After the scare we had today with Handsome's heart (Christian Issues) I am trying to come up with a plan for changing our eating habits. For all you out there who are health conscious how did you start off? I know that veggies, fruits, and low fats are a must but how would you suggest I introduce a regular healthy diet to the family? It is easy for me to say just eat better but know after a while we would get tired of chewing on raw plain veggies and fruit. I know from past experience this has to be a lifestyle change, not just an overnight change. Do any of you have suggestions for a beginner like me? Thanks!!! Patty
You can look up recipes at the www.americanheartassociation.com at leat I think I got that right. You can even get cookbooks.
Patty, I know this is VERY difficult! My husband was going through chest pains a few years back, and the doctor put him on a low fat diet for a while. It's not easy to do! Check out the library. They will probably have several low fat cookbooks. As Amy said, there's places on-line you can get info, too. What kind of milk do you drink? Can you lower the fat content in it? We are now drinking 1%. Also, do you eat wheat or white bread? If you eat white, switch to wheat. Those are probably the two easiest things to do. And NO DONUTS!!! That one was VERY hard for my husband. Good luck! But keep in mind that, unless he's willing to make the change, you are fighting a losing battle. It does no good to make all these changes at home to have him stop by the donut shop every day on his way to work!
There are recipes for raw foods as well as general tips at www.freedomyou.com. You might want to google the myths of vegetarianism. Actually, what seems to bother hearts the most is the combination of refined sugars & startches with hydrogenated fats. There are actaully good fats, like olive oil (virgin is best), red palm oil (red with Vit. A), & coconut oil (not coconut kernel oil. People who are down on coconut oil are confusing the two). Flax seed oil is great, but it doesn't stay fresh as long. I order my coconut & palm from Puritan's Pride. Kosher salt & most sea salts are unheated and therefore supposedly act to cleanse arteries. Also, research Natto Kinase, a fermented product, which alledgedly clears small capillaries as well as larger vessels. As far as sugars go--sugar subs can be as detrimental as refined sugars. Xylitol is made from certain fibrous parts of plants, like corn cobs or certain trees. It is a sugar "alcohol," which has a reputation of rebuilding plaque on teeth, strenthening bones, & helping to control diabetes. You see it as an ingredient in expensive chewing gum in health food stores, but you can order it by the pound. It looks & tastes like refined cane sugar. Cakes made from it seem to be heavier, & you only need to use about half as much. Some people, if they over-indulge in sweets, get gas. Xylitol also can give that effect, if eaten in large amounts. You can buy raw nut butters--sesame tahini, almond, and peanut butter. Watch the labels on peanut butter. A lot of it has the same ingredients as plain ole' Crisco shortening! We look for all-natural peanut butters. For fun starters on your health-food journey, try apple slices, spread with natural peanut butter. Yum! Oh, yes! The apple seeds contain poisen--a form of cyanide, actually--which researchers now say is death to cancer cells but harmless to our bodies! So, if you don't eat the seeds, send them to me! lol! This is a favorite topic of mine, as you can tell. I don't want to overwhelm you, so I'll quit now. Wait! One more thing. Why don't you research kefir, also? The taste is not worth it for everyone, (It's like a strong yogurt), but the health benefits could be worth the look-see. I'm hoping for great success for you on this journey! God made so many fabulous foods! P.S. These are not medical statements. I can't verify that any of this will work for anybody else. I may not be able to find all the sources where I learned these ideas. Each person should do his or her own research.
We went through this last year with high blood pressure. There are things you can do that he probably won't even notice. I always use the lowfat mushroom soup in recipes - we don't even notice the difference. Lowfat sour cream, too. Don't fall into the trap of eating more of it because it is low-fat though! The bread was something we stopped eating so much of. Who knew we ate so much? He started eating cereal (the Healthy Heart kind) a couple of mornings a week. I have always made his breakfast - so that was an easy meal to change. My husband likes everything - he is so NOT picky. Is your husband into really changing? Does he pretty much like everything?
The things we do are: low fat (we get our meat from a meat farm, not the grocery as well...way less fat), fruits and veggies, less white flour and buy wheat whenever we can, no soda, limited amount of junk (except my ice cream ), and drink lots of water.
All these ideas are such a blessing. Thank you so much. Handsome said that he really wants to change his habits. His cholesterol was actually great but none the less after this scare, obviously somethings not right and we need to do all we can to improve our bodies. Tomorrow is payday so I plan on shopping with a mission to accomplish. I know that I could stand to eat healthier. It will be a great habit to set for Ems as well. Thanks again and keep the great ideas coming. I need them.
Theres alot out there to help you with. Get the low fat meats, wheat breads, no soda, no junk food. Alot of water.
On the soda: I have heard as long as its diet, and maybe caffeene free is better but I don't think diet is as bad. try to drink tea, I've heard good things about the green tea, but the black tea has anti oxidendts. get lots of fiber, thats a hard one for me, but ask your doctor about fiber supplements, there are kinds you can stir right into your foods. here is a recipe site:http://healthy.allrecipes.com/
My heart sometimes does "flip-flops," & it used to stop beating for a scary-long time. It did this a lot several years ago. I took a list of possible contributing factors to my doctor, & he immediately circled DIET DR. PEPPER! "Ouch!" How I didn't want to give that up! Both the sugar subs & caffeine had to go. Symptoms return for me even with a couple of cups of coffee or a couple of sips of diet dr. Each of our bodies are different, but maybe artificial sugar subs aren't good for anyone.
