All of our Chef Services promote Weight Loss.
Give your body what it needs to heal itself.
It wouldn’t be a problem to be absolutely dependent upon food suppliers for our everyday needs if the food growers didn’t genetically alter the food, the processors didn’t use transfats, preservatives, harmful additives and the packagers didn’t fill our landfills with plastics that the earth cannot digest. But the truth is, we can’t get around these facts. The world is dying because we, “consumer” doesn’t produce our own food anymore. The expensive processed foods that we are dependent upon have been stripped of all of its original nutritional value causing diet-related illness and obesity.
The perfect answer to all of the pitfalls of health and well-being today is so simple, yet so profound: become “the producer” instead of “the consumer”. The ultimate goal for writing My Whole Foods Kitchen Cookbook is to inspire people to explore their creative power to produce health-building foods rather than mindlessly consume health-depleting, processed foods. The food industry has largely lost my trust.
The only way we will know something is organically grown and free of chemical additives and harmful ingredients is to grow it and process it ourselves.
What’s in Our Food?!!
I hear people say they can’t believe what the manufacturers are doing to “our food.” However, we have to remember that the food in the grocery store is not “our food.” That is “their food.” That is why it is inferior. We have to produce our own groceries for ourselves if we want it produce with love and commitment to the well-being of our loved ones and call it “our food.”
Why isn’t the medical industry shocked and appalled by what the food industry is doing? The medical industry’s idea of a health plan seems to be to scoff at the preventative maintenance of health and instead teach us to ignore warnings signs until symptoms begin to manifest in the body. Once you have symptoms, then a doctor knows just what to do. He has two methods at his disposal: medication or surgery. Millions of people are on medication and undergo surgery even when it could have been prevented by a healthier life-style. But will the medical industry teach us how to maintain health and prevent illness and disease? The answer is no! They don’t see that as their role. They only get involved when there is a reason for medication or surgery.
I recently studied the work of several researchers who have developed what they call the “cancer diet”. I was pleased to find out that it consisted of everything I had already written in this book! The parameters I am working with in this book automatically leads you into an immune boosting diet that prevents illness and disease because it is based upon the Creator’s original plan.
1) whole food ingredients
2) foods able to store for long periods of time
3) processed in my own kitchen
4) fresh foods grown in my own garden
5) limit everything else
Foods to Avoid Food to Include
Fight obesity with simple steps that will stop weight gain dead in its tracks.
| Drinks – Coffee, tea, soda, alcohol, sweet drinks | Water – The body needs a constant flow of clean, pure water. |
| Sugary Juices – Juice boxes. Flavored drinks. Even juice from natural sources is too high in sugar. | Fruit – Whole blueberries, bananas, apples in small amounts. Not juiced, but whole. Vitamin C (ascorbic acid powder works too.) |
| Sugar – Anything that tastes “sweet” is considered “sugar” to the cells in your body. Artificial sweeteners are made of chemicals that the body recognizes as “toxic”. | Natural Sweeteners – Stevia, honey, agave, honey powder, maple syrup |
| Starchy Foods – The body transforms potatoes, rice, pasta, corn and bread into sugar within 15 minutes. | Dark Leafy Salads, Sprouts – Super high in iron, vitamins and minerals. Barley Powders and other green powders. |
| Dressings – High calorie dressings do not contribute to the nutrition of salads. | Olive oil and Balsamic Vinegar – A winning dressing full of nutrients. |
| Chips – High calorie foods, fried and salted, cause obesity. | Nuts and Seeds – In small amounts are good source of protein. |
| French Fries – Deep fried foods cause obesity and contribute to poor health. | Flavor Veggies / Rainbow Veggies – Eat whole raw garlic cloves every day. Add onions to everything. Eat dipping veggies every day. |
| Processed Foods – Anything in a box or a bag will be processed with preservatives to give it an unnaturally long shelf life. | Beans – soy products, chili, bean dip or bean products are high in protein. |
| White Flour Products – White flour has been stripped of its amazing nutritional value and then “enriched” with an inferior artificial replacement. | Sprouted Whole Grains – Grains are the “staff of life” especially when sprouted. Grains combined make a nutritious synergy. |
| Red Meat, Pork – Contributes to heart disease and osteoporosis. | Fish – Good sources of proteinDairy – Plain yogurt and sour cream made fresh, soft and hard cheese in small amounts. |
If all goes well with our diet throughout the week,
we might have sweets and meats on Saturday.
