Add a creamy dipping sauce and a rich little dessert to your life to lower that insulin spike after a meal

It looks like it, but no, it's not hummus.

I've been reading everywhere about how insulin is what drives obesity. When your blood sugar gets high, it spikes the insulin response. Bringing down blood sugar is key to reducing insulin and thereby losing weight.

Is that not scrumptuous looking?

When you're diabetic like me, blood sugars can get high even if you eat no sugar at all. I was fasting the other day, hadn't eaten in a couple of days, and I checked my blood sugar and was amazed to see it was over 150. AFTER NO FOOD IN DAYS.

That's just downright wrong - but it runs in my family.

So that means even if I'm eating no sugar, I have to find other ways to bring down my blood sugar.

Since I always have a tendency to overeat, even if I'm eating protein, too much protein actually converts to glucose. Even if I'm eating vegetables, veggies have small amounts of carbs but those carbs add up if you eat too many.

I know, I know. Eat less. That's the root of my problem. I have a hard time eating less. After 55 years, it's a given, I think. So it's important I stay away from sugars and carbs.

Besides, even if I'm eating NOTHING (as we've already seen), my blood sugar is high. So no matter what I eat or don't eat, I need to come up with hacks to limit blood sugar spikes and insulin response, especially after meals.

From all my research, I've learned there are four hacks that will help with this:

(1) ceylon cinnamon during or after a meal will markedly lower your blood sugar (not cassia cinnamon or common cinnamon you buy at the store because it can dangerously thin your blood and cause other health problems if eaten in excess)
(2) nuts (especially almonds) before a meal will lower insulin response by 30%
(3) apple cider vinegar before a meal will lower insulin response by a whopping 40%
(4) fiber fiber fiber in the meal is also key to lowering insulin response

There are also certain foods that seem to be especially good for diabetics that you should eat ALOT of to lower blood sugars and limit insulin response:

Vegetables but especially Cruciferous Vegetables - I've read so much research on these, it's too much to summarize (just eat them). If you have thyroid issues, though, there is some concern about cruciferous vegetables hurting your thyroid (especially if you have an iodine deficiency). Cooking seems to minimize that risk. Brussel sprouts are one cruciferous veggies that studies say don't seem to have that affect on your thyroid. I have a hypothyroid condition, so I focus on eating brussel sprouts (cooked) just in case.

Raw cacao powder - Eaten 5 times a week, this stuff can lower risk of heart event by 57% (most diabetics die of heart attacks). It is a major source of magnesium (which most diabetics are deficient in) and is good for blood sugar control all around. It's also brain food. Dark chocolate is all the rage. This is the source. No sugar, no dairy, no added ingredients, no processing. Just 100% raw cacao. We're not talking cocoa powder (that's heated and processed). Cacao.

Healthy fats from avocado and coconut - I also limit olive oil because I've read that so much of it is fake. Plus even if it's real, you destroy it's value by cooking with it. I eat olives instead. Can't fake an olive. So coconut and avocado are my go-to healthy fats. I did recently decide to splurge on a high-end expensive extra virgin olive oil to use raw in my special creamy sauce in this post. Email me if you want to know where I got it and why I think it's the real thing. As for butter, I love butter but limit butter because I don't really trust that butter sold as grassfed really is grassfed butter, then there's the whole issue of A1 vs. A2 milk...it's all too much for me to sort out.

Okay, so what's the takeaway?

Well, I need to eat nuts preferably almonds right before a meal. I also need to put some apple cider vinegar into a cup of water and drink it right before a meal. I need to eat brussel sprouts every day. Cinnamon after every meal. Fiber, fiber, fiber. Cacao powder at least 5 days a week.

Should be simple, right? I never do any of it. I hate the taste of ACV. I never want to eat a handful of almonds right before a meal. Cacao powder? Have you tasted that awful, bitter stuff?

So I had to come up with a plan to make it enjoyable, palatable, enticing... Moreover, it had to be do-able, easy, like clockwork.

So I came up with a master plan:

(1) Avoid processed, packaged or fast food. Always.

(2) On a daily basis, eat mostly veggies (focus on greens and cruciferous veggies) and limited fish/meat with healthy fats.

(2) Only eat fruit a couple times a week and focus on low-carb, low-glycemic index berries like raspberries and blueberries. Occasionally, have fig, red grapefruit, green papaya, melon, kiwi or plum.

(3) Eat half an avocado mid-morning, every day, to make sure I get it in. I love avocados, so that won't be hard to do.

(4) Mix ceylon cinnamon in MCT Oil (a derivative of coconut oil that is most easily digested and super good for diabetics) and keep it in the fridge. Take a tablespoonful of it after every meal. Easy-peasy.

(5) Write down a meal plan that includes all the things you're supposed to be eating that are good for you and that you like. I'll share my meal plan with you in my next post.

(6) Make as many of these meals in advance and freeze them. For instance, I want to try to eat cooked mixed greens several times a week. I can take out individual portions when I want to eat them, which means I'll eat them more frequently. There are certain soups I want to eat once or twice a week, so I can make batches in advance and freeze.

Still left with the problem of how to get in that blood-sugar lowering apple cider vinegar and that awful bitter cacao powder. How to make SURE I eat almonds and brussel sprouts on the regular.

So I decided I'm going to cook a big batch of brussel sprouts every week and keep them in the fridge. I'm going to eat a few of them at the start of every meal. I'll just pull four or five of them out of the storage container and heat them in the oven.