We stay away from them, there are many conflicting reports on how they are fine, or how they are bad for you, so we just stay away.
LOL Prairie... You do KEFIR, too??? LOL So do I! I like Kombucha better, have you a scoby? Mine's dead, I tend to let them go for too long. Get too busy. Well, I am ressurecting this thread as you suggested. Ava, you were asking about pancakes. When people are coming from a typical modern American diet to trying to change, it is overwhelming! While your head is spinning, sometimes its good just to try a few things that at least move you in that direction. If your family likes pancakes, it's going to be difficult to cut them out, but the pancakes we are used to are not very good for us. They are nearly complete processed white flour and sugar for the syrup. Here is a recipe for pancakes that my kids love. I just click copied it from my blog. From the beginning they quit asking for regular ones, and they are much healthier to eat, especially if you can use pasture-fed chicken eggs. Recipe Turn your oven on to 400 degrees. Drop 2 TBL butter into large cassarole dish. Place dish in oven as it is heating, to melt the butter. Combine in blender: 6 - 9 eggs (the original recipe calls for 6, but we sneak in extra to get rid of eggs, it's a little heavier is all) 1 cup milk 1 cup flour 1/2 tsp salt When butter is melted, run it around to cover whole dish, pour combined ingredients into dish. The pattern of the melted butter will cause the bubbles, so if you pour the batter into the center and push the butter all out to the sides, the pancake will rise up around the sides and curl into the center. In the picture above you see that the batter was poured around the edges first, then mixed up the butter all in the center, to get puffs throughout the pancake. Put dish of batter into your now 400 degree oven, and set the timer for 20 minutes. For Syrup: You've GOT to make this syrup. We dont use anything else now. Put a really big soup pot on the burner and turn it on low. Drop in: 1 stick of butter 3/4 cup milk or buttermilk 1 1/2 cups sugar 2 TBL cornsyrup 1 tsp baking soda Bring up the temperature to medium and stir while bringing to a boil. You have to be careful, the baking soda will cause LOTS of bubbling. That's why you need the big pot or you will have a syrup accident all over your stove! Once it reaches boiling, you can back off and just let this simmer until your pancake is done. Remove from heat and stir in 2 tsp of vanilla. Bring out the pancake, sprinkle it with powdered sugar, cut into portions and drizzle with syrup. What I love about these is that there are so many healthy eggs, they are not dry, and you don't need much syrup, the way you do with regular pancakes. One syrup recipe will probably last 3 or 4 pancake recipes. Plus, they are just fun to make.
Thanks alot! I made banana pancakes with whole wheat flour once and they were delicious! We try to eat healthy as much as possible. When I changed my grocery shopping my kids were very disappointed at first. It meant no chicken nuggets, fish sticks, processed frozen junk and much more veggies and fruit. Well, fruit is never a problem and my daughter loves salads.....my ds is a different story with the veggies. So much the food I bought was so bad and I didn't even realize it. I never realized how many foods have high froutose corn syurp or partially hydrogenated oils. I have cut out about 90% of that. I will admit when the budget is low that % increases. However, I make my own cookies---yes bad but not as bad as store bought. I try to use whole foods more and not take as many shortcuts. I do enjoy cooking so more effort is not a big deal but more time can be a challenge.
That looks good! We'll try it tomorrow morning. No, I don't have a scoby. Or maybe I do & just don't know it! What is it? And what is Kombucha? Hey, I better go change my kefir now, or it might eat itself, like it does if it doesn't have fresh lactose once in a while.
Scoby is to Komboucha like grains are to Kefir. Komboucha is fermented tea, though. It's really tasty! I wish you could drink it all day, but it's dehydrating, so you have to limit yourself. I guess that's why I don't work at it too hard, I can never drink all I make.
Ava Rose, we hadn't realized all the chemicals in foods until we had to watch them because of possible reactions. And Valerie, I am definitely going to look up komboucha! One place some people can save quite a bit of money is to buy 5 or 10# of potatoes for the same price as a bag of chips; or oat meal & other hot cereals instead of dry cereal; or raw meat instead of prepared, etc. Like you say, though, the time to prepare them can be a challenge.
Adding tofu gives you healthy protein---better than meat protein. I use only olive oil now---it works fine for everything! One guy I know, who is a nutrition expert, said we should never use "crinkle bag" foods. That's usually potato chips and unhealthy things, so that's a good general rule to go by! We don't use real milk anymore. We use soy milk. The soy milk we use is calcium fotified, and has no animal product or antibiotics or that kind of thing in them. We don't eat meat of any kind. If you do eaat meat, it should be from people you know or who are in your area that you know keep their animals healthy and feed them good foods, etc., and that you know will have healthy cuts and good quality! Much of the stuff at stores would gag you if you saw where it came from and where it had been! Eating organic foods is more expensive, but much safer also. Although, speaking of cost, if you're cutting out sodas (I haven't had a soda in over 2 years now! I used to LOVE Dr. Pepper---no diet cuz of the stuff used in diet), and sweets and certain other things, and spending more for healthier , better foods, then you're really coming out about the same, cost-wise, but you're eating much more heathfully, and your heart and body will be much happier! :love:
