Eating Clean - Slowly Changing Food Habits

Have you ever heard the term, "Eating Clean?" It is basically all about getting down to basics. Instead of buying canned beans, make your own! It is *so* easy, cheaper, healthier, and you control the fat, sodium, and best of all - lard! Instead of eating processed foods such as fast food, Hamburger Helper, Tuna Helper, canned soups, canned foods in general it is all about getting down to basics.

This is a great thing to start before you ever have surgery. The trick to eating clean is not to decide tomorrow you are going to do it, that is all wrong! That is where we fail. The key is gradually introducing good foods to your diet. Do not take away everything all at once, you will be left feeling deprived, depressed, and you will be unlikely to do well. Instead of taking away, ADD foods!

What is your diet like? Fast foods and processed foods? That is probably what you eat if you are like a majority of people today. Do you want McDonald's? Fine, eat it... for now. ;o) But add something healthy to it in the meantime. Daily add a new food. Alternate between fruits and vegetables. What veggies do you like? Do you like broccoli? Fine! Today add 1/4 cup of broccoli to your diet. Eat what you will, but eat the broccoli first. Tomorrow, add a fruit. Do you like bananas? Great, tomorrow add 1/4 cup of broccoli and a small banana and eat as you usually do. But eat the fruits and veggies first, the the McDonald's.

What about the day after tomorrow? Add another veggie. Do you like carrots? Great! Add 1/4 cup of fresh carrots. So before your main meal you'll add 1/4 cup broccoli, 1 small banana, and 1/4 cup of fresh carrots. The day after add another fruit. Daily just add a new fruit or veggie. Do not, I repeat do NOT take away foods at this point. Do not deny yourself McDonald's, but do eat the fruits and veggies first before your main meal.

As the quantity of food increases daily start spreading the fruits and veggies out throughout the day before meals. Soon you simply will not be able to eat in quantity anymore, you will be unable to eat all the fresh fruits and veggies as well as the processed and fast foods.

When we diet we are taking foods away. That does not work, right? So add foods. Supposedly some brilliant person somewhere claimed that it takes three weeks to learn new habits. I do not know, maybe that is true, maybe not. But I can tell you that new habits do happen with time. Before you know it you really end up craving that fresh salad made your way vs. the processed foods you had been eating. This does not happen overnight and that is okay. Our bad habits did not happen over night either.

Go to the grocery store. Do not bring your spouse or your kids, they will annoy you. Go by yourself when you have a good hour to roam the produce section. Look at the colors of the produce. Yellow squash, green broccoli, red bell peppers, purple cabbage, orange oranges, yellow bananas, shop by color. Seriously stop and look at all the produce, find something you have never tried before and buy one. Take it home and experiment with it, look up various recipes, find something that sounds good. Better yet while you are in the grocery store find someone with a huge cart full of all produce and be bold, walk up to them with a produce item you have no clue how to prepare and ask them. Do what I do, find any sweet little old lady and ask her how she prepares whatever item you are holding. I have yet to have a little old lady that did not give me a cooking lesson if I asked for a bit of education. And let's face it, little old ladies are usually GREAT cooks!

Try one new produce item every week. Some will be winners and some will be gross. That's okay! You tried it but the point is, you will find items you do like in the meantime.

SALADS-

Make great salads! The key to a great salad is that you put items in there that you like. Make it your salad! And do not forget, not all salads have to contain lettuce. My favorite salad (I will post the recipe with dressing in full later in the blog under recipes) has no lettuce. It has:

Black beans
Corn
Celery
Onions
Serrano
Red bell pepper
Green bell pepper
Pineapple

Add items you like and take away what you do not like. Want more heat? Add jalapeno peppers instead. Maybe your surgery type does not work well with stringy pineapple so add diced apple instead. The key to a good salad is only put ingredients in there that you like and add lots of tastes and textures. Soft beans, crunchy bell peppers, sweet pineapple, flavorful onions. It is a burst of flavors and textures with each bite. It keeps your mouth and mind interested.

Do you like lettuce salads but your WLS stomach disagrees with your mind? Try salad with no lettuce. All the veggies you would usually put on a salad put in a bowl. Something like:

Tomatoes chopped
Celery diced
Onions diced
Radishes diced
Yellow squash diced
Zucchini diced
English Cucumber diced

Whatever veggies you would usually put on top of salads just cut them up, put them in a bowl, marinate in Italian dressing for a few hours and enjoy.

Try new salad dressings and do not be conventional. Be creative and try new foods! You might just like them!! A staple around my house is the following:

PICO DE GALLO

Roma tomatoes, quartered, remove seeds, chop fine 2 medium
Tomatillo 1 medium chopped fine
1/2 Red or Yellow onion, diced
1 Serrano (for more heat use jalapeno pepper instead)
Cilantro to taste
Salt to taste
Lime juice 1 tbsp

With the lime juice it will keep well for 4 days. Use that as a salad dressing, put on top of chili, make tostadas, refried beans, cheese, Pico de Gallo.

Try new flavors of salad dressings. Sweet, sour, tart, whatever your pleasure. My favorite store dressing is made by Girards, it is in the salad dressing aisle, in a glass triangular bottle and it is Chinese Chicken Salad.

