5/1/2018 1 Comment Breaking Through + a Recipe!
I've been stuck for a minute, losing and regaining the same pound over and over. So, since Dani was away, I really cleaned up my eating and focused more on fresh greens and keeping the carbs as low as I could. I also cut back on dairy this week. And, as of today, I'm down 3.5 pounds from my weigh in last week.
I've added a couple of things to my daily regimen: Amazing Grass drinks and tulsi tea. Both are supposed to support healthy cholesterol levels and give good support to metabolic function. While the Amazing Grass isn't so good that I'll swap out gin for it, it's tolerable. I started with the seven sample pack with a shaker cup from Amazon.
The seven flavors I received were: Detox and Cleanse, Original, Chocolate, Sweet Berry, Lemon-lime Energy, Berry, and Watermelon Energy.
So far, the one I liked best has been the Detox and Cleanse, but I'm not sure if that's really because it was best or if it's because it was the first one I tried and I was so surprised it wasn't gross. The chocolate smelled so great that I put it in with unsweetened coconut milk, but I think I'd probably prefer it with just water. I also got the shaker with the samples of their vegan protein powders, and I will probably try those next week. I was hoping for a sample of the pineapple lemongrass flavor, but no luck. So, I ordered a 15 packet box today. We'll see how that goes. I also added tulsi rose tea.
This was the first time I tried Davidson's, and it is quite lemony and has more chamomile flavor than the Organic India I usually buy, but it's delicious. I make a quart of concentrated tea that I keep in the fridge and that's what I drink in the daytime. Tulsi has so many good properties, and I definitely stay hydrated drinking this.
As we keep going, I want to do more vegetarian meals. I remembered I had a 1/2 pound of mushrooms that needed to be used, so I reached for my trusty Sunset Vegetarian Cookbook and made some swaps to the Filled Pancake recipe to drive the carb count down. Filled Pancake (6 servings) 5 Tbs unsalted butter (cut in half) 8 ounces of mushrooms, sliced 1 small onion, diced 4 large eggs, beaten 1 cup almond flour (I use Bob's super fine) 1 cup heavy cream (I use Land o' Lakes extra creamy, which lists 0 carbs per serving) 1 tsp dried basil 1/4 tsp black pepper 1/4 tsp nutmeg 3/4 tsp salt 1/3 cup parmesan cheese, grated Preheat oven to 425. Melt 1/2 of the butter in a 10 inch oven friendly skillet. Add onion and mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are just starting to brown. Add the basil, pepper, nutmeg, and salt and the other 1/2 of the butter and put in the oven until the butter is melted and bubbly. Whip the four eggs with a hand mixer or in a blender until well beaten and slowly add cream. Slowly add the almond flour. Take out the pan, pour in the batter, and sprinkle the parmesan cheese on top. Bake for 25 minutes. This is great served with a salad. I got six servings out of this one. I'm providing the nutritional data from Cronometer for the entire recipe, so folks can do the math based on number of slices. Optional: This is great with a little sour cream and sliced green onions on top as garnish. I didn't factor that into the nutritional information here, but I sure as heck eat them.
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4/22/2018 0 Comments Still here.I did weigh in on Tuesdays the last two weeks. The week of 4/10 I was up 7/10ths of a pound due to hormonal fluctuations (and a couple of days eating someone else's cooking). By 4/17, I was down a pound, so the scale is moving in the right direction again. I'm curious to see where it lands Tuesday.
This week, I started experimenting a little with erythritol, an artificial sweetener used in a lot of low-carb baking. I did a lot of reading on it before buying any, as I am fairly suspicious of low-no-glycemic index sweeteners. It turns out that erythritol is used in Bai drinks, which I have never had issues with, and it has been around a long time. It is excreted in your urine, and unless you're consuming huge amounts, it is well tolerated. We use liquid stevia around here, and apparently if you mix erythritol and stevia in baked goods, they cancel each other's potential aftertastes out. So, we've started playing with it and have made a couple of desserts this week. We didn't do any bread this week in swap, I guess. I do have rolls in the oven right now, though, as I had some egg whites I needed to use and the way I look at this recipe is that it's actually a great fiber supplement. Some friends asked last night (over dinner) if we'd found eating this way hard; part of our answer is that we have a five boxes of unopened Girl Scout cookies in the house. There's also some fund-raiser pretzels and cookie dough in the freezer. And, we've not found any reason or need to open the cupboard where we stashed all of the high carb stuff we stashed when we started. So, looks like cauliflower rice, zoodles, and gluten-free baking are going to stick around here for awhile.
