Cashew – Almond Milk — soaked raw cashews and almonds, blended, and nothing else. Run it through a nut milk bag and store in fridge for up to 4 days. This recipe is for a small amount, 1/2 cup cashews and 1/2 cup almonds.

Cashew – Almond Cheese Sauce — once again, soaked, blended, but with a smaller amount of water, and run through the nut milk bag. To this is will get nutritional yeast and a few other things before I stick in in the dehydrator to warm.

Hemp Seed Chorizo   — this is my star creation since I started going raw. It’s really out of this world. tee-hee

Plenty of Romaine Lettuce — for the “taco” salads topped with hemp seed chorizo and cheese sauce.

tomatoes – onions -avacados – garlic – cilantro — we can eat off of this for days when it’s made into a raw hot salsa.

and now for the drumroll please…….

I will attempt to make a raw version of “Hamburger Helper’s” infamous “Cheeseburger Macaroni” flavor. Yeah. pics are coming and the recipe too if it’s as good as I am hoping!

For this ambitious project I will need:

The Cheese Sauce

zucchini sliced into “noodles”

hemp seed “burger crumbles” — another ambitious attempt.. I’ve found that hemp seed makes a sublime substitute for ground meat and sausage when prepared with other things.

and that’s my “Hamburger Helper”

The “cheese sauce” is a standard ingredient that can be used in both dishes and lasts about 5 days in the fridge.

Honey Mangoes — smaller and yellow, this is how they are different from the regular mangoes and oooohhhhhh soooo good. I just peel and eat them as-is whenever I like.

My solution to this was two-fold: Take the party to a restaurant when you can -or- if you have to cook at home for guests, cook the good and healthy stuff! Roasted turkey instead of “fried,” baked sweet potatoes instead of that marshmallow brown sugar nightmare found on most holiday tables, low sugar, highly spiced fruit crisp with minimal crust, and so on… If you don’t present it as “healthy” foods, but instead present it as “gourmet” or “something different and yummy” people are not going to moan and groan about it. This year, we took the party outside. Restaurants were the answer. My kitchen was left in its’ immaculate state with twigs and barks intact and ready for me when I came home!

The restaurants were not a fail whale for me at all. You see, since I have been on this very low calorie diet based in high levels of nutrient intake, my appetite isn’t much to write home about. I was not at all tempted to order the banana split sundae. The thought of that made me think about hurling. It did!  I had salmon. I had vegetables. I had a bite of someone elses tiramisu.  I was satisfied, not tempted, not suffering, not in pain and best of all, I did not have to deal with the digestive consequences of breaking my diet.

This fatty did not take off the holidays. I trudged right on through. Ok, I did get drunk on pear-in-the-bottle brandy. lol. The rest of the time I stuck with vodka and grapefruit juice.

The first thing to do of course when this happens is to stop and think about it. You are hungry as hell… why?  You get plenty of nutrients, have a well balanced diet, but yet you suffer through moments of ravishing hunger. It’s not very comfortable. And anyone reading this blog knows that I am all about making losing weight as comfortable for yourself as possible. I don’t believe in suffering. Why should I put myself through that… yet, with all of my efforts to make losing weight as comfortable as possible for myself, sometimes it really sucks and I am really uncomfortable. Rare, but it happens. It happened last night. So what did I do?

I gave in to relieve the pain. lol. No I did not run up to the bagel shop and buy a dozen with cream cheese. No I did not run out and get fried Chinese take-out. And since my kitchen has been transformed into a health and wellness center, there’s really nothing here to seriously pig-out on.

My daily calorie limit is around 900 calories a day, roughly anywhere between 800-1000 calories a day. I’m certain that I must have had 1200 yesterday after giving in. But, the giving in totally relieved my suffering and didn’t cost me a lot in terms of calories. We are talking 2 small slices of whole wheat bread with a smidgen of butter and apricot preserves w/ a cup of milk. WOW was that satisfying. I felt better afterwards and certainly did not feel crazy like after eating a whole box of pastries from the Afghani bakery down the street. lol.

