover pumpkin lentil soup in the fridge and washed lettuce leaves in the salad spinner. Today it's going to be oats for breakfast, a green smoothie for lunch and the green machine and salad for tea. I want to make sure I eat enough to keep me satisfied all day long. I also need to drink plenty of water to flush the salt that I ingested during the week, out of my system.
I am eating my porrige as I am typing this and I laughed as I added two teaspoons of brown sugar. I no longer add salt ot butter, but I am darned if I am giving up my brown sugar!
It's funny but I cannot buy kale here in Perth. it seems we are too sophisticated to eat such a rustic vegetable. The greenest green I can find is tatsoi. I occasionally get lucky and get a bunch at a local gourmet greengrocer in Angelo Street, South Perth. This tiny shop is filled to the brim with Italian deli lines and great fruit and vegetables. They only stock top quality produce at top quality prices.
WHERE IS EVERYONE?
I have logged on to the Eat To Live forums and the Fat Free Vegan Forum and nobody is posting anything. What is happening in the USA? Maybe it's the change of season that is bringing about this great cyber silence. One thing is for sure, it is easier to follow the ETL guidelines in Summer, than it is in the cooler months. For someone wanting to experience a different taste experience, Nicole (full of veggies) has posted her famous pumpkin smoothie in time for the Fall pumpkin crop. I am going to try this one day as a desert rather than a smoothie. Thanks for the inspiration Nicole.
Now I am off to prewash my greens, so that they are ready to use in a flash. I like these labour saving ideas as they help me to whip up a meal in minutes, rather than hours as used to be the case. When I am hungry I want food almost instantly and that is when I am most vulnerable and likely to reach for the junk instead of food.
Oh, and after a week of eating a small amount of SAD foods, my weight stayed the same, 55 kilos (121 pounds) yippee!
Showing posts with label Eat to live. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eat to live. Show all posts
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Monday, September 24, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Why I Eat To Live?
Most people think I am obsessed with eating to control my weight. Well they actually think that I obsessed full stop! However they completely miss the point that by eating healthily, I have controlled tha asthma that has plagued me since I had the first attack at the tender age of fourteen months. During my teens I spent an average of one week per month in bed unable to breathe enough to speak or walk. It did not help that my mother was a heavy smoker either. This was in the 1950s and then no one linked smoking with health problems. It was not until 1986 when I first started eating an almost completely plant based diet, that I finally beat the onset of severe episodes. However no matter how hard I tried, I still have to take some pretty serious medication to control the attacks. On the brighter side, I have not been hospitalised for asthma since 1986.
Now I would dearly love to cut out the dependence on steriod inhalers. Can this be done? Especially since I have scarred lungs from all that wheezing over the decades. I truly believe that if anything can do this, it is a nutrient dense eating plan and for me that plan is Eat To Live
Now I would dearly love to cut out the dependence on steriod inhalers. Can this be done? Especially since I have scarred lungs from all that wheezing over the decades. I truly believe that if anything can do this, it is a nutrient dense eating plan and for me that plan is Eat To Live
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