Whole Food Plant Based Diet

What I eat Monday: September 9, 2024

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Most days are not anything special. It’s ordinary food whether you are plant eating or not. But I do like to learn new ways of cooking with plants. I learn a little bit at a time and this week’s new recipe was BROWNIES!

Breakfast was grape-nuts and Soymilk and blueberries with an orange for added calcium.

A snack of apple and pecans for energy as I had a busy day seeing patients and needed energy!

Lunch was greens topped with some noodles (made from chickpeas for a protein boost) with soybeans and tofu snd some garden cherry tomatoes. I made the same sauce for the noodles and for marinating the tofu. The sauce was some peanut butter melted in microwave, soy sauce, white wine vinegar and hot pepper flakes. Yum! Lots of great protein in this lunch! Especially since the brownie for dessert is added sugar free and made from black beans. More info below.

For dinner I met a favorite church group out at a local diner and got the veggie wrap and some sweet potato fries. I asked them to hold the sugar on the fries as I am trying to cut down on added sugar and they were happy to oblige.

Now about the brownies…

First you soak 2.5c of Medjool dates in hot water for 2-4 hours. Then you blend them up with 1c water to make a date paste.

You then take 1.5c of this date paste and blend in a can of rinsed and drained black beans and 3/4c plant milk.

Then mix in 1/2c cocoa, 1tsp of baking powder and vanilla, 1/2 tsp of baking soda, and 3/4c oats.

Mix it all up and then spread in brownie pan with some chips and nuts on top of you like and bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes. They need to cool to stay cut in a square and I like mine after some time in the fridge. Very fudgey…These are husband and teenager approved!

Happy plant eating!

Lifestyle Medicine Physical Activity Stress Management

Workout Wednesday: Less than Perfect

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I want to envision myself leading the perfect healthy life. My diet, my exercise, my temper , and my hair all just cooperate perfectly. Every. Single. Day. I once proudly told a mentor that I was a perfectionist. Without hesitation she replied, “Well, I can always tell when someone has a problem with dishonesty.”

Because perfect is dishonest. It is not a true part of being human. Sit down to hear me say this: You will never get it perfect. This applies to all your hard work on fixing your spouse too. It is slightly disappointing news, right before it is freeing.

Two facts were true this week. I had Covid and I really need my exercise time for my mental health. There was a time when the sudden intrusion of illness, or any big life event, would mean I would skip exercise because I couldn’t do it “perfectly”. By this I would mean that I couldn’t go to the HIIT class, or I couldn’t give it my usual effort.

But this week I stopped expecting myself to exercise and just considered a goal of “body movement”. I wasn’t sick enough to be stuck in bed, so I put shoes on my feet, and good music in my ears, and walked a mile outside on a “photo walk”. This is a walk where I take pictures of things in nature that I find beautiful. It is good for the soul.

Then I did 12 squats x 2 on a bench, 12 lunges x2 on a flight of stairs, 12 toe taps x2 on a parking bumper, and 12 tricep dips x2 on a garden fountain. There are many things on a walk can be used for strength training and making your own gym is creative and fun!

I then used my Tabata app timer to jog a minute, walk a minute, for the mile back to my home.

It wasn’t my best workout. It was far from perfect. But the truth is that right now my body is not at its best. I’m not perfect. But adding gentle movement to my day is always a win.

Lifestyle Medicine Whole Food Plant Based Diet

What I Eat Monday: A Bean, A Green, and A Grain

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It found me this weekend; the big Covid. I hardly have any symptoms, but I am trying to stay away from other people who might be more vulnerable. I am also doubling down on my nutrition with extra vitamin C and colorful fruits and vegetables for antioxidants.

It is times like these that I am glad for a stocked fridge. A few days before I had cleaned out the fridge and I had found:

Leftover baby carrots and cauliflower pieces from hosting a book club

A few getting squishy spaghetti squashes, and a few miniature butternut squashes from the garden

A handful of small round potatoes

A few red peppers. I was unsure if they were sweet or spicy

I chopped them all up and spread them on baking trays with parchment. I sprayed them with cooking spray, sprinkled them with salt, and roasted in the oven at 400 degrees.

I like to set the timer for 10 minutes and then check to see what veggies are done, flip all the others around a bit, and put it all back in for 10 more minutes. I repeat this 3-4 times or however much time is needed. This is a great activity for me to combine with laundry and other chores around the house as I can do other tasks in the 10 minute intervals.