This is what I love about being on a very low calorie diet, suffering is minimized, all around. The problem with so much of weight-loss philosophy is that it seems to be based in some sort of “punishment.” The fat person needs to be “punished” for being fat. Just like the smoker needs to be “punished” for smoking. It’s sick! Who has the right to judge anyone like that? Yet, it’s a common thread in our society when it comes to fatties and smokers. “Only punishment will help you get healthy.”  BULL HOCKEY STIX.

I’m smoke-free for almost 6 months now… and I did not do it by punishing myself. I did it with electronic cigs. What I needed to stop smoking was to set myself up for success, not failure. The e-cig did that for me.

Same thing with my weight loss, and I fully expect to be a size 10 or 12 by the time spring rolls around, people. That’s a big improvement from the size 20-22 I was packing before I started my weight loss program. I applied the same logic from quitting smoking to my diet regime:  I always set myself up for success, not failure.

Success works like this:  On this very low calorie diet, it’s certainly not every day or even every other day that I have an extreme hunger attack.. This week it was one day out of 6. It’s been one day out of 14 before. The thing I like about my diet plan is that now that I have transformed my kitchen, if I do have a hunger attack, I’m only going to go about 300 calories over my 900.  Before the kitchen transformation, I HAD to sit here and SUFFER THROUGH HELL just to stick to my diet.. and frankly, I’m no longer willing to play the “pain to gain” game. I don’t want pain! Pain sets you up for failure!

1200 calories yesterday was not a failure. I feel better today and a bit less hungry. My 900 will be easy and pain-free today.

And how is your day going? 

Speaking of which, wasn’t Buddha a big fat guy? All of those depictions, statues, etc., Buddha is always a big fat happy guy, I’m not sure if he was following his own rules on this, but nonetheless, if you’ve ever seen or met any Buddhist monks, they do not weigh as much as Buddha at all, most of them are really slender people. Probably has something to do with doing as Buddha said and not how he did. lol. Anyways.. on with the list, I’ve printed out the bold ones and taped them up in my kitchen:

Bhojanapatisamyutta (food)

1. I will receive pindapāta (alms round) food attentively.
2. When receiving pindapāta food, I will look only into the bowl.
3. I will receive curries in the right proportion to the rice.
   
4. I will receive pindapāta food only until it reached the rim of the bowl.
5. I will eat pindapāta food attentively.
6. When eating pindapāta food, I will look only into the bowl.
7. I will not dig up the rice making it uneven.
8. I will eat curries in the right proportion to the rice.
9. I will not eat rice only working from the top down.
10. I will not cover up curries – or curry mixed with rice – with white rice because of a desire to get a lot.
11. When I am not sick, I will not ask for curries or rice for the purpose of eating them myself.
12. I will not look at another’s bowl with the idea of finding fault.
13. I will not make up a very large mouthful of food.
14. I will make food up into suitably round mouthfuls.
15. I will not open my mouth until the portion of food has been brought to it.
16. When eating, I will not put my fingers into my mouth.
17. When food is still in my mouth, I will not speak.
18. I will not throw lumps of food into my mouth.
19. I will not eat by biting off mouthfuls of rice.
20. I will not eat stuffing out my cheeks.
21. I will not eat and shake my hand about at the same time.
22. I will not eat scattering grains of rice about so that they fall back into the bowl or elsewhere.
23. I will not eat putting my tongue out.
24. I will not eat making a champing sound.
25. I will not eat (or drink) making a sucking sound.
26. I will not eat licking my hands.
27. I will not eat scraping the bowl.
28. I will not eat licking my lips.
29. I will not take hold of a vessel of water with my hand soiled with food.
30. I will not throw out bowl-washing water which has grains of rice in it in a place where there are houses.

Quitting smoking was a similar situation. We’re both successfully quit for almost 6 months now using those electronic water vapor cigarette  — otherwise known as an e-cig. We both wanted this with the same passion and desperation. How much better we both feel since we stopped smoking!

