Health nuts- weigh in

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:daily exercise even if it's just a walk for an hour. Drink lots of plain water (use a pur water filter), shower daily, don't smoke, drink or do drugs including weed which is crazy popular around here. Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables a day eat some at each meal, 3 meals a day NO SNACKS. Deep breathing a few times a day. No scented anything, no candles, air fresheners, nothing like that.

I eat very healthy, exercise, drink water and very little to no alcohol but I do take a gummy every night. I sleep so much better at 48. It helps me be healthy in every other way after I have gotten a full night of restful sleep.

Sleep is so important, but just a heads up from personal experience - while the gummy helps me fall asleep and stay asleep, the sleep quality is always so much worse per my watch. You might have your dosage dialed in better than me, but I always get non-restorative sleep scores if I take a gummy.

I might wear my watch a few night to see what it says, but I feel very rested the next day. If I don't take it every little noise wakes me up and then I can't go back to sleep.

Smh. So you try earplugs and white noise machines not drugs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have realized that there is something to be said for “health nuts” - they look good, feel good, and don’t age as much. I want to hear from the health nut out there what their advice is. What is your biggest piece of advice on getting healthy and making yourself feel good? Diet, supplements, exercise, meditation, acupuncture, etc?

Whether I look good I will leave to the judgment of others

I am indeed a health nut though. My advice is plant-exclusive diet. And I mean plant-based WHOLE foods - beans, sweet potatoes, green vegetables, oatmeal, black/brown rice, etc. Not processed and/or plant junk food like plant-based "meat."

This. 100% the reason I look and feel 10 yrs younger.

With all due respect, every vegan I know looks pretty bad. I'm not saying your health has not improved since I don't know, but being vegan does nothing for your looks.

They do indeed look rough. So do heavy drinkers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:daily exercise even if it's just a walk for an hour. Drink lots of plain water (use a pur water filter), shower daily, don't smoke, drink or do drugs including weed which is crazy popular around here. Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables a day eat some at each meal, 3 meals a day NO SNACKS. Deep breathing a few times a day. No scented anything, no candles, air fresheners, nothing like that.

I eat very healthy, exercise, drink water and very little to no alcohol but I do take a gummy every night. I sleep so much better at 48. It helps me be healthy in every other way after I have gotten a full night of restful sleep.

Sleep is so important, but just a heads up from personal experience - while the gummy helps me fall asleep and stay asleep, the sleep quality is always so much worse per my watch. You might have your dosage dialed in better than me, but I always get non-restorative sleep scores if I take a gummy.

I might wear my watch a few night to see what it says, but I feel very rested the next day. If I don't take it every little noise wakes me up and then I can't go back to sleep.

Smh. So you try earplugs and white noise machines not drugs.

OMG I NEVER thought of that. Thank you so much for this brilliant advice.

[Anonymous]

The extreme health nuts look sickly and have a pallor to their skin….like the raw veggie people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:daily exercise even if it's just a walk for an hour. Drink lots of plain water (use a pur water filter), shower daily, don't smoke, drink or do drugs including weed which is crazy popular around here. Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables a day eat some at each meal, 3 meals a day NO SNACKS. Deep breathing a few times a day. No scented anything, no candles, air fresheners, nothing like that.

I eat very healthy, exercise, drink water and very little to no alcohol but I do take a gummy every night. I sleep so much better at 48. It helps me be healthy in every other way after I have gotten a full night of restful sleep.

Sleep is so important, but just a heads up from personal experience - while the gummy helps me fall asleep and stay asleep, the sleep quality is always so much worse per my watch. You might have your dosage dialed in better than me, but I always get non-restorative sleep scores if I take a gummy.

I might wear my watch a few night to see what it says, but I feel very rested the next day. If I don't take it every little noise wakes me up and then I can't go back to sleep.

NP here ... if you decide to try gummy-less sleep, I can't say enough about cheap wax earplugs. My sleep improved dramatically when I started using them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:daily exercise even if it's just a walk for an hour. Drink lots of plain water (use a pur water filter), shower daily, don't smoke, drink or do drugs including weed which is crazy popular around here. Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables a day eat some at each meal, 3 meals a day NO SNACKS. Deep breathing a few times a day. No scented anything, no candles, air fresheners, nothing like that.

