Diet??!! NOT!
Eating nuts and natural grains and fruits and vegetables always seemed to me to be the right way to eat. As I grew older, I discovered quite by accident that without much effort, my weight stayed at what it was when I was 17, and I felt good. Nowadays I prefer Middle Eastern and North African preparations. They're beautiful, well-seasoned, high in fiber and wonderfully healthy.
It seems that I just slipped into a lifestyle and a way of eating that allowed me to maintain health and a good weight naturally. In fact, anyone who has ever lived in my house has lost weight. Of course, some might say that's just the result of spending significant time around me . . .
But really, I believe it's the foods I have (and don't have) in the house. And no one ever starves! Generally everyone eats as much as they want of the foods I prepare and what sits on my shelves. I simply don't keep white sugar or flour or meat in the house.
That's it:- no white sugar or high fructose corn syrup
- no white flour
- no meat
I don't have a complicated set of principles to follow. I don't use a manual, I don't count anything, I don't have a complicated diet plan. By keeping just three items out of my diet (or at least limiting them), I pretty much eat as much as I would like as often as I would like. Quite naturally that ends up being 3-5 meals a day, and quite naturally, I end up maintaining a consistent weight -- and feeling more energetic as well. A Vita-mix makes it even easier to maintain an optimum weight while eating deliciously and healthfully!
Now what you will want to do is to set up your house in such a way as to be certain that you aren't tempted daily by the excluded foods -- and that you do have great foods that serve your nutritional needs within easy reach.
Here is my three-step plan for setting up a home kitchen that will contribute toward good and healthy eating:- Clean house
- Organize
- Restock your pantry
Clean house. By "clean house" I mean remove all food items from your kitchen -- from the refrigerator and from the shelves. Anyplace you have stored food, take it out. Clean the refrigerator and shelves to give yourself a feeling of a "clean start." Then go through every item, one by one, and discard anything that has in it white flour, white sugar, high fructose corn syrup -- or meat (if you are taking the full step toward vegetarianism at this time).
Did you know that high fructose corn syrup is such a concentrated sugar that the body doesn't even know what to do with it and treats it like a fat? It is probably one of the main culprits in the obesity epidemic in this country, and you will find it in virtually everything. When you finish reading labels and discarding, you will more than likely find that you have very little left in your kitchen.
Organize. When you have only those items left that don't contain white flour, white sugar or high fructose corn syrup -- or meat if you choose -- then organize them. The first major division is between refrigerator items and shelf items. Then determine sections for the refrigerator and sections for your shelves. You may need to purchase containers for the refrigerator and containers for your shelves, appropriate for each section. In my pantry, for example, I have two shelves that hold nuts, seeds, beans, cereal, pasta and dried fruits. I have boxes for each item (each type of nut, etc.). The boxes should either be clear so the contents can be seen or clearly labeled. Similarly for the refrigerator and freezer.
When my "children" were young, I used to include a section in the refrigerator and on the pantry shelves for them. In the refrigerator I kept carrot and celery sticks, yoghurt and fresh, washed fruit. On the pantry shelves I kept containers they could open themselves that contained various nuts, seeds, dried fruits and mixtures of nuts, seeds and dried fruits (their favorite was called "chipmunk lunch" in those days). I never worried about them eating too much and not eating their meals since their snacks were so nutritious. Their bodies told them when and what to eat as long as they were undisturbed by high fat/high sugar processed items loaded with high fructose corn syrup.
Restock your pantry. Once you have organized, you should be able to see at a glance where your supplies are "thin." You may, in fact, have virtually nothing. You will want to think about staples to have in the house for at least three meals -- and for healthy snacks. In choosing items to have as staples, remember to read labels and select only whole grains, seeds, nuts, dried fruits, beans and processed foods with no added sugar. It's a good idea to have a stock of both dried and canned beans -- dried because they are less expensive, canned because they are quicker to cook.
And now you're ready to organize your kitchen for cooking as described in Veggie How-to.
Special Notes
We use only Extra Virgin Olive Oil in our salads. For frying, we use a commercial Canola Oil, which is, in our opinion, the healthiest oil to use for frying other than Olive Oil.
You may have heard negative statements about Canola Oil. Snopes.com has an excellent article on this topic and concludes: "This light, tasteless oil's popularity is due to the structure of its fats. It is lower in saturated fat (about 6%) than any other oil. Compare this to the high saturated fat content of peanut oil (about 18%) and palm oil (at an incredibly high 79%). It also contains more cholesterol-balancing monounsaturated fat than any oil except olive oil and has the distinction of containing Omega-3 fatty acids, a polyunsaturated fat reputed to not only lower both cholesterol and triglycerides, but also to contribute to brain growth and development."