Then I had a thought. What if I had a delicious sauce to dip them into. I'd be that much more likely to eat them. Then I pondered: what kind of sauce could be rich and creamy and tasty and incorporate all kinds of healthy ingredients that I need to be eating anyway? Like almonds and apple cider vinegar? Then if I ate the brussel sprouts with the sauce before each meal, I'd be getting fiber, ACV and almonds all in to lower my insulin spike after eating.

Now when I say I'm a modified keto/paleo meal plan, it's because I eat more carbs than they allow. Granted, it's in the form of low-carb veggies, but it still adds up to more than the 20 carbs recommended for pure keto. I am more slow-carb than strictly low-carb. I only eat the carbs (like veggies) that are so full of fiber they produce a slow and low blood sugar rise.

I'm also different from keto in that I believe we need fruit. Not often - and erring on the side of lower-carb fruits, but fruit nonetheless. Couple times a week.

I also am a proponent of the musical fruit. I like the idea of beans, but very small amounts, I also believe beans must be soaked and sprouted to neutralize anti-nutrients. Perfect time to eat those beans is before a meal (all that fiber to blunt your insulin response) for that slow-carb idea.

So I wanted to incorporate beans into this mock hummus sauce. But not strictly chickpeas. They are so high in carbs. So I did some research and decided yellow lentils were a better choice. They rank second highest among all beans for high ORAC (antioxidant) levels, but they are among the lowest in carbs. So I put both chickpeas and yellow peas into this recipe. I buy my lentils and chickpeas already sprouted and keep them in my pantry. I boil and mash them as needed for recipes like this one.

By the way, there are 45 total carbs in a cup of chickpeas, but only 40 in lentils. If you subtract fiber and look at net carbs, you have 33 net carbs in a cup of chickpeas and 24 net carbs in the same amount of lentils. Less carbs, more fiber. Eliminate those carbs wherever you can. Black beans have 41 total carbs and 26 net carbs and have the best nutritonal profile probably, but I didn't want a black hummus. I make black bean soup occasionally. Green split peas are even higher in fiber and lower in carbs, so I make a split pea soup occasionally. I like white beans too, but they are higher in carbs, so I make white beans very rarely. They're so wonderfully high in fiber. One cup of white beans provides 75% of your daily fiber needs.)

Most people think you need beans and rice to make a complete protein, but beans and nuts also make for a complete protein. So normal hummus - and my mock hummus - are almost like eating meat. :)

Creamy Mock Hummus Dipping Sauce for Veggies

4 tbsp organic sprouted raw almond butter
4 tbsp organic sprouted raw tahini
1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil (make sure it's the real stuff)
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 small garlic clove chopped fine (or more depending on how much garlic you can handle)
1 cup mashed cauliflower
1 cup mashed sprouted organic yellow lentils
1/2 cup mashed sprouted organic chickpeas
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tbsp dried or 2 tbsp fresh parsley

Mash with a fork or mix in a food processor until creamy.

Email me at primadonnagail@gmail.com if you want to know where I order these ingredients.

I have no trouble eating this as an appetizer before every meal. This recipe should be divided into 4 servings. So you can eat some before lunch and before dinner one day, then again the next day. I can't imagine you'd want it before breakfast. Double the recipe if you want it to last you four days. You can dip our roasted, carmelized brussel sprouts or ANYTHING in that. Any meal you eat after that will register lower blood sugar and a lower insulin response. Tons of ACV, nuts (almonds and sesame seeds), fiber and healthy fat.

THEN COMES THE MEAL. Can you believe it? We get to eat MORE.

A sample meal after this might be a piece of wild-caught salmon with asparagus and homemade hollandaise sauce. Or how about caesar salad and a seared herb-crusted chicken breast?

Now, for dessert. End you meal with a spoonful of cinnamon/MCT oil we talked about earlier. That will break your savoring of your savory part of your meal. It will help you to stop eating actually. Shortly after that, you will be wanting something dessert-ey. But we don't want sugar of course.

That's where that awful, bitter cacao comes in. I was determined to fit it in somehow.

Dark Chocolate Mint Berry Ball

8 tbsp (1/2 cup) organic sprouted raw coconut butter (melt on low heat)
8 tbsp (1/2 cup) organic sprouted pumpkin seeds, ground
1/2 tart apple pureed with skin (eat the other half while you're making this)
6 tbsp organic raw cacao powder
6 tbsp raw unsweetened coconut flakes (optional)
2 tbsp organic blackstrap molasses
1/2 tsp ground stevia leaf (the real thing, it's green)
1/8 cup fresh chopped mint leaf or 1/2 tsp dried mint or 1/8 tsp mint extract (optional)
1 tsp real vanilla extract

Extra coconut flakes ground to powder for rolling the balls (optional)
Blueberries or raspberries (optional)

Mix all the ingredients together and form into into little balls wrapped around a blueberry or raspberry and lightly roll the ball in ground coconut flakes. Then freeze them on a cookie tray. If it's too "wet" to form into balls, add more ground pumpkin seed or coconut flakes into the mix (whichever you enjoy more). It will firm up once it freezes. Once they are frozen, throw them into a freezer container or bag for storage and pop one out when it's time for dessert.

If you don't like mint, leave it out. If you don't like coconut, leave out the flakes but still use the coconut butter. You won't taste the coconut as bad. If you don't like berries, just roll up a chocolate ball and leave out the berry in the middle.

Everything in there is good for you. It isn't very sweet but it makes you feel like you've had dessert (and chocolate dessert at that).

I can live with this kind of eating if it keeps me from getting my feet amputated from diabetes.

Just sayin.

