Halloween News Flash... Vegan Plays With Food. #eatlikeahorse #vegan #foodismedicine

I like to play with my food on this holiday.  Pumpkins are edible after all, right?

Here are some of my Jack-O-Lanterns.....

I want to wish everyone a safe and spooky Halloween!

Pass on the candy.  Eat a pumpkin.

33 Months a Vegan! Before and After Pics #foodismedicine #eattolose #eatlikeahorse

2014

2015

             

2016 with Joel Kahn, MD -America's Healthy Heart Doc!

     I was just reading my blog entry from a year ago. At that time I wanted to lose 4 more pounds to make it an even 100. I'm happy to say that I did it and then lost 9 lbs more over the past year. That means I went from 284 lbs down to 175 lbs in less than 3 years without surgery, pills, exercising, supplements, hypnosis, acupuncture or fad dieting.

     The first 96 lbs of  weight loss is attributed to converting my food choices from the standard American diet to a diet of whole foods, unprocessed and plant based. I've eliminated ALL oils since they are calorie dense and nutrient poor. The last 9 lbs left as I started exercising regularly (3 times a week) over the summer.  Cooking has become simplified and is now second nature. Most of my current recipes have between 4 and 8 ingredients. All of them are readily available at Kroger so I don't even have to go out of my way. (I do like the local bulk food store though.  It's cheaper and carries Nutritional Yeast; my "go to" for extra flavor.) Click here for a frozen chocolate treat.
     Worrying about protein is a thing of the past. I eat about 5 pounds of food a day. Everything I've read tells me that a man of my height needs about 55 grams of protein daily. I did the math. That comes out to 1/8th of a pound. Even that is misleading since your body makes it's own protein from the amino acid building blocks that all plants and all animals contain. The plants just don't have any cholesterol.
      Of the 20 amino acids that the proteins in our bodies are made from there are only 9 that we can't synthesize ourselves.  These 9 are called essential amino acids. All of them are readily available from plants. While some plants contain all of them all plants contain some of them. You don't need to take in all 9 of them in every bite because your body finishes the protein building process as the proper components are delivered.  But when you include grains, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and legumes during the course of the day you're covered. Peanut butter on whole grain bread contains them all but is also high in calories. Some of the best food choices that include all 9 of them are things you already eat without knowing it like guacamole, hummus, lentil or split pea soup, fruit salad and nori vegetable sushi.
After sticking to the plant based diet for about 2 months and wasting energy worrying about protein I stopped thinking about it. Honestly. If you eat a combination of fresh or dried fruits, whole grains, seeds and vegetables every day all of the amino acids you need will be included. You barely have to think about it. Problem solved! Here I am 33 months after turning away from all animal products with more definition in my muscles and weighing 5 lbs less than I did when I graduated high school 43 years ago:

Me holding my incentive to be healthy

    For more information on good plant sources of the 9 essential amino acids, click this link to find a printable chart of all of them and the variety of plants containing each one.
It's easier than you think! Try it. See what happens!

Plant Powered in my first 5K Race! #veganrunner #eatinglikeahorsepaysoff

My First 5K Race - Bronze Medal Winner!!!

     Three years ago, at age 58,  I was a 284 pound couch potato. When I layed down on the couch I couldn't sit back up. Either my wife would help me or I would roll on to the floor, get on my knees and then get up. That was the me that I had learned to accept. It was embarrassing. In spite of that, I didn't think anything was wrong with me.
     Yesterday, at age 61, on the Saturday before Labor Day at 178 pounds, I ran in my first 5K race, placed 3rd in my age group and won a bronze medal. Check that off my Bucket List. I just started running 3 months ago! What happened?
     It wasn't a pill. In fact I don't have to take anything other than a B vitamin supplement anymore. High blood pressure and high cholesterol disappeared. There was no surgery and I only started doing any serious exercise around Memorial Day this year and that was just for fun. The words "running" and "fun" had never before come out of my mouth in the same sentence without the word "not" included.
     At age 58 I started paying attention to some smart people starting with Joel Kahn, M.D.  He is an interventional cardiologist who lectures, writes and publishes books about healthy eating. I happened to have grown up with him, but didn't know, or didn't accept what he was saying about nutrition; specifically an entirely plant diet, until I friended him on Facebook. His writing introduced me to the science supporting good nutrition as an effective method of treating heart disease, Diabetes and obesity. Even then I didn't want to accept it. But I kept reading. He introduced me to writings by Calwell Esselstyn, M.D.,  T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Neal Barnard, M.D..  My mind changed.
     I put into practice a Vegan Diet and in 2 weeks noticed positive results with weight loss. My weight kept improving along with my blood pressure, blood chemistry and self esteem. I started blogging as a personal journal. I was invited by Paul Chatlin to write for his Plant Based Nutrition Support Group. That gave me the opportunity to meet all of the above Doctors along with a number of other authors including Michael Greger, M.D. and listen to their presentations in person. Thanks to this group I was also convinced to remove all oil from my diet.
     What I'm trying to explain is that once I accepted that this Vegan thing was something I wanted to try, it was not an immediate transformation. The more I learned the more I was convinced it was the right decision. I set a date and got started making lots of mistakes. Even so, my health kept improving. Over time with the guidance of all of the above my habits were refined eliminating oil, reducing consumption of nuts, learning to not eat too much and adding regular exercise.
     I was 58 and didn't know where I would be healthwise in 3 years. Now I'm 61 and quite pleased with the results of my decisions. How about you? Where are you now and where would you like your health to be in the near future? If you are ready to start reading, click on any of the links above. What have you got to lose?

