healthy food
Banting Progress…
The weekend has come and gone and I have successfully ‘banted’ my way through it with one small slip at a restaurant for lunch. Not a big deal, there was balsamic vinegar in the sauce for the steak so I scraped some off and felt none the worse for wear. The roast veggies were what I was craving and the cheesecake did not lure me. In fact, the sight of lemon cheesecake in the cake fridge made me keen to make a Banting-legal one so I have put it on the list for the week. My sister is coming to stay for 5 days, and we plan to make it a really healthy visit. What a pleasure. She is a great cook and we may well come up with a food trial or two. Cheesecake will be one of them. Watch this space!
It has taken a long time coming and now it has been shown quite convincingly that low carb high fat is a healthy, healing way of eating. There have been many reports of diabetics no longer needing medication, of PCOS being healed, of autism, epilepsy and obesity being successfully treated. More and more science around low carb high fat eating is getting through to the public and we are in a position to choose what works for us as far as health is concerned. But first we need to get rid of faulty thinking around the matter of fats. Understand that it is healthy and needed. The good stuff is not manufactured by man. It is a natural food, and in that lies the answer. Natural.
Why swop butter for margarine which is reputed to be one molecule away from plastic? Why eat boxed cereals which have been laced with no nutrition sugar and mysterious E numbers when there’s fresh berries and cream, and eggs and bacon with mushrooms and courgette fritters to delight in. (I think that will be brunch today!)
Shop around the edge of the supermarket where all the fresh foods are and leave the packaged inflammatory foods on the shelves. Read the ingredients of those packaged goods and if there is anything you cannot pronounce, MSG, E numbers or preservatives, it would be wise to steer clear of it. Wherever possible choose organic vegetables, raw milk products and grass fed free range meats. Good real food. The marketing around unhealthy foods is backed by huge money. Big corporations make billions from inferior foods which keep people unhealthy and in need of doctors and medication, and that is the territory of Big Pharma and more big money. Conspiracy theory? I don’t think so.
My personal experience with this lifestyle and in particular with fat, is that it tames my appetite. I am learning to reach for cream, coconut oil, cream cheese, avocado, macadamia nuts, mayonnaise, butter and high fat meat broths when I need to still the food voice in my head and it works. My energy levels are high and my motivation is strong. I shall keep on eating good fats, including healthy saturated fats. The treat is that I don’t have to resist a beautifully grilled lamb chop with a strip of crisp fat nor a perfectly roasted chicken, skin and all, because they hold such culinary pleasure as well as necessary nutrients and fuel for my now diminishing body. Yes, I am three kilos lighter this week. That makes it four in two weeks. I know a lot of it may be water weight right now, but it feels really good!
Roll on the Revolution!…
Banting Breakfast with Vegetables…
I think it true to say that we need to increase our vegetable intake on this Banting Way. This is where our good carbs should be coming from. Perhaps we could challenge ourselves to have something green with every meal? Can you imagine all those lovely nutrients? Our bodies will be singing and we will be doing a happy dance.
Why not have vegetables for breakfast? If we think of meals as 1, 2 and maybe 3, we need not think breakfast lunch and dinner, yes? So, my meal number 1 was Stir-fried Zucchini Noodles with Bacon and Parmesan, which I got off dietplan101. It was delicious (who doesn’t like bacon and cheese?) and the dish was only 5.6g. The zucchini were prepared with a vegetable peeler that makes thin noodles. (I inherited it from mum, she was a gadget queen:) I would have liked bigger zucchini so I think I need to plant some and let them get big like my grandpa used to grow them.
Eggs go well with vegetables. Try any of the following next time you make a scramble, an omelette or a fritatta : Broccoli, spinach, zucchini, peppers, leek, celery, herbs, or asparagus.
I used a fair bit of ghee (clarified butter which you can buy at some Checkers stores, or you can make it yourself) when I cooked this morning, as I am beginning to feel the value of fats in my diet because it is taming my appetite. I realise that portion control has for long been my nemesis. Second helpings are not the norm these days. Nice is still nice, believe me, but I seem to be getting satisfied more quickly.
Unfortunately I cannot download my photographs because my old laptop is misbehaving. Things will return to normal on the weekend and I will catch up with the photos.
Have a beautiful Banting day!…
Banting and Fat…
Got back to the farm yesterday and not two hours later I was preparing a Banting supper for a couple of friends. It turns out that my friend thought Banting was all about eating loads of fat, but when she saw what was on offer, she realised there was much more to it. She loved the food. Basically, we had left overs.