Best-Mock-Cornbread-in-the-World-Ever

I wasn't planning on cooking anything for the blog that night--hence I had to hurry up and snap a terrible photo right  before I ate what just may be the most amazing mock cornbread in the world ever.

And I made it with no recipe by complete accident.

It has absolutely NO corn in it (GMO or otherwise), is gluten-free and is made up of sprouted ancient grains like amaranth, quinoa and buckwheat with a dash of tapioca and brown rice flours. All organic. All sprouted.

And it was moist, not crumbly at all, absolutely to die for, melt in your mouth, sliced easily, and I swear it almost slid out the pan with no oil needed on the cast iron skillet. Perfection--by accident!

I promised I'd do a post soon with the recipe, then I drizzled that beautiful perfect wedge with organic blackstrap molasses and it was like having cush-cush and Steen's but a healthy version (my Cajun readers will know what I'm talking about). In other words, it was good eating for being so healthy! 

And it got better every day. It was best on the 3rd morning. I just stored it in the oven, like my mother always stored her cornbread.

I told you to be on the lookout for my best-mock-cornbread-in-the-world-ever post and here it is:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2. Mix following dry ingredients well:

1/2 cup sprouted buckwheat flour

1/2 cup sprouted oat flour

1/2 cup sprouted amaranth flour

3/4 cup sprouted quinoa flour

1/2 cup tapioca flour (tapioca is made from a root and doesn't need to be sprouted)

1/4 cup sprouted brown rice flour

2 tsp baking powder (I like Rumford's aluminum-free)

1 1/2 tsp salt (or 1 tbsp pink salt coarse)

1/2 tsp baking soda (I only use Bob's Red Mill, and there IS a difference)

3. Mix wet ingredients as directed below:

1/4 cup organic butter (half a stick) or coconut oil or avocado oil (but I like butter)

1/2 cup organic milk or buttermilk

3 large eggs (can replace with 1/2 cup soaked flaxseeds with gel)

1/6 cup sweetener (I use organic succanat or organic sugar or honey since it's such a small amount and I think organic sugar is much healthier than artificial sweeteners)

Melt butter then cool, add milk, sweetener and then eggs.

4. Pour wet mix into dry ingredients and mix well with a spoon, careful not to over mix.

5. If batter doesn't look wet enough to you, add more milk. If it looks too wet, add extra amaranth or quinoa flour until it looks right to you (you know what a cornbread batter is supposed to look like).

6. Heat your black iron skillet on the stove. If it is well seasoned, you won't need any butter to oil it, but if it is dry or new, oil it with butter. Pour your "cornbread" batter into the skillet. It should sizzle slightly as you pour it in.

7. Move skillet into preheated oven and bake for 35 minutes until golden brown.

8. Cool for 10 minutes then slice, serve and enjoy.

One of my friends asked why I couldn't just make cornbread with cornmeal since it's easy to find organic cornmeal. I explained that corn is fed to cattle to fatten them up. There's a reason for that. There's a reason the sweetener used in almost everything bad for you is high-fructose CORN syrup. Corn is notorious for fattening us up.

Basically, regular cornbread is a carb. This cornbread is primarily a protein. Everybody knows how important protein is in the morning.

The ancient grains used in this recipe are not really grains, but rather seeds, and they are high in protein (except for brown rice and oats and they are superfoods). Because all grains, nuts and seeds are chock full of anti-nutrients, it's important to sprout them before making them into flour. I buy this flour that is made with sprouted, organic ingredients. Once sprouted, amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat, brown rice and oats are all superfoods, high is soluble and insoluble fiber, vitamins, minerals and trace nutrients. It's basically nutrient-bread, not cornbread.

Some people ignore me when I talk about how important it is to use sprouted grains. I honestly would not eat grains at all if they weren't sprouted and organic. They are bad for you. I swear. I can give you links to all the articles. If you don't know where to get sprouted organic flours like these, just google it or email me and I'll send you links. There are a variety of sources. Email me at thefatladyssong@gmail.com. If I don't answer you back quick enough, comment on one of my blog entries. That should get my attention. :)

Oh, one final note: I wouldn't advise eating my mock cornbread at night. It wakes my brain up. The first time I made it, it was at night and I couldn't sleep after eating it. I thought it might be because I was so excited I'd come up with such a great mock cornbread. Nah. It's got to be one of the ingredients--or the combination, I don't know which. But it's perfect for breakfast if you want your brain operating on all gears. You'll be amazed. Please write to me and tell me if it has the same effect on you. (As an aside, it doesn't just get your brain moving, if you know what I mean. No, no, not that. Although maybe... I'm talking movement in the bathroom, not bedroom, but you never know. It might wake everything up.)

Let me know what you think of it and if it gets you moving!

P.S. Add a half of a miniature can of mexicorn, some peppers (red bell pepper, jalapeno and serrano?) and your favorite mexican cheese to make Mexican Cornbread. What ? I'm telling you to add corn? A few grains of corn in your cornbread won't kill you...
😉

Gluten-Free Ancient Grain Pumpkin Bread

“It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.” 
― Sarah Addison Allen, First Frost

I love pumpkin, and if you haven't had much experience with it...well, 'tis the season. You know, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and all that. People joke about everything being pumpkin spiced this time of year. If you are like me and you love pumpkin, you should be encouraged to know it is a true superfood.

But if you don't like pumpkin, this pumpkin bread recipe doesn't have to include pumpkin. It can be made using apples or carrots or even butternut squash instead of pumpkin. A combination of apples and butternut squash is your healthiest replacement for pumpkin. Butternut squash is so filled with fiber and nutrients and I have not yet found a way to incorporate it into a dish I like. But what's not to like about a Butternut Apple Loaf. It's fall and 'tis the season for winter squashes, root vegetables and apple picking, so improvise.