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PLAN A Whole Foods in Their Natural State Eat well. Age well. PROs Plan A gives our bodies the foods they were designed to eat. CONs Unfamiliar and new
PLAN B Processed Foods Eat poorly. Die slowly. PROs
CONs
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We Choose Plan A
GRAINS and BEANS
NUTS and SEEDS
FRUITS and VEGETABLES, FRESH, FROZEN OR DRIED
HERBS and GREENS
.
1) The first benefit of Plan A is by learning a new way to cook and a new way to eat using whole foods in their natural state you maintain a higher level of health. Prevention is the best health insurance you can supply for your family.
2) The second benefit is to go beyond being “the consumer” who has all of his needs supplied by others, to being a person skilled at producing his own groceries and becoming totally self-reliant. This is the only way to truly be self-governing.
3) The third benefit of Plan A is to maintain a higher level of preparedness in the face of a famine or natural disaster because these are the same foods that can store for long periods of time without refrigeration. Did the Creator have a plan for perpetual prosperity beyond mere survival? Yes!
Criteria for the foods we buy in Plan A:
the highest quality,
the smallest amount of space,
the lightest weight
stores well for long periods of time
the least amount of cost.
Criteria for the diet in Plan A:
he most nutritious
the least amount of calories,
the least amount of preparation time
the best tasting
4) Plan A doesn’t go along with today’s trends towards automation and manufacturing, medication and surgery, but goes back to where we began with a life-style that promotes health and well-being in all three dimensions: body, mind and spirit. It’s not enough just to eat food. We must be intimately involved in what goes into our bodies and never trust our health and the health of our loved ones to anyone who stands to make money from our obesity. Our fulfillment comes from being involved in the process of planting, tending, growing, harvesting, grinding, kneading, baking, slicing, cooking and serving our own home made foods for our loved ones.
5) Plan A includes a Refrigerator/Freezer System, a Baker’s Rack with the Dry Mix Set Up and a collection of whole foods that store for long periods of time in buckets and cases. In the following pages you will be encouraged to prepare all of your vegetables at one time and have them ready to add to every meal. Having a Salad Bar that is ready-to-go will be the best thing that ever happened to your family’s health. It is much more likely that your family will choose to eat vegetables like they should when the vegetables are prepared and ready for them to eat! How many times have you shopped for all the best produce with intentions to eat every last bit only to realize that they have gone bad in the refrigerator before you got to them?
When I realized that the Garden of Eden was right there in the produce section of my local grocery store I decided to prepare an organic salad bar for my family. I prepared containers full of washed greens, chopped flavorful veggies such as onions, bell peppers, chili peppers, fresh fruits such as grapes and melons and a bin full of salad dressings and toppings including capers, almond slivers, homemade croutons, oil and vinegar, feta cheese and cherry tomatoes that I could take from the refrigerator to the dinner table and back again. With these foods readily available, I found we ate fresh foods much more often.
Garden Salad Bar – Inexpensive Therapy
Whether from the store or from the garden, I prepare my Garden Salad Bar each week. I think of it as therapy because of the health and nutrition that comes from eating these wonderful whole foods. I also think of it as therapy because working in the garden is so incredibly satisfying and therapeutic which we will discuss in the next chapter.
Salad Bar: I let everyone in the family build their own salad at the table. Children will be much more excited about eating a salad that they are allowed to build themselves.
Condiment Bin: Making your own condiments is much easier than you think. Follow the simple recipes and set up a condiment bin that can go from the fridge to the table.
I fill my refrigerator containers. I have everything chopped and ready to use for all the meals for the week. I have become a “producer”. I work a full day at home to make our food bill disappear, instead of working a full day outside the home to put food on the table. I add to my garden and My Whole Foods Kitchen as my garden space, my budget and my time allows.
Once I found success in setting up my menu around fresh foods I set a new goal to grow all of my produce instead of buying them. I was able to jump right in and plant exactly what I needed because I had already done the groundwork using the produce at the grocery store. I knew what my family would eat and how much. I went to the local nursery and “shopped” for the same list I used in the produce section of the grocery store: salad greens, tomatoes, dipping veggies, flavor veggies, grilling veggies and melons.
Weight Loss
While the published daily calorie recommendations are 1,000 to 4,000 calories a day, “depending on exercise, gender, lifestyle and age”, I personally on the other hand gain wait steadily if I come anywhere near 1000 calories a day. I have to stay far beneath this supposed “minimum”. How many calories do the starving people in other countries live on? Knowing that the majority of people in other countries live on less than $1.25 a day, my guess is they live on far less than this minimum and yet are still alive.
