Clean Eating and Having Fun!

Chop and then  saute - nearly anything.  My cookbook 101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less has the recipes, but this shows how easy it is, and how much fun!

2 key concerns and 4 big solutions for perimenopause and menopause

When you are 40-50 years old and female, you are in perimenopause, the time when major changes are happening all over your body, on the road to the major landmark of menopause. Women have to accomplish in approximately 18 months what a man gets to spread out over a decade. [The male version is andropause, when a man's internal biochemistry shifts from reproduction to conservation of resources for aging.]

Problem #1:  Failing Thyroid

One of the most common problems is a failing thyroid. While many changes of perimenopause and menopause are normal parts of life, including hot flashes, a failing thyroid needs intervention,

What does thyroid hormone do?

Thyroid hormone must be absorbed by every cell in your body. It is the metabolism hormone. Without it, you will experience more and more lethargy, you will constantly feel cold, you will gain more and more weight and (if the thyroid levels fall low enough), you will die. The ONLY way to deal with a thyroid that is failing to produce enough T4 (which is converted to the active hormone T3) is to supplement with genuine T4 or T3. Syntheroid doesn't work well for a lot of people but it's cheap so you'll probably start with that one. Armour is "natural" in that it is taken from the bodies of pigs who were killed for meat, and that natural moniker appeals to some of us. The doses aren't going to be precisely equal because every pig is different, which is why your doc may not love it; it's harder to feel good if you're not getting the same dose every day, so if your ideology pushes you to Armour (which I love, by the way), you understand that her concern is your health, not anything sinister, please. You can also take T3 directly, whose brand name is Cytomel.

Your body needs you to take T4 or T3 every day, so your cells can have the chemical it needs to run your metabolism. There are NO herbs, and iodine supplements are included here, that can substitute for thyroid hormone. If you genuinely need it, do please take it. An iodine supplement can only help if you are not producing hormone due to an actual iodine deficiency and if you are eating a healthy diet, you don't have one. You can harm yourself very severely if you overdose on iodine, so don't muck around with this. Do what your body needs.

Another cure: get serious about exercise.  Do it; stop making excuses.  I KNOW that when you aren't sleeping enough, etc. you get frantic about What Isn't Getting Done.  This increases your stress.  There is a solution, it is actually the ONLY solution, and it will work.

Here's the solution: cut your to-do list in half.  I. AM. SERIOUS.  For the first two years that perimenopause starts and the 18 months of actual menopause you need to cut back your responsibilities sharply.  You have to.  You are the exquisite ancestral result of 10,000 generations of people who dealt with reality, not with what they wished was reality; those folks ended up dead and left the gene pool.  You have to have less worries and responsibilities.  Get a good night's sleep and hire a life coach like me and make it happen.  

This is a major biological transition and moderate exercise (energetic walking, treadmilling and spinning, yoga, weights work, classes, etc.) every single day will improve your hormonal balance every single day.  I know you hate this truth, but it is a truth, supported by reams of clinical evidence.  Moving enough to get a mild sweat going shifts your bouncing hormone levels onto a more even keel.  They need to trend downward slowly; you can deal with that.  It's when they are all over the place that your poor brain gets crazy and has you drenching sweat one minute and freezing the next and sleeping deeply and healthfully never  If you want the torment to stop, lace up your shoes and re-read/view/listen to the Moving Domain. 

Taking hormone supplements (even the natural, bioidentical, blah-blah stuff) ups your chances of breast cancer.  Think breast cancer will be less hassle than exercising every day?  By the time we hit 45, we're past the fantasy that devastating problems and illnesses only happen to other people.  Whatever it takes, make exercise and healthy eating your priority.