This recipe is super-nutritious, packed with sprouted ancient grains and seeds, healthy fats, healthy sweeteners.

Healthy sweeteners? Yes, I use two of them in this recipe. The most healthy one is blackstrap molasses. Read my post on organic blackstrap molasses. It is a superfood in its own right. It's a tremendous source of magnesium and calcium and in the right ratio. My second sweetener is basically sugar, but it's a much healthier sugar than the white granular stuff you buy at the store. Sucanat looks like brown sugar but it is evaporated organic whole cane juice, filled with nutrients. It's basically what sugar is before all the processing. It's not as sweet as sugar though, but you can puree organic raisins, dates, figs or prunes to add sweetener

Keep in mind most recipes call for 2-3 cups of sugar to 3 cups of flour in a pumpkin bread recipe, but mine only uses 1 cup of succanat and 6 tbsp of the blackstrap molasses. I put twice (or more) the cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg in my recipe, and spices make it satisfying to me in spite of the mild sweet taste. But by adding pureed fruits to taste, you can make it sweet to taste and you'll be adding whole food and fiber to your pumpkin bread/muffins instead of empty sugar calories.

All of the grains and seeds used in this recipe are sprouted and organic. You can sprout them yourself or buy them already sprouted. Email me at theagelesslife@gmail.com and I'll send you links for purchasing organic sprouted nuts and flours.

Gluten-Free Ancient Grain Pumpkin Bread

Wet Bowl 

Soak your flax seeds overnight before using (or a minimum of four hours), then add the rest of your wet ingredients and blend it all together with an immersion blender:

1/3 cup fresh ground soaked whole organic flaxseeds
6 tbsp organic blackstrap molasses
6 organic figs and 3 organic prunes (they are both superfoods in different ways so I like to incorporate both but if you don't have them on hand, you can use organic dates or even organic raisins, pureed)
1/4 cup grass-fed butter
 *vegans can double up on the coconut oil and leave the butter out or replace butter with avocado oil
1/4 cup extra-virgin coconut oil
2 tbsp fresh grated ginger
1 1/4 cup organic evaporated cane juice (aka sucanat)
 *sucanat is dry but you want to blend it into your wet ingredients before folding in your other dry ingredients
3 pastured or organic eggs
 *some recipes call for 4 eggs, but soaked flaxseeds are an egg substitute, so use 3 or 2 or 1 or if you are vegan none, your preference, just be sure to add 2 tbsp of soaked flaxseed for every egg you omit
2 tsp vanilla
15-18 oz mashed cooked pumpkin or canned organic pumpkin puree (can substitute with two cans of mashed carrots, two cups of mashed cooked butternut squash, mashed fresh-cooked carrots or mashed cooked apples)

Dry Bowl 

Combine all of these ingredients together in one "dry" bowl and sift and mix well:

3.25 cups organic gluten-free ancient grain flour mix
 *see mix below
1 1/2 tsp Bob's Red Mill baking soda (the brand makes a difference)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp fresh ground cloves
6 tsp ceylon cinnamon
2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped organic sprouted walnuts

You can mix and match sprouted gluten-free flours however you like but this is how I make my "Organic gluten-free ancient grain flour mix" and it gives me an amazing mix of proteins and nutrients in a simple morning muffin--and it turns out perfect every time:

1/4 cup sprouted amaranth flour
1/4 cup sprouted buckwheat flour
1/4 cup sprouted quinoa flour
1/4 cup potato starch (or arrowroot)
1/2 cup sprouted organic sorghum flour
1/4 cup sprouted brown rice flour
1/2 cup sprouted oat flour
3/4 cup tapioca flour
3 tbsp ground psyllium husks

All my sprouted flours are organic. Email me for my latest "best source" for these organic, sprouted flours.

Gradually pour dry ingredients into wet bowl until mixed well. Pour into two loaf pans and bake for 40-50 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Allow to cool for one hour before slicing.

Also, you don't have to pour it into two traditional loaf pans... You can make three thin cake layers using cake pans and drizzle the healthy icing (below) on top and in between to make a three-layer "cake." Or you can pour it into a bundt pan and drizzle the icing on top and slice. Or make muffins.

Remember, all the varieties have different cooking times. The thin cake may take only 20 minutes, muffins may take 25-40, depending on how big you make them, and the bundt pan will take 40 minutes to cook a pumpkin bread.

I like pumpkin loaf to eat that night and pumpkin muffins to eat the next few days (and freeze) and this recipe makes 1 pumpkin loaf and 12 small-medium muffins.

Remember, overcooking your muffins can make them too dry and hard the next day, too many eggs can make them rubbery, and overmixing or leaving out the baking powder can make them lose their fluffiness. You don't want pumpkin rocks, you want pumpkin muffins.

My pumpkin bread and muffins are truly not very sweet, but when I bring some to my daughter who insists on super sweet pumpkin bread, instead of adding sweetener, I prefer to make a healthy icing with organic cream cheese slowly melted in a pan with virgin coconut oil, then mixed with organic raw honey after allowing it to cool some (you don't want to overheat raw honey and lose its benefits). The coconut oil and cream cheese both will stiffen as they cool and become harder to mix, so don't wait too long to add in the honey, but it will give you a stiffer icing without having to use powdered sugar or cornstarch. If you slather it onto the top of your warm pumpkin loaf, it will slightly melt into the loaf and then stiffen back up as the loaf cools.

one-minute superfood: blackstrap molasses

What are the top 3 reasons to take organic blackstrap molasses as a health supplement?

