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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I've spent the last six months slowly transforming my diet. I was raised on bad foods - much of it processed, definitely the typical low fiber high fat American diet. After I left home I recreated most of the foods I'd eaten growing up but the busier my career got the more my diet relied on a lot of take out most of which was also low fiber high fat and high sodium to boot.

The last several years I got a lot of experience cooking - before I'd been a passable cook but I became much more skilled and began to really enjoy cooking. I'm grateful for those skills and that enjoyment because it's helped a lot with the transition to eating foods that are fairly new to me as I begin to eat more plant based. Growing up vegetables mostly came in a can or when fresh were cooked to the point they were entirely unappetizing - it's a whole new world for me to crave vegetables and fruit and for them to be the focus of my grocery shop and diet.

I recommend Dr. Robert Lustig's books, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz's book and online content on the fiber fueled diet, and especially if you podcast, check out The Exam Room with Chuck Carroll. It's the podcast of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine and the content it medically accurate and has really motivated me to make these life changes. They push a plant based diet for optimal human health, but there isn't judgment or condemnation for listeners who continue to consume animal products. I still eat eggs, some dairy, and chicken - yesterday for Xmas I had some ham, it was lovely, but I definitely feel better the last few months that I no longer consume beef or pork and have cut way back on cheese and butter.

Every morning I consume:

12-24 oz blueberry green tea unsweetened
1/4 cup walnuts 
1 slice (6 portions per 9" pie) homemade quiche made with store bought pre-rolled crust, 6 eggs, 3/4 cup cream, 3/4 cup shredded parmesan, 8oz chopped fresh spinach sauteed with 4oz julienned sundried tomatoes and minced fresh garlic. Quiche is flavored with either italian herb blend or herbs de provence and also plentiful chili flakes as I really love heat in my food and it is thought to help with BP.

Sometimes I also have a side of roasted veggies - red or sweet potatotes or brussel sprouts - with my quiche, but more often just the quiche and afterward a piece of fruit either small apple, banana or 2-3 little mandarin oranges.

This nuts and quiche and fruit breakfast works so well for my body - it's a great phytonutrient bomb with the right balance of fat, protein, carbs and especially fiber that it keeps me sated for hours. I usually have breakfast around 8 and don't think about food again until 2pm. Usually around that time I'll have a cup of raw broccoli and another serving of nuts - pistachios typically - or more fruit.

Dinners can be roasted vegetables in various combinations, rice bowl with roasted veggies, or my curry which I make 2x month. My curry is tomato based with onions, sweet peppers, garlic, dark garbanzo beans, kale or spinach and some chicken because I still love some saturated fat in curry (I also use some cream and butter, but not much compared to how I made it a year ago). When I make a batch of curry I make a batch of rice and keep it in the fridge for the week - it makes leftovers easier but it's also a great method because rice and potatoes and certain other starches (pasta) become much more resistant when cooked and then cooled before eating - whether you eat it cold like pasta salad or reheat it again for consumption.

Dr. Lustig's boom Metabolical discusses that the two rules for caring for your body are 1) feed the gut and 2) protect the liver. Feed the gut means design your diet around feeding the microbiome in your gut. There are billions of bacteria in there and they all like different food - Dr. Bulsiewicz, a gastroenterologist, suggests it's best practice to consume at least 30 different plant sources per week, and as many each day as you can. Plant sources include fruits and veggies and whole grains but also herbs and spices so you can get a variety easily. My quiche contains ten different plant food sources, for instance. Paired with the nuts and fruit or side veggie, I've already consumed 12+ sources at one meal.

I still struggle a little with occasional emotional urges for sweets and unhealthy savories, but the thing that astonished me was how within a few weeks of consuming the RDA+ of fiber every day, and a variety from whole foods, my gut microbiome rebalanced so nicely that beyond having beautiful BMs every morning, my food-obsessed brain has just quieted down almost entirely. I don't have cravings like I'd battled for years in peri/menopause. When I do have sweets or really fatty foods, I am quickly satisfied and usually feel icky after consumption because my gut just doesn't want that food. Sweets and fat destroy the good bugs and feed bad bugs that make you feel sick and tired all the time.

Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. Little meat or dairy, none at all if you can. Don't grab for substitutes - avoid ultra processed foods as much as possible. Our bodies are evolved for whole foods, close a possible to harvest condition.

This has been some of the hardest but also best work of my life. I wish I'd been born into a healthy eating family but I don't think many Americans really are, most of us are eating a diet that is really not good for our hearts and guts and other organs. It's nice to see there really is a movement of doctors trying to change healthcare by prevention through diet and other lifestyle modifications, but the forces against them are strong so it will take time to change our food and public health education systems. So much of our chronic disease is curable by using food as medicine but there is not a lot of profit in that except for broccoli farmers. [/quote]

NP. This is fantastic. I'm going to make a quiche tomorrow. [/quote]

No problems with quiche, but store bought prerolled crust is disgusting and full of palm oil/hydrogenated oil or soybean oil.  Not something I would eat every day.  Make a crustless quiche or a frittata.  If you must have a true quiche, for the love, make your own crust.  [/quote]

The store brand prerolled crust I buy has the following ingredients:

[quote]Ingredients:  Enriched Bleached Flour (wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate (vitamin B1), Riboflavin (vitamin B2), Folic Acid), Wheat Starch, Lard (deodorized Lard, Hydrogenated Lard, Bht (preservative)), Water, Sugar, Contains 2% Or Less Of: Salt, Sodium Propionate And Citric Acid And Potassium Sorbate (preservatives), Xanthan Gum, Colored With (yellow 5, Red 40). Contains Statement: Wheat.[/quote]

Those are the same ingredients I'd use if I made my grandmother's crust, which was made with lard. I've made her crust successfully a few times, but it is time consuming and requires food prep space that I don't have anymore - I don't have the typical DCUM kitchen, I have a tiny galley kitchen these days and it's just not a space that I would enjoy trying to roll dough. I'm also certain that the additional time and hassle of making the crust from scratch would likely keep me from making the quiche every 7 days or so which has been my norm for the last year. (BTW I dropped my cholesterol 30 points over the last year eating this quiche almost daily - among other dietary changes, lots more fiber/plants.)

I have been meaning to try making a frittata, although the crust is a little bit of pleasure in my daily eats. I have one last pre-rolled crust in the fridge to make this week's quiche, then I promise to try frittata once and see if it makes me equally happy/sated.[/quote]

Disgusting.  Even worse than I thought.  Cannot believe you consume that every day.[/quote]

It's basically flour, water, and sugar. Where's the problem?[/quote]

Are you joking? Did you read the ingredients? I promise, this is no one’s grandmother’s recipe[/quote]

Sorry, I forgot the lard. Still don’t see the problem. [/quote]

It’s “deodorized and hydrogenated” lard.  You can’t eat a worse fat [/quote]

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