This is how I food prep and how I tend to arrange my meals : A Bean, A Green, and A Grain.

Breakfast is shredded wheat with blueberries and soy milk. Let’s substitute blueberries for the green because it’s breakfast, the mini wheats are the grain, and the soy milk is the bean.

Lunch is a curry split pea spread on sourdough with mixed greens, fresh cucumber, some of the roasted veggies, and some added sugar free cookies that I had made after roasting the veggies. The greens are a handful from store box, the bean is the curried split pea, and the grain is the sourdough bread.

I snacked on some edamame which I love as a way to increase the protein in my diet. Dinner was take- out Indian that I ate with my husband on the porch while properly socially distanced. The bean was the chick peas, the grain was the rice, and the green was a handful of greens I added for fun.

It was delicious food that nourished my body and gave it fuel to fight the Covid. I hope everyone has a great week…and Happy Plant Eating!

Whole Food Plant Based Diet

The Next Question

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People often ask me how I changed to a plant based diet. There seems to be a disappointed disconnect as I shrug my shoulders and reply, “I just decided to do it.”

I really want to give people a 7 step plan for getting rid of all the saturated fat and cholesterol and zero-fiber animal foods. But, truthfully, I woke up one day and decided that for the next 30 days I would eat only plants. I rummaged around and found some oatmeal and blueberries. It was hodge-podge, messy, and creative. Lunch was a baked potato and some left over broccoli. I opened a can of beans and topped it with some salsa. It was ugly at times, but each day I got better, and I learned.

First, I decided. But as my husband points out, I have an unusual ability to go “all-in” on things. He’s not wrong. But I think it comes from the question I asked AFTER I made the decision.

Once decided, and when things get hard, I don’t revisit the decision. I never asked, “Should I keep eating plants on vacation or while traveling?” but instead I asked, “How will I keep eating plants while on vacation and traveling?” It’s a big difference.

How will I eat plants at the Mexican restaurant, or at the barbecue place that my father-in-law picked for his birthday? How will I eat plants at this work dinner? The all-in success was found in never revisiting the “should”. The success was found in asking the “how”.

Too often we sabotage ourselves going backward to re-answer a question that we have already answered. I know I should go to the gym. I should stop drinking. I should cook more. I should get to bed earlier.

We usually go back to re-answer it when obstacles come. I should go to the gym, but work has been too crazy. I should stop drinking but maybe not on football weekends. I should cook more after the kids have less activities. I should go to bed earlier after summer is over.

But what if instead we said:

How will I get to the gym with work being this crazy?

How will I stop drinking during football season?

How will I cook more with all the kids activities happening.?

How will I get to bed on time during the summer?

The “should” statements are a wish for a future that never seems to come, and the “how” questions are committed actions.

How will I stay married to this person?

How will I be successful at work?

How will I stay sober?

The key to success often isn’t just in the decision. It is almost always in the next question.

Physical Activity

On Beauty: A Workout Wednesday Post

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I once had a person tell me that looking at my feet made him want to vomit. It’s perhaps a fair assessment as I was born with very deformed feet. I can’t point my toes, stand on one foot, or do ankle circles, I don’t have the correct number of toes, and I need to shop in kids shoes for a size 13 and a 1, because they are not even the same size.

I had a bunch of surgeries when I was little to make them functional with wheelchairs and crutches and braces and odd shoes. I had casts and more casts and physical therapy sessions aplenty all before I turned five years old.

To my parents credit I don’t remember feeling weird or different as my energies were channeled into sports where my arms could be power (long-distance swimming), and my time was spent developing a penchant for reading and a talent for writing. And my feet have carried me down the aisle at one wedding and numerous graduations, into the delivery room and through two pregnancies, and even through a half marathon.

Today for my workout I decided to go for a run on a late summer morning that was teasing us with fall temperatures. I took pictures, as I often do, of things that I think are beautiful and I listened to music that fed my soul.

I was only going to do a mile. But the weather had me continuing on down the trail until I realized I had run 1.5 miles. I decided to go for 2. Then a great song came on and my watch said 2.2 and, although tired, I knew it was going to be three. I’m a slow runner but it brought me such joy to move my body this morning in great weather, beautiful surroundings, and good music in my ears.

