My friend, our office assistant, suggested the following recipe when she learned that I was taking a moratorium on grocery shopping. Happily I had all of the ingredients on hand! This sure made lunch far more interesting than my plan to eat a can a day of each thing.

Yesterday, I mentioned my “Eat Only What’s In My Pantry For A Month” diet.  I sort of invented this diet in my late 20′s, after-college, starving under-paid programmer years.  I’m quite sure there are many variations of this diet around and they probably have more or less inventive names.

Back in December when I was starting the paperwork to attempt to refinance my house, before the emergency surgery interrupted, I talked to my shrink about my options should the refinancing fall through.  I brought up this memory of one July back in my younger years, admittedly when I was healthier and more socially active, that I quite literally brought a random can of something every day to work for lunch; it would be “Oh, looks like I’m having beets today!” or “Hmmm, green beans!”  I ate dry toast every morning and at least once or twice every weekend, a friend’s mom would feed me and I was not ashamed.  I only spent money on rent, utilities, and gas.  I had less than $10 in cash in my purse the whole month and I believe I managed to end up with at least $5 of it.

I used to think once you got beyond 35 years old, you couldn’t live like that anymore.  I always get a laugh when I tell people that one of my favorite memories in college is going to Krispee Kreme at 3am after the midnight movie when the “hot now” sign is flashing and buying one donut but not having enough cash to pay for it so I had to write a check…and worrying that it would bounce before my monthly allowance check deposited.  You can only really get away with that in college, right?  I mean, try explaining that kind of expense as a 38 year old.

So, here we are on Feb. 2nd and I have begun my “pantry” diet.  It’s going to be hard because I’m going to be out of candy and chips really soon.  I can make my own soy milk and soy yogurt — I have a stockpile of soy beans for some reason.  I have a lot of rice and couscous and frozen fruit, some granola.  I’m sure I have some oatmeal, canned beets, and green beans.  There’s a bean soup mix in there and a few bags of frozen veggies.  I even have the things I need to make a rather dull pot of spaghetti.  I think if I plan things out, I can make it through 26-ish days of February.

I just feel a little too old to be doing all of this…and I sure wish I’d stockpiled more chocolate bars before January ended.

Here’s a recipe I tried recently that I really enjoyed.  I couldn’t get enough of it and even looked forward to the leftovers.  What I really liked about it was how simple it was to make and yet how hearty and filling it was.  Plus, I’ve been on such a tomato kick lately and using so few ingredients really allowed the tomato flavor to shine through; it wasn’t smothered by more overpowering flavors or more prevalent ingredients as what often happens to tomato sauces when it is used as just a base.

I believe this will be one of the vegan recipes I’ll make while visiting with my parents — though I’m sure my mother will want to “dress it up” a bit for my father and herself.

Recipe: Portabellas & Cannellini in Tomato Sauce

Well, I have been doing my own version of an elimination diet rather than the McDougall elimination diet as planned.  I honestly cannot be sure if the cause was some sort of stomach virus, the caffeine withdrawal, my gastroparesis, or the swine flu — I’m only throwing that last one in there for my mother’s benefit.

Starting on Monday night, my stomach started feeling just a little off, but I didn’t think anything of it.  However, I had no appetite on Tuesday, which I attributed to the really bland elimination diet food — cream of rice with mashed bananas for breakfast and unseasoned vegetable soup for lunch.  I couldn’t finish lunch.  My stomach was doing this lurchy thing and hinting that if I kept trying to filling it with spoonfuls of broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, carrots, and green beans, then it was going to teach me some sort of lesson.  Throughout the rest of the day, every move I made, just upset my stomach, leading to increasing visits to the powder rooms.  I ended up staying home on Wednesday, where I attempted to lay as still as possible — and I don’t recall there being anything good on t.v. and eat nothing until late in the day when I attempted stale saltines and applesauce which were o..k…

I lost 5 pounds in 2 days.  Not the way I wanted to.  I continued on what I consider a “white” diet on Thursday with ginger ale, a plain bagel, a white potato, and white rice with some soy butter.  I still had what I assumed was the caffeine withdrawal headache on Thursday night.  My new gastroparesis medication, domperidone, which my mother picked up for me “across the border”, arrived while I was on “bed rest” so I took the first dose on Thursday too, hoping that it was going to have a positive impact after months of digestive deterioration.

