Eating Out Grain-Free

   Just the other day, someone asked me, because of my diet, if I still went out for meals. The answer is yes. We do not go out as often because the meals we make at home are much more colorful and flavorful than we usually get at a diner or restaurant.

   So how does this work. Every restaurant we have visited has had no issue with us requesting bread and croutons be omitted from our meals. I look for broiled or baked entrees, substitute cottage cheese, cole slaw, vegetable or fruit for the starch. For instance, a recent meal consisted of: broiled cod with butter, lemon and pepper; steamed broccoli; cottage cheese; and water with lemon. Not only was this meal delicious and filling, but totaled just 401 calories.

   Another recent meal out consisted of: petite sirloin steak; broccoli;, sautéed zucchini and yellow squash; and water and lemon. Again, delicious and filling and a mere 424 calories. Each of these meals contained very little carbohydrates. They left me satisfied. Because I have gone awhile without grains, I had no craving for bread or pasta or even dessert.

   I track all that I eat so that I can keep track of my nutrient intake. According to LoseIt app, my calorie budget each day is just over 1900. I find that I eat much less than that, not purposely but because I just don’t feel the need to eat more. Proteins and fats satisfy you quickly, especially when you are not exposing yourself to the opiate-like substances in wheat which further stimulate your appetite. If you concentrate on vegetables over fruit, you also keep your blood sugar more level. Of course, starch vegetables can raise your glucose levels, but I avoid those too.

   You can have very satisfying meals in restaurants that are grain free. Even simple lunch items can be easily adjusted by the kitchen. Ask them to leave off the bread and eat the sandwich without it or ask them to wrap the sandwich contents in lettuce.

    Being mindful of how foods effect the body, this can be an effective lifestyle decision.

So what's the deal with flours?

When Justin and I started our "going against the grain" adventure, we figured that our food choices would be limited. To our surprise, it has been anything but limiting. In fact, because we no longer eat (and thereby limit ourselves to) wheat-based products, we have discovered many naturally gluten-free options. So many in fact that we are often overwhelmed with all the options available to us! Case in point flours and meals. First off... who knew there were so many alternatives to wheat flour? Rice, corn, millet, potato, sorghum, and quinoa just to name a few. What's more, not all flours and meals are created equal. In fact, not all are made of grains. Some are actually grass (in the case of millet). Others are made of nuts (almond meal and coconut flour), beans (garbanzo), or seeds (buckwheat). If that is not enough to make your head spin, each have characteristics that make them great for some recipes while lousy for other recipes. For example, arrowroot creates a shiny gloss that is great for dessert sauces or glazes. But its slimy texture is not meant to be used with dairy products. Meanwhile, if you intend to use dairy products, then corn starch is a better choice. Then there's coconut flour which is great for soups and sauces. Its nut counterpart, Almond meal is really dense and expands with liquids so very little is needed in your favorite recipes. We're also told don't get confused between potato starch and potato flour as each have very distinct characteristics and uses. At the end of the day though, both work better when mixed with other flours and meals rather than alone.So how do you make sense of all it? How do you know which flour or meal to use and for what purpose? A great resource is WholeIntentions.com. You’ll find a list of common flour substitutes along with a description of their characteristics. There's also a reference chart listing the amounts of flour to use when using it in place of wheat flour and another noting which gluten-free flours make the best thickeners. Also click here for a Gluten Substitution Chart which will help you to select the best gluten-free alternative in your favorite recipes.

Do you have any favorite sites that help you to stay organized when baking gluten-free? If so, please share. Thank you!

Process free your diet

When you first decide to go healthy, you think to yourself, “how can hard it be?” Then you start to read labels and discover that foods you thought were healthy, weren’t. Case in point…. gluten-free products. When you first start out on a gluten-free diet, the first thing you do is try to find substitutes for your old favorites such as muffins, brownies, cakes, breads, etc. While the manufacturers consider their products to be “safe” in that they do not contain those nasty glutens, you soon discover that many pre-packaged items are high in calories, are loaded with sugar, and require lots of eggs and/or butter to be added to the product in an effort to make it taste good! Totally frustrated, you now realize that most of the stuff available on grocery store shelves (and in restaurants for that matter) can hardly be called food. While these food products give us the calories we need to survive, they do not offer the nutrients we need to thrive. So what to do? Hope and inspiration came in the form of Andrew Olson…author of the One Ingredient Chef. His premise for eating healthy is simple ... so simple in fact that a first-grader can understand. Yet his approach to healthy eating his powerful enough to save lives... only eat foods that start out as one whole ingredient you can hold it in your hand. For example, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli, apples, brown rice, spinach, etc. Sounds easy enough... eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Got it!  For packaged items, it's trickier for some as requires you to read the label. So if the package says, “ingredients: brown rice, go for it! If however a package lists 300 ingredients, most of which you cannot pronounce, then forget it. To help you stay on track, his site includes recipes, articles, and tips on how to make your diet process-free.He also offers a free One Ingredient Chef eBook that may be downloaded with resources, recipes, and menu plans for improving your health by cooking with only real ingredients.