First, it's a natural iron supplement, ideal for pregnant women, post-menopausal women, or anyone dealing with anemia. Second, it's extremely high in minerals and vitamins like copper, manganese, B6, potassium, chromium and selenium. Third, it's a great alternative sweetener with a glycemic index of only 55. Most important, it is high in healthy absorbable calcium and magnesium and in the right ratio for optimal absorption. Oops, that was four, not three. But there are way more reasons than that anyway.

But back to the most important reason. Most people are seriously deficient in calcium and magnesium, and it's important to ingest them in the right ratios so that they are useable for our bodies. Supplemental calcium has been shown to be dangerous. It can lead to increased hardening of the arteries. So food sources like blackstap molasses which have those minerals in natural form in the right ratios are perfect.

Thinking you get your calcium from milk? Milk is not good for us, really. Give it up. Instead, eat only fermented dairy like homemade yogurt or kefir from fresh organic raw milk, or a cheese like pecorino romano high in CLA. But you shouldn't eat enough dairy to get all the calcium you need. If you do, you're eating too much. Think small amounts when it comes to dairy, even fermented dairy.

Usually, I get my calcium from eating tons of greens (kale, turnip greens, mustard greens, etc.) or eating sardines with the bones (extremely high form of absorbable calcium).

Blackstrap molasses is an easy source when you don't have sardines or greens on hand. But it tastes just awful, I think. The only way I like it is on cush-cush or cornbread I make with organic non-GMO cornmeal. But I don't like to eat even organic corn very often. I always gain lots of weight from it.

So how to take my blackstrap molasses?

Today I found a way to ingest it DAILY and painlessly. Pleasurably actually. Read more for the recipe and a discussion of why it's the perfect vehicle for your blackstrap molasses.

Make sure it's organic cause you don't want to get the byproducts from horrible pesticide-soaked GMO sugar beets or highly-sprayed commercial sugar cane in your blackstrap molasses. That's what molasses is--the mineral-rich byproduct of sugar production. Better you get the rich natural molasses byproduct of organic sugar production from organic sugar cane.

I like Plantation Organic but read this comparison of blackstrap molasses products on another blog I like: https://www.toxinless.com/blackstrap-molasses The cheapest source I've found for it is jet.com. Take advantage of your first 3 orders being 15% with free shipping. Stock up on this stuff. It's expensive to order from other sites and the variety carried at many healthfood stores is oftentimes the non-organic variety.

FROZEN COCO MOCHA MACAROON

This morning, in my habitual fashion as of late, I had chocolate for breakfast. I eat some form of homemade chocolate confection every few days for regularity's sake. Nothing works better for me than chocolate. Combined with coffee, it is an instant laxative. I've always had a sluggish digestive system and I've never found anything that works this well. I am trying to stay away from harsh laxatives. I get plenty of fiber...it just SITS there. Chocolates makes everything move. I even find it sparks me mentally.

In the past, I have used organic raw cane sugar in my homemade chocolate confections (which really is alot better than regular sugar), but I'm diabetic and should do even organic sugar rarely if at all. In my last post about chocolate for breakfast, I had drizzled my homemade chocolate syrup (with no sugar) over sweet chunks of fresh pineapple.

But today, I tried making a chocolate confection with blackstrap molasses. I thought it might taste terrible, so I added lots of ingredients to distract from the taste, including extra cocoa and a splash of strong coffee and some raw unsweetened coconut flakes. My recipe included:

Ingredients:

1/3 cup raw cacao (or your favorite cocoa powder)
2 tbsp, virgin coconut oil
1/8 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
2 tbsp. brewed coffee
1/4 cup ground raw flax seeds
2 tbsp. blackstrap molasses

I froze little spoonfuls of it in the shape of coconut macaroons on a glass plate in the freezer, but they looked nothing like macaroons. They were black as molasses, you could say, and decadently mocha. (You can also pour the confection out into a flat mold and make them like chocolate crunch bars.)

Directions:

Add all your dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix well. Gently melt your coconut oil in a pan then mix your coffee and molasses in with your melted coconut oil. Pour the liquid into your mixing bowl and mix well with your dry ingredients. If the mixture is not moist enough, add a splash more coffee. Drop spoonfuls onto a glass or stainless steel tray or plate for freezing. When frozen, you can use a butter knife to separate them gently from the tray or plate and place them in the container of your choice. I just leave the plate in my freezer and keep reusing it every time I want to make more.

Chocolate for breakfast is great for regularity, as I said, but so are flax, pumpkin seeds, coconut oil, and blackstrap molasses. Blackstrap molasses is a natural stool softener. This combination of ingredients is a one-two health punch for your digestive system.**

Plus the seeds are high in protein, as is the cacao. Yes, cocoa powder has over a gram of protein per tablespoon, while raw cacao powder has twice the protein. You should always aim for high-protein and healthy fats in your first meal of the day. Also, remember my favorite quote from www.livestrong.com: "cocoa powder could help reduce the risk of obesity and fatty liver disease."

(Oh yeah! See, I can scientifically justify my chocolate for breakfast kick!)

For awhile, when I first started this health journey and learned that blackstrap molasses, coconut oil, ground flax, pumpkin seeds and dark chocolate was so good for me, I was taking two disgusting tablespoons of blackstrap molasses daily, plus two disgusting tablespoons of coconut oil daily, trying to figure out how to get my flax in, and eating a handful of pumpkin seeds when I thought about it. Then eating part of a gourmet expensive dark chocolate bar a few times a week for the antioxidants and for regularity, but worried about the sugar content.