With some leftover mince mixture I made baby hamburger patties, with that a green leafy salad with yellow peppers, cherry tomatoes and a few mange tout, cold roast chicken breast chopped up and served with avocado and Greek yogurt dressing, and we had the reheated chicken liver dish from this morning. (Hubby kindly sent some home with me) Coffee with cream to finish.
It is very interesting to hear the perceptions people have of Banting. My friend did say she would have to get her head around the idea of eating fat. I would imagine that is likely for most people who have been duped by the propaganda around saturated fat, that of it being bad for your heart etc. Please read The Real Meal Revolution and watch some of Prof Tim Noakes’s YouTube lectures on Banting. The science is all there. We need fat. It is healthy for us. And no margarine please. Apparently it is only one molecule away from plastic! It is just plain unnatural. I render fat from the meats I use and love to cook with it.
It is misty and wet here on the farm. Of course the garden is loving it! The greens in my breakfast dish were picked from that garden minutes before cooking them. The breakfast was Green Eggs with Pink-stemmed Swiss Chard (grown from heirloom seeds) with Garlic, and it was cooked in coconut oil.
Snack lunch today was some mature cheddar cheese and half an avocado and coffee with cream. Good fats! At this point the carb count is about twenty, and since I am restricting my carbs to 25g a day for the first two weeks, I have five carbs left for supper or a snack. Half a cup of zucchini is around 4 carbs, so that is what I will have tonight with the stir-fried hake that I am going to make. Easy peasy and not much fuss. My old laptop is playing up but I am hoping to have some pics of it tomorrow. Look out for the Spicy Stir-Fried Hake with Buttered Courgettes recipe and pic.
Enjoy this Banting ride…
Banting Foods – Making Wise Choices…
When the Atkins Diet was all the rage, first in the late seventies and then again in the nineties, it was criticised for its lack of vegetables. Those same critics most likely did not read the Atkins Diet Revolution too well, because they would have seen the three cups of vegetables recommended daily. Two salad and one cooked vegetable. And that was only in the first two weeks of induction. After induction you could add more vegetables until you reached your CCL (Critical Carbohydrate Level) where you would no longer be losing weight. Unfortunately there were a whole bunch of low carb products (fake foods) being touted as well, and a low carb candy bar seemed much more exciting than a stick of celery. No vegetables meant more constipation as people were not getting enough fibre. The diet was blamed.
There are also those who complain they cannot eat fruit on a low carb diet. If you read the orange list in The Real Meal Revolution by Prof Tim Noakes et al, you will see a comprehensive list of fruit from which we can choose to eat, as long as we include it in our carbs for the day. The decision is ours to make. A little pineapple or apple in the chicken salad does make a difference every now and then. And strawberries and cream are a true treat. However, I am beginning to see the value of noting the carbs on a daily basis. Munching meats is cool because there are no carbs to count, nor in fat. Milk, cream, cheeses, nuts and seeds (which means crackers and breads) all need to be counted, along with the more dense vegetables. Unless it is high fat such as butter and lemon, sauces need to be limited and some archived for the moment.
The simple rule would be to choose our carbs wisely.
I think it was in a Paleo article where it was suggested that we should eat only those things that you could pick, dig out or kill with a pointed stick while naked on the plains, or was it the savannah? Now I don’t know about naked with a pointed stick, but I do get their meaning. It all boils down to real, natural food. Stuff that you could mostly eat raw actually. Raw meat? Come on, you know steak tartare don’t you? Well, you get my drift. You can’t eat rice raw, or wheat, or legumes unless sprouted. Sugar would be sucked from a cane and if the bees didn’t get you, honey would be a rare delight. Real food is what we need to keep healthy. Our bodies are made for it. They thrive on natural organic foods.
Sweets don’t grow on trees.
Not long ago in a meditation course with Osho, the one thing that stuck with me was the word “mindful”. Eating mindfully has become another reminder from my nagging but caring inner voice. We cannot eat mindfully in front of a television. In fact, I think we eat most mindfully when we are alone. Osho declared it would take much longer to eat our meals if we did so in a mindful manner. Slowly, chewing well, savouring and focusing on every mouthful. When the inner voice gets through to me and I practise that mindfulness, it works. It is then that a stick of celery delights.
Slow and steady with the Revolution…
Banting and a new Facebook Page…
Banting Babes and Boys. That’s it. My new Facebook page with for everyone who is committed to changing their food lifestyle in order to be healthy, healed and filled with energy.