I eat very healthy, exercise, drink water and very little to no alcohol but I do take a gummy every night. I sleep so much better at 48. It helps me be healthy in every other way after I have gotten a full night of restful sleep.

Sleep is so important, but just a heads up from personal experience - while the gummy helps me fall asleep and stay asleep, the sleep quality is always so much worse per my watch. You might have your dosage dialed in better than me, but I always get non-restorative sleep scores if I take a gummy.

I might wear my watch a few night to see what it says, but I feel very rested the next day. If I don't take it every little noise wakes me up and then I can't go back to sleep.

NP here ... if you decide to try gummy-less sleep, I can't say enough about cheap wax earplugs. My sleep improved dramatically when I started using them.

How are they better than the foam ones? Are they hard to pull back out?

[Anonymous]

Eh, I wouldn't call myself a health nut, but I avoid processed food and exercise every day. It does wonders for my mental health and energy levels and keeps my weight stable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eating a healthy diet. Also avoid ridiculous skin-saturating chemicals like dryer sheets and scented detergents, and don't use air freshener.

Or candles.

No candles- ever. Might as well smoke

[Anonymous]

EXERCISE: You need to have an exercise routine. And it needs to include weight training, but that can even mean three days a week for 20 minutes with two 10 pound dumbbells to start with. Look on YouTube for total body dumbbell routines. Eventually, between weight training and cardio, make sure you’re moving 60 minutes a day, 4 to 7 days a week.

DIET: Less red meat, cut out or down on the potato chips and other junk food, and eat two handfuls a day of mixed nuts. There was a report on the news a decade ago about the data around life extending nutrients in nuts. Reduce or eliminate alcohol. And obviously, for the love of God, do not smoke cigarettes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eating a healthy diet. Also avoid ridiculous skin-saturating chemicals like dryer sheets and scented detergents, and don't use air freshener.

Or candles.

No candles- ever. Might as well smoke

+1000 no candles or air fresheners, fabric fresheners, dryer sheets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eating a healthy diet. Also avoid ridiculous skin-saturating chemicals like dryer sheets and scented detergents, and don't use air freshener.

Or candles.

No candles- ever. Might as well smoke

+1000 no candles or air fresheners, fabric fresheners, dryer sheets.

Why?

[Anonymous]

Floss every day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Diet.

Very little animal fat, very little added sugar, low salt. Those 3 criteria eliminate most processed foods and other unhealthy foods.

My son’s birthday is coming up, and I will make and eat a glorious strawberry mousse cake… so I do make exceptions. My baking is much less sweet than the average American dessert, however.

Off topic, but can you share your strawberry mousse cake recipe? My vegetarian teen loves strawberries and so many of the strawberry cake recipes online have strawberry jello (not vegetarian, plus pretty fake tasting).

Ooh, I'd love to help you.

I combine different recipes together, and the mousse recipe I use contains gelatin (so not vegeterian), heavy whipping cream and fruit purée. You could play around with agar-agar, which is an algae gelling agent - although I'm not sure how it would behave with these ingredients. I use a gelling agent when I need to stabilize cream that has too much added liquid from a fruit purée, so that it doesn't run on me. This makes it become a mousse.

But sometimes I do without the gelatin, when I use my secret superpower ingredient: freeze-dried strawberry powder! The strawberry powder flavors and tints the whipped cream, and is a great stabilizer, especially if you also add powdered/confectioner's sugar, which also contains a stabilizing agent in the form of cornstarch (because the strawberries are acidic). Technically, the resulting flavored whipped cream is not a mousse.

For the cake part, I do either a pâte sablée, or a génoise. If you beat the yolks and whites separately then combine carefully, you get an east-Asian style very fluffy texture of génoise. Then on top I spread sugar syrup, then real fruit pieces, then mousse flavored with that fruit (or the flavored whipped cream), and sometimes, if I have extra time, a jellied glaze of concentrated fruit to cover the cake, but that's annoying because you need to attach a plastic liner to the cake so the glaze doesn't run before it sets (this also required gelatin or agar-agar). My son likes strawberry, my daughter likes mango. I always have to do the mousse variety for mango, since I can't find freeze-fried mango powder.

