Whole Food Plant Based Diet

What I Eat Monday! August 5th, 2024

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Well, today, beach week turned into only beach weekend as hurricane Debby arrived to join us. She had us dragging our feet while trying to accept the fact we needed to leave, binge watching The Weather Channel, and then with inward groaning hurriedly packing up the car as the rain started to intensify.

Breakfast was a deliciously ripe nectarine with oatmeal and soy milk and a drizzle of honey. My own “peaches and cream”. We were still in the non-acceptance faze as we drank coffee and stared at the clouds gathering.

Lunch was in the car as we tried to battle the outer bands of Hurricane Debby up the eastern SC coast. I had thrown in our groceries from the beach house and dug out a package of blueberries and a package of edamame. Oreos were being eaten in the backseat, so I had a few of these as well to help calm the nerves.

Dinner was at Mexican with a fancy mocktail to ease the pain of a missed beach week with friends and family and a bowl of black beans, rice, lettuce, and tomato. Followed by a walk to “walk it all off” as my husband says… I think he means the food, but the time in nature helped me walk off a bit of my blues as well.

It wasn’t a perfect healthy diet day, but because it was a super stressful day, it could’ve been worse. Just like this beach week was not perfect, but it could’ve also been much worse: we are all safe and home and Sammy Dog got a long walk .

Positive Social Connection Stress Management

The Space In Between

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Welcome to The Jolly Heart; Beach Week Edition! It’s a week of travel, family time, and seeing good friends. Routines will be upended, unanticipated challenges will come, cooking will be for multitudes, and new memories will be made. It’s a vacation, but it also has moments of chaos.

I have been thinking of chaos lately. It might be because I live with young adult children, my job can keep me on my toes, and the news has never been newsier. It all leads to days of feeling unsettled. I try to pay attention to getting movement and eating well, but I also tend to something I call The-Space-In-Between to get some relief.

I had a mentor tell me once to draw a circle around my feet and look down. This is what I could control. This was the space I was in charge of managing. It contained my own body and mind, but, I also realized that circle encompasses the space in between my feet and yours.

If I was New Age I might call it my Aura, but Lifestyle Medicine doctors call it “Social Connection”. It is a very important contributor to our health and as important as not smoking to our longevity.

When I first started paying attention to The Space In Between I went after low hanging fruit. Not using my middle finger while driving meant a successful day for me. It’s important, I believe, to realize when we put our frustration and exhaustion into The Space In Between. It affects those around us and we have no idea of fully knowing what’s going on in their circle and at their feet. Snapping at my husband after a long day at work, barking at my kids to clean up, sarcasm, eye rolling, denigrating another behind their back or on social media; these are all examples of how I can, unthinkingly, pollute up their space with my own fear, my own frustration at the clunkiness of life, my own desire to have it all the way I like it. It can hurt worse than a slap to the face and it creates a divide: not only between me and them, but also between me and others witnessing. There are no bridges and connections being built. And without these connections, research tells us, we are taking years off our own life.

After controlling for pollution, I started to challenge myself in The Space In Between to try some beautification. Small things like eye contact and a smile with a cashier, sending emails with gratitude folded around the business needing done, thanking my family for their own acts of kindness, bringing curiosity and grace to other’s anger and frustration. I started to sprinkle those beautification seeds everywhere I went and I felt different. I felt happier regardless of what others around me were doing in their space. I was tending my space and it made me feel healthy and strong in a world full of chaos.

On our beach-bound road trip we stopped in a Wendy’s. While my family ordered the food, I noticed the straw/napkin/utensil station was a mess. Trash overflowing on the counter around the trash holes, no napkins, low on utensils, etc. “Sheesh, Wendy’s,” I thought, “my grandpa, a man with an eye for details and the original lover of the Wendy’s Frosty would be disappointed.”

