Finding my Groove

[Daydream]

Marla, wow! Thank you kindly for your detailed recipe. Since you eat that vegetable soup often, it must be a winning recipe and from reading it over, it sounds like it is!

[Marla]

Today's food:



1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
Yes

2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.
Yes

3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
Yes

4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
Yes

5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
Yes

6. Eliminate any added oil.
Yes

7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
Yes

8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
Yes

9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
Yes

10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).
Yes, did 40 minutes on treadmill with intervals.

Thoughts:
I had to go to the fancy supermarket today to get a birthday card for my sister, and while I was there I noticed just how much tempting gourmet junk was on offer. Every end cap, every island, every holiday display, all stacked up with bakery items, sweets, snacks, caloric drinks, and alcohol. They sure don't make it easy for anyone to be healthy! I didn't look closely at any of it (the best defense, I find), but did stop in the produce section and got a discounted bag of persimmons, some big red "Holiday" grapes on sale, an organic delicata squash, and a few Japanese sweet potatoes. I've been on a white sweet potato (aka "Hannah yam") kick for quite a while, but before that I was eating mostly Japanese sweet potatoes. I like both varieties. When the JSPs are good, they are wonderful, but sometimes they are a bit dry and/or pasty in texture, and you just never know until after you bake them. The Hannahs have been more consistent for me, and I can get them at the cheapo supermarkets where I usually shop. But today, since I was in the fancy supermarket that has JSPs, I thought I'd get some.

I made some easy blended tomato soup to use for checklist item #1 (ingredients are canned tomatoes, celery, onion, water, and spices). I am not sure if the soup filled me up and caused me not to finish my dinner, or if my dinner just wasn't that exciting. Or both. I ate most of it, leaving about 1/4 of the stew-filled squash. My dessert bowl of fruit was a little too big as well, and there was some left after I'd eaten all I wanted.

All in all, a good day with the right food in the right amounts.

[Marla]

Today's food:



1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
Yes

2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.
Yes

3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
Yes

4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
Yes

5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
Yes

6. Eliminate any added oil.
Yes

7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
Yes

8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
Yes

9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
Yes

10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).
Not today, I had a lot going on and didn't manage to fit it in.

Thoughts:
My Japanese sweet potato was really good today; I think I will get some more from the same place and hopefully they'll be as moist, sweet, and delicious as this one was. I always roast my sweet potatoes on a parchment-lined baking sheet at 400F for 60-90 minutes depending on the size. I turn them over halfway through roasting. I will roast enough for 2-3 days or at a time, but not more than that because I prefer them freshly roasted and I don't like the way the texture changes after several days in the fridge. I know, picky, picky. I have tried air frying the refrigerated ones, and it didn't improve them as far as I'm concerned, so I typically just microwave them to reheat.

Today I read one of the studies cited by Jeff on soup and satiety: Soup preloads in a variety of forms reduce meal energy intake (Flood and Rolls, 2007). I was interested in this study because I was curious to know what kind of soup might be the most effective for preloading. The researchers tested four types of vegetable soup prepared from identical ingredients: separate broth and vegetables, chunky vegetable soup, chunky-pureed vegetable soup, and pureed vegetable soup. They had hypothesized that the chunky soup would be the most effective at reducing energy intake, but the study showed that all the preparations (which were all low in calorie density due the ingredients used) had a similar effect and all reduced subsequent food intake. That's great information for me, since my lunch soup is chunky, but the soups I prefer to use for preloading before dinner are pureed, and I had wondered if that would make them less satiating (apparently not). I was also interested to see that the amount of soup they served to women in the study was 1.5 cups, which coincidentally is how much I've been serving myself before dinner (men in the study got 2 cups).

This was such an interesting study, and reading it has increased my estimation of the potential value of following checklist item #1 consistently, which will likely help with compliance. Thank you for your article and the references, Jeff.

[Marla]

Just pasting today's weekly weigh-in post to my journal.

Weight change +/- in lbs: -.8

1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.16 of 21 meals. I did this for breakfast and lunch daily, but failed to do it for dinner for the first 5 days of the week. When I noticed that pattern, I addressed it and hopefully will do better.

2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert. Yes, every meal.

3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them. I had a celebration meal (birthday/anniversary) on Monday that had some added sugars/salts. Otherwise complied with this.

4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood). Yes.

5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy). One day early in the week I had a small portion of a Thanksgiving leftover that had tofu in it. And the celebration meal on Monday had tofu and sesame seeds.

6. Eliminate any added oil. Yes.

7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit. Yes.

8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages). Yes.

9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself. Yes.

10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking). Yes, 7 days out of 7. But I should note that on several days I only did the minimum (30 minutes) which is a reduction from what I had previously been doing.