Don't Think You Can Get Healthy?

That’s what I used to say. When facing food that tastes good, but is bad for you, there's that feeling of powerless when tempted by its flavor or aroma… be it sweet, salty, or both.  Then comes the day when you realize that you are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Along with that realization, comes the nagging question... “Can I really get healthy?” In years past, the following are some of the reasons why I thought I could not get healthy. The difference between now and then though is that I now have some comebacks to keep me focused.

1. I don’t eat THAT much junk food! I didn't think so until I kept a food diary and discovered that I ate more junk food than I cared to admit to myself, to my husband, or to my stepson. Whether it’s a pad of paper or a phone app such as “LoseIt”, a food diary allows you to take a hard look at what you eat during the course of a day. Before you know it, you start to see eating patterns emerge. For example, my husband would have a big breakfast at home, but still have room for donuts before lunch when someone brought them into work. Then after lunch, he would hit the vending machines. For me, I loaded up on carbs throughout the day. It would be pancakes, French toast, or hash browns for breakfast; a sandwich or leftover pasta for lunch; followed by a mid-afternoon snack be it a Mounds bar or a handful of Twizzlers – all in an effort to get that much-needed energy boost to get through the rest of the day. Using a phone app has an added bonus of not only tracking what you eat, but also the exercises you take in, calculating the calories you consume and burn as well as the nutrients you take in be it carbs, fats, or protein along with cholesterol and sodium levels.
2. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Once you become familiar with your eating patterns, you know what and where to cut back on. Being Italian in heritage, I have to tell you that I ate a lot of bread and pasta in my day. What's more, I could not even begin to imagine a life without either one. Ultimately, my food diary did not lie. I knew in my heart that I had to cut down on those tasty carbs. Keeping a food diary has helped me to stay connected in terms of what I ate compared to how I felt. My gut ached on days filled with bread and pasta. In addition, I felt bloated, tired, and cranky. Conversely, on days I had protein, fruits, and vegetables I felt thinner, had a clearer head, and more energy.  So the logical first step for me was to seek out appetizing Paleo and Gluten-Free recipes.
3. Healthy foods are bland and boring. Truth is they do not have to be. Spice them up with flavored butter or spices. Reinvent old recipes using spaghetti squash in place of pasta; cauliflower as the base for “mock fried rice”, or zucchini as the “crust” the next time you make pizza. This is your chance to get creative!
4. I don't have time to make meals from scratch. Truth is grocery stores now offer fruits and vegetables pre-washed and cut. Lean cuts of meat are already seasoned and ready to throw in the oven (be sure to read labels before purchase for any “unsafe” ingredients such as gluten or MSG) . As a result, stir fries take less time to make on your stovetop than it does to microwave a frozen lasagna or bake a store-bough pizza in the oven.
5. I don’t feel ready. That’s ok. Practice in moderation and realize each new day provides another opportunity to get healthy. It took my husband and I a good six weeks and a lot of trial and error to get into the groove of a new dietary routine. Even then we gave ourselves permission (I know I did at least)  to indulge now and then. What I discovered along the way was that by giving into your cravings, the cravings dissipate. No longer feeling deprived, you're ready to start anew. What’s more, you learn after a few indulgences that the foods you crave no longer taste nearly as good as they once did!

      What are some of your reasons for not getting healthy? Chances are... there's even better reasons to get healthy!

Carb Sense

   Carbohydrates are essential for good health. They give our body energy. But, we must be aware of how carbs effect our body. There are simple and complex carbohydrates. Simple carbs are absorbed quickly into the blood stream, whereas the body has to work at releasing the carbs in their more complex forms. Both enter the blood as glucose. How quickly they raise blood sugar is behind the Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load numbers.

   The increase of sugar in the blood stimulates the pancreas to secrete insulin, which is a hormone that the body uses to regulate the blood sugar by informing your body it is time to store the sugar as glycogen and fat. Simple carbs cause a higher sugar load and causes a higher insulin response.

   But aren’t there good carbs? Yes. Eat more fresh vegetables, more fresh fruits and less grains and cereals. Vegetables have sugar but it is harder for your body to get to it and causes a gradual absorption into the blood stream. Fruits have more sugar, in the form of fructose, which usually has a higher glycemic load than vegetables. Nature usually pairs these sugars with fiber.

   Fiber is not digested by your body, so these carbs basically pass through you. These can be subtracted from the total carbs to get your “net” carbs, also sometimes called impact or effective carbs. If you eat something with a Total Carb count of 16g, with 4g of fiber, then this food would have 12g of net carbs.

   You may notice that the fiber and sugar carbs listed on the label do not add up to the total carb count.  For instance, a sweet potato, 5” long (130g) has 112 calories. It has 26g of Total Carbohydrate, 4g of fiber and 5g of sugar. So what is the other 17 grams? Those are complex carbohydrates or starches. It has a medium glycemic load of 11. Foods with a glycemic load of 10 or less are considered to have a low glycemic load. High glycemic load (20 and higher) foods increase blood sugar the most.

