I’m going to eat a bowl of Cheerios tomorrow morning!
If you read last week’s menu plan or were part of the dinnertime discussions on my Facebook page last week, perhaps you understand what a big deal that is.
Today (Sunday) is the last day of our two-week Crazy Diet/Liver Cleanse/Horrible Thing I Thought Would Never Be Over.
For the past two weeks, we ate fruits and veggies and nuts. And that’s it.
And I’m (somewhat) alive.
Our goal is to not go crazy tomorrow, but transition by adding grains and meats back into our diets. We want to continue avoiding sugar as much as possible.
I’ll be linking this post up to Menu Plan Monday over at OrgJunkie.com AND Top Ten Tuesday over at its new home, Many Little Blessings. (Which just happens to belong to Angie, who designed my pink-polka-dot e-book cover which I love.)
Things I Learned During Our Two Weeks of All Veggies:
1. I have a sugar addiction. Now I know to place part of the blame for that on processed foods that contain ridiculous amounts of it.
This morning when I discovered we were out of the natural peanut butter we’d been using, I used the regular stuff. (Since it was the last day and all.)
The regular peanut butter? It tasted like frosting. Cake frosting. Now that I’ve adjusted to not having sugar in things that aren’t supposed to have sugar, it was overwhelming.
2. Eggplant bought on Wednesday won’t necessarily still be edible on Friday.
3. Hubby and I are different. I already knew that, but now have a new example:
After ten days of a fourteen-day liver cleanse, he says “If we’ve done ten days we might as well do four more.”
I say “If we’ve done ten days, don’t you think that’s enough?”
4. The kids eat significantly more veggies (without coercion) when there are multiple options on the table.
5. Contrary to what I have always thought, I DO have the self-control to not eat. (At least when my only options are vegetables.)
6. I am capable of doing more than opening cans of vegetables. Necessity is the mother of invention. Or creativity. Or at least desperate internet searches.
7. A spaghetti squash is exactly the perfect size to be treated (held, sung to, rocked) as a baby. At least in the eyes of a five year old girl.
8. When you fill your cart with produce immediately upon entering the store, it’s kind of hard to find a spot for the heavy stuff you grab later on.
9. I may like salad, but salad stops cutting it after about four days.
1o. Knives, cutting boards, and food processors get used waaayyyy more when you’re eating all fruits and vegetables. Which makes running the dishwasher every night even more important.
So what’s on our menu for this week?
Monday – Grilled Chicken and Zucchini/Mozzarella Bake
Tuesday – Chicken Fried Rice (With rice this time, not “cauliflower rice”)
Wednesday – Tortilla Soup
Thursday – Spaghetti
Friday – Out to Eat
Saturday – Asian Salad with Chicken
What’s on your menu this week?
I’m so impressed! Good luck on not going crazy tomorrow when you can have other foods again.
Did you feel like you were getting enough protein in the two weeks or not really?
We did get to eat nuts, and honestly I didn’t miss miss meat as much as I thought I would. (Just cookies!)
Good job! It really is a lot of effort to make whole fresh food, and a big mess, especially if you have slob tendencies. I tend to get into a frenzy and cook and chop a whole bunch of stuff all at once and it just trashes the kitchen and leaves me exhausted.
Sometimes I wonder if we are all 2 years old still with how much sugar is in everything! I have always been a frosting scraper offer -unless it was a really nice homemade cream cheese kind without too much sugar. Since I have switched entirely to a plant based diet without processed foods (most of the time) I really can’t stand over sugared things, it really tastes like nothing but a tongue burn to me, the same as if I just put a spoonful of salt in my mouth. Now celery tastes so salty and juicy and mineral-y I can’t stop eating half a bunch a day. Very wierd.
Nony your 2 weeks inspired me and I put in more effort and finally gave up coffee (8 days and counting) and lost 3 pounds -finally breaking a number barrier that has been driving me crazy!
…and my kitchen is clean but laundry day has suffered horribly. I finally just waited until today to start again. I think I have to get over the halfway point by Sunday night or I will be in trouble.
Enjoy your grains!
Yes, that Sunday night start to Laundry Day is so important. I missed mine last night and already feel behind this morning!
I think the goal is to add more veges to your diet so you don’t have to go on the liver cleanse/oh god this is so horrible diet again.
Speaking as a diabetic (type 2) who has to cut down/cut out carbs on a lifetime basis – coming to terms with my carbohydrate addiction (and recognising that the whole world has one) is something I’m still struggling with.
BTW – I think it’s hilarious that the spaghetti squash is singable and rockable – oh the endless adaptability of children!! LOL
Exactly. And I should have put on there that each night we’ll be having an additional veggie PLUS I’ll put out some carrots and celery which the kids love.
Kiri, I understand what your going through. My DH was diagnosed with T2 Diabetes the day before we left for our family Disneyland vacation! We worked so hard that week to get his numbers into range, He left the Drs office at a 401 and when we came back we had him down to 115. I’m not diabetic, but I changed the way our whole family ate. I found it easier to help him control his diet by changing all of ours. I still make treats for my DH, but I use whole wheat flour, flaxseed and we’ve learned to embrace Agave Nectar. The biggest change to our diet did come in the way of increasing veggies. Now at dinner we have 2 veggies and a salad along side our protein. We still have a carbohydrate, but it’s a smaller portion now or it’s a faux carb, think mashed cauliflower.