Victories, comments, concerns, questions:
I feel pretty good about the week. I planned a celebration meal that consisted of foods allowed on the regular McDougall program, and I stuck to that plan. I enjoyed the richer foods for that one meal and had no trouble going back to MWL. That's an important win for me!

My total minutes of exercise this week were about half of what I've usually been doing, which is probably an important factor in why I only lost half the weight I usually lose.

I am feeling the annual pull toward holiday indulgence, as I knew I would, but so far I've resisted it. I hoped that by keeping a daily food journal and participating in this group, I could add some extra bricks and mortar to my willpower fortress, to get me through the season. I'm SO glad I decided to do this because it is really helping. To be able to get this extra accountability and support is such a gift. Thank you.

[deweyswakms]

Maria,
your posts are inspiring! And you have lost so much weight! well done.

I love soups; make them all the time. Love a good veggie soup but lack the storage space to make large quantities, plus cooking for just me. Think I'll do a veggie soup next week plus bean burgers.

Bravo on fixing the Vitamix!

Marsha

[Marla]

Thanks for commenting, Marsha! I love soup too. I haven't been making a lot of my old favorite soups since reducing sodium, as they don't taste good to me without bouillon, but I am gradually re-introducing the ones that I think have the best chance of working in a low-sodium version.

I hope you enjoy your vegetable soup and beanburgers. My favorite beanburgers are Jeff's fast food burgers made with sweet potato and curry powder.

[Marla]

Ugh, I wrote a long journal entry but my login timed out while I was writing it, so that when I hit submit, it prompted me to log in, and my post was gone. Not going to re-create it. But, here's today's food:



1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
Yes

2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.
Yes

3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
Yes

4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
Yes

5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
Yes

6. Eliminate any added oil.
Yes

7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
Yes

8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
Yes

9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
Yes

10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).
Yes, did an hour combined time on treadmill and exercise bike.

Thoughts:
I had some thoughts, honest.

[deweyswakms]

[quote="Marla"]

Curried carrot soup sounds yummy! Did you have a recipe or just made it up? I can do that. I make my own veggie stock from all the peelings and vegetable trimmings.

I so agree about going into ANY grocery store and having to navigate a minefield of very unhealthy foods. Sad really.

Marsha

[Marla]

Hi Marsha,

This was the first time I tried the curried carrot soup. I adapted it from this Vitamix recipe: https://www.vitamix.com/us/en_us/Recipes/Curried-Carrot-Soup . I omitted the oil, soy milk, and salt, and used Pacific brand low sodium vegetable stock. I also increased the curry powder and added some cayenne pepper. I think I would make it again and play with the recipe some more -- it didn't knock my socks off but it was okay. Oh, and I am not sure I would use the Vitamix to "cook" the soup next time.....leaving the blender running for over 5 minutes was a noisy experience. I would cook it in the normal way and just puree it at the end.

I'll continue seeking out and testing some other low calorie dense, low sodium soups for preloading. I saw a cabbage soup on the Plant Based Cooking Show site that looks good and needs no modifications: https://plantbasedcookingshow.com/2019/01/20/easy-cabbage-soup-in-the-instant-pot/

Yes, any grocery store can be a minefield. I primarily shop at Winco and Food Maxx, two discount grocery stores that (in my area anyway) cater to a lower-income clientele. The displays are very basic, and the items featured aren't tempting to me. They tend to be inexpensive processed junk foods (sugary cereal, chips, soda, boxed mac and cheese, etc) piled up with signage advertising the cheap price, with no attempt to make them visually appealing. But in the more upscale market they'll feature handcrafted items from their bakery, expensive coffees, unique gourmet candies and snack foods (many of them purporting to be healthy although they aren't), fancy alcoholic beverages, all in elegant packaging and displayed in an appealing way with cute little hand-lettered signs that capture your attention. This is way more dangerous to me than navigating aisles full of ramen and twinkies on my way to the bulk foods and produce.

[Marla]

Today's food:



1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
Yes

2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.
Yes

3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
Yes

4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
Yes

5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
Yes

6. Eliminate any added oil.
Yes

7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
Yes

8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
Yes

9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
Yes

10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).
Yes, did an hour (combined time) on treadmill and bike, with intervals.

Thoughts:
Koshari is sooooo delicious. It's just a pile of starches with spicy tomato sauce and caramelized onions, but there is something incredibly satisfying about the combination of lentils, pasta, and rice. No question that starch is my food (as Dr. McDougall likes to say).

For breakfast, I was out of oat groats this morning so I had old fashioned oats. I stirred in some mashed banana, because I don't really enjoy plain old fashioned oats the way I enjoy plain oat groats. I am sure both kinds of oats are healthy and they both seem to keep me full for about the same amount of time.

I ate my last portion of vegetable soup for lunch today, so I went to the store and got salad stuff for this week's lunches. I'm kind of looking forward to a big salad tomorrow (ongoing quest for the perfect dressing notwithstanding).