But when it comes to food, dude can pack it away and when I bring out the barks and seaweeds, he can’t deal. He’s skinny, andl except for his little potbelly, which, for him is a non-issue that goes away if he runs around the block every day for a month. lol.

So today after an especially painful cuisine experience, I’ve decided that our kitchen is going to be transformed into a health center. He has no say in this. He can eat his food out if he wants to have anything that is not in the kitchen, and I’m chucking a whole truckload of food out, that doesn’t need to be here. But really, I don’t have much on hand that is necessarily “bad,” but for example, peanut butter… it’s just too damn easy to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, you dig???!  This kitchen needs to be a restricted area, with barks and seaweeds, lentils and hempseed.

And that is what is going on tonight. The transformation of the kitchen from a feeding trough to a health center.

I haven’t told my husband yet.

How did I begin to love this simple, yet good-for-fatties food? I started experimenting with different herbs and spice mixtures that really liven up the old school “cottage cheese and tomatoes” into a new school gourmet treat! I’m going to give a general recipe you can follow, but you should experiment with your own favorite spices and herbs. Fresh herbs are just lovely with it, I especially enjoy thyme and basil, fresh, diced up and tossed in with the cottage cheese. Oh, and another thing, I don’t like “fat-free” anything, and that includes cottage cheese. yuk. It’s got to have a little butterfat in there to keep my taste buds satisfied, so what I do is go for the low-fat or reduced-fat cottage cheese. Again, to each his own here, some people dig the fat-free stuff, just not I. Use it for this recipe if you like it.

1 cup of your favorite cottage cheese

2 ripe tomatoes (or one large one)

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

2 tbs chopped fresh thyme

Now here is the kicker: Go to the supermarket and select one of their multi-spice combos that fits your taste buds. I selected one I really like that has hot red pepper in it in addition to 14 other spices and a little salt.

Toss your cottage cheese with the fresh herbs, cut the tomatoes in wedges of 4 and place them around the mound of cottage cheese that has been tossed with the fresh herbs. Now, sprinkle your favorite multi-spice addition on top of everything. Viola’ !  You have a jazzy fun cottage cheese and tomatoes!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’m not a huge fan of the proliferation of bariatric surgeries these days. I’m also not a huge fan of the pharmaceutical industry. But side by side, I’d much rather see people get this surgery than swallow “diet pills,” prescription or not. Both of these things remind me of the huge increase in prescriptions written for people with “depression” in the 1990s. Of course, depression, like morbid obesity, are very real illnesses that require medical intervention. However, depression medication for people that aren’t mentally ill and bariatric surgery for people 30lbs overweight (and yes there are doctors out there that will do both of these things) is in my layman’s opinion, unnecessary, stupid and possibly dangerous.

But as you will see when you read the Bariatric Girl blog, she spent 3 decades morbidly obese and thanks to life saving surgery, she is no longer ill and obese.  A human life has been saved. Thank the god of your choice for that! Seriously. There should not be a stigma about obese people having life saving surgery. If I had to have this surgery and someone had a stupid comment about it, I would just ask them, “hey, would you like me to drop dead?” Because let’s face it, people that are morbidly obese are on death’s doorstep. That’s what the MORBID part means.

If you are depressed, and have a clinical brain chemistry issue, if you are an obese yo-yo-tried-everything-dieter-for-decades, diabetic, severely ill, severely obese, yeah, you need medical intervention; and that is between you and your doctor.  And I can honestly say here, that if I needed life saving bariatric surgery, I would get the surgery instead of staying ill and obese.

Weight loss is a very personal journey; but one constant always remains the same for everyone : You must take in less calories than you expend. Period, end of story. Bariatric surgery alters your digestive system for life. Like any other surgery there are risks, and like taking pills, there are risks. The question you have to answer is, will the risks outweigh the benefits? I think in the case of some fussy primadonna with too much time, money and 40 lbs to lose, this surgery is way more riskier than the so-called benefits. This is what I call “taking the easy way out” .. you aren’t clinically ill, you’ve found a doctor that will perform this surgery (and hey, look at how many plastic surgeons have worked on Michael Jackson, when he certainly did not need it, lol) and so instead of learning to control yourself, you go out and get this surgery. I think it’s dumb. But your mileage may vary.