This morning I didn’t have the caffeine headache when I woke and though I had some of the heartburn and some of the icky stomach feeling all day, while continuing my “white” diet, I feel slightly better.  Again, I can’t tell if it’s because it’s the 7th day after giving up caffeine — some websites say caffeine withdrawal can last up to 10 days, but it didn’t seem so bad the first few days — or a regular stomach bug — which should be going away on its own by now, right? — or my gastroparesis — which now has the domperidone fighting it.

Of course, now that I’m under 190 on the scale, I’m tempted to just get back on the Maximum Weight Loss Diet once I can start eating correctly again to see if I can lose weight now or if I’m going to gain back that weight and slip back into the same stuck place I was before.  I also have The McDougall Program 12 Days to Dynamic Health, which Dr. McDougall recommended to me as a push off point after the elimination diet.

I know I’m just trying not to think about that cream of rice and that vegetable soup.  You know how it is when you get sick after eating something, you just need a long vacation before you try it again.  Oy.

Well, I’m not going to think about it for another day or two.  It’s going to be “white” diet until then.

My low metabolism mixed with the gastroparesis continues to be a problem for my attempt at weight loss.  I have just been gaining and losing the same 3 pounds since I started Dr. McDougall’s Maximum Weight Loss Plan.  As excited as I was at the possibility that this plan might work for me, I am not surprised that it was thwarted just as every other attempt for the last 5 years.

I exchanged e-mails with Dr. McDougall, explaining my health condition — after all, the physicians I’ve been to see in person have had nothing  useful to advise other than eat less and exercise more.  Dr. McDougall suggested I might find some answers to my health issues through a rather drastic method called the elimination diet.  According to Dr. McDougall’s December 2002 newsletter, “this is the last step in searching out a dietary cause for health problems and is not recommended for the average person seeking relief from obesity, high cholesterol, and generalized fatigue.  The standard McDougall approach of a low-fat, vegan diet and exercise will solve the problems for most people.  And the Maximum Weight Loss Program that eliminates refined foods (including flour products) and sugars will help even the most calorie efficient person lose weight…The ‘elimination diet’ is truly for those people who are desperate and want to get well NOW – and who feel they have tried everything else.”

I guess I fall into the classification of desperate.

During the first week of an elimination diet, you eat only certain foods that are least likely to cause any type of adverse reaction.  (Some elimination diets require you to do this for two weeks.)  At the end of this “elimination period”, your body should be “clear” of the problem foods that you were eating before the diet.  In other words, you should be relieved of your problems, especially if they were allergic in nature.

During that “elimination period”, all foods should be thoroughly cooked, because cooking alters the proteins, making them less likely to cause an adverse response.

At the end of the “elimination period”, each week,  you will add one food, and only one food, back in to your diet to determine if it causes any unpleasant reaction.  For testing purposes, each “new” food should be eaten in large quantities 3 times a day for two days.  If the food does not cause a reaction, you can conclude that it is not a troublemaker.  Most reactions occur within a few hours, but some may not show up for several days.  When you have a reaction to a food, you must wait 7 days  before testing the next item.  This interval gives your system time to clear itself of the allergy-causing food.

Foods to Avoid: chocolate, nuts, caffeine, onions, green pepper, cucumbers, corn, radishes, all citrus fruits, strawberries, tomatoes, wheat

Starches to Eat: brown rice, sweet potatoes, winter squash, taro, tapioca, rice flour, puffed rice

Condiments: salt only

Beverages: water only

Note: fruits & vegetables must be cooked

In preparation for this diet, which I’m hoping to start tomorrow, I decided that I should give up caffeine first and then wait a few days to recover from the caffeine withdrawal before attempting anything else.  I remember the last time I tried to give up caffeine and it wasn’t pretty.  Within 36 hours, there was a migraine, my brains felt like they were oozing out of my ears, I was sick to my stomach, I could barely see to walk — I did not make it.  I gave in.