Me in December, 2013

32 Months A Vegan! Mark your calendar, Detroit! #TVinterview #readyformycloseup #eatlikeahorse #foodismedicine

Dr. Joel Kahn and me!

     Mark your calendar and set your DVR for Thursday, September 8th at 8 pm on PBS channel 56 in the greater Detroit area. There will be a program presented by Dr. Kahn regarding all the things you need to do to prevent and reverse heart disease. I have a small part in it as well.  This is the guy who got me started 3 years ago.

I read the articles he published and followed him on Facebook for about 3 months. My attitude went from "There is NO WAY I will ever do that!!!" to "Maybe I should do this..." to "I HAVE TO DO THIS!" 

     Now, instead of yo yo dieting, taking pills to lower my blood pressure and a Statin to control my cholesterol and triglycerides, I just eat right. No more pills for any of that! I went from an all time high of 284 lbs to 178 lbs in less than 2 years WITHOUT exercising. After losing the weight, I started walking, then running and swimming because I'm not thinking about how bad I look in a bathing suit anymore.  Tomorrow I will be running in my very first 5K race. It comes with a shirt!

Finishing is all I hope for, but since I'm 61 already, that's a HUGE win for me!

After

For those of you who are out of state, the show will be broadcast nationally in December.

I'll keep you posted.

Before

     

31 Months a Vegan! You can't out exercise too much of a good diet either! #I'mstuffed #eatlikeagorilla #eattoloseweight #2muchis2much

I have a confession to make. For the past 1.5 months I've been participating in aerobic activities. I run 3.1 miles (5K) on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday and I swim a mile during the weekend then Tuesday and Thursday and I haven't lost any weight. Not a single pound. It's not supposed to work that way!

I don't eat any animal products or oil. I limit myself to 12 almonds 2 or 3 times a week, I don't eat sweets, processed food, white rice and almost no bread or pasta. My diet is 100% plants and I'm not losing any weight. By my calculations the calories burned by the extra exercise add up to about 3600 per week. The generally accepted standard is that 3500 calories burned equals 1 pound of weight loss and I haven't seen any difference at all for 6 weeks. So what am I doing wrong?

I did some research. That 3500 calorie standard turns out to be wrong. It is based on lab values set 58 years ago and measures how many calories are released by burning 1 pound of fat in a lab. It does not take into account hormones, rising and falling metabolic rate or the myriad of  other things that happen in a human body during any 24 hour period. 

In a University of Michigan study designed to examine this very subject people who are obese to begin with are resistant to the hormone that suppresses appetite. Especially in women. If you are lean, exercise will suppress your appetite immediately after. If you are obese, exercise will not suppress your appetite and will probably make you more hungry.

Now back to me. I wanted to understand what I personally was doing wrong to sabotage weight loss without participating in expensive metabolic measurements and blood work to study my hormones. 

My thought was that I was rewarding myself for all the exercise by eating more. So I began to keep a food diary again; a simple way to measure my intake. I had the advantage of being able to compare my current food diary with the one I kept 2 years ago while I was in the middle of losing 103 pounds simply by going Vegan without doing any exercise routine at all. 

"You can't out exercise a bad diet!"

Before changing my diet, I figured that if I had a lot of pizza on Friday, I could just work out on Saturday and burn it off. That never worked. Either I wouldn't work out at all or not enough to burn off anywhere near the amount of calories I had consumed. The next day I would just eat some other high fat food anyway and get stuck in the same vicious cycle. I had fallen into the same trap that kept me fat most of my adult life. My food diary showed that I was eating twice as much food as I ate daily 2 years ago. It was all good, healthy, strictly plants food but I was taking in as many calories as I was burning with exercise. Almost exactly as many. As a result I didn't lose or gain any weight at all. 