I listen to audiobooks and podcasts when Sophie takes me for walks, and after finishing Taubes' The Case Against Sugar I checked out Nina Teicholz's The Big Fat Surprise. You can get your own copy at the link below if your library doesn't have it.
What is remarkable to me is how easy it is to find the actual peer-reviewed articles about the studies that she discusses in the book. For instance, it's not hard to trace the fact that Dr. Ornish's recommendations are based on a small group of people (no more than 21, and the numbers fluctuate depending on his own reporting). In addition, those people also quit smoking, added exercise, and made other lifestyle changes in addition to going LFHC (low fat high carb) and plant focused.
On my own, I've done a bit of investigation into the celebrity diet docs pushing the low-fat high-carb vegan way of eating. Neil Barnard is a nueroscientist, yet his food work focuses on diabetes. Esselstyn is a retired surgeon and olympic athlete married to one of the daughters of a founder of the Cleveland Clinic, where he operated (not where he actually practiced nutritional medicine or cardiology). Dr. McDougall got into the nutrition game in part because of his early stroke as a teenager. My point here is that in none of these cases do we really find sound science that shows that a low-fat high-carb diet actually improves the body's condition. While I enjoyed eating that way, my goals were not political or ethical for the most part. Instead, my goals for eating that way were to ensure that I don't (as they indicate in the documentary with the title Forks over Knives) dig my grave with my silverware. When we stop and consider the specialties and the board certifications of the celebrity doctors, though, they often don't back up, from a medical or scientific angle, the diets they promote. And I sense that The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, PCRM, is probably a pretty powerful lobbying group. That's not to say that the folks on the other side aren't biased--they are. But when I am finding peer-reviewed research that explains why I couldn't get my HDL over 57 on a vegan diet loaded with carbs, I find that more compelling than anything a documentary with David Avocado Wolfe in it might be. The bottom line, though, is that my body certainly seems to be responding well to a lower carb way of eating. I am doing some reasonable calorie restriction, but I have it set to a deficit of 1/2 pound a week. But I'm averaging 1.5 pounds lost per week--even when I go over my allotted calories (which is easy to do by a smidgen here or there). And midpoint from one weigh in to the next, we had an anniversary dinner that ended with a spudnut topped with ice cream and chocolate sauce. And I still lost 1.3 pounds in that week. Eating LFHC and mostly vegan I agonized over when I'd get to eat again and even with the same amount of calories and working out more than I am now wasn't losing weight. In fact, my weight was creeping up. So, as long as I feel this good I'm going to keep on keeping on. Note: I did add a magnesium/potassium supplement to our vitamins last week, as well as a daily spirulina capsule to help with electrolyte balance and ward off restless leg syndrome. 3/27/2018 0 Comments Going against the old rulesSo, we're entering week five of low-carb, (mostly) whole food eating. I've been avoiding the scale, in part because even though the calories are in range for me to lose and I'm definitely shedding ketones, I'm still in that stage of disbelief that I can eat fat and not blow up like a blimp. In the mirror, though, and by measuring my wrist width, I know there's something happening.
So I weighed. I'm down three pounds from when I last weighed in two weeks ago. That's pretty amazing to me, as my calorie deficits have been on the modest side, but I also know that FitBit over-estimates my calorie burn and Cronometer underestimates, so I guess I've hit that sweet spot in the middle. Years ago, I tried Sugar Busters. I didn't really lose any on that plan back then, quite possibly because I wasn't doing it right. This time around, I have Cronometer and I'm tracking food intake, watching my macros, and I'm adding a magnesium/potassium supplement and a spirulina supplement to my daily intake. I'm also following a couple of FB groups and I'm learning a lot about how there are just as many junk-food keto folks as there are junk food vegans. And that keto vegans are eating a lot of processed stuff. If the macros are the same--in other words if the goal is to have low carbs, hit a minimum and moderate protein goal, and to eat healthy fats (including a proportion of saturated fat)--it seems to me the only real reason to be a vegan is ideological. While I still worry about farming practices and the impact on the environment associated with dietary intake of animals, I also am aware of how the agricultural processes and harvesting processes of some of the vegan staples and of the meat analogues also have negative impacts--sometimes directly on animal populations. So, there really isn't a perfect answer here. What I do know is that for possibly the first time, I don't really feel like my eating is disordered. I don't have highs and lows during the day where I want to eat everything I can get my hands on. I feel pretty steady all the way around, which is nice. And, I'm eating plenty of leafy greens and enjoying fresh berries as dessert. I thought that I'd really miss the large amount of fruit I ate before, but it's not really been an issue. I keep hearing that this way of eating is "not sustainable." While I do fully plan on sharing a Lost Spudnut at dinner on Friday at the Griffin (they take a spudnut, plop a scoop of ice cream on it, and then add chocolate sauce), that's a splurge. I'm not fantasizing about eating the way I used to, and I adjusted to eating meat again fairly easily. Last weekend, we did a 16:8 intermittent fast cycle (really Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday). Dani was on call, so not having anything other than coffee made sense and we just made sure to reach our macros and calorie threshold in the other two meals. To me, this is sustainable. I have a bag of potatoes if anyone wants it. We also have Girl Scout cookies that are unopened. I'm sure they'll get eaten at some point, but for now, I'll take raspberries or blackberries with coconut whipped cream (Gay Lea brand is awesome). Also, if you want to learn more about how sugar has been given a free pass, check out The Case Against Sugar by Taubes. Angel here: I know it has been a minute.