I made it 3.1 miles. I bent down, hands on knees, exhausted, in my driveway and saw my feet and smiled. They can’t be called beautiful in the traditional sense, but they had carried me through more than I thought I could do. That, I realized, is a different kind of beauty.

Moving a body-any kind of body-with joy is beautiful and is a mental health elixir. Our bodies are beautiful in how they carry our souls for as long as they are able. We demand so much from them, and spend a lot of time thinking they are less than optimal, but they still carry us and start to dance when that particular song plays, or beg to run outside, or seemingly on their own, jump to hug the ones we love the most.

There is beauty all around us, if we know how to see it. And there is a joy in moving our bodies that reflects the beauty of the soul. My feet are beautiful, and yours are too. Let’s move them with the joy they deserve today!

Stress Management

Looking Higher

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I know a guy who claims to have no God. He is a proud atheist. He will also tell you how important Service is for his own health and clarity. He routinely recommends “service to others” as a path to good mental health and I could not agree more.

Walking with a Higher Power, something that is beyond my own skin, might be one of the most important things I can do for health.

Most importantly, this practice protects me from trying to BE that power myself.

Because when I try to manage, fix, manipulate, direct, enforce, punish, reward, or worry into submission the world around me, I fall prey to anxiety (aka fear) and depression, self-pity, selfish behavior, anger, slightly more than white-lies, and using others as actors in my direction of my play. It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting for me and wearing for those around me. It’s the opposite of good health, true social connection, or stress reduction, and leads to sleepless nights, Oreo eating, and so much hand-wringing that I become unable to move my body with joy.

When it was first suggested to find a Higher Power, something greater than myself to look toward for direction, I chose the Power of Good. The Power of Good is invisible like the wind, but you can see the effect of both things in people’s lives. “Goodness” was a Power outside of my own skin that I could believe in and reliably trust. I learned that religious people call this Faith.

I first started asking this Higher Power for direction at the beginning of my day, and then in the evening I began reviewing my actions through its lens. Before long I started to converse with it anytime I was unable to figure something out, or fix something myself. I learned that religious people call this Prayer.

Today I belong to church as one part of my practice, but my Higher Power bursts out in unexpected places and at unexpected times. It cannot seem to be controlled in a way that is most akin to when you get the giggles inappropriately and cannot stop. I learned that religious people call this Grace.

I intuitively know I am seeing only a small part of something too big for me to get my human arms and mind around. For me, it seems to have no definite body or pronoun, exudes wisdom and loving perspective, and seems to not have an ounce of fear, anger, or self-righteous judgement; things that can cover me like a heavy wet blanket from which I cannot escape. I learned that religious people call this Sin.

For me, even with my human limits, I can rest in this Higher Power. I can trust it to lead me. My atheist friend calls his power “Service” and I call mine by many names including: Goodness, Love, Joy, Grace, Patience, Kindness, Beauty, or for short, just “God”.

I am coming up on 11 years of finding a Higher Power and I can tell you that turning toward this Power, talking to it, listening back, letting it guide me in all situations, has been the best life change that I EVER made for my health. I learned that religious people call this “Finding God.”

And as my friends in Kenya like to say, “God is Good. All the Time.”

Whole Food Plant Based Diet

What I Eat Monday August 12, 2024

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I try to be honest so this is actually what I ate yesterday, Sunday, but I repeated most of it with leftovers today!

For breakfast I sliced some whole wheat sourdough and layered on some hummus and greens and apple with a drizzle of honey.

Then, for lunch I whipped up some chickpea “chicken” salad by crushing up a can of chickpeas and then throwing in raisins, apple, green onion, and celery. I then take hummus and thin it with lemon juice to make a sauce to hold it all together. I ate this with pita bread and fresh cherries. Yum!

Breakfast
Ingredients for Chickpea salad
Mashing up the chickpeas
Lunch chick-pea salad

For a snack I enjoyed 3 cookies. I make these cookies using a can of white beans!! They are so yummy and packed with fiber and bean goodness.

Basically mix the dry ingredients: pulse up 3/4c rolled oats in food processor till it’s flour like and mix it with a cup of whole wheat flour, 1tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, sprinkle of cinnamon and salt.

Then drain the can of white beans but save the fluid. Put a cup of the beans in your food processor with 1/4c until sweet applesauce, 1/2c raw sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 1 TBSP of the bean liquid. Purée it all up and add to your dry ingredients and stir till moistened.

