I’ve had a hard time making a decent loaf with my bread machine. This recipe is the best so far…
INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
This is the best recipe I’ve ever made hands down. It is absolutely delicious! You can also bake the salmon on top of a bed of rice…simply line the bottom of a baking tray with rice and fill to the top of the rice with chicken or vegetable broth…bake for 30 minutes, then place the salmon on top and finish baking.
INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
The flesh of spaghetti squash comes out in long strands, very much resembling the noodles for which it is named. In this recipe, the ‘noodles’ are tossed with vegetables and feta cheese. You can substitute different vegetables, but be sure to use ones that have contrasting colors.
INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
Miso soup is a quick and easy meal to prepare. I have created this alternate version from the traditional miso soup recipe and it turned out pretty damn good.
Ingredients:
Directions:
At this point the soup is ready but i prefer to let everything sit for a while under a low heat so the juices from the veggies distribute.
Day 3 and 4 were pretty easy…hunger was minimal, I got better at making tasty juice drinks, and I felt good. I decided to start breaking my fast on day 5. I drank a smoothie for breakfast, a carrot juice combo for lunch, and oatmeal with fruit for dinner. Today I had a smoothie for breakfast, salad for lunch, and miso soup with edemame for dinner. My stomach is a lot smaller now and it takes a lot less quantity to fill me up.
All in all I’m really glad I did this fast. I think in the future I’ll be juice fasting at least 1 or 2 days a month to keep my system balanced and my immune system strong. The fresh juices were too good not to consume all the time.
I’m on day 3 of my just fast and things are going well…
The first day was much easier than I expected. The hunger wasn’t too bad and was cured every time I drank a tea or juice. The fresh fruit juices are excellent. I had no idea how good fresh juice was until now…especially carrot juice. It sounded gross to me but its actually quite sweet and tasty. Mixing carrots with fruits like apples, grapes, pares, and watermelon makes an excellent tasting drink. I mixed what I ended up calling a “black n tan” juice…because when i mixed grapes with watermelon, the juices separated in the glass giving you two separate drinks in one.
The last juice on the first day was an experimental vegetable green drink. It was horrible! I cringe when I think about it. I basically mixed celery, spinach, garlic, ginger, wheat grass, lemon, and tomatoes. The garlic and ginger were overpowering. It was seriously gross.
On day two I felt groggy most of the day with a few mild headaches…which is normal from what I’ve read. My veggie drink that night was MUCH better…I mixed carrots, a beat, a green pepper, and half a cucumber. It tasted quite good actually. I think the sweetness of the carrots is key for a good tasting veggie drink.
Day three is going great…my grogginess is pretty much gone, and I don’t have a headache anymore. I even played an intense match of volleyball this morning and though I was feeling the lack of energy in my playing and got hungry after the first 2 games, it wasn’t too bad.
Eliminating food from my diet for a few days has really made me notice how much I’m attached to it mentally. Its really an addiction of our culture. All the fast food/restaurant commercials showing me delicious close-ups of food just oozing with flavor…it really sparks my taste buds! I’d really like to detach my addiction to taste so that I can control what I eat a little better…its not that easy to do however because its all I’ve ever known since I was born. I think the fast is a good start though.
In general I’ve noticed that my sinuses have cleared up and day-to-day allergies I’ve struggled with over the years have pretty much gone away. Its a good feeling to know that you can cure such a common and annoying thing simply by changing your diet.
It looks like I’ll be continuing my fast for the next few days now that I’m “over the hump”.
I have had about 4 days of pre-fasting to prepare my body for a liquid-only diet. It has been a little bumpy, but not too bad. I’ve been eating only fruits and veggies in the morning and afternoon, then a little bit of grains with more veggies for dinner. Yesterday I had a mild head-ache most of the day and felt drowsy. I would get hungry about every hour after I ate, but would just eat something else to tide me over…and be ok.