Since we last posted, lots of things have changed, including a good 10-15 pound weight gain for me. Our lovely mother dropped 22+ pounds simply by going back to the training she and dad got from the diabetes educator back when he was diagnosed. She looks great and even though I shoveled carbs at her over Christmas, she has kept it off. Between her success and reading Jason Fung's The Obesity Code I started to look at the way we were eating at Casa Codgers. For the last eight years or so, since the first year of medical school, our eating at home has largely been vegetarian-vegan. But that means more of the same--low fat, high carb eating. When I read Fung, it was clear to me why even if I focused on calories I was hungry and also not losing any weight, even if I tracked calories and tried to keep the fat low. I went back and looked at the last time I really cracked down on calories and found that on an average day I was eating 150 carbs or so. Many days, I ate over 200. And even when I looked at net carbs, it was out of control. I, like most of the US, had become a carb addict. So, we're taking a different route this time and using Dietdoctor.com to help retrain us as to what to eat. Because Ancel Keys' Lipid Hypothesis has basically been shown to be false we're not doing a vegan low-fat approach. Eventually I plan to start cooking more plant-based and working some tofu, soy curls (I have bags of those hiding in the freezer), and seitan back in the diet, but for now nothing--including reasonable portions of meat--is off the table. Doing vegan low carb often leads to people having to use a lot of protein powders and eat things like "noatmeal" which I cannot do (to be fair, I can't eat oatmeal porridge either--slimy). As Fung notes, any diet works in the short term. And we know that if someone loses weight, whether they lose it from calorie restriction, carb restriction, going vegan and raw, etc, their numbers improve for LDL, HDL, and blood pressure. Dr. D and I have been eating this new way for just over two weeks now. We feel great and despite us lovingly storing away our box of carbs at the start, not once have we been tempted to open the cabinet over the fridge and dive in. We have boxes of GS cookies sitting untouched right now. I'm sure we'll eat them at some future point, but for right now, they are just sitting sealed. I leave this post with an answer to a question or two: Isn't what you're describing Atkins? Nope. There are some differences from the old-school Atkins. For instance, protein is not king here. I'm working on lowering the protein to a more moderate level. The idea promoted by Fung, Hyman, and other docs is that protein should be no more than 30% of your daily intake. This has to do with the ways in which our body's insulin response works with protein. Also, Atkins focuses a lot on "legal" sugar alcohols. The way we're eating is far more focused on whole foods, no sweeteners (not even stevia, which I actually seem to have lost my taste for), and no "franken-foods". This is far more Whole 30 similar. I prefer to simply say we're eating grain free and sugar free. What about The China Study? Well, it turns out that the message isn't that different. Campbell argues to moderate protein intake as a way to control cancer genes. Fung, Hyman, and others also indicate that protein should be lower than fat intake (at least a 1:1 ratio gram wise up to a 1:2 ratio in favor of fat). So, this way of eating is not that far afield of Campbell's conclusions. 7/19/2014 1 Comment Weekly Check InI don't really have any food pictures for you this week; I was vegan (with the exception of pizza at the movies last week--more on that in a bit) all week at home. I did go off the book menu wise, though, just because so many of the recipes in the book menu plan tend to be a bit too repetitious. I mentioned this before--if I have black beans and potatoes at lunch, I don't want black bean and potato soup for dinner that day.