This blog records my journey which has only just begun. You can follow me on Instagram (marloescottwilson) and Twitter (@marloepink) as well, but this is where I pour my heart out over food! This is where I share my food experiments and recipes. This is where I celebrate the changes I am making on my journey. My guide is The Real Meal Revolution by Tim Noakes et al. I love cooking (and eating!) and I love really good food that is organically grown and humanely reared. I garden and grow organic vegetables and in my kitchen there is never a shortage of green leafy goodness. New vegetables are being planted and new seed is being sown in this awesome Spring season. It is such an awesome feeling when eating one’s own lovingly grown produce:)
I get my free range eggs from a neighbour but am working on designing my chook dome and getting a rooster with a harem. In the meantime I am sorted. A nearby organic dairy farm offers cheeses, yogurt, raw cow and goat milk, free range eggs and free range pastured pork. How amazing to have such a place in my area.
OK. Enough rambling. Here’s my Food of the Day…
Meal 1: 3 Zucchini Fritters with a difference. I added 1/4 cup of finely grated Parmesan, 2 small tsp tomato paste and a leeeetle cream to the recipe I made yesterday. (Check yesterday’s blog entry for the basic recipe. Very yum.) This was served with two free range eggs fried in butter and olive oil.
1 filter coffee with cream
Meal 2: Herring with Ina Paarman’s Blue Cheese salad dressing. (She don’t use no MSG and it is way low in carbs. So cool.)
One chicken leg left over from last night
(Gotta tell you, two hours later and that 4 o’clock hunger time has passed and I am truly not hungry, so the diet discipline and the fat intake is working…)
Meal 3:
Going out to a friend for the evening. She has kindly cooked food that I can eat! Awesome. It is wonderful to have friends who care. Roast chicken and salad is goooood! I will take my own beautiful bottle of water spiked with Bitters. It looks just like a pink blush wine! And I believe bitters is good for the digestion. Yeh!
Cruising on with the Revolution…
Here is a “Before” pic. Mmino and me. First kiss.
Swimming, sun and iced water…
The day started with writing and then our lovely Water Babes class. It followed with the only cup of black filter coffee I have in a day.
I do love Water Babes! It makes me feel so good. And yesterday I swam 30 laps without stopping in my 15 metre long pool. Believe me, you need a pool in the hot northern reaches of this land. Summer is one long sweat, and if sweating could make us lose weight, I would be Twiggy by now, or I would have slipped down the plughole in the bath.
When I arrived here 17 years ago I immediately started putting on weight. On speaking to the leader of Weight Watchers at that time, she told me that a doctor had addressed the WW gathering a few weeks before and what she told me has stuck in my mind ever since. I might not say it the way he did, but this is my understanding.
In a hot climate such as ours, our bodies get really warm and our metabolism slows down. The doctor suggested that we drink iced water and exercise in air conditioned rooms. Now I know that many nutritionists and health practitioners suggest room temperature water, which I love and drink copiously. However, iced water is so very welcome on a hot day, and it begs a trial, so I am going to experiment with it. Interesting about the metabolism though. I think I will consult Google Scholar on that one.
Needless to say, here in our sunny clime, we do not need vitamin D supplements. My skin is turning a light gold from the pool activities and somehow one always looks that little bit healthier with a bit of tan. My legs are still milky white, but then again, I hardly ever show them! My beautiful daughter Jennifer has black skin and even she tans. Strange but amazing what the sun does for us – warms us and feeds us with vitamins – and like a little plant when it is fed good compost and kept free of pesticides and poisons (read preservatives and white carbs) we grow strong and beautiful.
It really is important that we see ourselves as beautiful. That we speak the language of kindness to ourselves as well as others. Go on. Say it…I am indeed beautiful and I love the me I am. Dare you…
Just because I am fat (as I said – tell it like it is) does not mean that I cannot strike a confident pose, a sexy pose even:) I am what I am inside…my spirit is playful and I am learning all the time. So exciting. I love life…and I am learning to love sincerely. My friends, my family, the beautiful planet that nurtures me. It is like melting into Source (whatever your name for the Centre of All) and realising just how much a part we all are of this awesome thing called Love. How the fibre of our spider’s webs are inextricably linked. We are indeed one.
OK. Enough rambling. Back to food!
Noon meal, (first of the day) is to be a lentil and vegetable curry type stew/soup thing. Don’t you love making up dishes from whatever is in the fridge? Spices are a must, especially cayenne and turmeric. If you ask Aunty G (Google/Google Scholar) about the health benefits, you will find that cayenne helps the heart as well as a whole bunch of other things and turmeric is anti-inflammatory and is a great after-dinner/meal drink with 50/50 plain yogurt and water. Yum. In fact, I might just have one after lunch.
Let you know later about the Lentil and Veg recipe…off to cook