My awesome breakfast: supercharged oatmeal

I’m often away from home and busy from 10 am until 6 pm. I wanted to find a breakfast to keep me energized and satiated for that period of time. I’m interested in consuming great nutrition and find most restaurants lacking.

I’ve found something that not only does that, it’s super nutritious and delicious. I haven’t measured, but the oats, seeds, soy milk, walnuts, and yogurt add protein, the walnuts, seeds, yogurt, and olive oil add fat, the yogurt adds probiotics. and it’s got carbs and plenty of fiber from the whole grains and fruit.

I cook 1 cup of organic sprouted rolled oats from One Degree as directed. I add half a teaspoon of olive oil to keep it from foaming up.

If I don’t leave the lid slightly ajar, it’s too watery, so that’s an important part of the instructions. I let it simmer for 10 minutes to get a texture that’s slightly chewy.

After the oats are cooked, I add 3 tablespoons each of flax seeds, hemp seeds, and chia seeds, as well as a teaspoon each of Ceylon cinnamon and nutmeg.

I mix it really well and put it into a covered bowl to store in the fridge.

To eat, I mash about 1/3rd of a cup of the mixture with a couple of tablespoons of organic soy milk and warm it in a small saucepan. (No microwave available.)

While it’s warming, I prepare a one-serving bowl, adding blueberries and walnuts and whatever I have of the following: dried cranberries, blackberries, soaked prunes, pomegranate seeds.

Usually it’s sweet enough without adding anything, but if I want more sweetness, I can add a little bit of the water the prunes are soaked in, which is super sweet and plumps up the prunes. I keep a jar in my fridge. I could add honey or maple syrup if I didn’t have that.

I also add about a quarter cup of yogurt to the bowl. I prefer skyr or Greek yogurt for the protein.

I combine the heated oatmeal and soy milk with the contents of the bowl and stir well.

I get about 6 servings out of one cup of oatmeal. It sustains me very well throughout the day, and when I start to feel hungry again, it’s late afternoon, and I have a light dinner.

I am slowly losing weight without much effort.

I’ve tried intermittent fasting before where I didn’t eat until mid-day, but this timing (I think of it as front-end loading) seems to work so much better for my system.

I do a lot of batch cooking because it’s less time consuming than cooking each meal from scratch. I also make legume-based dishes, like black bean soup or lentil curry, and brown or black rice, doubling or even quadrupling the ingredients to make big batches that I can freeze in meal-sized batches.

Then I simply move a couple of servings from the freezer to the fridge to thaw for 1-2 days, reheat, and voila! Super heathy, inexpensive, delicious meals.

Eating 30 plants a week challenge: a hearty, healthy winter breakfast

This is a challenge that’s been getting some attention, and it’s worth having fun with!

You’ll get more fiber, eat less processed foods, and it supports your healthy gut microbes. Of course, having a healthy gut influences the rest of the body, improving digestion, energy, mood, sleep, and just plain feeling good.

I didn’t used to eat breakfast, as part of an intermittent fasting regimen. Now, I eat a hearty breakfast and eat again when I feel hungry in the afternoon. Letting hunger drive your eating, and then eating slowly and chewing well until satisfied, makes a difference.

That’s often it for the day. No dinner, and it makes intermittent fasting easier.

I do know the experience of overeating because the taste of something is so satisfying. I’m working with that. Also, I used to have a leaky gut and started working to improve my gut health in 2007, so it’s been a focus for a while.

Here’s what I’ve been eating for breakfast, with minor variations:

The organic sprouted rolled oats came from Wheatsville, an Austin food coop. They cook in 5 minutes, although I changed the proportions to 1/3 cup each of boiling water and oats and immediately turn the heat down to as low as it goes.

Add to that coconut milk yogurt, pecans, dried cranberries, beautiful organic blueberries, flax seeds, hemp seeds, maple syrup, and 5 spices (Ceylon cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, orange peel, and allspice). While the oats are cooking, add everything else to a bowl. When the oats are done, add to your bowl and stir well.

Voila! 13 plants, from Wheatsville, Costco (the pecans and maple syrup aged in bourbon barrels!), and HEB, our beloved Texas chain that does so much for Texas communities in crisis from disasters and Texas public schools.

Really, it’s pretty simple: a whole grain, nuts, seeds, berries, yogurt, a natural sweetener, and spices. Have fun improvising on that!

Next up, a veggie curry served over quinoa.

Can I consume 30 plants in two meals in one day? Stay tuned!

Sensible eating for healthy weight loss: my best practices and desired habits

I have put on some extra weight and I want to take it off. I already eat a fairly healthy, mostly Paleo diet. I was thinking about the mindset and habits I want to cultivate. I’m looking at what’s worked for me in the past and some new best practices.

Twice since 2000, I’ve lost weight: the first time, I lost 35 pounds, of which 20 pounds crept back on for a few years, and then I lost the 20 pounds and kept it off for a few years. Those 20 pounds have crept back on over the past 7 years.

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Courtesy: Diethunters.com

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A lazy woman’s experiment with the ketogenic diet

Last summer I did some intermittent fasting. I lost a few pounds and then plateaued. I found it difficult to maintain on a daily basis long-term. I dropped it after a couple of months and gained back the pounds I had lost.

For the past 5 weeks now, I’ve been following a ketogenic diet, and again, I’ve lost a few pounds. I haven’t lost muscle that I can tell: I’m still able to do as many repetitions of bodyweight exercises (squats, pushups) as before with about same amount of effort. I have an abundance of energy, which stays stable. I sleep well. I feel good!

I did a lot of online research about the ketogenic diet. Basically it is a high fat, moderate protein, very low carb diet. By consistently eating this way, your body makes the switch from burning glucose to burning fat for fuel. (That’s what ketosis is.) Once your body gets trained into ketosis, it affects your fat-burning ability for life. This can take anywhere from a couple of weeks to several months to occur.

The keto diet has a lot of other benefits as well. It helps with epilepsy, early Alzheimer’s and cognitive impairment, Parkinson’s, ADHD, MS, autism, and bipolar II. It lowers blood sugar and insulin, and some say it prevents and kills cancer cells (which may be due the lack of sugar/carbs). There are more claims based on personal experience. Although high in fat, it does not increase your risk for heart disease, and it’s said to prevent strokes.

Here are 14 takeaways from my experience so far (and if you have health issues, especially regarding blood sugar, please consult with your doctor before trying any of this): Continue reading

6 weeks of intermittent fasting by a woman

Six weeks ago, I started an intermittent fasting eating schedule. I wanted to lose some belly fat. From what I gleaned on the internet about intermittent fasting, when we go longer than usual without eating, our bodies burn fat for energy instead of the customary fuel source, glucose.

Feeling some hunger is also in line with the experience of most humans throughout history. They put on fat from feasting, and when food was scarce, they felt hungry and burned fat. Hunger was part of their lives, and the human body is designed for occasional fasting.

After reading about various configurations of going without food (some fast 1-2 days a week, some do 12-hour daily fasts, etc.), I decided to go with a 16-hour daily fast, 7 days a week. Breakfast is the easiest meal for me to skip. I do more physical work in the afternoons and need energy for that, and I enjoy unwinding with dinner. So from 8 pm until noon I would fast. A good chunk of that time, I would be asleep — a natural 8 hour fast. So really, I only had to abstain from eating the first few hours of each day.

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