I made use of the sausage I made last week in dinner for yesterday (and there's some left for another meal). Dani was on 24 hour call last night, so on Thursday I made two meals. We had the Sesame soy curls over brown basmati with broccoli on the side that night, and I cooked a batch of polenta in the oven and topped that with sauteed onions, peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes and sliced vegan Italian sausage. Other meals this week included a Chik patty (they were on sale at Aldi this week--they may only be veganish, but oh well) with corn and baked beans (from my Sunday cooking last week) and Tempeh fajitas. We also had Seitan Piccata this week, which is always a favorite around here. We're still eating a good bit of raw stuff, and I've decided watermelon is something I'm not tired of yet. Smoothies every day for breakfast, as well. So, the weigh in this week I was hoping for a pound off--I've been walking and working out most days of the week. I was only down 0.2 pounds, though. I suspect this was the result of (1) salty sesame soy curls for dinner the night before and (2) the pizza I ate at the movies Saturday--who knows how many calories were in that thing? So, I'm just going with the fact it went down, not up, and that our diet is cleaner than it has been of late. I did eat some whole wheat Ritz with some almond butter a minute ago, but that's about as "junky" as it gets around here. I'm also seeing some things in the mirror that aren't showing up on the scale, so onward! 7/13/2014 0 Comments Weekend ShenanigansSo, yesterday's workout was housekeeping. Sophie tends to fling mud all over the kitchen, and we let things pile up on the dining table and the kitchen counter throughout the week. It was time to declutter and do a full wipe-down. Dani took to the yard to get things in shape there while I started the wipe-down from the light fixtures downward (I noticed the top of the fridge was filthy while changing a light bulb, and it was on after that).
I'm still looking to Barnard for some ideas, and as I noted on DoV today, I used his BBQ sauce as a base for my own today. Also, we had his basic pancakes for breakfast yesterday with fresh watermelon on the side for breakfast. Above, you'll see one of our favorite desserts; tofu pudding. I've made this for years now, and decided to try cutting back the sugar and cocoa powder a bit. Here's the current recipe, which I think is better than before! Tofu Pudding 4 servings 1 box Mori Nu Lite Tofu (the shelf-stable kind) 4 Tablespoons of brown sugar (1/4 cup) 4 Tablespoons of cocoa powder (1/4 cup) splash of vanilla Use an immersion blender, food processor or regular blender. I tried using beaters but they don't get the pudding smooth. Top with fruit of your choice. This is under 100 calories a serving when you use the "lite" Mori Nu. I also snapped a picture of my plate the other day with the portobello burger and pesto roasted potatoes. Yesterday's lunch was a redo of that with vegan Bocca burger patties in for the mushrooms. The shenanigans part of the weekend was dinner last night was off the books. We went with Kelly and Megan to see Tammy (which we all agreed was better than we expected). Dinner was grabbed there, as the Alamo has a full dinner menu. We ate light for breakfast and lunch, so we didn't feel to bad about it. 7/10/2014 1 Comment Days 3 and 4So, I haven't fallen off the wagon here; I just was really busy the last couple of days with work. That made not having to decide what's for breakfast, lunch, and dinner a blessing for sure.
Both days we had smoothies for breakfast. I bought a big bag of kale because it was there and we've been adding some to our smoothies of late. I think the added fiber helps the smoothie last a bit longer. Lunch was leftover grilled vegetables in a wrap and artichoke & tomato salad on the side with watermelon to follow yesterday. Dinner last night was my version of red beans and rice with collards on the side, and that was lunch today, as well. Tonight, I think we're having a portobello burger on a sandwich thin as the bun and roasted potatoes tossed in pesto. This NutritionMD.org pesto recipe is quite tasty! For dessert, I'm whipping up some chocolate pudding with lite Mori-nu tofu (1 block of tofu + 4 Tablespoons of brown sugar, 4 Tablespoons of cocoa powder and a dash of vanilla) to serve with fresh strawberries. I'm loving the amount of raw fruit and vegetables we're eating this week, and I'm also realizing that a lot of crap (dairy and processed things like crackers) had snuck into our daily diet. Granted, those were healthier versions of crap, but we weren't saving them for treats. I took yesterday off from Step (in part because I just didn't have the hour to spare), but I got back to it today, and it was a well-appreciated reward and break from sitting in front of a computer. And, of course, every day the dogs and I take a stroll. 7/8/2014 0 Comments Day 2I don't really have many pictures today; the smoothie was the standard with some raw kale thrown in, so that was green. Lunch was the leftover pasta.