I was 120 lbs overweight when I started my new life as a slender person. 2 doctors told me I did not need this surgery. I do not have diabetes, I do not have high blood pressure, I don’t have any of the major illnesses associated with obesity. Arthritis and GERD (which has since gone away since I changed my lifestyle) are my challenges. These don’t necessitate bariatric surgery. I explained in another post why all of the fat people my age, in my family, have diabetes and high blood pressure, FAST FOOD, DINTY MOORE and SPAM. lol. I’m an artisan-bread-dipped-in-olive-oil girl, always have been, my problem is I intake way too many calories and did not exercise. That’s how I gained 120lbs. That’s also why, at 120 lbs overweight, I did not and do not have diabetes, cholesterol problems or high blood pressure. I’ve got the genetics for all three baby! I’ve never done the things to make those genes express… fast food is a killer, people. I know of several young adults that have had to have their gall bladders removed because of gall bladder disease due to obesity and fast food diets.

So, let’s take a look at what kind of diet these people that have had bariatric surgery eat. Now, this is absolutely fascinating, because it is the exact opposite of what Weight Watchers and and a lot of these other diet programs suggest. The only diet program I know of that comes close to mimicking the diet that a person who has had bariatric surgery easts is that doctor’s Medfast diet. Here’s the link from Duke Medical Center that give complete instructions to the bariatric patient after surgery. And here is the meal planning guide for bariatric surgery.

I guarantee you that if you eat the same diet the bariatric people eat, you are going to lose weight. Protein powder and clear liquid starting out the first 3 weeks. Oh yeah, you are going to lose weight.

The question is, can you overcome the horror that lurks in your own brain? The cravings, the cheating, so on… people that have had this surgery cannot cheat without getting very sick or busting their “pouches.”  Bariatric surgery is a straight jacket for your digestive system.  You either do what you are supposed to, or suffer the consequences.

I started losing weight when I adopted a modified version of what the bariatric person would eat. I graze and drink small amounts throughout the day. I do not eat large meals, or drink huge glasses of water. I do not stuff my stomach with raw vegetables. I keep my intake down to half cups of anything. Considering that I could put away a half gallon of ice cream before I started living like this, half cups of food/drink spaced two hours apart has reset my appetite in ways I never imagined. It’s so easy now not to cheat! That’s why I call it “bariatric surgery of the brain.” heh.

The easiest way to get a good serving of turmeric everyday is to try my turmeric/kefir tea!

Once again, don’t fall for any pill scams when it comes to turmeric. Also, don’t buy those little expensive bottles of spice from the regular supermarket. If you do not have an asian grocer in your area, or a health food store that sells turmeric in bulk, order it from Amazon. Here is a link for those of you that live out in the boondocks and don’t have access to this wonderful plant: (note how inexpensive this is, and it lasts a long time when bought in bulk).

1 lb of Frontier Turmeric $3.99

You are fat AND you smoke.

This is my story. I’m fat and I smoke.

I’ve never been able to tackle both problems at once, and I’ve had more massive FAIL with quitting smoking than I’ve ever had with this weight loss stuff.  When I first started my weight loss journey, my smoking went through the roof. Then when I tried to exercise, I couldn’t breathe. Well… can’t lose weight unless you get some exercise! So, with much dragging of feet I decided to quit smoking too, so I could breathe, so I could exercise.

My smoking is just like a person that has been morbidly obese most of their lives and co-morbid with lots of other illnesses that makes a perfect candidate for bariatric surgery. I’ve tried it all. Pills, patches, gums, cold turkey, etc etc etc. Finally, I just gave up. This time around though, I found something really awesome that really works for me, and that’s one of those new fangled smokeless electronic cigarettes! I’m going to post more about this in the days to come, but for now, I will tell you all, I can breathe, I have no cravings, and this time, I can do this!!!

