The FastDay Forum

[Tracieknits]

The almond milk is a nice, creamy base that has only 30 calories per cup,

That's good, @Tracieknits, but what's in it? Almonds, clearly. But what else? Water? Anything else? I go by Michael Pollan's dictum, don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognise as food. So

high-fiber hemp protein powder

, is a bit suss too. What are these products? If I were going to make protein shakes, which I am interested in doing, I would need to know what I am doing. Also I don't know if we can get high-fiber hemp protein powder in Australia. I'll check out both these products in shops here and see what I can find out.

My understanding of almond milk is that it's a very old French recipe and has been made for centuries. I included a recipe to show you it's a simple, whole food, not a bizarre concoction.

The hemp protein powder is just ground hemp seeds. It's not anything a grandmother couldn't wrap her head around. It's a seed ground into flour. The high-fiber part is that they didn't sift out the fibrous bits. So it's like whole wheat flour versus white flour. But it's seeds from a different plant. Here's a link to the stuff I buy: https://store.nutiva.com/hemp-protein-plus-fiber/

Hope this helps!

While I do like Michael Pollan, I have to say that my grandmother recognized hamburgers and french fries as food. So...

While I do like Michael Pollan, I have to say that my grandmother recognized hamburgers and french fries as food. So..

Yes, well what he would say about that: eat as much junk food as you like as long as you make it yourself. Grandma would have made her own hamburgers and chips. And I wouldn't eat chips very often if I had to make them myself as they are a lot of bother.
Thank you for that. So it looks like I could make almond milk and hemp flour myself too. I'll certainly check it out. Thank you. I just found your link to making almond milk. It looks quite easy and is just almonds and water. I'll give it a try.

[Tracieknits]

Oh I can fry potatoes, it's not much of a bother!! But my grandmother took me out for burgers and fries when I was a little girl, to a chain called Friendly's. I don't know if they were good when I was little, but by the time I graduated high school in 1984, it was crap! LOL

I think my grandmother was a horrible example because while she was a lovely lady and beyond kind to me, she couldn't be bothered to cook well or from scratch. My mother and I sometimes laugh about the horrible things she cooked. She would overcook courgettes/zucchini until it was nearly liquid and then add a couple of spoonfuls of frozen orange juice concentrate. It was terrible!!! And I just remembered she liked Spam LOL

I have had a terrible sugar addiction, carb addiction and sweet tooth for basically my whole life. I have tried countless times to quit and I have failed each time. I have reduced some of my sugar intake (I no longer have it in coffee or tea), but dessert is still a huge issue for me.

I have been writing reviews for amazon's site since 2000, so I'm part of their reviewer squad and they sometimes send me free things to review. I got a new book by the head of the Weill Cornell Medical College, the "Change Your Biology Diet". Honestly, most of the book is nothing new, at all. He recommends eating windows. He recommends cutting carbs and sugar. We know all of this stuff.

Except, he recommends protein shakes. He suggests going two weeks, replacing your breakfast and lunch with a protein meal replacement shake. He says if you do this for two weeks, you'll be kick started into more weight loss. He recommends various commercial crap, like Atkins and GNC - full of artificial sweeteners and tasting nasty. Well I decided to kind of sort of follow his advice and try skipping breakfast and having a smoothie at the health food store for lunch. I ordered the one with peanut butter, banana, unsweetened almond milk and hemp protein powder. So for all of last week, I did this (well on Monday I tried the Atkins for breakfast and a protein bar for lunch).

I tried to just eat really healthy things for dinner and see how long I could go without sugar. Oddly enough, I found that I wasn't craving sugar. I decided that if I could make it the whole week without sugar, I could have a dessert on Saturday when we went out to eat. About the closest thing I got to having dessert was three nights I had plain yogurt with a half the amount of jam I used to put on it.

I lost two pounds last week, and I have learned how to make the smoothies at home. I'm using peanut butter powder (much fewer calories than real peanut butter), high fiber hemp protein powder, almond milk, ice and frozen pineapple (for a bit of sweetness). I just had my lunch smoothie (at 1:30pm) and I'm stuffed and happy. I figure it was about 230 calories. I haven't decided if I'm going to make today a proper fast day and try to keep my calories near 500 or if I'm going to make this week a second week of jumpstart (like the doctor suggested) and therefore allow myself to eat a much larger meal tonight. If I do it all week, my smoothies and dinners will be bulked up (I'll use real peanut butter instead of low calorie peanut powder in my smoothies, for one and i'll probably add a banana).

I'm just so shocked that I don't feel completely owned by sugar right now.

Sounds wonderful. How is it going?

[Tracieknits]

well it's going reasonably well. I have had a crazy busy last couple of months, including a vacation with a friend and my sister coming to visit (she leaves today!) We've been going to way too many restaurants. Ugh!!

I have found on the days I have a smoothie, I definitely do better than the days where I don't have one. I have also found that my max seems to be four days, and the ones that work best for me are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. I can actually handle that. If I don't eat a real lunch by the third day, my body gets really annoyed with me.

I've also noticed that I'm feeling sick if I eat too much sugar -- FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE! I have always been able to eat insanely, disgustingly huge portions of sugar sweetened foods and treats without feeling any ill effects - no stomach aches, no headaches, just a crash and burn a few hours later which makes me crave more sugar. But my mom had a lot of candy out and I ate too much this weekend, and felt AWFUL. It was fantastic! I'm hoping that by really reining in my sugar consumption, I'll have destroyed my tolerance for it.

Sugar addiction has been my downfall. I did well on the Atkins diet many years ago, but couldn't do it for life. WW was deadly when I was given 'permission' to eat a dessert with earned points. Actually, all diets worked for me till I stopped, then I gained back more than I lost.
The protein smoothies intrigue me, and I will try. I have, like you, noticed carbs in the morning keep me craving them all day. I will try the end-of-meal eating of a little. Thanks for sharing what is working for you.

[Tracieknits]

I didn't do nearly as well as I would have liked last night. My husband is away on business, and my son asked me to teach him how to make carbonara (my husband hates it, so it's something we only have when he's away). Well after eating a pasta dinner, my son talked me into getting him a big milkshake at the corner store - it's a local chain that has pretty decent ice cream. And of course he wanted a large, extra thick one. And of course he didn't finish it and I let myself be the garbage disposal.

I ate way too many calories last night. I have no idea how my son is still so thin. He definitely ate more than I did!!