However, I’m proud to say that I am now on day 3 of no caffeine and so far it hasn’t been too bad.  Just a constant dull ache in my head and a pain in my neck.  This is tolerable.  I read somewhere that caffeine withdrawal can last up to 10 days.  I hope it doesn’t last that long, but I can survive this if it does.

So on to the rest of the elimination diet.  Adding stuff back in sounds agonizingly long so I better get to it.

Val lifts 40 lb Pumpkin

Have you seen that new Jenny Craig commercial where Valerie Bertinelli compares her lost 40 pounds to a giant pumpkin? When she lifts it she really has to put her back into it and even kind of stumbles like she might drop it.  She says she can barely lift it.

Visually, that’s really quite inspiring.

Back in 2002 when I did Weight Watchers, every time we lost 5 pounds, I remember my WW Leader telling us to go to the grocery store and pick up a 5 pound bag of potatoes so we could realize just how much weight we’d gotten rid of.  She advise us to imagine us to multiply that bag by the multiples of 5 we had lost.  I never really did that and even though I lost 55 – 60 pounds over the year, I never put it into that kind of perspective.

However, last week when I saw this commercial I was really struck by the mass of the weight that came off her small frame.  The truth is that Val and I are about the same height and other than the fact that I’m slightly more curvier in spots, our frames are both naturally petite.  So, it was easy for me to imagine that all of my extra weight is a giant pumpkin, a 65+ pound giant pumpkin, and suddenly I understood why my back hurts when I do chores that require standing, in part why I’m so easily fatigued, why I’m out of breath walking up the parking garage ramp, why I feel like I’m waddling, in part why I’m tired all of the time…

Before 2002 I had no memory of being a thin adult and thus couldn’t even imagine myself as a thin person.  However, because I was 130 – 135 lbs for the first part of 2003, I have very vivid memories of seeing my thin reflection in the mirror and looking down at my wanna-be flat stomach and my tiny arms and legs.  I recall how it felt to wear size 8 – 10 clothes and how good I felt about myself.

The image of Valerie Bertinelli and that 40 lb pumpkin has stuck with me, inspired me, motivated me.  I finished reading The Mcdougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss and then I obsessed about putting together the perfect one week menu.  I sometimes get a little overwhelmed by the details and, thus, never get around to actually starting things.  But Val and her Great Pumpkin pushed me on and I actually made it to the grocery store last night.  I didn’t actually get anything cooked, however, because by the time I got home and got the refrigerator cleaned out then refilled, I was exhausted and in a load of pain — my feet still hurt this morning!  I did try to stick to most of the principles though today.  Lunch was mostly McDougall, but it was leftovers that needed to be eaten, and I’ve snacked on veggies.

So, I’m basically going to try to stick to the following for a bit and see if I lose weight and start to feel better — plus, it’s all vegan!

Breakfast: starch with fruit and optional soy or rice milk

Snack: rice cakes, corn thins, or veggie crudities with optional fat-free bean dip

Lunch: starch-based entrée with very-low-calorie salad

Snack: rice cakes, corn thins, or veggie crudities with optional fat-free bean dip

Dinner: starch-based entrée with veggies (preferably green and yellow)  with very-low-calorie salad

Snack: fruit

For the “maximum” weight loss period, there’s no oils, no high-fat plant foods like nuts, avocados, seeds, olives, coconut, or soybean products, and no flour products.  Salt, sugar, and fruit all have limitations.  But like the old WW Core program, there’s a big focus on eating until satisfied — according to McDougall, carbohydrates will not only quickly satisfy, but keep one feeling full much longer.

There seems to be some sort of potato cult on the McDougall forums…if you have trouble with hunger, the advice is to just fill up on potatoes.  Considering the fact that my mother tried to “rip me a new one” the other day because twice in a row she talked to me and I had just eaten oven French fries for dinner, I can imagine my mother would not be impressed with this diet; she certainly will not buy into the nutritional science behind it.