Hi, I’m Renee Melton, director of nutrition services for Sensei.  I’ve been a dietitian for over 20 years and my career has taken me everywhere from hospitals to private practice, to research and teaching at a university and developing web based courses.

I’ve always been interested in using technology to educate people about health.  As it is, most people rely on the internet when they want to research something.  Sensei is the marriage of all things I love:  nutrition, preventive health, teaching and technology.

Hi Renee!

Tell us from a Dietitian’s perspective, what is the most important thing someone can do to lose weight and stick to their eating plan?

Planning is really the key to success.  Without a plan, your best intentions to eat healthier and lose weight go out the window as soon as someone says ‘Let’s go out to eat’ or brings donuts into the office.

Find a plan that works well with your life (rather than make you change your life to fit it) and lifestyle.  If you don’t like to cook or eat fast food at lunch, your plan should let you do that, but at the same time, it should teach you how to make better choices wherever you are.

I noticed that the Mediterranean diet plan that I selected uses yogurt frequently; can you tell us about the value of probiotics in maintaining good health?

Probiotics are healthy bacteria that help maintain balance in the intestines by helping to keep harmful bacteria under control.  They also appear to boost our immune systems.  Yogurt contains Lactobacillus acidophilus, which is one of the most prominent bacteria in the intestines.

Probiotics have been credited with reducing inflammation in inflammatory bowel disease and helping to control diarrhea due to antibiotics or infection. A recent study in new moms suggests probiotics might be helpful in reducing belly fat after pregnancy.  There’s ongoing research looking at the benefits of probiotics in treating some infections, allergies and even certain types of cancer.  But more research is needed before we can truly determine their effect in all these areas.

Bottom line, we know probiotics are good for our digestive systems and a good thing to have.  Check the label on your yogurt and make sure it contains live cultures.

We know water is important, but from a Dietitian’s perspective, for those that have difficulty drinking a lot of water, what is the minimum amount of water you need to drink; and what things can you do to help yourself get into the habit of drinking more water?

Water is one of the most important nutrients we can get…we can’t live without it.  How much you need varies greatly.  It depends on things like your gender, body size & composition, climate and activity.  Healthy conditions can also affect your need.

On average we lose 10-11 cups of water from the body each day through urine and breathing.  The Institute of Medicine says the average healthy women need about 9 cups and men about 13 cups of water per day.

You should drink enough so that you don’t feel thirsty throughout the day and your urine should be colorless or slightly yellow.  If the color is dark yellow (concentrated), chances are your aren’t drinking enough.

The good news is that not all your fluids need to come from water.  You get some water from all the foods you eat (about 20% of your needs), plus anything you drink.  But be careful of the calories in the drinks you choose.  They can add up fast and lead to weight gain.

If you don’t like water, try some of these:
low calorie sports drinks
water with lemon slices or lemon juice added
diluted juice (dilute with water as much as you can to your taste)
herbal teas (hot or cold)
green tea (hot or cold)

I thought that the pop up “behavioral ques” on Sensei were fantastic. Is it helpful to print things out like this from the site and tape them in your kitchen?

I’m so glad you’re finding the messages helpful.

How you use them is really a personal choice.  You’ll probably find that a couple of the messages really resonate with you, enough that you might want to take it on almost like a mantra.  When you find these, I think it’s a great idea to print these up and post them wherever you will see them frequently.

Anything that helps keep you motivated and on track is a good thing!

Why do you think, as a Dietitian, that a plan like Sensei is better than the pre-packaged plans that come with food? More variety? Cost effectiveness?  Fresher foods?

One of the biggest downsides of prepackaged plans is the cost.  Not only do you need to pay for the delivered food, which can be very expensive, but then you have to go to the store and buy all the fresh things too.  Sensei’s grocery lists are significantly less expensive that popular pre-packaged plans.  Plus the Budget Friendly plans can save you up to $100 per month on your grocery bill.

With Sensei you’ll have more flexibility and variety.  You can choose menus that have store bought frozen meals, or you can find really quick and easy recipes, or you can go out to eat.  The choice is yours and you can change it at any time.