So far I'm following through with my intention to do better with exercise this week. I did 50 minutes on the treadmill with 4 intervals where I got my heart rate up near peak. Then I went on the exercise bike for 10 minutes to make it an even hour of exercise. Later, after dinner, I stepped up and down and did some simple knee lifts and kicks on a low (4") aerobic step while we watched tv. I did about 20 minutes of that. Earlier this year I was doing the stepping during tv time every night, but I fell out of the habit. I think it's a good habit that is worth cultivating.

[Marla]

Today's food:



1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
Yes

2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.
Yes

3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
Yes

4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
Yes

5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
Yes

6. Eliminate any added oil.
Yes

7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
Yes

8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
Yes

9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
Yes

10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).
Yes, did an hour of raking leaves, an hour on the treadmill and bike, and 20 minutes of light stepping on a step bench after dinner.

Thoughts:
The casserole I made tonight is an updated version of one I learned here on this forum 15 years ago! The creator was a member named Seedy. The original recipe used canned chili beans. For mine, I use homemade chili beans in tomato sauce, plus canned NSA kidney beans and black beans. Those go in the bottom of the casserole dish, then I add a layer of white bean cheez and salsa, then put pre-browned hashbrowns on top and bake until hot and bubbly. I used two small casserole dishes so that we could eat one tonight and freeze one for later.

The fuyu persimmons I bought the other day were overripe and about to go bad, so I froze them with the intent to use them in nice cream. Tonight's banana-persimmon nice cream was very sweet and creamy.

Lots of exercise today, I should sleep well tonight.

Is December over yet?

[Marla]

Today's food:



1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
Yes

2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.
Yes. My dinner bowl had less than 50% greens, so I had some zucchini on the side to make it 50%.

3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
Yes

4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
Yes

5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
Yes

6. Eliminate any added oil.
Yes

7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
Yes

8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
Yes

9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
Yes

10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).
Yes, did an hour combined on treadmill and bike with some higher intensity intervals, and 20 minutes of stepping after dinner.

Thoughts:
One thing I've had to figure out is how to do this without being able to have a completely "clean" environment at home. My husband eats the same things I do, but also eats higher calorie dense foods like bread, peanut butter, nuts, raisins, and dry cereal. My adult son who lives with us does not eat like us and brings plenty of C.R.A.P. (calorie rich and processed) food into the house. It is what it is. I can't keep that stuff out of the house, but I have negotiated a situation where my son keeps his snacks in one cupboard that I don't use. Both of their breads (my son eats sourdough and my husband eats Dave's) are in the freezer, and the peanut butter is on a high shelf that requires a step stool to reach it. It's the best I can do.

Thinking back to times when I've gotten off track in the past, it usually starts with little things that aren't too unhealthy. Then more and more of those, then as time passes more questionable things, until eventually I'm getting oily vegan takeout several times a week and eating Tofutti Cuties with both hands. At that point I'm already deep in the pleasure trap and it isn't too much of a stretch to eat a little dairy, so that creeps back in too. But I've never gone from a good groove, straight to the worst off-plan junk, overnight. It always starts with things that are healthy-ish but that I shouldn't really be eating because I know where they lead. I'm in a happy zone right now, where my MWL food is tasting good to me and I'm enjoying my meals. I don't want to recalibrate my system so that it starts craving junk again. I always think about those rats that Dr. Lisle lectures about, the ones that got fed a diet of human junk food for a while, and then when the researchers took the junk food away and gave them their normal rat chow, they refused to eat for 2 weeks! Ha, I know how they felt. And I have no wish to go through that (again).

[LRou]

Looks delicious and really healthy too. Well-done!

[squealcat]

I remember Dr Lisle's talk about the rats and need to keep it on my mind this week ! Those foods really sneak in when I least expect them. I can go along pretty well being happy with my food and one little thing sneaks into my mind first and my mouth second and then more "stuff" follows !

Thank you for all your posts, by the way ! You have helped me immensely ! I have always had oats for breakfast each day and don't tire of it at all. Now I have added sweet potato to my lunch every day after my huge salad ! I can eat that every day as well. I like variety and have different things for dinner .

I want to post my meals on my journal and did well for one day. I really messed up yesterday but am jumping back in today. I don't do pictures though. Thanks again !

[deweyswakms]

I primarily shop at Winco and

I primarily shop at Winco; I go very early to avoid most people. They have good produce and best prices for many items And yes, none of that expensive tricked out 'junk'. I love carrots so will try them in a soup. I do add some salt, not much, to my chilis and soups. I use a packaged chili seasoning mix (will see if it has sodium in it), and primarily rely on pepper, turmeric/garlic/curry for other seasonings. Interestingly I add leftover coffee to my chili base.

I love oatmeal so now want to try oat grouts!

Marsha