Don’t Starve To Lose Weight (PART 4)

READ THE LABLE!

If the label says “wheat flour” it is refined, If it’s unrefined the label will say 100 percent whole wheat (or some other grain). Often both kinds of flours will be listed, and if that’s the case, don’t but it. Also, watch for added fat in various forms-lard, butter, margarine, vegetable oil, or partially hydrogenated oil- don’t but it! This will eliminate 97 out of 100 loaves of bread on the shelf at the store. If you want to control your weight, all your food needs to be unrefined!

Will you get hungry two hours after eating our low-fat recipes? No! Recently I was visiting with a physician who wanted a better understanding of this concept, and she said, “But fat is needed for satiety.” In other words, since fat slows digestion time it tends to keep us satisfied, keeps us from getting hungry too quickly! She was right. It is the Fat that makes us feel full. But there is another ingredients usually missing from processed foods that also provides satiety: fiber. Plant foods are all high in fiber. But the fiber is removed when processed into white bread or pasts, vegetable oil, and sugar. These are just the obvious examples. 

Animal products don’t need to be processed or refined to lose fiber – they never had fiber, they never will! Don’t miss this incredible point: Animal products (meat, fish, chicken, eggs, and milk) have zero fiber. No wonder so many Americans are constipated. Of course, fiber has much more to offer besides regularity. It lowers cholesterol. It helps protect against diabetes. And it helps keep us from getting hungry too quickly so we don’t look for snacks.

The recipes in this blog are different – they don’t use animal products. The ingredients are from your garden or the produce department, tastefully presented with gravies, sauces, and dressings made from nuts. All the fiber is still there. When you eat your first meal from this blog, you will agree with the participants in our weight-loss programs. They were amazed to find that they could go five hours without even a snack – they just never felt hungry. 

The Live it is not just for weight control. Cholesterol goes down, the cholesterol ratio is improved, and hypertension can be cured and controlled. There is a much decreased risk for a number of cancers. There is a dramatic decrease in diabetes incidence, with a virtual nonincidence of gout.

Finally, a word about the psychology of controlling weight. Through a complex interplay of one’s background and life experiences it’s possible to develop a true obsession to overeating. There are people who almost tear the doors off the cupboards to get food, stuffing themselves as fast as they can gulp it down, not even enjoying the food. This is the extreme end of the spectrum, but if you recognize something like this in yourself, you need more help than this blog can offer. See a physician and get help in finding professionals to guide you through recovery from a very complex problem.

Don’t Starve To Lose Weight (PART 3)

THE LIVE IT

Start with delicious produce, grains, and nuts. Thoughtfully prepare them in your own kitchen. Then sit down and enjoy several helpings, guilt-free. Unrefined plant foods are naturally low in fat. That helps you to lose weight, because a low you up. A pound of fat has more than twice the calories of a pound of carbohydrate or protein. A meal from my blog might have half the calories of the meal you ate last night!

What did you eat last night? If you had a serving or two of vegetables and salad, good for you! But you may be struggling with extra weight because you’re eating refined foods: dressings, gravies, sauces, and entrèes. The term refined foods refer to the process of removing fiber nutrients from plant foods and usually increasing the amount of fat. There is another way to eat your entrèes, potatoes, fruit, and vegetables! You don’t have to eat then plain – you’ll learn about that in the recipes that I will start listing soon.

Refined foods can be blamed for most of the excess pounds people carry around. The culprits are oil, butter, and the high percentage of fat found in meat. Neva replaces oil in her recipes with nuts, olives, and coconut. Those foods give you all the moisture you need and make the food taste great, but because the refining process is left behind, you don’t get too many calories.

Obviously junk food is highly refined. A 200-calorie potato becomes a 1,000-calorie bag of chips. Chips are easy to eat, and even easier to store as fat. Other refined foods such as white bread, pasts and rice, are not as fattening but should be replaced with their whole-grain originals. Fewer calories are consumes, while the fiber and nutrients your body needs are restored.

Don’t Starve To Lose Weight (PART 2)

EXERCISE

Every diet requires exercise to be effective. It not only burns calories, but arise the efficiency of your gigantic calorie burners, the basal metabolic rate (BMR). Every day the body needs a certain amount of calories just to operate, even if we don’t move a muscle all day. The basal metabolic rate is the calories burned to pump blood, breathe, run the brain, process food, keep the body warm, etc. The astonishing thing is that this BMR for most people is about 75 percent of their total calorie expenditure – close to 1,500 calories. You’d need to run 15 miles to burn 1,500 calories! Many people burn only an additional 300 calories for a whole day’s activities (the equivalent of walking three miles).

Here’s the catch: If you diet, your BMR, which is the giant calorie consumer, will decrease. It is as though the body says itself, “Food shortage! Conserve calories!” The body turns down the “furnace.” Exercise tricks the body into keeping the furnace going full-blast even on fewer calories. The food shortage is ignored when you exercise, and your body burns calories left and right.

Most people will need to walk three miles per day to make this work. Any form of exercise will do. Try to find something which you enjoy: play tennis, ride a bike, go swimming, or work in your garden. Just find out how long it takes you to walk three miles, and then exercise that long each day. And you don’t have to exercise vigorously. You can even divide up your three miles throughout the day and you will burn the same number of calories. You can even exercise leisurely. Whether you run or walk that mile, slow or fast, the same number of calories will be burned.

What’s more, for about a day after exercise (and if the exercise is vigorous, the effect is greater) the BMR is even higher, giving you added help in controlling calories. Amazingly a sedentary person (very little exercise) will tend to have a larger appetite than one who has been exercising regularly.

