The sweet life

Last night, at the end of a successful Day 1 on Whole 30, I decided that the gorgeous organic peach I picked up at the market would make a yummy little dessert.

And boy did it!


The peach was diced -- skin and all, kissed with a bit of fresh lemon juice, and lightly sauteed in a small pan with a tiny bit of coconut oil until a bit soft. Into a small baking dish it went.

I mixed together a few chopped pecans with a little shredded coconut, and sprinkled this on top of the peaches. A few minutes under the broil -- to crisp the topping -- and it was done.

No deprivation here! It was the perfect end to a wonderful day of clean eating. I could eat like this forever....

Whole 30!

My decision to eat Paleo was not spur-of-the-moment. It came about gradually, but became a natural progression after -- with the help of my doctor, Tamara Sachs --  I discovered the foods my body can't tolerate.

Today, I am taking my Paleo experience to a whole new level, starting the Whole30 -- 30 days of clean eating:

• Organic, grass-fed chicken, beef and pork
• Wild fish
• Organic fruits and veggies
• Raw nuts and seeds
• Good fats, such as avocado, ghee, coconut butter, nut butters and olives.

I will eat three meals a day, and skip snacks because I really don't need them when I eat well. And although some might argue that this way of eating is way too expensive, I actually save some money because I am not buying crap -- and crap takes it toll, financially and physically.

The Whole30 concept is the brainchild of Dallas and Melissa Hartwig,who ask followers to think of the 30 days as a short-term nutritional reset, designed to help you restore a healthy metabolism, heal your digestive tract, calm systemic inflammation and put an end to unhealthy cravings, habits,and relationships with food.

The Hartwigs outline the 30-day program on their Web site, www.whole9life.com. It's there for free, although I recommend their book, "It Starts with Food," a bargain at less than $14 on Amazon. They have no agenda, and although they think the way they eat is the best way possible, they understand that we are all human and have to eat in a way that works for us.

But one sentence from the book keeps repeating in my mind:
"You are what what you eat eats."

Say that five times. And then think about it. If we eat meat, poultry and fish raised on genetically modified corn and soy and injected with hormones, we are eating those things as well. If we eat non-organic fruits and veggies, we are eating pesticides.

I won't promise to post daily the next 30 days, but I will try. I am pumped. And I can't wait for Day 30 because I know I will feel terrific. I also plan on posting lots of recipes, because the more I cook, the better my chances of staying motivated.

I am so looking forward to Oct. 2, the morning I wake up with 30 days of clean eating under my hopefully much-smaller belt!

My body knows best

For months I've taken one day at a time, recording what I eat daily, and then listening to my body tell me whether I made good food choices the day before. On days when I eat something that does not agree with me my sleep is restless, and in the morning my tummy aches and I feel as if I am in the throws of a mild hangover. That sums up how I feel today.
The culprit: The chia pudding I made with coconut milk in a package, not the can. I was cleaning out my pantry yesterday, came upon a box, and immediately whipped up a batch of pudding, a great dessert after dinner, topped with some luscious berries. What I didn't do was read the ingredients on the box of coconut milk, which I did this morning. I was shocked by the unpronounceable items it includes, the stuff I have avoided for months.

The experts always say to listen to your body, but before I felt as good as I do now, I had no idea what good felt like or that my body could tell me when I've eaten something that does not agree with me.

For the past few months I have religiously read ingredients, and either tossed ones I shouldn't eat from my pantry or left them at the grocers. So why did the coconut milk stay? Along with the almond and rice milks in my pantry, I assumed they were nutritious. And you know what they say about making assumptions.

Never again!

Not so sweet

I have long been an admirer of Anna Louise Gittleman, even though I cannot follow her Fat Flush Plan for more than a few weeks.

But I love her newsletter because it is packed with valuable research. Her latest post concerns sugar, what she calls the greatest poison in our diet, linked to more than 60 sixty ailments, including Type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease and Metabolic Syndrome.

Go anyplace and just watch the fat people parade by. More than 30 million have Type 2 diabetes and another 70 million qualify as pre-diabetic. Although the reasons why we are fat are many, if we simply cut out sugar we would all see some great changes.

I did two months ago, and I am not looking back. I thought it was going to be difficult to do, but honestly, once the first few days had passed, I haven't missed it at all. And it's not as if it hasn't been  offered. But now when I think of eating that piece of wedding cake or cute little cupcake, I think about how crappy I felt just a few short months ago and how well I feel now.