Carbohydrates are our primary source of energy. They alone provide energy for red blood cells, and certain cells of the kidneys, and the preferred fuel for the central nervous system, including the brain. Fat, on the other hand, is a secondary source of energy that can be used by some tissues, such as muscle, but is more often stored for use in times of famine.

Humans were designed by nature to crave carbohydrates – or, to put the matter in more practical terms, to crave sweet-tasting foods. Because of the sweet-tasting taste buds are on the tip of our tongues we are designed to seek starches, vegetables and fruits – which supply us with both energy and maximum nutrition. In fact, carbohydrates, with their unique combination of sweet-flavor, energy, and nutrition, regulate our hunger drive. Unless you eat enough carbohydrate foods, you will remain hungry and looking for food.

There are no carbohydrates in red meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, or eggs. Most dairy products are deficient in carbohydrates. Cheese, for example, contains only two percent carbohydrate. This is one important reason people who eat a diet rich in animal foods never satisfied and become compulsive overeaters. (Dr. McDougall’s Health and Medical Center, Plant Foods)

My mother’s reaction to the French fries was to tell me that they were just going to be converted to fat.  I tried to explain to her what I read in McDougall’s book that carbohydrates are energy and that it’s the oils and the fats that actually get stored as fat, but she didn’t want to hear it.  She just went on a rant about how she knew this vegan thing was a bad idea.  It was just like the last time when all I ate were potatoes and starches and no vegetables.  Now I tried to explain to her that I had been feeling bloated from the gastroparesis and thus I had broken down my meals so that I would eat my protein at one sitting, my veggies at another, and my starch at another, which I’ve explained before, but she didn’t want to hear it.  I think she just wants to be right even if that means I’ll end up sicker.

Anyway, since I had rice for lunch, I think I may try to make some sort of beans and potato dish for dinner.  I got the recipe from the potato cult.  If it’s any good, I’ll post it.

The potato chip was was invented at Moon’s Lake House in 1853 at Saratoga Springs.

I began reading The Mcdougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss over the weekend.  I’m about two (2) chapters into it, which I realize isn’t far compared to those of you super readers who manage to read a book a day, tweet 100 things every two hours, talk to everyone on Facebook once a day, stay up-to-date on your e-mail, keep up with 20 blogs on your RSS reader, cook a family meal every night, which you photography and post about on your cooking blog before you either scrapbook, knit or do some other crafty thing I’m jealous of, which you will also blog about, and you will still have time to go to your full time job.  sigh!

I got almost to the end of the 2nd chapter and decided I had to reread what I’ve already read but with a highlighter.  So, really I’ve almost read four (4) chapters.  So there.

Anyway…I have found Dr. McDougall’s very straightforward, non-patronizing, non-guilt-mongering tone to be very refreshing.  First of all, his book doesn’t read like so many other weight loss books do — either overly perky or dramatically preachy.   In fact, he lets on straight away that the feelings of guilt and failure that most mainstream marketed diet programs lead to are not right and unnecessary.  Not only that, but the starvation method that generally leads to those feelings is absolutely wrong.

The notion that these two very basic instincts [-- the desire to look beautiful or the desire to eat -- ] are in opposition is not only wrong, but downright self-destructive.  It is this cultural delusion that promotes guilt and frustration, and…helps to keep people overweight. (The McDougall Program for Maximum Weight Loss, Chapter 1, p. 1)

If you feel hungry, your body is telling you something important.  Don’t ignore it.  I suppose it’s like what they say if you feel pain.  If you feel pain doing something, stop doing that something.  It’s your body’s alarm system letting you know that something is wrong that you should correct right away.  Like when the oil light comes on in your car, if you don’t do something immediately, long term damage can occur.

Your body will turn on you the longer you go without food or the longer you eat less than it needs to operate healthily.  This is because your body has a built in self-preservation mechanism and food deprivation is one of those things that triggers the shields to go up and all hands to be called on deck as they say.