Now I've finally combined all of them in a lovely little chocolate breakfast macaroon.

You also could use the ground flax, molasses and coconut oil as a great "goo" to make homemade granola bars.

**If you really are having problems with regularity, you can also add pureed prunes to this mocha-coconut frozen macaroon. It's especially a handy way to ingest them if you don't like prunes by themselves. I can eat prunes by the handful, so I don't put them in my chocolate unless I'm making a big platter of fudge, then I use prunes and figs for sweetening my fudge. (My grandkids tear it up!) Prunes are going to be your highest source of both soluble and insoluble fiber together.

The Sweet Sixteen

I recently wrote a long, detailed post entitled Everything you need to know about hunger control... 

It has more valuable information in it than anything I've written. It gives the big picture of where we're going with this blog. Unfortunately, it holds first place for the LEAST NUMBER OF VIEWS of all my posts on this blog. Even the post announcing the blog's new Facebook page got more views.

The problem is, I kept referencing things I said in that post, and nobody knows what I'm talking about.

Like my Sweet Sixteen List. To make your journey easier, here's a post that contains nothing but the Sweet Sixteen List so you can access it easily when you want to look at it. (Some people decided to print it out).

When I started this blog a month ago, it was because I'd been doing LOTS of research this past year after my cancer surgery, and I wanted a way to keep track of what I was learning.

I decided to do an experiment. I decided I would try to incorporate--all at the same time--everything I'd been learning while I was writing the blog. I might not be able to do it for the rest of my life, but my goal was to try, for a limited time, to do everything right.

Doing everything right would mean I would have to:

1. stop eating fast food
2. avoid exposure to chemicals, plastics, hormones, and anti-biotics (including plastic food storage containers, chlorinated water and anti-bacterial soaps, chemical-laden personal care products like toothpaste and shampoo, GMO-foods, etc.)
3. eat much smaller amounts of organic grass-fed meats (avoid commercial non-organic meats at all costs due to hormones, antibiotics and processing)
4. cut out all unhealthy processed vegetable oils (canola, vegetable/soy, peanut, etc.)
5. increase healthy fats (avocado and its oil, coconut and its oil, grass-fed butter especially raw butter, organic grass-fed lard or tallow, etc.)
6. cut out all commercial dairy and eat only grass-fed fermented dairy (like grass-fed and organic kefir, cheese and yogurt) or grass-fed butter and ghee
7. eat vegetables and eat VOLUMES of vegetables
8. eat only soaked and SPROUTED beans and lentils (and sprouted bean flours)
9. eat no grains except occasional white rice (use sprouted amaranth, coconut flour, sprouted bean flours and ground flax to replace grains)
10. avoid all processed foods (that means NO PROCESSED FOODS AT ALL)
11. minimize all canned foods (even BPA-free) except canned sardines, salmon and oysters
12. stay away from restaurants until the weight is gone (and if unavoidable, try to eat fish and vegetables or salad)
13. stay away from all sugar except in the form of organic blackstrap molasses, prunes, figs, very small amounts of raw honey, powdered raw stevia leaf (not the processed white powder stevia, the good stuff is green), and ceylon cinnamon oil (which imparts a sweet taste)...if it gets desperate, use raw organic evaporated cane sugar sprinkled on top of berries before losing control and eating a whole chocolate cake
14. speaking of chocolate cake, allow treats like that on holidays only but consume dark chocolate in a healthy form (email me at theagelesslife@gmail.com if you want healthy chocolate recipes)
15. take all the supplements you know are good all at the same time and do it consistently while following all of the above guidelines for eating
16. walk 45 minutes five days a week, with HIRT, and build upper-body muscle strength through low-weight/high reps weight lifting

Print that list out. It is my Sweet Sixteen List and it is at the core of what is working for me right now. 

Everything you need to know about achieving hunger control...it's a long one (print it out and read it over and over)

In 1972, I was a fat four-eyed fifth grader with frizzy hair living in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, attending St. Joseph Catholic School. It was a miserable year of my life and the last year of my fat childhood. In sixth grade, I got skinny.  (I'll tell you that story next. The post will be called: "A Fat Four-Eyed Fifth Grader with Frizzy Hair). It was a fluke that I lost all that weight. Circumstances conspired as you'll see when you read my next post. I had no idea how to lose weight back then, and the way I did it is not the way you should do it. I'm not even sure you could do it. It was a complete fluke.

But back then, if I'd read the diet books or consulted a bariatric physician, I would have learned that every diet basically comes down to the same essential premise: EAT YOUR VEGETABLES.

The low-fat diets, of course, say eat lots of vegetables. But even low-carb like Atkins or Paleo say to eat primarily veggies. Paleo allows more fats and meats, but in small quantities. Every reasonable eating plan ever put forth on this earth has, at its root, the same premise: increase the amount of vegetables you eat.

Everybody knows vegetables are good for you, but I didn't fully realize the connection between vegetables and weight loss until I started getting older and dieting in earnest. I remember seeing all those diet books with their list of unlimited or free foods: broccoli, greens, brussel sprouts. Yech. That was my response back then. Besides, I was taking in too many calories from the bad food I was eating. I didn't want to add more food to the mix, especially not food I didn't like. When you finish that big roast beef meal with mashed potatoes and gravy and green bean casserole with fried onions and cream of mushroom soup, you don't sit down and have a big bowl of brussel sprouts for dessert. No. You have rocky road ice cream. Then you're too full for the brussel sprouts you are allowed in unlimited supply. The unlimited vegetables thing? It just never happened.