I went up to the counter to ask for some napkins- because road trips can never have too many napkins-and the gentleman sighed in a kind and tired way and grabbed at a large wrapped brown paper package. As he ripped open the big package of napkins, he muttered as much to himself as me, “Everyone called in today…I was on my way to replace these..”. He offered me as many napkins as I needed before he was called by another customer to ring up an order. I looked at my feet and imagined that circle…all of it…and I grabbed a few fist-fulls of napkins and put them in the napkin dispensers best that I could. (I obviously missed the employee training session about Wendy’s napkin dispensers.) I hoped it bought our guy a few more minutes to do the job himself. My husband chuckled and said, “You’re hired!” and my teen just looked slightly embarrassed, but there it was: The Space In Between.

Just like my garden, I don’t always get it right, I never get it perfect, but it’s where I see magic and holiness happen, and for me, where I see my God at work: The Space In Between your feet and mine -in a world full of chaos- is important.

Whole Food Plant Based Diet

What I Eat Monday! July 29, 2024

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This morning started off with oatmeal and blueberries. I microwave this for a minute or so and then add a bit of soy milk.

For lunch I did my favorite recipe called “throw stuff in a bowl.” I had some spinach which I topped with farro and white bean mixture that I cooked this weekend. I also added some baked tofu cubes. (See below on how to bake tofu-yum!) I had pulled some small purple carrots and sugar beets from the garden because the cantaloupe vines were running them over. I almost threw them in the compost because they were tiny, but instead I wrapped them in foil and had my husband roast them this weekend while he was grilling. I added those and some cherry tomatoes and hot sauce.

For my sweet tooth snack I love to take Medjool dates and stuff them with peanuts and vegan chocolate chips. I also have been eating more protein in the handy snack of edamame which has 14g for 1/3 of a cup.

I did not want to cook dinner, so we did some Indian take-out from Nawab. I usually get Chana Masala, but opted for the yellow lentil dal. I added some spinach to the rice and dal and it was super yummy!

How to Bake Tofu:

1. Buy a package of extra firm tofu

2. Drain the water, slice to half the thickness/two thinner blocks

3. Press the two blocks between paper towels for 15-30 min. (I pile on a cooking board with canned goods on top for weight.)

4. Heat oven to 350

5. Cut tofu into cubes and dress with favorite sauce. There are lots of recipes online. I love to mix soy sauce, melted peanut butter, and hot pepper flakes. Sometimes I shake it around with corn starch first to make it crispier. Sometimes I marinate it overnight in the fridge for more flavor.

6. Bake at 350 in oven for 10 minutes then flip and do 10 more minutes on other side.

7. Enjoy!

In the winter I roast some veggies each week for lunches and the tofu is easy enough to add into the oven and bake with the veggies.

Whole Food Plant Based Diet

What I eat Monday!July 15th 2024

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Breakfast with grape-nuts, blueberries, and soy milk
Lunch of black bean dinner leftovers with rice over greens and corn and no-bake cookies

Grape-nuts have 90% of you daily iron and that is a great way to start the day. The lunch leftovers were from a dinner I made this weekend: Costa Rican Style Spinach, Potato, and Black Beans. It’s a go-to quick dinner where you sauté 1c chopped onion and a couple cloves of minced garlic for a few minutes in vegetable broth and then start opening cans. Dump in a can of diced tomatoes with green chilis, a can of sliced potatoes (drained), and a can of black beans (drained and rinsed). Add in a tsp of cumin, a TBSP tomato paste and 1/2 cup water. Boil or simmer for 10 minutes until thickened then throw in 4-6c spinach leaves and 1/4c chopped cilantro and some hot sauce for 3-4 more minutes. Viola! Serve over rice or with crusty whole grain bread. I just put the leftovers onto some greens and added some corn for lunch today.

After lunch it wasn’t the best nutrition today because what is not pictured is the Oreos and Coke Zero. And while these are vegan they are not “whole food”. These are my coping vice because this weekend the news cycle had me despondent. It wasn’t the events per se, but rather knowing we had planted zucchini seeds all over. and then watching the looks and words of disbelief when zucchini sprouted up and grew. The disconnect made me feel like maybe the world has gone slightly mad. When you plant zucchini, you pretty dependably grow zucchini. And if this is not a vegetable you like, then yes, I suppose it is tragic, but not surprising at all. Sad that it was not realized to be the wrong seed in the first place, perhaps. Sad beyond words.