I recently read this book,
Juice Fasting and Detoxification: Use the Healing Power of Fresh Juice to Feel Young and Look Great : The Fastest Way to Restore Your Health (Paperback) by Steve Meyerowitz, Michael Parman, Beth Robbins
It was an excellent source of knowledge, confidence, and preparation for the juice fast. I’ll recap some interesting points from the book:
Your body has to deal with the foods you eat twice: Once on the way in, and once on the way out. On the way in, your liver determines what is a toxin (then stores it), and what is nourishing (and releases it). Your liver can store vast amounts of toxins and hold on to them for a long time. A large build-up of toxins in your system cripples it when it has to fight off even the smallest irritations.
I believe it to be the source of my allergies, my asthma, my constant stuffy nose, and my tiredness during the day. I also believe it to be the source of all health, disease, and healing.
When you fast, your body converts from working/processing mode, to clean house mode. Your liver begins to release all those toxins it has been storing into your bloodstream…which means that your body has to deal with it and flush it out. This can cause symptoms of the flu, head-aches, and other side-effects. Sounds crappy huh? Well once your body releases these toxins it has been storing for you, it begins to balance the PH of your stomach, will give you an immune system stronger than anything that challenges it, change the way you feel, change the way you think, and the list goes on.
Not a bad price to pay in my opinion. After all we did this to ourselves right? You can pay the price now and reap the rewards of a clean healthy body, or pay the price later in the form of sickness, disease, or maybe even death.
I certainly hope all of this holds true, and will document my experience.
Here we go!
Today is day 1 of a long journey of healthy eating and the benefits that come from it. In my first post, I mentioned that I’ll be doing a 5-7 day juice fast. After some internet research on juice fasting (quite a bit of the good info i found in google groups), it is clear that there is a lot of contradicting opinions on the methods, length, benefits, etc… of fasting.
I suspect that this is partly because there is not a lot of scientific study around fasting, and partly because people fast for very different reasons.
From what I can tell, people fast because:
I am fasting because of the detoxification effect and to help me segway into my new diet.
Through that research I found some books (and authors) that people recommended…
A few Authors of fasting literature:
Arnold Ehret
Dr. Paavo Airola
Paul Bragg
Alan Cot
A couple of recommended books (by others) :
I have checked out #1 from my local library and will be picking it up tonight. I have also bought a “Jack Lalanne’s Power Juicer” (i bought it at Super Target for $75 after the instant rebate)…it seemed to be the best balance of price and quality I could find.
Spiders On Drugs
I’ve decided to take the next step in my search for awesomeness in life. I am going to change the way I eat. Everything I’ve done, read, and experienced in my life seems to have lead me here. The time is now. This is not a new year’s resolution. It being new years eve and all makes the timing right, but for me its more of a life’s resolution…a personal commitment to my mind, body, and soul.
I know that what I put in my body is the very source of my energy, my health, my emotional state, and my clarity. I know that when I feel tired during the day, when I’m sick, when I’m unfocused, when I’m moody…its all a product of what I initially put in my body.
Right now I’m in pretty good health by most standards. I’m 29 years old, 6′ tall, weigh 163 pounds, and physically fit. Thats pretty impressive considering that about 80% of what I put in my body is crap that my body has to “deal with” rather than nurture it. This does explain however why I have a low energy level, get sick often, under perform in sports, have anxiety, and have a hard time focusing.
I will be documenting my progress with my new diet and how it affects every aspect of my life in hopes that it will help others make similar changes in their life.
I still have some more research to do, but I will likely start out with a 5-7 day juice fast to detox my body of all the crap…which will help me segway into consuming only what my body needs. I expect this to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.
Right now I drink coffee every morning since before i can remember (I’m sipping coffee as I wright this), I absolutely love most foods that are horrible for me, and I like to drink alcohol at least 3 times a week. I would say that right now I eat reasonably healthy and am conscious of what I put in my body…but even with that its nowhere near giving my body all that it needs.
I will learn to applicate and love foods that my body needs…those vegies will taste as good if not better than pizza ever did because of the effect it will have on my body and my mind. I expect it to be similar to working out…at first very very hard, but once you feel and know the positive effects, you start to crave it.