Oh, my mom cooked lots of vegetables. My dad always had a garden and raised his own grass-fed beef. My mom would cook up a big batch of green beans with bacon and onions. Fried okra or fried squash. Stuffed eggplant. But the veggies were a side. The main course was the meat and the fat-laden starches. Everyone back then used gallons of soybean oil in their cooking--to make a roux for the gumbo, to deep-fry everything, or to stir-fry everything we didn't deep-fry. When my mother cooked a light supper, it was usually scrambled eggs and french fries with tons of processed ketchup. The vegetable in that meal was a few scattered green onions in the scrambled eggs.

I enjoyed vegetable dishes--but my heart chased after other foods. Brisket and babyback ribs and fried chicken. Jambalaya, mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, French toast. Much the way my heart overlooked good men who actually liked me and might have treated me well. My heart always chased after the bad boys who would end up hurting me.

Some of us always want what we're not supposed to have. Most of us probably.

As a fluke, I got skinny in the sixth grade, as I already said. But trying to keep my weight under control as I grew older was hard. I was obsessed with food. (Still am clearly) It was either feast or famine, as I developed bulimia, anorexia and a binge eating disorder, all rolled into one. I also exercised compulsively. I tried everything to undo the damage caused by my second- and third-servings of pork roast with rice and gravy and corn maque choux. (You should taste my pork roast. You'd get fat too. And notice there's not a single vegetable in that favorite meal.) I loved pork. I loved breakfast sausage and bacon especially. I didn't have two little sausage links or two strips of bacon with my eggs. I sometimes ate the whole pack by myself. My hunger drove me like a slavemaster. I felt powerless to resist. More. More. More.

I should have weighed 400 pounds, but I was so athletic (always hiking, dancing, riding bikes or horses, working hard outside with my dad, or doing exercises) that I stayed in a somewhat normal weight range for most of my adolescence. I was rarely skinny, but I wasn't obese.

Why did I eat like that? Well, like I told you in yesterday's post, I think it all goes back to my hunger for my mother and for nutrition in my first months of life.

There is a rehab for food addicts that actually is focused on adoption issues. It's that common that adoptees try to fill a hole or soothe that loss with food or other addictive substances. 

Then, growing up, I was molested by several men, and sexual abuse is clearly linked with food disorders.

That's the why. And those kinds of deep emotional issues are difficult to fix. It doesn't happen overnight. So that's why most food addicts focus on trying to control their food intake, rather than try to fix the root of the problem. The emotions seem to have a mind of their own. How can you control something you can't see or even really understand. Who can afford years of Freudian psychoanalysis? A diet book is cheaper.

I am 54 and food has almost killed me at this point, and I've read thousands of diet books and spent years in psychoanalysis. I still haven't fixed the emotions or solved the puzzle of my eating. I have tried everything--from the craziest supplements to the most extreme diets. I've spent lots of time, lots of money and nothing has worked long-term.

The diet books were cheaper than the psychoanalyst, but the two most successful things so far in my journey have been free. God and fasting.

Yes, fasting. The only way I've ever been able to lose weight successfully is to stop eating completely. Once I take that first bite, I'm lost. Like a drunk who takes the first drink. Fasting (nothing but water) is something I came to in my walk with God and it has saved my life. It's the only way I've been able to keep myself from reaching 700 pounds. Occasionally, I fast and lose 50-60 pounds and my diabetes and high-blood pressure go into remission, and it takes me a couple years to gain it all back and re-do the damage. I've done the research. Fasting is actually good for you if it's done right. But it's hard to do. Getting past the first few days (until the hunger leaves you) is excruciating for me. But once the hunger leaves you in a fast, the remaining days are so freeing. To exist without hunger is a dream.

Some people think it's just extreme dieting,but it's not. Starvation (extremely low-calorie dieting) is BAD for you. But fasting is different. If done properly, it's meant to be a life-saving intervention. I'll do a post on fasting soon, because it's been my greatest health discovery...

Until now.

Fasting is good and I believe it is of God. But I knew God wanted me to be free of my enslavement to food. What's the first commandment of the Ten Commandments: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." 

In my life, my food has been an idol that I have placed before God, before my own health, before anything. That's what addictions like this are. Idols. They control us when we should be controlled by our better selves, or the spirit of God within us, leading us to health and life. God wants us to be strong, healthy and at a healthy weight more than we want it for ourselves. He's on our side with this one. So I knew he would lead me to a place where my irrational hunger no longer controlled me.

And finally I have reached that place.

Right now, I am eating healthy every day, I'm not bingeing, I'm losing weight, I'm getting healthier, my blood sugars are good, and I AM NOT HUNGRY.

I am as amazed as you are. I mean, I'm really motivated and really trying, but I have always tried and this has never happened to me. I've never not been hungry. Except when I'm fasting.

What am I doing differently?

I'd like to say it's all the latest supplements I've discovered--and I do believe they are a big part of it. But the real thing making the difference in my opinion? It's this new thing I'm really focusing on doing for the first time in my life.

I am eating my vegetables. I am eating HUGE amounts of vegetables.

Now, don't stop reading. Please. It's not that simple. If you go away now, you will miss the crucial element of this that has kept me (and you) lost for years. And it's not just this. It's just mainly this.

The thought occurred to me a couple months ago that I'd tried every strange diet known to man and every weight-loss supplement on earth. I'd tried everything except eating my vegetables. Even when I was a vegetarian, my plate was filled with more tofu and grains and starches than it ever was vegetables. I'd eat bowls full of tofu scrambler and fried rice and potato casseroles. All blood-sugar elevating foods. My whole life I've eaten massive amounts of non-vegetables and always short-changed myself on the veggies.