The most familiar defense mechanism, the one we all have experienced on these strict calorie counting diets, is a lack of appetite once food is made available again or rather when any excuse is made available — office birthday cake, family 4th of July picnic, home alone and no one is looking?

Unfortunately, people who have been starving, whether they did it to themselves or otherwise, may also experience improved efficiency of their intestines.  What this means is that they become much better at absorbing nutrients so when they start eating again, the weight gain is much quicker than before.  This is probably why you feel like it takes two days to gain back what it took two months to take off.

Another survival mechanism is a lowered metabolic rate.  That’s right, all of those folks, who think they are going to quickly drop weight by skipping meals and starving themselves, are actually making it harder because once the body realizes it’s not getting enough to eat, it slows down the metabolism and starts conserving calories; thus, losing weight requires more and more effort and willpower.

Unfortunately, you aren’t just losing fat either.  When you diet, you lose muscle mass along with the fat, especially if you don’t exercise.  Then when you “give up” the starvation method and start to regain the weight, you regain fat, not muscle.  Muscle consumes more calories than fat tissue.  Even while a person is resting, healthy muscles burns calories while fat mostly just stores calories.  (Fat is a hoarder, y’all…no wonder I’m unable to embrace my inner neat freak…)  Therefore, when you replace muscle with fat, you are basically sabotaging your future attempts at losing weight, taking away the tissue that would help you lose weight just sitting there, making it more likely that you will continue the cycle.

And your body learns from experience just like you learn from experience.  You know how you’ve learned to put away a little extra money to pay for the extra heating oil in the Winter?  Well, your body learns from each time you diet how to be more efficient at using food.  Thus, the next time you diet, losing weight will be slower and harder.

By trying to lose weight via a starvation method such as calorie counting, you are surrendering to the mainstream marketing belief that your need for food is wrong, that nature designed you wrong, that your hunger drive must be changed or corrected.

So, can’t someone choose to be beautiful and choose to eat?

Three things are required to keep each of us alive:

• Without air a person can only survive for 3 minutes.
• Without water a person can only survive three days.
• Without food a person can only survive three weeks to three months.

Everything else is nonessential.  (No matter what the subliminal messages tell you.)

Have you ever heard of anyone who over-breathed?  What about someone who over-drank water?  You never hear of someone who limits herself to just eight glasses of water a day and if she’s still thirsty, “just goes to bed because she’s out of water for the day” — as my old WW leader might have said in the context.

The problem might be that the air isn’t pure enough or the water isn’t clean enough, but you can’t ever have too much air or drink too much water.  So if you trust your body to tell you how much air and how much water you need, why can’t your body be trusted to tell you how much food it needs as well?

Was the hunger drive designed incorrectly?  Do we really need to count every calorie?  Keep track of every morsel?

Perhaps the problem isn’t how much we eat but what we eat?

I think perhaps many of us just don’t know how to listen to our bodies.  Most of us have grown up always with processed food from grocery stores and fast food joints on every corner.  Our bodies never had a chance to learn anything else.  But like polluted air and unfiltered water, our bodies know poison is mucking up the machinery.  It doesn’t help that we’re on this starvation cycle while we’re pumping it full of chemicals and pesticides and synthetic and mutant  foods.

Several years ago, before my IgAN diagnosis, I unconsciously stopped eating pork and sausages, with a few exceptions.  Then I unconsciously started eating less and less beef.  Before I knew it I was technically a “flexitarian”, eating about 75% vegetarian meals.  It was not difficult for me to switch to a “pescetarian” when I received my diagnosis.  The truth is that my body had been speaking to me for years, telling me that meat made me feel icky.  You could visibly tell the difference the day after I ate meat just how bad I felt.

That’s why I am trying out this dietary vegan thing now.  I’m trying to listen to my body; I really feel that the more wholesome and natural my diet, the more healthy my body will be.  I also believe that after years of trying to lose weight through various calorie counting diets that left me hungry so much of the time, my metabolism is stalled.  There has to be a way to revive it through healthy eating  and exercise.

