Whole Foods

I am refining the diet that I am going to use to lose my 100 pounds this year. I have decided that I am going to stick to whole foods and allow myself only 200 calories of processed foods a day. (I may tweak this as I go along.)  Processes foods that have no calories (such as diet Coke) will be used very sparingly. Oh and I will probably give myself one cheat day a week in moderation.

Over eating on whole foods is difficult. I can't think of a single whole food that is loaded with calories except maybe butter and nuts.  The thing about nuts is that if I eat them in their raw form without being roasted or salted, I can keep myself to a handful.  They still taste really good but are not addicting.

I like to think that I grew up eating whole foods. By whole foods, I am not talking about the grocery chain. I am talking about unprocessed foods. Foods in their natural state. Had I simply eaten what my mother was serving, I would indeed have had mostly whole foods. Except on Thursdays when my parents went out and we had Swanson's chicken pot pies. And of coarse pasta and bread. But otherwise mostly home made cooking from whole foods. My sister, Judy, and I were the ones making the cakes and cookies and puddings from packages. Eating candy bars and then McDonald's and Pizza after they were invented.

One of my favorite books on eating is Michael Pollan's Food Rules. Mr Pollan is an advocate of real, unprocessed  foods and in the book he says that eating right is really not complicated. It comes down to 7 words. "Eat foods. Not too much.  Mostly plants." By foods he means real foods, not foods produced in factories. My favorite rule is "You can eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself."  The idea is that we won't bake cookies every day or cakes. When you want something you have to think about it and go to the trouble of making it rather than buying it off the grocery shelf. This rule lead me to an Internet search on how to make Coca Cola. Yes it is a secret formula but there are open source recipes.  From Wikepedia:

Flavoring
3.50 ml Orange oil
1.00 ml lemon oil
1.00 ml nutmeg oil
1.25 ml cassia (cinnamon) oil
0.25 ml coriander oil
0.25 ml neroli oil (similar to petitgrain, bergamot, or bitter orange oil)
2.75 ml lime oil
0.25 ml lavender oil
10.0 g food-grade, NOT ART-GRADE gum arabic (thickener)
3.00 ml water

Concentrate
10 ml flavoring (approximately 2 tsp packed)
17.5 ml 75% citric acid or phosphoric acid (3.5 tsp)
2.28 l water
2.36 kg granulated white sugar (or equivalent sweetener)
2.5 ml caffeine (optional but does affect taste)
30.0 ml caramel color (optional, should not affect taste)

Then there is a complicated 4 step process for putting it all together. I don't think I will be making this anytime soon so I guess I give up the Coke. (Actually I already have switched to diet coke but drink it only when I have to stay awake or an occasion treat at the movies.)

Other rules I like: "don't eating anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food and avoid food products that contain more than five ingredients.

The down side to eating whole, unprocessed foods is that you have to do a lot more cooking.  Tonight I spent 2 hours chopping veggies to make vegetable beef soup.  I used grass fed beef again. But I will have enough soup for several days so tomorrow my soup will be fast food.

 For breakfast I had scrambled eggs with mushrooms, red bell peppers, onions and cheddar cheese.  I only use pastured eggs and I am cutting way back on meat and trying to get organic meats that are humanly raised.  Can be tricky.

In the next few weeks I am going to try to track my calories to make sure I am not eating over the allotted amount.  So far I am feeling good.