Diced chicken
Romaine lettuce
Those tiny baby corn on the cobs (sorry, I do not know the proper name)
Water chestnuts
Crunchy Chinese noodles
Girards Dressing

Try Extra Virgin Olive Oil based dressings, the oil is good for you, for those with bands or bypass and you have a stoma it does help to lube the food through your stoma, it is the right kind of fat, and it tastes good. Dressings do not end with Mayo alone.

The key to a good salad again, making it your way, lots of colors, lots of textures, and lots of flavors. Think of salads as you would your family recipe for chili or spaghetti sauce. There are as many recipes as there are people cooking. Make it your way, that is all that matters.

BEANS-

Instead of buying canned beans make your own. It is so much better and after you make your own beans - canned just will not do the trick anymore.

A general rule of thumb:

Soak dry beans in water for 8 hours or overnight,
Never salt beans until after they are cooked or they will be tough,
Use your crock pot/slow cooker because it is easier,
Use Crock Pot/Slow Cooker liners so you do not have a huge mess to clean later.

That is it. Soak your pinto beans, black beans, lentils, whatever your pleasure throughout the night, using a crock pot liner use the entire bag of beans with more water, chicken stock, vegetable stock, whatever you have around. Add chili powder, onions, and garlic. Let the beans cook all day. Use what you want for a recipe and put the rest in the freezer for next time. They freeze well and you always have fresh beans for a recipe.

Make your own refried beans, it is far easier than you may realize. Just cook your favorite beans as outlined above, reserve a small amount of the water they were cooked in, add a bit of EVOO, more chili powder, garlic, salt, pepper, and smash. That's it, you do not need to fry them unless you want to. My favorite is refried black beans. The texture is much more smooth than pinto beans.

Add beans to lettuce salads, soups, chili, make bean salads, the list is endless.

Quiche (From Ana O'Donnell:

In muffin cups, mix:


2 cloves minced garlic
2 cups chopped broccoli
1 tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup 2% milk
7 eggs
1 cup shredded mozz (used whole milk b/c that's all I had on hand)
A bit of Mozz cheese

Mix, stir, whatever.  Pour into muffin cups line with either liners or EVOO and bake at 350(F) for 12 minutes.  She said they are 90 calories each and you have good protein, good fiber, and good food!


When you go grocery shopping, shop outside the aisles. Produce, meat, dairy... those are the sections you should buy most of your items. The aisles are where you'll find the overly processed foods. Canned meats, canned veggies, canned fruits, canned dinners, canned pasta, all the foods that got us fat to begin with are there. Shop the perimeters of the grocery store, that is where the best foods are.

Again, please do not try to make fast and drastic changes to your diet, it does not work. Do not take away from your diet just yet, add to it instead. Try new foods every week when you go to the store. Shop the produce aisle by color and buy lots of colors and try one new item weekly. Make your food fun and interesting by adding lots of textures, colors, and flavors. Make food the way you like it.

WATER-

Water is essential for health and clean eating. It is probably more important during the weight loss stage and there is a reason for this. When you burn fat that fat is turned into chemicals that your body gets rid of via bodily fluids and when you exhale. Mostly it is in urine but it is in saliva as well. It is critical to flush out these chemicals as you burn fat.

Nothing really replaces water. Juice does not replace water, it does make your pancreas work to pump out insulin due to the blood sugar spikes. Same with milk. Tea typically has caffeine and that makes your heart work harder. Sugar free drinks still have chemicals and sweeteners. Nothing beats plain old water. If you can get it down plain, that is best. If you just are not a water drinker then please, at least get sugar free, caffeine free liquids down daily.

PROTEIN-

Protein has multiple functions:

1. build and repair body tissue.
2. maintain cell growth in the formation of new body tissue. This is especially important if the body is growing rapidly, injured, or under stress.
3. aid in the formation of enzymes, some hormones and antibodies.
4. provide as energy if sufficient carbohydrates and fats are not supplied by the diet.

A protein is basically a full chain of 23 amino acids. If not all amino acids are present then it is not a full protein chain. Foods that are complete protein chains are foods such as beef, chicken, duck, goose, pork, fish, seafood, elk, and bison as well as most dairy, brewers yeast, most nuts, etc. Foods that are a partial protein chain are most beans such as black beans, pinto beans, (It should be noted that lentils are a full protein chain.) grains, and peas. Protein must be consumed daily. While you can go for several days without protein especially immediately post op, you should do your best to consume protein as soon as possible.

Protein will also help boost metabolism if in a lean version such as lean meats.

"Proteins are needed at all meals but especially at breakfast to replenish amino acids used for growth and maintenance during the night. Excess protein not immediately needed by the body is converted to fat and stored in adipose tissues to be used as energy. Unfortunately it cannot be converted back to amino acids." (source is: http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=1269, I cite this source since it is a controversial topic of when and how to consume protein.)

A healthy diet is essential to weight loss. Massive weight loss is a huge insult to the human body, we can overcome potential future problems by a quality diet of unprocessed foods. Getting to basics is essential to health and simply feeling good.

Enjoy your food!