Don’t Starve To Lose Weight (PART 1)

Lower Your Cholesterol Without Medication!

Prevent or Even Reverse Diabetes!

Drastically Lower your Risk of Heart Disease!

Are those preposterous claims? No, these claims are substantial in medical literature – here is how you can do it. Let’s begin with the issue of controlling weight. 

Most Americans are overweight. In the past two decades this condition has increased to pandemic proportions: 60 to 80 percent of adults are overweight. Many are in the obese category. These extra pounds are making us more susceptible to a host of health problems from heart disease to diabetes to certain cancers, and much more.

Very few of us are please with the extra pounds we are carrying, although some of us have developed a jolly spirit in an attempt to relieve our private agony. Recently I worked with a woman who weighed nearly 500 pounds. As time went by she confided to me her innermost feelings: “When I go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant, people look at me and think, What are you doing in here, you big fat slob?” Those were the tragic words, not mine. Her negativity is a common thread among overweight people.

Solutions, of course, are offered everywhere. Friends offer unsolicited advice and advertises promise pills to suppress hunger and burn calories. These slick and convincing ads seldom reveals the research: less than 5 percent of Americans who dies keep the weight off long-term. Most of us know that from painful experience.

“But,” you ask, “how do I know your plan is not just another empty promise?” That’s fair question. You will need a certain degree of trust to accept our proposed eating plan, but it might help you to know that we have nothing to sell. It will cost you less than what you are spending right now on your Pantry. The approach is very simple: You essentially eat all you want and lose weight slowly and consistently – and keep it off as long as you stay with the plan. 

“Wait a minute,” you say. “All the plans work if you stay with them!” True. Most dieters gain their weight back because they quit the diet. But there are three great differences with this plan. 1. You eat all you want. 2. No spending money on a “weight loss” product. 3. You don’t diet, you live it. This is a new life style – one so workable and energizing that you will never want the old one back. So what is this plan? Here it is in one simple sentence: Exercise moderately and eat only unrefined plan foods.

You’re probably wondering, Is that a life? Where will I get the energy to exercise? How can I turn down favorite foods while people all around me, some of them thin, enjoy the American diet? One key is to visualize success. See yourself buying new clothes, several sizes smaller. Imagine a life of looking and feeling great. That is a life!

Healthy Cuisine Your Family Will Love (Part 2)

People are often concerned that if they quit using so many refined or prepared products, it will take more time in the kitchen-efficiency can make up for much of it! So I will include Efficiency Tips, the result of many years of experience in saving time.

The Ingredients Equivalents article gives general guidelines for substitution-a real plus if something is missing from your pantry. Another helpful article is Menus and Shopping Lists. Those articles will provide complete menus with shopping lists – enough for four weeks! This will help you get a running start on what to plan for the family and what to keep on your pantry shelf.

If you have children or grandchildren, you’ll appreciate Favorites for Children. These are recipes kids especially enjoy eating them into the kitchen to help you make the healthy and delicious dishes!

Finally, we make every effort to use only unrefined plant products. These are some exceptions mainly in the use of sweeteners and also in an effort to “reach out” to family members who may not be ready to follow the very best dietary plan for their health or at least not without the changes taking more time. We often use dates raisins, or some other whole food sweetener, but also use some honey, syrup, or sugar of some kind, though sparingly. It is certainly possible for one to use some refined flour, for example, in a recipe, in an effort to make a preparation a little more like the standard fare.

Healthy Cuisine Your Family Will Love (Part 1)

We are writing the 7 Cooking Secrets because we want to help you improve your family’s health. The fact that you are on this blog indicates that you are interested in cooking healthy meals. But maybe you aren’t sure how to do it. We frequently read or hear in the media advice from leading nutritionists, scientists, and physicians on what we should be eating. But it isn’t easy to make lifestyle changes, especially when it comes to changing what we eat.

Eating delicious food is delightful experience. But we Westerners have developed a taste for food that is risky to our health. And we have lost the skills (and determination) needed to prepare healthful food that is also tasty and attractive. 7 Cooking Secrets can help change that. We know that if healthful food tasted good, looked appealing, and was affordable, you and your family be happy to eat it!

How can you get your family to adopt more healthy eating habits? It will take some willingness to allow their tastes to change gradually. At our home almost everyone enjoy these healthy dishes. Every recipe may not be a winner for everyone, but here in our blog are some suggestions that we believe will help you introduce healthy food to your family. 

1. Go slowly. Don’t clear the meat, dairy, and oil out of your kitchen all at once. Add one now meal to your menu at a time. Soon it will become a family favorite.      

2. Serve your first dish without fanfare. Don’t announce, “That is healthy!” or “This is cashew cheese!” Cashews can never be cheese. But that entrée will be delicious because of the nuts, and they won’t miss the cheese if you don’t mention it.

3. Heart disease or diabetes can be dramatically reserved for many people. If you or someone in your family has one of those conditions, you’ll want to make changes more rapidly. Go ahead! Get rid of the culprit foods and make a new shopping list based on this blog. Just be sure you make changes deliberately and steadily.

You will notice that there is a spiritual flavour in 7 Cooking Secrets. This is because we believe that our bodies belong to God – a concept found in the Bible. We believe that the best health will result when you accept God-given responsibility to keep your body as healthy as possible. (You’ll enjoy reading my blog as I will also share my personal story, where how I was so unskilled in the kitchen until God answered my prayer for help.) No matter what your spiritual values are, we’re sure you will benefit from making healthy food taste good.