What to Eat ?
Low fat Whole Food Plant Based Diet
So what does this mean. It is a diet for health ( to digress - diet does not mean just for weight control, but what we eat ) . It is a subset of Vegan. ( In studies the word that turns people off the most when it comes to Food is “Vegan”. ) So when I first tell people that I am a Vegan they tend to immediately think that I eat lots of green salads. This is totally wrong and it would take about 10-15 lbs of green and yellow vegetables to get the number of calories that I need in a day.
So a WFPBD ( Which I am going to call Vegan from here on out as it is shorter to say and write.) that we want you to eat will consist of:
70 % of the calories from Starches
20 % of the calories from Green and Yellow
Vegetables
10 % of the calories from Fruit
No Meat or Dairy
So using the above WFPBD you will get
approximately 10 % of the Calories from Fat - a very
low fat diet
So what does the typical American diet consist of :
20 % Starches
70 % Meat and Dairy
5 % Fruit
4 % Vegetables
Overall 40 % of the calories in the typical American
diet are from Fat
So what is a starch ? It is a type of carbohydrate that consists of long chains of sugars in the form of either amylose or amylopectin. Typical examples would be : potatoes, rice, beans, lentils , peas,corn , and whole grains. “ Carbs are not bad and we will go into this and some of the other misconceptions about diet in our next meeting, but we want to get you eating the correct things asap.
Important to note that “ Vegan “ does not equal healthy. Remember the WFPBD is a subset of Vegan and I could put you on a pretty unhealthy “ Vegan “ diet. One of the things that we want to avoid as much as possible are “highly processed “ foods. A lot of these are going to be the already prepared things such as TV dinners, canned meals, trying to make vegan foods look like Animal products. That doesn’t mean we cannot eat these at all , like an occasional “ Impossible Meat Burger “ , but this should not be the mainstay of our diet. Just like a lot of nuts or avocados should not be the mainstay of our diet.
I have a lot of recipes in different cultures that I think you would enjoy. But also as Milton Mills an Internist said in one of his lectures:
“ We were all born without preferences. No one asked for fried chicken, ice cream or a pork chop in the delivery room. The unhealthy things we eat, we had to learn to like. We can learn to like healthy foods instead. We can change for the better. “
So Who does the cooking at home ? If it is your significant other than you may need to discuss this with them . Eating out for the most part will be difficult at a lot of our typical restaurants. But a lot of Asian restaurants, some Italian restaurants , some Mexican restaurants and others can accommodate a WFPBD. Chipotle is one where you can pick what goes into your burrito.
So what is a typical food day like for me ?
Breakfast - pretty boring on most days as I eat Quaker Oatmeal Squares ( dry ) and a piece of peanut butter jelly toast. I make my own low sugar jams.
Lunch - sometimes left overs from previous evening meals, sometimes a microwave baked potato with salsa, or brown gravy or some homemade chili on the potato and then a piece of fruit, an apple, some pineapple , mangos are some of my favorites
Dinner - Spaghetti, lasagna ( my own home made dairy free delicious ricotta cheese ) , peasants pie, Thai food, in really hot weather maybe a rice or pasta based salad, Mexican food, etc. and again fruit as for lunch for dessert.
When I eat, I eat until I am satisfied. For me this usually means no less than 2 large helpings of the main course.
Desserts - I do very little , maybe some fresh or home made canned fruits. But I do have some good recipes. I was definitely a “sweet tooth” before this diet , but with the change in my microbiome ( bacteria in our gut that do amazing things for us ) I really don’t crave sweets like I once did .