I’ve never liked to cook, so over time we’ve changed our eating habits from cooked to raw. We’ve been eating salads for lunch for several years. But thanks to The Energy Blueprint* program, our lunch salad is now gigantic. And we eat largely raw for breakfast and supper as well. We like to eat out several times a week, so that’s the only time we eat a completely cooked meal any more.
We consciously eat fruits and vegetables of different colors every day. That way we get a wide variety of phytonutrients without having to take so many pills. And we intentionally vary the fruits and vegetables we buy each week to add even more variety to our meals.
We do still eat some meat, and we keep hard boiled eggs handy at all times for added protein. Occasionally I’ll fix an omelet with coconut oil and lots of veggies. Hubby still eats bread, but I rarely do. Once in a blue moon I’ll fix organic oatmeal, but I try to avoid gluten grains.
Trying New Foods
I’ve discovered purple potatoes! These little new potato size wonders have purple skin AND purple insides. The color means they are extra rich in anthocyanins, which are very powerful nutrients with many health benefits. Since I’m a Type II diabetic, I boil a pot of them at the beginning of the week and then eat them cold. Sometimes I have them for breakfast and occasionally for supper. I add them to our lunch salad sometimes. Cold potatoes have what is called resistant starch, which does not create an insulin spike the way hot potatoes do. Of course I eat the skin, too.
When I eat the potatoes, I also have fresh fruit, such as raspberries or blueberries, or red grapes. And we’ve discovered a kind of grapes I had never heard of before – Moon Drops! They are long! Sometimes they are almost as long as my little finger! And they are such a dark purple they look almost black.
And I’m eating WAY more blueberries than I ever have before – usually at every meal. Dark blue, purple, and red fruits and vegetables, plus lots of different greens make up a large part of our diet now. We had made salads with spinach for many years, but now our salads also include arugula, butter lettuce, and watercress. We had tried kale in the past and didn’t like it, so that’s not been included.
Eating Fermented Every Meal
I make milk kefir every day now, something I had never tasted before going on the Energy Blueprint program. But one of the suggestions in the Blueprint is to eat fermented foods at each meal. They have way more probiotics in them than any supplement we could be buying. I make a “cereal” with pecan pieces, flaxseed meal, and kefir most mornings. I’ve always liked yogurt and cottage cheese, so it was not surprising that I like kefir. It’s a little like buttermilk, but tastes a little different to me. I bought the starter online, and it only takes a few minutes to make a full glass for each day. I’ve always loved milk, but as I have gotten older, I’ve become lactose intolerant. The kefir grains digest the lactose in the milk as they ferment it, so it’s not been a problem for me to digest it. And it increases my calcium intake – something I need, since I have Osteopenia.
I’m also learning how to make my own sauerkraut. And, again to up the nutrition value, I make it with purple cabbage! I’m still experimenting with how to do this easily, and have had one complete flop that I had to throw away. I don’t like a lot of salt, so it’s a matter of using enough salt in the brine to keep it from spoiling, without getting it so salty I can’t stand it.
Sprouting Seeds
Another new discovery for me is sprouting seeds. Sprouts are a powerhouse of natural energy and nutrition. Hubby bought a big container of alfalfa sprouts from the store to add to our ever growing salads, but it went bad before we could eat it all. After doing some research, I discovered that broccoli sprouts are way higher in nutrition than grown broccoli florets. And I’ve always had digestive troubles with raw broccoli, anyway. But growing my own broccoli sprouts has been easy, and I eat them with every meal now – even breakfast.
Healthy Oils
Since we’re not cooking at home, we’ve had to make an effort to get the good fats in our diet. Improving our fat intake is still a work in progress. I get some fat from my whole milk kefir every day, and a little bit of olive oil from the vinaigrette salad dressing we use. Hubby eats yogurt every day, but he usually eats the low fat kind, so that doesn’t help as much as the higher fat types would. I try to eat an avocado every day, as well. And we eat pecans and walnuts every day. We also take MCT C8 oil several times a day. It is a brain boosting fat made from coconut oil.
Changed Eating Habits = Better Health
All these changes from the typical Southern fried foods diet has not happened overnight. We took the first steps in changing our eating habits when I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. We gradually moved away from frying, then stopped cooking everything, and finally stopped buying processed foods almost entirely. The Energy Blueprint program encouraged me to increase my intake of raw fruits and vegetables. And today I can honestly say I am feeling more energetic than I have felt in decades. Diet is not the only thing I’ve changed while following this program, but it’s certainly an important factor in my improved health.