That was my lightbulb going on over my head moment. I was rewarding myself whether hungry or not with way more food than I needed. While part of this problem may be due to my body trying to maintain homeostasis, most of it is psychological. I've proven to myself over the past 31 months that I have the willpower and the ability to control what I eat. Now I had to go back to controlling how much I eat.

I've gone back to using a food diary as a training tool. I write down everything eaten, including water, for 3 days in a row. This simple tool helps repair the disconnect between my stomach and my brain. When I see it on paper, the desire to eat just ceases. Contrary to my previous belief, even a vegan who eats no oil can still eat too much. Luckily for me I realized what I was doing wrong and found a way to get back on track. It turns out you can't even out exercise too much of a good diet!
Here's the plan:
1) Eat whole foods
2) Just plants
3) Not too much.
.....Challenge accepted. Two pounds gone in 3 days. ;-)
Carry on!

Veggie Burger Picture! #vegan #kosher #pareve #eattolose

Veggie Burger with Spicy Roast Peppers

I had to post these pictures. It would be great if there was a scratch and taste app.

I got the medium hot peppers from my office manager's garden, washed them, cut them into strips, microwaved them for 1 minute and topped off my sandwich. That's BBQ sauce on the bun. Add bean sprouts, lettuce, pickles, tomato slices, caramelized onion or whatever you like on your burger.

It was delightful!

RECIPE

Recipe:

1 cup millet 

1 cup rolled oats

1 large portobello mushroom cap

4 cups salted water (or vegetable stock)

1 small onion chopped fine

6 T nutritional yeast
3 T light soy sauce

2 T paprika

1/2 Jalapeno pepper

Bring salted water, nutritional yeast, onion, millet and paprika to a boil. Turn the heat down to simmer covered for 30 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed.

Put the mushroom cap, soy sauce and Jalapeno pepper in a blender or food processor and puree it.

In a medium sized mixing bowl add the millet, rolled oats and the puree you just made. Knead them together until the mixture is the consistency of raw hamburger. Add more rolled oats if its too gooey. 

Let it sit in the fridge overnight uncovered.

Form it into patties and bake on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper for 30 to 40 minutes depending on how thick you make your patties.

Let them cool then separated from the paper. If you don't let them cool they will stick.  Put them on the grill for 5 minutes per side to make grill marks.
It's summer! You're going to eat so eat well. Make it fruits, veggies, grains and legumes with little or no oil instead of meat and cheese. Your cardiovascular system will thank you!

Stuffed Peppers! #vegan #kosher #pareve #foodISmedicine #millet #glutenfree

Stuffed Green Pepper with Millet

I was at the local bulk food store to pick up nutritional yeast and quinoa. Right next to the quinoa was a bin of millet. Not knowing what it is I got out my trusty phone and Googled it. I was pleasantly surprised to find out it is a gluten free seed with pretty good nutritional value.

Nutrition Facts
Serving Size: 1 cup
Amount Per Serving
Calories from Fat 16 Calories 207
% Daily Values*
Total Fat 1.74g		3%
	Saturated Fat 0.299g	1%
	Polyunsaturated Fat 0.884g
	Monounsaturated Fat 0.32g
Cholesterol 0mg		0%
Sodium 3mg		0%
Potassium 108mg
Total Carbohydrate 41.19g		14%
	Dietary Fiber 2.3g	9%
	Sugars 0.23g
Protein 6.11g
Vitamin A 0% Vitamin C 0%
Calcium 0% Iron 6%

     I bought some and made patties in the shape of hamburgers. Two of them came with me to my office for lunch. When I got there, I was handed a bag of veggies picked that day from the garden of my office manager. Talk about fresh! I got green peppers, cherry tomatoes and snap peas. So instead of just eating my plain "burgers" I crumbled them and made stuffed peppers with cherry tomatoes and snap peas in the microwave with vegan catsup on the side. Really delicious!

Recipe:

1 cup millet 

1 cup rolled oats

1 large portobello mushroom cap

4 cups salted water (or vegetable stock)

1 small onion chopped fine

6 T nutritional yeast
3 T light soy sauce

2 T paprika

1/2 Jalapeno pepper

Bring salted water, nutritional yeast, onion and paprika to a boil. Turn the heat down to simmer covered for 30 minutes or until all the liquid is absorbed.

Put the mushroom cap, soy sauce and Jalapeno pepper in a blender or food processor and puree it.

In a medium sized mixing bowl add the millet, rolled oats and the puree. Knead them together until the mixture is the consistency of raw hamburger. Add more rolled oats if its too gooey. 

Let it sit in the fridge overnight uncovered.

Form it into patties and bake on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper for 30 to 40 minutes.

Let them cool then separated from the paper. Put them on the grill for 5 minutes per side to make grill marks.

You can eat them like a hamburger or squish them up and stuff peppers like I did. Enjoy!