Shop the Sides
Tacos with black beans, cilantro, tomato, and onion

For dinner comfort food was still top of mind so Mexican was our jam. I like to look at the “sides” on a menu and see what I can do. Tacos sounded good so I asked for the 3 tacos with black beans instead of meat. They were delicious.

During that dinner I finally found words to talk about my great sadness. It must have been the tacos. And then we took a walk outside.

Probably I should have tried tacos, talking, and nature before Oreos, but some days you sail smooth, being the change you want to see, and some days you just hold on during the choppy ride while waving an Oreo wildly in one hand.

Positive Social Connection

The Separateness Lie

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Am I the only one that has times of feeling alone living on a planet of a billion people?

A better word might be disconnect.

Disconnected is different from being alone. I have felt disconnected in a room full of people and I have felt connected while totally alone.

When I am connected I feel part of a larger whole. This state seems to be intricately tied to my mental health and well-being, and it was how I first understood the word “God”.

God started for me, and still is, the whole thing. The bigger thing to which I belong. I am a part, and I am connected to all the other parts. Or as yogis like to say, “Namaste”.

When my youngest child was learning violin the teacher explained to him that when he played the E note on his violin using other strings, my son’s E string would start to vibrate. Something in the space between the strings was connecting them. It is called resonance.

When I’m feeling disconnected, it is that space in-between that I need to tune into. I am seeking resonance.

How each of us does this is quite individual, but it always takes a form of bridge making, that you feel more often than see.

Nature is often a bridge from the larger whole to each of us. There is a practice of going outside and looking up at the sky when someone feels lost. The posture is so universal that you can visualize it immediately. When we look at the sky, or a beautiful tree, body of water, or large vista we are automatically connecting with what is larger than ourselves. Try it. Go on outside, take a deep breath, and look up. Feel it? Resonance. We are outside of our little self-in the space between-if only for a moment.

Artists often connect by creating. Their art is a bridge made from them to you. Our souls resonate through time while looking at what has been created. Writers do this too by building mental bridges of shared humanity that can be powerful.Speech and vision setting are other forms of connecting art. I notice this particular lack from leaders in the world today. I crave hearing a vision of our shared space with a sort of pleading desperation letter that I can’t figure out where to send.

Too often I get task oriented, but when wise people advise to listen, not just hear, or to be present, not just solve, I believe they are speaking of the sacredness of this space. Truly seeing another person, or hearing their soul is rare today. Caring for the divine in that space between is where I see God.

The greatest truth I know is that we are all connected to each other. For good or bad, neglected or nourished, this truth will remain.

And in a world that sometimes get transactional with broken bridges everywhere, I remain convinced that this bridge building, creating resonance, tending the space between, will be the most important work we do for our health.

We are built to build it, feel it, and respond to it, as surely as the violinist’s E-string.

Physical Activity

Lunch time Move

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I decided that instead of napping after lunch this week, I would take 30 minutes and add some body movement.

I am a lunch napper and so this idea is a big change for me. After I eat lunch, I love to close my eyes and catch a 15 minute nap. My dog loves to join me in our together Power Nap Time.

For a small new habit change, this week at lunch I started doing a 0.5mile walk around the block, 12 upright shoulder presses with hand weights, 12 standing tricep presses, 25 squats with bicep curls, 12 standing side bends with weights-each side, and 25 dead bugs on my back with weights.

It’s hot outside for a walk but for 10 minutes I embrace the slight sweat. Enough to move, but not enough to mess the hair is the goal. I don’t change into full workout gear or shower after this new habit because that’s not the idea. I am just trying to add movement.

I found that I don’t miss the nap! I look forward to the fresh air and the music I put in my ears. I feel energized to a greater degree than with my nap, and my dog joins with me in movement too. He is pretty convinced that it’s our play time together and this makes me smile…even as I get a large dog toy thrown at me during my dead bug abs!

What can you do mid-day to increase your movement? Join me in mine!

Ps. If you are on Facebook, look up and like our Facebook page: The Jolly Heart. Share our posts that others might find helpful!

Lifestyle Medicine Whole Food Plant Based Diet

What I Eat Monday! July 8, 2024

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Welcome to a new feature called, “What-I-eat-Monday”. On Mondays I will show you what I eat in a day on a whole food plant-based diet.