Eat more soy.  Soy metabolizes as a molecule that looks enough like estradiol (estrogen) that it connects to hormone receptors on cells and makes your body think it has more hormone than it really does.  So your peri- and menopause symptoms are less intense.  Japanese women have lower levels of reproductive cancers and easier menopause and a lot of the reason is soy in the diet.  Soy milk.  Edamame.  Tempeh.  Tofu that's flavored.  If all you've ever eaten is the boring while stuff, that's only for the hard-core.  Ordinary folks like me get the flavored stuff, yum.  Non-meat sausage, bacon and you-name-it can be made from tapioca and other healthy substances, but a lot of it is soy.  Enjoy!

Problem #2: Catastrophically dropping calorie requirements

This cause of slow and steady weight gain during the perimenopause and menopause years is a sharp drop in your metabolic rate.  You burn less calories just running basic processes.  You will have to cut 100-300 calories per day out of what you input by changing what you eat or eating less overall food per day.  You’ll be mildly hungry a lot of the time, because of the crazy hormones, and if you respond with eating, you will compound the problem. 

Good news: exercise dulls your appetite as well as revving up your metabolism for several hours.  The amount you burn working out is trivial compared to the benefit of boosting your metabolism.  Adding muscle – not bulk, remember; breathe! – adds to your metabolic rate because muscles burn up calories getting ready to leap into action, whereas fat just sits there.

The good news about this 2^nd issue is that you don’t need a manufactured hormone to save you.  You can be the heroine of this story all on your own. 

Check out  101 Stress Busters for Energy, Joy & Healthy Longevity for great ideas!!  Only $1.99 on Kindle; $9.99 in paper.  

www.soaringdragon.biz
victoria@soaringdragon.biz

How I Made Brussels Sprouts Lovable...

How I Made Brussels Sprouts Lovable
                                       – Without Requiring a Vulcan Mind-Meld

Copyright 2017, Victoria C. Leo

             

              Yeah. Brussels sprouts.  I wanted to pick the most difficult palatability challenge just like I chose the toughest demographic when I began working on weight loss challenges in my business nineteen years ago [women 35+ with full-time careers or businesses, kids, cats, parents, poodles, a 21^st century household with 12 different kinds of insurance to fill out forms for, and cars, appliances and electronics that break, need cleaning or explode at the least opportune moments; you know, people like YOU!]. 

I’m going to prove you to you that it’s just as easy to turn this tough tiger into a sweet pussy-cat as it is to – well, pet a pussy-cat.  All the vegetables that you “can’t stand”?  Bring ‘em on!!

What’s the matter with…

1)   Brussels sprouts

2)   Green beans

3)   Peas

4)   Spinach

5)   Kale

6)   Swiss and red chard

7)   Collards

The problems, if you think about it, fall into one of two categories: either the greens are bitter, have an “aftertaste,” are tough to chew, etc.  or they are just boring.  Beans, peas and spinach fall into this latter category.

How to Make the Boring Exciting

One of the best things to do with peas (and everything else on the list) is to toss frozen peas into soup or stew.  101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less has a whole section on soup and stew.  Start with a low-sodium soup and hype it with more fresh or frozen veg, or start with vegetable or seafood stock and do the same.

But here’s what so many people forget: you can radically change the Yum rating of food by adding spices.  That’s why Europeans and Middle Easterners wanted so desperately to find new, faster, cheaper routes to Indonesia, aka The Spice Islands, and India.  And if you’ve ever eaten traditional English cooking, you’ll wish they’d tried harder, sigh.  In 101 Healthy Meals, I explain the sweet prices and sharp spices in more detail.  The short version is: pepper, garlic and stuff like that all taste good together; all the sweet spices taste great together.  Don’t fuss over exactly which one to use.  Just throw a moderate (sharp spices) or generous (sweet spices) amount in the soup/stew.  Set the burner to medium, set a timer to 15 minutes and go back to writing your memoirs or paying the bills.  Come back and stir it at intervals until you taste it and it tastes good.   It will!

Peas, spinach, that boring white tofu or anything else that you don’t want to eat because it’s blah – give it the spice treatment.