   Keep your net carb count low by using fresh vegetables, supplemented by fruit. Not only do fresh vegetables offer complex carbs, they are usually packed with lots of nutrients. Foods such as raw cauliflower, broccoli, tomato and even celery are very nutrient dense, make you feel full and accomplish all this with limited calories.

   Happy eating. You don’t have to necessarily count carbs, just realize where they come from. Stay away or limit obvious starches like breads, cereals, and potato, as they quickly turn to sugar and increase your insulin (storage hormone) response. Good health to you.

Hunger for Change

As we have shared in previous posts, my husband and I have been "going against the grain" now since early January after experiencing a number of health setbacks last year... and the results have been extraordinary. Not only do our stomachs and intestines feel better, be we also have a clearer head, more energy, and greatly reduced joint pain. In addition, we no longer crave processed foods, are extremely satisfied with the smaller portions we do eat, and best of all... we no longer feel famished in between meals. As a side benefit, we have lost weight too! Watching the documentary, "Hunger for Change" last night only confirms what we have experienced for ourselves these last few months. In a sequel to their popular documentary "Food Matters", filmmakers James Colquhoun and Laurentine ten Bosch take a controversial look out at why you crave certain foods and how the food industry has secretly engineered packaged foods to be highly addictive. Foods such as wheat and corn as well as additives such as sugar, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and MSG have been engineered to stimulate appetite with some experts saying they are as addictive as cocaine. Daily consumption of these as well as other processed foods and additives lead you down a destructive path of food addiction, obesity, and metabolic syndrome while increasing your risk for chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure,  arthritis, dementia, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, and more. 

The good news is that once you realize what is actually happening, you can make needed changes to your diet to eliminate food cravings while escaping the diet trap too. It starts by gradually replacing processed “faux-foods” with organic, nutrient-dense real foods such as fresh vegetables and fruits and lean meats such as chicken and fish. In addition, by making other lifestyle changes such as regular exercise and proactively reducing your daily stress, you can live a fuller, more vibrant life as you now have an abundance of energy in which to achieve all of your goals... and eventually reach your ideal weight too!

Want to know more? Check out FoodMaters.tv and the video "Hunger for Change."

Tips for Dining Out Gluten-Free/Grain Free

One of the major challenges of the gluten-free/grain-free (GF2) lifestyle is dining out. I am happy to say that you don’t have to be a recluse. In fact, with so many restaurants including gluten-free options on their menus, it’s possible to go out with your friends and loved ones and stick with your diet too. The secret is simple… be prepared and here’s how…

1. Don't go hungry. The hungrier you are, the more likely you are to make a mistake. So eat something beforehand and/or be sure to bring some snacks to munch on while everyone else is filling up on the rolls. A friend of mine keeps individually packaged GF cookies and crackers in her purse.
2. As in theatre, know the show before you go. By that I mean, be familiar with the diet you are on. Whether you are staying away from gluten or grains all together, not only know what foods to avoid, but also where they are likely to be hidden. For example gluten or grain may be hidden in sauces, gravies, dressings, and condiments. So be sure to protect yourself against them.
3. Select a GF2 friendly restaurant. Check with the restaurant in advance to make sure there are menu items you can eat. In addition, you may want to check out one or more of celiac-friendly restaurant directories. Also..l. whether the restaurant is a chain restaurant or a local establishment, many offer gluten-free menus. So be sure to check out their menu online or have one emailed to you beforehand. If you're still not sure whether anything safe is on the menu, call ahead, preferably when the restaurant isn't busy, and speak with the chef or the manager
   
   Note: If you'll be dining at an Italian restaurant, call to ask whether they have gluten-free pastas. Many of them do. If not, ask whether they mind if you brought your own pasta. Many restaurants will be happy to prepare your gluten-free pasta and top it with their own fresh sauce.
   
4. Tell your server you're on a special diet. Advise them that you have dietary restrictions and need to know how the food is prepared. If your server does not understand, ask to speak with the restaurant manager or the chef. Also... consider bringing along a dining card that explain what you can and cannot eat. Cards are available in a wide variety of languages.
5. Select two or three dishes on the menu that look as though they may be safe, then be sure to ask questions. For example, look for simple dishes without coatings or sauces, or with sauces that can be left off. Check out and learn restaurant menu terms that indicate a dish containing gluten. In addition, be sure to always ask your server to tell the chef you cannot have wheat, barley or rye (or any grain for that matter if you are grain free). Ask a lot of questions and never assume anything is gluten-free or grain-free. Even if a menu item looks safe, a chef's secret recipe may include gluten or grains.
6. Be prepared to eat something that isn't your first choice. If nothing on the menu looks safe, ask if the chef if they can sauté’ some plain meat or fish in olive oil or butter and include some steam some vegetables. While it may not be the tastiest meal you ever had, keep in mind that the goal here is to eat food that does not make you feel sick.

Do you have any additional tips you would like to share with this community?