Today was a special Monday because it was the first Monday back to work after vacation week. I always make sure to dig into my Lifestyle Medicine principles during these transitions. I got up and exercised, meditated, and checked my blood pressure.

Exercising at the 5 am hour after vacation week
Blood pressure still looking normal

Then I ate a breakfast of oatmeal, blueberries, cinnamon, and soy milk and packed a lunch of leftover Chickpea salad, pita bread, greens from the garden, and cucumber salad

Breakfast
Lunch
Snack

The chickpea salad is just some chopped veggies like celery, carrot, green onion, with raisins and chickpeas and then mixed with oil free hummus thinned with some fresh lemon juice. I sprinkle cinnamon in there too for a surprisingly great flavor.

For a snack I had some fresh nectarines and some whole grain cranberry pecan bread.

Then I made a quick and easy dinner of Quinoa taco meat. This is so easy to do as you boil veg broth (1c) and add in 1/2 cup quinoa, 1TBSP chili powder, 1tsp cumin, 1/2tsp paprika and 1/2tsp oregano, with 1/4tsp each of onion and garlic powder. Boil for 15 minutes.

This is the MOST yummy taco filling! Toppings are cabbage, tomato, avocado and salsa. I love these taco shells as we’ll

Dinner

After dinner it was time for a walk and some garden time to unwind

Our resident frog

I hope you had a great Monday and cheers to a good lifestyle and a good life!

Positive Social Connection

Circles

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The Lion King is famous for the song, “The Circle of Life”. Most of us can picture Mufasa, holding up little Simba, proud and full of love. When I picture the scene in the Lion King, I feel my eyes crinkle into a smile and my shoulders relax.

But there is an opposite to the Circle of Life. There is the Circle of Fear. I am no stranger to this place. But I’m sure I have underestimated it exponentially. I have judged fear, or anxiety, or stress, or insecurity, or any of its pseudonyms, as a trivial individual concern.

I know what fear does to me. It’s a focusing inward posture and thought process. I think up ways to mitigate, to reassure, to be safe. Perhaps I need a new petition or a law, a new tonic or drug, perhaps I need to look thinner or use hair dye, maybe I need to subtly lift myself up at the expense of my neighbor. At its most harmful I need to find an enemy to blame.

It feels like there is not enough. And it’s catchier than a pandemic. Unless skilled like a Jedi, you start to fall ill when surrounded by it. “Why was I so naive,” you think to yourself as you join the sick circle of fear and pass it on. scarcity of resources blinks like a neon warning light.

You go get the new alarm system, buy the gun, don’t go to the music hall for fear of someone else and their gun. You shutter up the shop that offers your gifts to the world. And the only thing you have to offer the person next to you is…more of the same fear.

Circle complete.

I am convinced that fear is our worst contagious disease and our greatest public health threat.

I haven’t found the cure, but I have found a few things to break out of the fear racetrack. The good news is that these things are always available, and they are free.

You just chose. The circle of Life. Or the Circle of Fear.

Choosing Life means choosing the substance of Life as illustrated in the famous scene from the Lion King. Choose belief and love. Choose faith. Choose to see the other in front of you. Listen to people around you and learn their hearts, not just their words. Practice humility and really laugh. Serve. Share your gifts boldly. Stop hiding them. Let me repeat that: Stop Hiding You.

Live Namaste, Matthew 7:12, or your own personal version of the same.

In the end, the Circle of Fear gets us alone and afraid and convinced that the Circle of Life is not real. But in the end, your Life is the only real thing of any value you can leave behind. Choose well…and then go infect the others with reckless abandon.

Positive Social Connection

Freedom

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When I started eating differently, I was afraid. Of what, I could not tell you. Perhaps some rouge tofu might attack me at the grocery store once it found out I was looking at recipes with beans and lentils. I am still, truth be told, a little wary of tofu.

But, it always seems to be like that, doesn’t it? Trying something new is scary.