Another option is taking boring veggies and putting them into a burrito or omelet. 

·Turn a pan on medium heat, spray it liberally with olive oil, and saute (lightly cook) your spinach, onions or other greens.  For the noxious ones like kale, chop them small, removing the stems.  Put a lot of greens in the pan, because greens are mostly water and the volume will shrivel to 20% of what you started with.

·When the shriveling is well along and things are making sizzling noises, turn things over with a spatula, so the warming is equal on both sides.

·Add eggs or egg substitute and when the egg mixture has set, add Daiya or similar brand of non-dairy cheese.  The “cheese” is made of tapioca or something equally innocuous and non-fat, with lots of nice digestible protein.  Keep turning it over so it doesn’t burn.  Add sweet prices!

·Shovel parts of it into tortillas, and make wraps or burritos, or just plunk it on a plate and eat it. 

The cooking removes the bitterness from the bitter greens.

Another option, instead of an egg dish, is to add a small amount of pasta sauce and the non-dairy cheese.  This gives you a “pasta-type” flavor, especially if you add some (not a ton) of parmesan or romano blend cheese on top. 

Bitter Greens

You can dump them in soup or make egg and other saute-veggies in pasta sauce dishes.

The key to taming the taste is to chop them up as small as you can, and give them a good amount of saute time.

For kale and collards:  spray with olive oil, put them in a broiler and get the broiling started.  Then pull them out, throw on some sharp or sweet spices, and finish the broiling.  You get a really good “crunch” with this, although it might not come out perfectly the first time. 

Baking is another great way to tame the bitter taste. 

·You can make a “meatloaf” with veggie-substitute for ground round, plus chopped up kale and collards, and the filler. 

·You can bake fish on a bed of quinoa, brown rice or couscous, with a ton of kale and collards and chard.  [All of these are in 101 Healthy Meals so I assume you know the basic procedure.]

·You can bake any form of protein, including beans, with pasta sauce and get your Lasagna fix with these no-longer-bitter greens.

So now you can see so many different ways to make really yummy meals and side dishes from all kinds of leafy greens and peas.

But what about Brussels sprouts.  I DO understand why it’s not everyone’s fave veg.  It takes more time to cook, yes, it does.  But does it really deserve the horror that my husband treated it to when we first started cooking together?  Nah.

The key to making the Brussels sprouts yummy is to find a way to apply a lot of heat.  Baking works.  You can put it into a baked ensemble and in 30-40 minutes, it is bubbling in its pasta sauce or light patina of olive oil and it’s as docile as a – well, not a baby if you have any experience with them; a more willful and obdurate age doesn’t reoccur until teenagehood – how about docile as you wish your children, spouse and manager were?

You can steam it easily with a microwave.  Put some water in a microwave-safe bowl and set it for 6 minutes.  Add some of that lovely cheese sub and nuke it for another 1.5 - 2 minutes.  Yum. 

You can always steam it in an actual steamer if you have one.   You can also boil sprouts, and then add a 1 minute nuke with cheese sub or Parmesan.  Finally, you can get them half-cooked in the microwave, and then broil them.  Spray them with olive oil, perhaps spices or Parmesan.

ALL of these options are really yummy!

And the Vulcan mind-meld.  If you have spent the past half-century engrossed exclusively in literary fiction or living in your underground bunker, and don’t know what that phrase means, a generous translation would be “without extensive mental manipulation.”  In other words, you don’t have to have your normal thinking reset to love the unlovable veggies; you just have to know how to cook them and your beliefs will be a natural result of your Yum response!

Enjoy!

Want a copy of the basic cookbook this references?  Go to Amazon print or e-books, or your local bookseller.

Victoria C Leo    253-203-6676    victoria@soaringdragon.biz
www.soaringdragon.biz

Facebook group: Healing Minds, Healing Bodies

Blog:  soaringdragoninjapan.blogspot.com