Food log:
- Breakfast: steamed spinach, cashews, nutritional yeast, spicy balsamic vinegar
- Lunch: spinach salad with carrots, celery, red onion, broccoli, and cannellini beans with tahini dressing
- Dinner: Happy Herbivore enchilada casserole, watermelon
- Extras: 3 beers (dinner and trivia)
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| My salad for lunch |
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| Enchilada Casserole |
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| Topped with vegan nacho cheese, guacamole, and salsa |
Exercise log: yoga in the morning
How I felt: Today I felt just exhausted.... Let me tell you why: before Kevin and I got married last September, I went on the pill a few months before to get used to it and had been on it up until I started this six week challenge a few weeks ago. I went off the pill for several reasons, the most important reason being that I had extreme fatigue and migraines from it. So, today started my first "time of the month" since going off of the pill. It has been hell! I haven't had this heavy of flow or this bad of back pains since I can remember. :( It's as if I wasn't having a full period since I had been on the pill, and my body is taking its wrath on me because of it. I hope as I continue with my Nutritarian lifestyle and rebalance my hormones, that it gets better. My eating for the day went very well. I forced myself to eat steamed greens for breakfast (maybe it will grow on me), then had a large lovely salad for lunch. After work I went over to my parents for dinner. My mom made a dish from Happy Herbivore, one of her favorite cookbooks, for the first time: Enchilada casserole. It. Was. Delicious! I had to stop myself at one serving, but I could definitely have eaten more. On top of it I put the nacho cheese recipe from the book, some homemade guacamole, and salsa. Yum!
What is your favorite Nutritarian-friendly cook book?
Really enjoy reading your blog. Love how REAL you are about the whole process. I'm fairly new to the Nutritarian lifestyle but have been plant-based(vegan) for the past year and vegetarian for 4 years prior to that. Just read Dr. Fuhrman's book Eat To Live a couple of weeks ago and have been following his guidelines ever since. Feeling great! Thanks again for posting your experience! oh....and my favorite Nutritarian friendly cookbooks are the Happy Herbivore Cookbooks...have all three! Love them!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much Sus Annah! I am so real about it that I will admit that I fell off the wagon over the last few weeks :(. I'm back on again and my husband is giving it a shot with me. Check out my new posts coming up of our experiences!
DeleteI think I will get one of the HH cookbooks soon! My Nutritarian mom also swears by them!
I am also working my way back to the nutritarian lifestyle and am incorporating greens into my morning. This morning I wanted something sweet, more breakfast like so I sauteed kale, onion and a few slices apples then sprinkled it with sage. It was really yummy. I also like HH and have enjoyed her DVD cooking abroad.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, that sounds delicious! I'm back to fruits in the morning because it is so easy on the go, but maybe I'll give a more savory breakfast a try on the weekend.
DeleteJust discovered your blog - I need to start keeping track of what I eat everyday like this! I have been following a whole-foods plant based diet for about a year and a half. In the past, I had similar experiences with migraines, the pill, and menstrual cramps. While on the pill, I started having 'abnormal' migraines, and finally went to a neurologist, who isisted that I stop taking oral birth control. He said anyone with classic migraines (ie. with aura) should not take hormonal birth control.
ReplyDeleteI stopped the pill and immediately got adult acne and a heavy period with unbearable cramps. I suffered through this for years, taking a ridiculous amount of NSAIDS during my monthly cycle. A few months after going plant based, the acne was nearly gone and the cramps improved to the point where I no longer feel any discomfort and don't take any medication. When I stray from a plant based diet, the cramps return and my skin breaks out. Give your body some time to adjust to the change in hormones, and keep eating the way you have been, it should get better soon!!
Thanks for sharing your experiences with BC and migraines. I have seen a great improvement from month to month since I have been off. I also notice the same things when I am plant-based and when I cheat. It's great to see our bodies start to heal themselves from the inside out!
DeleteAmy, congratulations on all the wonderfully positive changes in your life (just read your About Me.) One of the great benefits of the nutritarian lifestyle is the ripple effect...somehow, in taking this most positive step in taking care of yourself, more good choices follow. Good luck to you both on your journey!
ReplyDeleteI too find it difficult to find good nutritarian-centered cookbooks. Sometimes you just want something different than you normally make. And sometimes you just wish for a book full of recipes where you don't have to swap out so many ingredients all the time.
I just noticed yesterday that Dr. Fuhrman is coming out soon with an Eat to Live cookbook - the best of nutritarian recipes from the member center, etc. Should be good! (and one would expect fewer to no substitutions will be needed coming from that crowd! Also, if you don't have it, we cooked our way through Dr. Fuhrman's Eat for Health (focusing primarily on the healthiest stage of recipes) and my 93-year-old mom, my 22-year-old vegan from birth daughter and myself have loved nearly every recipe. (One or two I thought were cooked overly long, so I reduced the cooking time. And some use his products (fig vinegar, Matozest and VegeZest) but I just sub and make my own versions (rice vinegar blended with a fig; made my own blends using the same/similar ingredients that are in his seasoning products.) But there are a lot of really good recipes.
Dr. Neal Barnard's books also have good recipes.. Food for Life and the Fat Gene book for example. Dr. Barnard shares the vegan low-fat plant-based philosophy..He emphasizes very very low fat (discourages eating the fattier plant foods like avocado, coconut/coconut oil.) At times his recipes use oil, flour (usually whole wheat, sometimes half whole/half white, sometimes just white unbleached flour) and sugar, but since you seem to favor Dr. Fuhrman-style, you could omit/water saute or substitute for the oil, sub for the white flour using all whole wheat or white whole wheat or other flours (almond flour, gluten-free flours, etc.) do fewer of the baked goods eating whole grains instead; and sub coconut sugar, dates or other fruits/applesauce or even the sweeter veggies, etc. for the raw cane sugar.
Some of the raw books also have great recipes and it is fun to discover some of the great dishes you can make. Cheri Soria of Living Light does great uncookbooks (her zucchini hummus is wonderful, etc.), as does Jennifer Cornbleet. You just have to be careful...many raw uncookbooks use a ton of nuts or ingredients either difficult to obtain in many parts of the country and/or expensive (young Thai coconut, for example. An exemplary ingredient, very fascinating to learn about, but can be hard to find and costly. Some recipe books use those in nearly every recipe!) Others use a ton of nuts (it can seem like every dish is cashews and dates. ha!) And then there are all the great smoothie/green smoothie recipes.
And all the great blogs, of course! But then you were asking about cookbooks. Hope more folks respond...would love to hear about more great nutritarian recipe books.