If we are going to lose weight, we have to find the calorie intake for our own personal fitness that is the maximum, not the minimum. We must find the maximum we can eat before weight-gain begins. In my own life, I don’t pick a number of calories I “get to eat” and then spend the calories like spending money all day until the allotment has been used up. Instead I try to estimate how much I burn hour by hour and then replenish the calories with highly nutritious food and drinks.
If you have ever worked out on a machine that tells you how many calories you burn as you exercise it is very sobering. You can work with all of your might for 20 minutes and at the most burn 200 calories. If you continue to work out for an hour, you might use 600 calories. How can the minimum be in the thousands? It doesn’t make sense.
It also makes no sense when I hear advertisements promising to speed up your metabolism so you can eat more and still lose weight! If you were in a crisis situation and you didn’t need as many calories as other people to maintain your weight, wouldn’t that be a good thing? If you have a car with great gas mileage, would you have the mechanic work on it so that it would burn fuel quicker? Of course, not!
I have experimented with liquid fasts on green drinks and soups. After three days, all my hunger pains went away. I was determined to continue fasting until I stopped having bowel movements. This would allow my digestive system to rest. Fasting helps to rid the body of toxins and release them from the tissues. When these toxins are mobilized into the bloodstream, the body works to eliminate them. During fasting, the experts warn that you may suffer from headaches, diarrhea, or depression, yet allowing your digestion to rest for a few days will help you recover and rebuild. I personally do not experience these symptoms at all. A 10-day fast helps to take care of many health issues before they arise by eliminating illness-producing chemicals before they have a chance to manifest.
Juice Fasting
In January I like to fast for up to 10 days to recover from the Holidays. I never fast on water alone. Fresh juices help detox and also supply the body healing nutrition. Wheat grass juice is the perfect tonic for fasting. It can also be rubbed on the skin mixed with oil for a double dose of cleansing and restoring from inside and out. Wheat grass juice combined with fasting can restore the health and vitality by eliminating toxins and rebuilding the immune system.
One benefit of a 10-day fast is it gives you an opportunity to understand your body and know ahead of time what lack of food feels like. I know now, after experiencing it a few times, that after three days when the stomach is completely empty, all hunger pains stop. I finally realized that hunger pains are more of a signal to tell us that the stomach is empty rather than a warning that if you don’t eat something, you are going to die or your health is going to suffer—quite the opposite. As long as you continue to take in fluids, the body benefits in every possible way by ignoring those hunger pains.
If you know, as I do, that you can go 10 days without food and still be fine, then you won’t face the possibility of food shortages with the same sense of doom as everyone around you does. In a real crisis you will be among those who do not panic. You will not worry about your children going without food for a little while. You will have peace and expect your immune system to come out on top after food deprivation of a week or more. Less is more when it comes to your diet. As long as the liquid nutrients you take in are from high-quality whole foods, you and your loves ones will be fine. A warm, comforting bowl of vegetable soup will do wonders.
The World Hunger Organization states that world agriculture produces enough calories for every man woman and child to have over 2,700 calories a day. That would be enough for everyone to maintain health and well-being. As of 2008 (2005 statistics), the World Bank estimated that there were an estimated 1,345 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 a day or less.3 This compares to the later FAO estimate of 1.02 billion undernourished people. Extreme poverty remains an alarming problem in the world’s developing regions.
Statistics like that enrage me and make me less and less concerned about my own calorie intake and more concerned about those that have no food. Let’s work together to change this statistic.
Lose Weight – Save the World!
-Let’s start by cutting our servings in half. That would solve the calorie intake issue. Then teach our children to stop eating more than they need, rather than constantly shaming them to “clean up their plate.” The answer is to serve them smaller servings. If they want more when that is gone, they can have more.
-Let’s produce our own food and eliminate our need for the genetically modified agriculture that the world produces. If we stop buying their products they will have no choice but to listen.
-Let’s work our muscles and burn our calories, not through expensive gym memberships, but by digging, planting, weeding, kneading, lifting buckets and transporting equipment and producing what we need. While we are at it, let’s make more food than we need so we have enough to share with our neighbors.
-Let’s re-direct our food money into whole foods that store well and ship well and start saving up the money we save on food for that trip to developing nations. Ship the food to our destination and pass it out when we get there. How hard can it be?