Six months ago I talked my mom into trying a Silver Sneakers class at her Y. She was nervous and reluctant. But I know my mom. She likes people, music, and dancing. And we just happened to walk into the best class in town with Lisa leading the way. Now when I am back visiting we don’t miss her class! It’s a room full of people dancing and moving and health and life surround it all.

But pushing someone else to try a new thing is so much easier then doing it yourself. I like to learn about new things, but actually doing them is a different story. For example, I read about cooking tofu for months, but when I actually touched the tofu, I wore my skeptical face with wrinkled up nose, and kept repeating, “Remember… this is just soybeans…you like soybeans…”

Fast forward to this 4th of July. I talked my dad into trying a recipe for grilled carrot dogs. It couldn’t be more scary than the weird white soybeans, right? Besides we were in this adventure together.

But they were delicious! I’m still in disbelief myself. If you are laughing at me right now, know that I am laughing too!

I noticed that I try new things when people I love and respect encourage me down a road of change.

I thought of this on this Fourth of July. The few who tried a new way. Trusting the people. A belief that we are always better as a sum of our parts than any one of us alone. We need each other because change is scary. And because not a single one of us has all the good.

But each one of us can take another’s hand and walk toward health and life. That direction is easy to recognize: healthy living is always a building force and not a destructive one. It is free-ing.

So make that positive social connection in real life, take a friend to a joyful exercise class, or laugh while grilling carrots. (Have we now seen everything?!) Take that chance this Fourth of July and see if your heart feels just a little more free.

Whole Food Plant Based Diet

Traveling Plants

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I should tell you that I love airports. Airports and Pilot gas stations are fascinating to me in their variety of offerings and intersection of different people. Where else can you chat with someone from another country and someone from your favorite college, see families in action at all ages and stages, witness grief and glee, buy a bobble-head or a shot glass, AND get your nails done all in one hour?

At the airport I love the spiritual practice of looking at the people around me, imagining their stories, and trying to see them like God might see them. Today I also walked around with Turnpike Troubadours playing in my ears and laughed as my fast walk started to turn into a walk-dance combo. But who cares?? It’s the airport!

It’s all fun until I start to get hungry. NOBODY wants to witness me while hangry (Ask my husband about that…or then again, please don’t.) So, to get down to important and earthly things, what am I going to eat??

When I switched to a whole-food plant-based diet I didn’t want to focus on what I “couldn’t” have, but instead I focused on what could fuel my body and my mind well.

The truth is that before I changed my diet, all the edible things were available to me. And, still, all the edible things are available to me. I just choose differently. And so a fun scavenger hunt was born.

I do pack a few simple meals or “lunches” in my bag. I have always been one of those people who, when traveling, become weirdly food insecure. Chances are there will be a Walmart somewhere nearby the places I go (or the Kenyan equivalent), but put me on a plane and I pack food like we might be going on an Arctic expedition.

So today I made some lunches out of some lentil curry and black beans I had left-over or had pre-made. (Picture above) Throw in some greens, tortillas, tomato, farro, hot sauce and fresh fruit…and the person on the plane looks at you enviously as they munch on their pretzels!

I have also previously packed raisins, tangelos, peanuts, soy-nuts, or edamame. Once someone in LaGuardia security took my hummus, but the food otherwise makes it through security just fine.

In the airport I look for nuts without added sugar and oil, these amazing pickles, these fruit bars from Starbucks (4g of fiber) and other great snacks. I try to avoid added oil and sugar as an ingredient because this adds up quickly as I travel and I end up not feeling the best.

On this particular trip I was reminded to also pack my grace alongside my plants. I was boarding the plane when I noticed we had a female pilot. It wasn’t until I squealed to the welcoming flight attendant, “We have a girl pilot!!” that I realized I should not call her a girl-pilot. I am perhaps the most sexist feminist I know. I blame being a child of the 1980s. It was a confusing time. I saw the flight attendant extend me some grace for my comment and I packed that grace in my appropriately sized carry-on to pay it forward. And, just so you know, this particular pilot was a bad ass. Truth.

So it turns out travel is just like the rest of life lived eating a whole-food plant based life; it’s an adventure, needs a seasoning of grace, completely possible, and fun!

What do you like to pack for the plane and the airport?