I love that you guys are doing this!!! I will say that spicing up the salad dressings really helps (but yes, salads do get boring). The Radish Miso dressing in the Grated Beet and Carrot salad is adventurous and FULL of flavor. http://wellroundedhippie.com/2012/02/06/menu-plan-monday-february-6-2012/ Since you already have the food processor out you might as well try it 🙂
Did you know that the brain runs on sugar? Vegetarians do eat protein, commonly in the form of tempeh and tofu. Learning to see what makes good tofu matters. Most grocery tofu needs to be eaten fairly quickly. Unless you’re lucky and live near a tofu-making outfit. Don’t go without protein. That’s what the body lives on. We need a little bit every day. And although there’s protein in vegetables, it may not be enough for developing little bodies (kids). A young girl that’s menstruating, possibly well into her 20s also needs to get enough protein as without it, she is more likely to experience anemia (iron deficiency). Just FYI.
Our kids didn’t do the diet we did. Definitely the hardest part was making separate meals for them each night!
And I was amazed at how the sugar in fruits was able to satisfy my cravings for sweets more than it ever did before!
Our bodies do need sugar, but not refined sugar. The natural sugar in fruit is suffient. Also nuts have lots of protien as well as veggies.
http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/carbs.html
Regarding the brain running on sugar, Glucose. Also, eat some fat as many minerals and vitamins do not get delivered to the body otherwise. We need some fat in order to deliver and absorb various nutrients. Those who diet and eat no fat long-term are starving themselves, and likely don’t even realize it. Everything is a process, even eating and absorbing the nutrients in food. Good Luck!
We tried this roasted eggplant parmesan…even my half-Italian husband loved it! http://www.joybauer.com/today-show/roasted-eggplant-parmesan.aspx
Does have cheese, but it’s SO easy!
Because I know you all will have sympathy…they are working on the sewer lines in my neighborhood today so we’ve had no water all day. No washing dishes, no dishwasher, no laundry no nothing!! I have a hard enough time keeping up and now…ugh. And they are still at it and my kids need showers before bed tonight. Grrr
Hey Nony,
One piece of info from my own journey with sugar. If you’ve got that sugar bug (and boy do I have it big TIME) and you use it to get through those long Mama days, it’s much harder to moderate your consumption. If you stay off for a couple of weeks then it’s easy to stay off, but lapses lead to other lapses and then there you are going “I need my fix because I’m tired, stressed, whatever” and there you are back to trying to use it to prop yourself up.
Either way, congrats on finishing this and learning so much.
Good job! Yeah, eggplant always surprising me by going bad so quickly. I’ve started using those pricey green produce bags, and they do make everything last a little longer. I had to laugh at the spaghetti squash baby – it made me think of a poor little pioneer girl with no toys who plays with vegetables 😉
Great Post! Great List!
Great little experiment for YOU to try (not me) 🙂
I have done no sugar/no processed…but never just veggies…that’s gutsy.
In 2008, my husband was diagnosed (biopsy) with stage 1 fatty liver disease (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis). The gastroenterologist basically told us that we needed to try to cut down the fat in his diet, because there is no medical treatment until you qualify for a liver transplant…
Talk about a wake-up call! We had cut it down as much as possible (we thought) and that was about 30% fat in the diet. After a timely meeting with a friend who was part of the Healthy Indiana coalition, we attended a seminar which taught us about the vegan diet and treated us to excellent vegan cooking. In three months, Dave had lost 22 lbs. I loved the quick meals (some a little as 10 minutes and many only 30 minutes) and the cleaner kitchen (no fat spatters to keep cleaning up!) When he had his next appointment with the GI his liver numbers were completely back to normal!! After telling him the good news that he wouldn’t have to see him again, he sat down and asked Dave how he did it. Just no animal products.
We did eat whole grains, legumes, olive oil, and mostly unprocessed foods. This cut back on sugar, of course. We maintained a mostly vegan diet until he had a TBI from a serious wreck in 2019 and the medical team really emphasized animal protein for healing. In the last few months, we have really been turning back to vegan eating again, especially to increase fiber and keep the gut microbiome happier. We are both losing weight slowly and steadily, and sugar is much less of an obsession. We also learned to go to bed with an empty stomach!! Keeping at least 12 hours free of eating has helped a lot and doing the daily maintenance tasks before breakfast helps delay it, and managing to have supper around 5 keeps us busy enough to avoid snacking. Of course, we also bike or walk 5 out of 6 days (when the weather cooperates) and go to the gym when the weather refuses to cooperate.
Whether you go totally vegan or not, aiming for that 100g of fiber daily is a big boost to health–just start slow and add gradually so the microbiome has time to adjust (which it does after every meal!)
A favorite meal is the Haystack: 1/3 x each of cooked whole grain (brown rice, quinoa, bulgar wheat, etc.) and a legume (I like lentils) with a chutney or salsa or Asian-style homemade dressing or balsamic vinegar, topped with everything but the kitchen sink! Greens cut in ribbons, root veggies cut up raw or roasted, tomato, olives, onion, toss in some dried or fresh fruit, especially berries, and nuts. The greater the number of different plants, the better for the microbiome.
I just realized–he was released from the acute rehab hospital two years ago this past week!!! Almost a year after that, he was done with outpatient rehab and our life is amazingly normal again. God has done great things, far more than we deserve.
* That was supposed to be 1/3 cup of cooked grain and 1/3 cup of cooked legumes. (One should also get a good night’s sleep by getting off the computer earlier!!!)