Gittleman talks about hidden sugars, the ones we have no idea we are eating. You'll find them in most processed foods, from packaged meats to soups to commercial salt. It's also in vitamins, aspirin, prescription and over-the-counter drugs and in cosmetics.

She cites studies that have linked sugar and refined carbs to cardiovascular disease. For example, the Masai and Samburu tribes of East Africa suffer no heart disease even though their diet is composed of mostly meat and milk.

And let's not forget sugar substitues -- artificial sweeteners and high-fructose corn syrup. Gittleman believes it's no coincidence that our cholesterol and triglyceride levels and our abnormal liver tests started escalating when HFCS began being slipped into much of our processed foods.

Why? Because our borides cannot metabolize HFCS, which skips right past the need for insulin production and goes right into our cells where it becomes an uncontrolled source of trouble to our organs. Since our bodies have no idea what HFCS is or what to do with it, it gets stored as fat.


No wonder we are all singing the sugar blues!

Allergic to what?

Lentils. Beans. Eggs.

We've been told for years to include all these in our diets, which I did. An egg for breakfast. Beans on my salad with the goal to eat vegetarian all day -- saving the meat, poultry and fish for dinner. Lentil soup before dinner, to fill me up before the main event.

That was my diet for months. Unfortunately, I am intolerant to all three -- PLUS ! Throw all dairy and gluten into my new list of no-nos. I also lack any kind of B or D vitamins, although I have supplemented these two for decades.

My allergy to all these foods is not the kind that has me grabbing an Epi pen and being rushed to the hospital. Mine is a food intolerance, which has caused me, in no particular order, to have:

• Inflammation throughout my body, including excruciating carpal tunnel
• Insomnia
• An 18-wheeler-sized tire around my waist
• Exhaustion
• Red eyes
• Dull skin
• High blood pressure.

For a week, the bad foods have been banished from my diet and I feel fantastic.

• More energy than I have had in years;
• Nights of restful seven-hour sleep with no getting up three or four times to pee; 
• And the wheel around my waist, although still there, is more the size of a luxury car now. But hey, it's only been a week.

I always knew the role good food plays in a body. I never suspected that the foods I eat could play such a role in all that was ailing me -- and that it could happen so quickly.

And I owe it all to Dr. Tamara Sachs, a functional medicine MD who doesn't treat symptoms. Instead, she's a doctor/detective, searching for the underlying issues of what is going on in your body.

I am forever thankful I found that woman!

Nightmares

I have been eating really healthy for the past eight months, but about six weeks ago turned it up a notch and got really serious. I breeze through my days hardly ever tempted to eat something I know will upset my tummy, but once I fall asleep, things change.

Every night I dream that I am chowing down on my old go-to comfort foods: Twizzlers. Pints of Ben & Jerry's. Nona's biscotti. I could go on.

I've had these anything-but-sweet dreams for more than a week. Granted, when I wake up in the morning and  discover it was a dream, the relief is huge and my commitment renewed.

But why am I having these dreams? Turns out, they are totally normal and it is not my sub-conscious telling me that my willpower is weakening. In fact, one sage person in a blog says when you have these dreams, enjoy them.  Revel in the tastes because they are costing you zero calories. Eventually they will go away, sort of like the dreams ex-students have that they missed a test.

Can't wait to see what tonight's treat will be.

Fish tales

I love fish. And once I found out that our local fish market was selling fish previously frozen, I decided to give the markets a try. I would seek out the fish not marked "previously frozen" because I had no idea when the market started the thawing process. For all I know, it could have been a week ago. And to me, that's not fresh.

But what really galled me was that much of the fish I bought tasted, well, fishy. 

I started buying all our fish at Trader Joe's and Costco. The fish is frozen solid, I defrost it as needed, and the fish tastes like the ocean.

Which is why I was very happy to see that Barton Seaver, director of the Healthy and Sustainable Food Program at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard School of Public Health agrees with me. 

“The technology of freezing fish has evolved to the point where it’s comparable to, if not better than, fresh fish,” Seaver told NutritionAction.com.“Historically, seafood was frozen as a last-ditch effort to keep it from spoiling. If fish wasn’t sold by Friday, it was frozen so it could be sold when demand was up. So it was a crappy piece of fish to begin with. But these days, fish is pulled from the water, filleted, and frozen within hours. That sounds pretty good to me.”

He goes on to talk about stores that sell previously frozen fish, which he says are "shortchanging the consumer of many benefits.f it’s frozen, it can stay in the freezer until you use it on your schedule,” says Seaver. “Why thaw it and start the process of spoilage? Retailers are playing to a taboo about frozen fish.”
 So frozen it is.