Round about three pm, my normal time to go on a rampage through the kitchen (must be my stomach memory of getting home from school, or maybe just that lunch is gone), I had to eat something else. I snagged a fruit and nut bar (mango and cashew) out of the snack drawer. Before dinner, I butchered a watermelon as Dani and I were both pretty hungry. Dinner was supposed to be the tomato soup and a salad. I opted to grill the zucchini for tomorrow's lunch sandwiches and had some yellow squash so I just grilled it all. We had sandwiches with the soup (which I put white kidney beans in because I had two cups cooked and tomorrow's dinner is red beans and rice). I also assume he uses white rice (really?) in the soup because it cooks in 25 minutes, so I cooked brown rice separately and used that. I also snuck in some of my no chicken broth powder instead of just regular salt. The soup was ugly, but it was pretty tasty (it would have been prettier with red beans). We ate about 1/2 of it, even though there were supposed to be two servings total. So, in Day 2, I liked the food fine. The sandwiches are yummy with the white bean and roasted pepper spread (I put in two cloves of garlic and some seasoned salt) and with the veggies grilled. I put some garlic powder in the balsamic vinegar rub and grilled some onion and roasted another pepper to put on the sandwiches. Grand total for the day is around 1366 calories give or take for some estimates given that I didn't eat 1/2 of the soup serving and I didn't really measure how much watermelon I ate, so I guessed. I'm under 15% of those from fat, so I'm hoping that helps budge the extra pounds. So, the new recipe find today is the white bean spread for the sandwiches. With the grilled vegetables it was quite tasty--not surprising, as it's basically white kidney bean roasted pepper hummus :) In the book, some of his daily meals combos are a bit weird. The web version of day 5 has no lunch--in the book, the lunch is a baked potato topped with black beans and salsa, which would be fine if dinner that day were not black bean and potato soup. Day 4's dinner is black bean chili. Since I'm cooking my own beans, I guess I can kind of see why he does this as it means you could go through a batch of beans without having to eat the same thing over and over. But, I can cook beans easily in the pressure cooker and freeze them in portions needed for specific recipes, so that's where some of the alteration comes in. If I'm eating beans twice a day daily I want some bean variety. I also can't guarantee that I'm following his recipe for red beans and rice--I make a pretty darn good version already that is vegan and low fat, so we'll see. I'm not sure I'm ok with stirring the greens into the beans. So, today is my first day doing a somewhat modified 21 day Kickstart. The day started with my normal smoothie. Basic Smoothie Recipe (makes 2) 1 banana 2 cups frozen berries, mixed fruit 1 cup soymilk 1 cup of orange juice 2 Tablespoons of Bob's Red Mill Soy Protein This comes in at under 300 calories for a big smoothie. I have to confess, I had started using Hemp Hearts as my protein supplement in my morning smoothies. They are so creamy and make the smoothie have a lot more body. However, at 180 calories and 15 grams of fat, they are too much of a splurge for every day. So, I'm going back to Bob's soy powder with 20 calories and 0 grams of fat. At a savings of 160 calories per smoothie, assuming I have smoothies 5 days a week all year, that's 33K calories and a load of fat calories gone. Translation: I suspect my beloved Hemp Hearts may be partially responsible for the gain of late. I forgot to take a picture until I drained it, but here's the evidence. Lunch was my version of the blue corn chip salad. Our store only had regular baked chips (no blue ones), so that's why the salad isn't blue :) The recipe calls for 16 ounces of black beans rinsed. He has to mean a 16 ounce can opened and rinsed (thus not 16 ounces of beans). A can has approximately 1.5-2 cups of beans, so I just gave us each a cup of cooked beans per person. The recipe also calls for three roasted peppers for two people. I roasted a yellow bell and split it between us. This I will do again. What's not to love about taco salad? Dinner was the pasta with grilled asparagus, lemon, and peas and the glazed pear salad. To the pasta I added an extra lemon's worth of juice to and I confess, just a drop or two of truffle oil (literally no more than a 1/4 teaspoon). I made a double batch of the pasta so we can have it for lunch tomorrow. I know the truffle oil is not on the chart below and it's oil so I'm not supposed to, but the pasta is a bit bland. Some of the balsamic glaze on there worked too. So, I came in under budget enough that I can get away with a glass of old vine garnacha in the new glasses we bought today. I not only walked the dogs this morning, but got in a Jenny Ford Malibu Step before lunch.
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The Two Fat SistersRenee and Angel welcome you to their blog. Hopefully we can change our name some time. In the meantime, watch as we try to get there. Archives
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