Archives for raw foods

The Greens Go Green | Day 5

July 22, 2016 by Zucchini Runner in Food, Life | 2 Comments

Today is the LAST DAY I will be tracking my food on the blog for The Greens Go Green! Not only is it time consuming to measure all the food, weigh it and enter it into My Fitness Pal, but it’s also time consuming to type up a blog post about it each day and photograph everything that enters my mouth! haha I WILL say, I’m going to try and keep these EATING habits going the best I can, for as long as I can. I feel amazing eating this way! It really has been fairly easy to do too. It’s like I always say… you just need to shift your thinking.

So, before I get into the details of my daily intake below, I want to share some tips on how you can do a “Week of Green” yourself!

  1. Go grocery shopping over the weekend, when you have plenty of time to shop. Stock up on ALL your favorite fruits and veggies ONLY. No meat. No dairy. No eggs. No fish. Don’t even leave the produce section. (Well, unless you need to buy some boxed beans. 🙂 We definitely ate beans for added protein and calories.) Buy organic whenever possible. You can use the Environmental Working Groups guide to help pick the best fruits and veggies to buy organic. (Strawberries, apples, nectarines to name a few.)
  2. Don’t focus on fancy recipes or put any pressure on yourself to make elaborate meals. Get back to basics. Wash, cut, and simply eat all your fruit fresh. Wash, cut, steam or bake any veggies you like cooked. See all my previous days, and today, for ideas on what to eat raw and what to cook.
  3. If it comes in a prepackaged container, AND contains more than ONE ingredient; try to avoid it. (For example, we still used olive oil, extra virgin unrefined coconut oil, flax oil and rice. But if you grab for a carton of almond milk that has 6 ingredients, skip it. We did use salad dressing a couple of times in a pinch, vs. making our own. Not the end of the world by any means.)
  4. Focus on WHOLE FOODS. This means foods that have not been modified from their original form. If you want tomatoes, use fresh, not boxed or canned. There is a difference in quality, energy, and nutrients from fresh vs. packaged. Always. No matter what. So make your goal to eat AS MUCH FRESH FOOD as you can. I’d shoot for 95% during your week.
  5. If you have a juicer, and want to juice each day, be sure you focus on greens. Minimize the high sugar fruits and veggies. Think of them as the salt of cooking. A little bit, goes a long way to make the taste of the green juice palatable (sweeter). So you can add one carrot, or 1 green apple to a large green juice; but it’s better to EAT those in a salad. Eating those vs. juicing allows your body to absorb the sugars and other nutrients slower, since the fiber slows absorption. Slower absorption, means less of a sugar rush to the blood stream, less (or no) crashing later.
  6. If it ever becomes a struggle during the week, think of all the good you are doing for yourself — mind, body and spirit. And think of all the good it is doing for the planet! Going meat and dairy free, especially long term, has a positive impact on the environment. I’ve never been a “don’t eat meat”, angrily pointing my finger at people type of person. However I do believe, wholeheartedly that as a society we have lost sight of the value of fruits and veggies. They should be the #1 focus on the plate, meat and/or dairy intake should be the afterthought, not fruits and veggies. Eating nothing but plants for a week is the BEST thing you can do for yourself.
  7. Use a calorie and macro tracking application like My Fitness Pal. This will ensure you are getting the right amount of nutrients. The first couple days it might be hard to judge just how BIG your salads or bowls of fresh fruit should be! You want these foods to keep you full, and nourished for 2-4 hours. The goal is HIGH nutrition here, NOT starvation!
  8. LISTEN to your body. LISTEN to your stomach. Is it actually hungry? Or are your taste buds just craving something more sweet/salty/heavy? Keep this in mind during the week.
  9. Enjoy the feeling of light and easy digestion! I lost 3.4 lbs in the 4 days I’ve been doing this. (I weigh myself each morning, so I can’t count today!) I know most of that is just cleaning out my gut, versus fat off my bum. I will say however, that with no processed sugar or wheat my stomach is definitely flatter due to less bloating!

I don’t want this to get to long, so I’ll stop there. If you have ANY questions, please ask them below in the comments. I’m happy to answer anything I can. GOOD LUCK! If you try it, let me know how it goes!

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BREAKFAST: 399 calories, 46 g carbs, 16 g fat, 19 g protein, 22 g sugar, 12 g fiber. This was the exact same shake as yesterday. Chocolate vegan Shakeology, turmeric powder, maca powder, 1 tsp. Vita Mineral Greens, 1 c. frozen organic blueberries, few dashes of cinnamon and 1 tbsp. of flax oil. Very filling, lasted me 3.5 hours.