This is the mango mousse recipe I tweaked for this and other fruits; this one does not use a génoise cake, but a crunchier sablé crust. I do a normal crust, no coconut.
https://www.abakingjourney.com/mango-mousse-cake/#recipe

Here is a recipe for the quintessential east-Asian strawberry cake, originally developed in Japan from French patisserie techniques, but now famous in Korea and China too. I flavor and stabilize the whipped cream with freeze-dried strawberry powder.
https://drivemehungry.com/japanese-strawberry-shortcake/#wprm-recipe-container-7491

Thank you! I'm so happy I remembered to check this thread again. Apologies to the die hard health nuts, this recipe is not for you, at least not on a regular basis. I've never used honey or corn syrup in a cake but the recipe looks promising.

FYI, trader Joe's now has freeze dried mango in case that might work to make the mango powder. I thought about trying something like that myself. I'm slightly concerned it might get gummy because the mangoes themselves are so fibrous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Diet.

Very little animal fat, very little added sugar, low salt. Those 3 criteria eliminate most processed foods and other unhealthy foods.

My son’s birthday is coming up, and I will make and eat a glorious strawberry mousse cake… so I do make exceptions. My baking is much less sweet than the average American dessert, however.

Off topic, but can you share your strawberry mousse cake recipe? My vegetarian teen loves strawberries and so many of the strawberry cake recipes online have strawberry jello (not vegetarian, plus pretty fake tasting).

Ooh, I'd love to help you.

I combine different recipes together, and the mousse recipe I use contains gelatin (so not vegeterian), heavy whipping cream and fruit purée. You could play around with agar-agar, which is an algae gelling agent - although I'm not sure how it would behave with these ingredients. I use a gelling agent when I need to stabilize cream that has too much added liquid from a fruit purée, so that it doesn't run on me. This makes it become a mousse.

But sometimes I do without the gelatin, when I use my secret superpower ingredient: freeze-dried strawberry powder! The strawberry powder flavors and tints the whipped cream, and is a great stabilizer, especially if you also add powdered/confectioner's sugar, which also contains a stabilizing agent in the form of cornstarch (because the strawberries are acidic). Technically, the resulting flavored whipped cream is not a mousse.

For the cake part, I do either a pâte sablée, or a génoise. If you beat the yolks and whites separately then combine carefully, you get an east-Asian style very fluffy texture of génoise. Then on top I spread sugar syrup, then real fruit pieces, then mousse flavored with that fruit (or the flavored whipped cream), and sometimes, if I have extra time, a jellied glaze of concentrated fruit to cover the cake, but that's annoying because you need to attach a plastic liner to the cake so the glaze doesn't run before it sets (this also required gelatin or agar-agar). My son likes strawberry, my daughter likes mango. I always have to do the mousse variety for mango, since I can't find freeze-fried mango powder.

This is the mango mousse recipe I tweaked for this and other fruits; this one does not use a génoise cake, but a crunchier sablé crust. I do a normal crust, no coconut.
https://www.abakingjourney.com/mango-mousse-cake/#recipe

Here is a recipe for the quintessential east-Asian strawberry cake, originally developed in Japan from French patisserie techniques, but now famous in Korea and China too. I flavor and stabilize the whipped cream with freeze-dried strawberry powder.
https://drivemehungry.com/japanese-strawberry-shortcake/#wprm-recipe-container-7491

Thank you! I'm so happy I remembered to check this thread again. Apologies to the die hard health nuts, this recipe is not for you, at least not on a regular basis. I've never used honey or corn syrup in a cake but the recipe looks promising.

FYI, trader Joe's now has freeze dried mango in case that might work to make the mango powder. I thought about trying something like that myself. I'm slightly concerned it might get gummy because the mangoes themselves are so fibrous.

Submitted too soon. Do you think you could add strawberry powder to the cake itself?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have realized that there is something to be said for “health nuts” - they look good, feel good, and don’t age as much. I want to hear from the health nut out there what their advice is. What is your biggest piece of advice on getting healthy and making yourself feel good? Diet, supplements, exercise, meditation, acupuncture, etc?

Whether I look good I will leave to the judgment of others

I am indeed a health nut though. My advice is plant-exclusive diet. And I mean plant-based WHOLE foods - beans, sweet potatoes, green vegetables, oatmeal, black/brown rice, etc. Not processed and/or plant junk food like plant-based "meat."

This. 100% the reason I look and feel 10 yrs younger.

With all due respect, every vegan I know looks pretty bad. I'm not saying your health has not improved since I don't know, but being vegan does nothing for your looks.

The only vegan I know is a chain smoker who looks 10 years older than her age