After my hopscotching my way down the lane of temptation to gooey Cheeseland (as opposed to Candyland), I’ve been keeping my eyes out for easy-to-make and cheaper-than-take-out Italian-style vegan meals to help me get back on track.  I found two such items in the frozen foods section of Whole Foods during my semi-weekly trip last Tuesday.

Amy's (Non Dairy) Baked Ziti Bowl

I just love ziti. Besides Alfredo on any kind of pasta , Baked Zita is my favorite.  O.K. we’ll call it my favorite of the red sauce pasta dishes, to be followed by Eggplant Parmesan, Spaghetti the way my mother used to makeit even if I do have to substitute meatless crumbles now.  So, when I found Amy’s Baked Ziti in a vegan version, I was excited.  I wish more of her items were vegan or that Whole Foods carried more of the vegan options.

I really should have taken a good look at the photo on the box so I would have been less surprised by the amount of peas in the dish.  I’m not a fan of peas as a rule.  I only like them as a dehydrated snack.  They were very hard to eat around.  However, that’s my only real complaint, considering this is a t.v. dinner with faux cheese and no gluten pasta.  The cheese really melted well — better than her non-dairy pizzas — and the portion is just right for a full meal.  Someone who isn’t supposed to restrict their meal sizes could probably add a side salad or a side vegetable or a fruit for “dessert”.  I will most likely stock my fridge with this again when I don’t have the time or gumption to make a whole big batch of my own secret recipe.

Whole Kitchen Vegan Meatballs

Now, I have to admit I was particularly excited about the discovery of Whole Food’s own frozen foods brand Whole Kitchen.  Well, O.K. I was really more excited about the fact that they had boxed up their Vegan Meatballs so there would be no more lurking in the deli section, hovering over the prepared foods, hoping beyond hope that this week someone back there had thought to mix together some meatless meatballs for those of us who are vegetarian Italian food lovers.  One time two years ago, I happened upon one container in the deli of Whole Foods “Meatless Meatballs” and I thought they were the best vegetarian substitute I’d ever tasted and to the agony of my mother and my co-workers, I have been bemoaning for two years that I have gone faithfully every week looking for them, never to see such things again.

But there they were in the freezer section.

So, I dressed them up in a Tomato & Basil Marinara Sauce that I found freshly made in the deli section (of course) and cooked them through.  I placed two slices of rice “Mozarella” cheese on an open whole wheat “hoagie” and spooned the hot, sauce-soaked meatless meatballs onto the cheese and bread and placed the open sandwhich into the microwave for 45 seconds so the cheese would melt a little and the bread would be soft and warm.

It was heaven!  Better than Subway or any sandwhich shop I can remember.  Next time I’m going to try those vegan meatballs with Spaghetti or maybe some Baked Ziti.  I wonder how they go with Alfredo — I have an “Alfredo” Sauce recipe made with tofu that’s supposed to be to-die-for…  

I’ve done some backsliding and in the tradition of the chicken and the egg, I don’t know whether the backsliding is the catalyst of my massive migraine and general feeling illish or if those led to a seeking of comfort foods which are the road to backsliding.

Cheese and shrimp are the hardest to give up, I think. Shrimp probably would not be so hard if I could find a Chinese restaurant that made tofu fried rice take out. Cheese however is like my kryptonite. Melted gooey cheese is the food of gods and goddesses and it is best served on calazones, pizzas, cheesy fries, grilled cheese sandwiches, baked potatoes, pasta, lasagna, etc… Mostly, it’s been the Italian foods with cheese that I’ve been craving of late.

It doesn’t help that I’ve figured out how to use my TomTom to tell me where the nearest Amatos is on my route home from anywhere. They have some sort of cheesy bread I can eat in the car while the eggplant parm tempts me the whole drive home.

I really need to try some of those recipes where tofu is used as a cheese substitute. It’s just so hard to cook when you feel so miserable.