Then add in 1/4c rolled oats and the rest of the bean liquid with 1/2c vegan chocolate chips. Make balls and flatten a bit before baking 12-15min at 350 degrees.

For dinner I made an easy summer dinner that was a mixture of a can of black beans (drained and rinsed), a cup of corn, diced red bell pepper, diced cherry tomatoes, diced avocado, and green onions. I add a sauce that is 1 TBSP whole grain mustard with 2-3 TBSP fresh lime juice, 1 TBSP oil, and 1 tsp cumin. Mix it all together and serve with chips and fresh pineapple-strawberry fruit mix for a yummy summer dinner!

Ingredients for the sauce
Dinner

Happy eating Plant Eaters!

Physical Activity

Workout Wednesday!

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Some days I just need a quick workout at the gym.  I know I need to exercise for mental health as much as physical health and so the days when I am feeling not at the top of my mental/emotional health game, I am at a crossroads of needing to exercise and not being motivated to exercise.

If you have those days too, feel free to try my template that involves 4 or 6-minute movement segments using a Tabata format.

A Tabata is a form of exercise where you alternate short periods of exercise with shorter periods of rest.  For a Tabata, I use 4 minutes of exercise consisting of 8 exercises, each done for 20 seconds, with 10 seconds of rest in between.  There are lots of great Tabata timer apps for free and in general, I choose the 8 exercises to fit the pattern of lower legs, cardio, arms, side abs, middle abs, side abs, cardio, arms with legs combined

Get-It-Done-Workout

Block One: 6 minutes of cardio

For the first 6 minute block I like to do the elliptical at a steep incline and lower resistance for 1 minute, medium resistance for 1 minute, high resistance for  1 minute, and then repeat this resistance pattern at a medium incline.   The goal is just to get your heart rate up for 6 minutes.  You can run outside in intervals or even a consistant 6 minute run.  You could jump rope in a pattern of 1 minute on and 15 seconds off for 6 minutes.  Whatever you have available to do for 6 minutes

Rest 1 minute

Block Two: 2 Tabatas (8 minutes total) with 30 seconds of rest in between the first and second Tabata

Today I did the following 8 exercises: wide leg squats while holding hand weights, moutainclimbers, tricep dips, side plank with hip dips and lifts on left side, v-sit sit ups, side plank with hip dips and lifts on right side, jump lunges, legs together squats with both arm rows with handweights.  I then rested 30 seconds and repeated this Tabata

Rest 1 minute

Block Three: 6 minutes of cardio

I did the same elliptical routine that I did in Block One, but sometimes I change it up and run on the treadmill, or run up and down some flights of stairs if they are available.

Rest 1 minute

Block 4: 2 Tabatas (8 minutes total) with 30 seconds of rest in between

You can repeat the same Tabata in Block Two for today I did 8 different exercises.  I did wide leg squat with alternating side leg lifts, jumping jacks, straight front arm raises with weights, sitting russian twists holding a weight, dead bugs with weights, bicycle crunches, burpees, lateral arm flys with hand weights

 

This should get you a quick 30- 35 minute workout with plenty of variety to keep you entertained on the days that you just need to get it done!

Lifestyle Medicine Stress Management

Chasing Peace

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I have spent a lifetime waiting for peace. Working for it, wrangling it, and negotiating with it. It’s been a lot like a laughing toddler slipping from my grasp and running ahead as I tried to wrestle it back into place.

I was positive that if I got into medical school life would finally be good. Only to find that, wait, no, if I get into residency it will be settled. This turned into peace once I find a job, once I get promoted, once I complete my thesis, or once I get perfect patient experience scores. Then, surely, I will finally be able to sit on top of my career aspirational mountaintop and rest.

I prayed once in bargaining fashion to find someone to marry, and then twice that we have a healthy child, and now repeatedly that these teenagers make it to adulthood without killing themselves. I’m sure once they find someone to marry, or once everyone is settled and happy, that then I can sit on my happy matriarchal couch and enjoy the situation.

I have told a friend that once I lose this weight, once I run a 5K, once my blood pressure is fixed, once I finally take up yoga, or when I retire and finally have more time, to de-stress and meditate that then I will be able to feel at peace and healthy.