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SNACK 1: Watermelon, nectarine and blueberries. 238 calories, 54 g carbs, 0 fat, 4 g protein, 45 g sugar, 14 g fiber

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LUNCH: There is a baked potato hidden under all that food… we did broccoli (one of our favs), onion, mushroom, red kidney beans, fresh sliced tomato and green onion. 1 tbsp. vegan dressing. 419 calories, 76 g carbs, 6 g fat, 21 g protein, 9 g sugar, 20 g fiber

SNACK 2: Hot air popped popcorn with real salt and coconut oil 244 calories, 24 g carbs, 14 g fat, 4 g protein, 0 sugar, 4 g fiber

SNACK 2: MOVIE NIGHT! Hot air popped popcorn with real salt and coconut oil. 244 calories, 24 g carbs, 14 g fat, 4 g protein, 0 sugar, 4 g fiber (Still WAY better than something out of a bag with fake butter and microwaved!)

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Our movie theater just did a huge remodel, and now has a bar (amongst other things), so we each got a beverage to enjoy while we waited for the movie to start. Mine was just vodka with soda water and a lime wedge. Nothing but 104 calories.

As you may have noticed, we didn’t have an official dinner today. We had enough calories from our other meals and weren’t really hungry! The popcorn and our drinks got us through. haha Not highly nutritious, but it’s Friday night and sometimes a little of the not-so-good stuff is A-OK! 🙂 Today was also a rest day. Back at it with a run and workout tomorrow though.

Have a great weekend! “See” ya next week. I will be posting a recipe for homemade, gluten-free seed and veggie crackers!

Totals for the day:

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I hope you enjoyed the journey! Do you think you will try a week of focusing on just plant foods?

Raw Foods Class Part 2 & 3

July 6, 2014 by Zucchini Runner in Food, Life | Comments Off on Raw Foods Class Part 2 & 3

This Raw Foods Class post is a little… ok… a LOT behind schedule. But in all fairness, the assignments aren’t actually all due until the end of the class session, which is July 7th. 🙂 So technically, I’m only behind on my self-imposed schedule. Anyway, I REALLY wanted to try a few recipes that utilized my dehydrator so I looked a couple up in my new favorite cookbook, Going Raw. They both involved soaking nuts and seeds, and then dehydrating them. In other words, you need to plan ahead with these puppies! I also needed some food we could bring on our Vegas trip! (Yeah, this post is way overdue…) We’ve found that planning ahead, and bringing our own food is the best way to stay on track, not to mention save some money. Luckily, our hotel room had a kitchen. We even brought our juicer!

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The first recipe I was excited to try was a savory, crunchy protein mix. It had very few ingredients and seemed pretty simple to assemble.

Protein Crunch Mix

1 1/2 cups hulled buckwheat groats, soaked 1 hour
3/4 cup sunflower seeds, soaked 4-6 hours
3/4 cup pumpkin seeds, soaked 4-6 hours
5 tbsp tamari
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder

While this recipe WAS super simple to make, I’m sad to say, it wasn’t our favorite. All the ingredients were dehydrated at 110º F for 8 hours, so it was a long wait to see if the dehydrating would help the taste. (I was a little worried about the flavor, since it was pretty strong before dehydration.) Mr. Zucchini Runner was NOT a fan… whereas I was trying to remain optimistic! Once it was dehydrated it was a LITTLE more tasty. But I think if I made this again, I wouldn’t use the tamari; I would find another way to add salty and/or smokey.

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Now, the second raw food recipe I tried was DELICIOUS!! I’m so excited to tell you about this one. It had many more ingredients, and a touch of sweet which helped to hide the strong flavor of buckwheat.

Maple-Pecan Granola

2 cups pecans, soaked 4 hours, coarsely chopped
2 cups hulled buckwheat groats, soaked 1 hour, rinsed well
1 cup flaxseeds, soaked 1 hour in 1 1/4 cups water; do not drain soak water
2 cups rolled oats
1 cup hulled hemp seeds
1 1/2 cups dried cherries (or cranberries or raisins)
1/2 cup coconut sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp pink Himalayan salt

After combining all the above ingredients in a bowl, I placed the mixture on 5 different dehydrator trays lined with parchment paper. The recipe called for 110º F and 24 hours of dehydrating time, to my surprise, since it was so dry here, it only took about 16 hours until it was completely dry. It took a little longer to prepare, compared to the protein crunch mix above, but it was totally worth it! This mixture came in handy during our Vegas trip MANY times. It was great with an apple as a snack, or with our homemade almond milk as a treat at the end of a long day.

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Have you been trying to incorporate more raw foods into your daily nutrition? I know I have, and I’ve been LOVING it! I’m sad my last class is tomorrow night, but I’m so thankful for everything I’ve learned — especially getting over the fear of using my dehydrator.