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I am sure I finally will be rid of my worries and challenges and find peace, IF (insert desired outcome).

But sadly, chasing the outcome-based peace never came and stayed for more than an hour or two. There was always more work to do.

Most recently I was riddled with fear about this country’s upcoming national elections. I was full of what my husband describes as “piss and vinegar”. I was giving my political speech to him, throwing noble-cause punches into the air, all while still in my jammies.

But, he had to go help a friend move a refrigerator and I needed to get dressed to meet my friends for coffee, and so we both needed a little reprieve from my fervor. My husband easily stepped away from me, but I was stuck with me, and needed a little help.

I did what mentors have taught me and tried a prayer to help locate some peace. (I truthfully always do this reluctantly and as a last resort as I run out of my own solutions.)

Maybe you’ve been there too: Peace being held hostage to the future and a present full of fear that is hard to manage.

Soon after that prayer I found myself with friends talking about upcoming surgeries and other scary things, when an awful truth wedged its way into my consciousness. With the flash of a bright light turning on, my mind held the thought, “It won’t be done on November 6th.”

With this thought came a full and powerful realization that I will wake up on November 6th, and there will still be work to do. I will still need to figure out how I will be a citizen, how I will model to the younger, how I will build bridges to neighbors. I have this work to do today, AND I will still have this work to do later.

And strangely, that is where I found peace today. It was in the realization that it will never be done. There will always be a sunrise that comes with a day full of decisions about what work I will do. The assignment may change from school to residency to job, or from babies to young adult children, or from working for one civic issue that matters to another, but it will never be finished.

When I realized this truth, peace stopped being something that ran ahead of me like a laughing toddler trying to get away, and instead climbed right in my lap to be in the middle of the wild ride, with an eager face that said, “So where are we going next??”

Physical Activity

Workout Wednesday: Pool Time Friends!

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Because this is Workout Wednesday, No-Beach-Week-Hurricane edition I decided it appropriate to head into the pool.

I was a swimmer in high school, but I haven’t been in the water recently because a friend at a dinner party told us all about what she saw at the bottom of the deep end of the pool during a recent scuba certification class. For the good of all water sports, let’s all just agree never to speak of these things. Deal? Done!

But because I ultimately really trust in the power of chlorine I headed back to the pool today.

Ready for the best part? In the middle of my workout I reached out to the woman swimming next to me to ask her to take a few photos for the blog. As she turned toward me, I realized that I knew this woman! Dr. MCO and I were emergency physicians together for years. She wasn’t just a colleague; she was a mentor and someone I look-up to in spades. I would watch her walk into a male dominated area of medicine, always bringing Oreos for the resident doctors, and run a level one trauma center and emergency department like a boss. For me, this visual action image was more powerful than any words of encouragement or talk-up speech. If you’ve been to an emergency department near here, Dr. MCO likely trained your doctor to save your life. That is her life legacy from where I sit, but she’ll just tell you about her 3 year old grand-daughter; who I’m sure is equally as amazing!

It made my morning so special to get to talk with her again. Swimming can be solitary but social at the same time which always makes a workout more fun.

My Workout in swimmer speak:

First (100 swim, 100pull, 100 kick)x3

Second (25 fly, 12 pull-ups, 25 back, 12 v-sits ) x3

Third (150 swim, 50 fly kick, 50 back kick)x 3

Workout in regular people speak:

First I did 4 lengths of freestyle swim, 4 lengths of freestyle just pulling with my arms using paddles on my hands and a bouy on my legs, 4 lengths of freestyle kicking with flippers and a kick-board. I repeated this all two more times. I was warmed up!!

Second I swam I length of the pool in butterfly stroke and then I used the starting block to do 12 pull-ups. I then swam one length of the pool doing backstroke, jumped out of the pool and did these v-sits for ab work. I did this all 2 more times!

Third I swam freestyle for 6 lengths of the pool, then grabbed my kick-board and fins and kicked butterfly kick for 2 lengths of the pool followed by backstroke kick for 2 lengths of the pool. I repeated all that two more times!

Dr. MCO gave me some tips as well including paddles for pulling that have holes in them that can be great for beginners. She also showed me a ring swim counter that you can click with each lap so that you can swim -and be in peace- while it helps you keep track of laps.

That is all for work-out Wednesday water edition for today. Keep your heart healthy…and just a little jolly!