After all the years in counseling, OA meetings, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, you name it, I think my eating disorder might have originated in some pretty profound emotional trauma...but I think malnutrition was as much to blame.

How many of you read yesterday's post where I told the story of being adopted and being put on straight cow's milk? I described how I wailed inconsolably--for my mother and for NUTRITION. I was taking in alot of something that really wasn't good for me, and very little (if anything) that was good for me. Commercial cow's milk is not really good for us and especially not as a newborn's sole food source.

Do you see the parallels in my adult life? I've been taking in lots of things that aren't good for me and very little of what is good for me--with an insatiable appetite.

I eat like this because I am malnourished.

With all the food I was taking in, I know I could never convince anyone I was malnourished. But I was.

A couple years ago, I first began to suspect I was malnourished. But I couldn't stop eating all the bad stuff. I was out of control. I was eating fast food and processed food and deli meats and commercial meats and dairy and everything bad you can imagine. But in the midst of that out of control eating, I started researching superfoods. I thought if I focused on ingesting superfoods, I would be sure I was getting all the nutrients I needed, in the midst of my bad eating, so that maybe those nutrients could begin to turn my health around.

When I started this blog a month ago, it was because I'd been doing LOTS of research this past year after my cancer surgery, and I wanted a way to keep track of what I was learning. This blog is more for me than it is for you actually. (Though I do want to build a community of people here so we can share what we learn together.)

So I decided I would try to incorporate--all at the same time--everything I'd been learning. I might not be able to do it for the rest of my life, but my goal was to try, for a limited time, to do everything right. Doing everything right would mean I would have to:

1. stop eating fast food
2. avoid exposure to chemicals, plastics, hormones, and anti-biotics (including plastic food storage containers, chlorinated water and anti-bacterial soaps, chemical-laden personal care products like toothpaste and shampoo, GMO-foods, etc.)
3. eat much smaller amounts of organic grass-fed meats (avoid commercial non-organic meats at all costs due to hormones, antibiotics and processing)
4. cut out all unhealthy processed vegetable oils (canola, vegetable/soy, peanut, etc.)
5. increase healthy fats (avocado and its oil, coconut and its oil, grass-fed butter especially raw butter, organic grass-fed lard or tallow, etc.)
6. cut out all commercial dairy and eat only grass-fed fermented dairy (like grass-fed and organic kefir, cheese and yogurt) or grass-fed butter and ghee
7. eat vegetables and eat VOLUMES of vegetables
8. eat only soaked and SPROUTED beans and lentils (and sprouted bean flours)
9. eat no grains except occasional white rice (use sprouted amaranth, coconut flour, sprouted bean flours and ground flax to replace grains)
10. avoid all processed foods (that means NO PROCESSED FOODS AT ALL)
11. minimize all canned foods (even BPA-free) except canned sardines, salmon and oysters
12. stay away from restaurants until the weight is gone (and if unavoidable, try to eat fish and vegetables or salad)
13. stay away from all sugar except in the form of organic blackstrap molasses, prunes, figs, very small amounts of raw honey, powdered raw stevia leaf (not the processed white powder stevia, the good stuff is green), and ceylon cinnamon oil (which imparts a sweet taste)...if it gets desperate, use raw organic evaporated cane sugar sprinkled on top of berries before losing control and eating a whole chocolate cake
14. speaking of chocolate cake, allow treats like that on holidays only but consume dark chocolate in a healthy form (email me at theagelesslife@gmail.com if you want healthy chocolate recipes)
15. take all the supplements you know are good all at the same time and do it consistently while following all of the above guidelines for eating
16. walk 45 minutes five days a week, with HIRT, and build upper-body muscle strength through low-weight/high reps weight lifting

Print that list out. It is my Sweet Sixteen List and it is at the core of what is working for me right now. But number 7 is key.

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE LEARNED: It's time to stop chasing after every supplement and diet and just eat our vegetables. The other stuff is important but this is the key factor that will make or break your hunger. You won't be able to follow any of the rest of that until you deal with your hunger. You can't force yourself to give up anything until you get rid of your hunger. At the root of your hunger may be emotional issues, but I have come to believe that malnutrition is the number one factor influencing our hunger. You can't take something away from your hunger until you feed it something different. Hunger only will go away on its own. At least for me. To make it go away, feed it. Feed it vegetables. Tons of them. Until it goes away. Then you are not under the control of your hunger, and you can make more rational choices. That is what I have learned.

And then I learned something else. I learned one of the scientific reasons why my hunger was going away.

Vegetables--especially fructooligosaccharides and inulin-rich foods like onions, garlic, asparagus, leeks, bananas, jerusalem artichoke and yacon, together with mucilaginous foods like okra and flax seeds--feed special kinds of bacteria in your large intestine. One of these bacteria is called Clostridium butyricum.

This is important so keep reading. We're at the crux of this whole post right here. This is where you are going to send your hunger packing.

Most bacteria in the clostridia family cause things like botulism and c-diff. Not this baby. This is the white sheep in a family of black sheep. This little bug lives in the lining of your large intestine and cutting-edge research shows that it has an important role in communicating with your immune-system. Of millions, this one might be one of the most important bacteria you could have proliferating in your gut. It battles the bad clostridia and can kick butt. Clostridium butyricum also produces butyric acid, or butyrate, which is that amazing stuff that stops you from being hungry and makes you lose weight. Basically, you feed the friendly little clostridium butyricum what it likes--onions, okra, garlic, asparagus, bananas (especially green ones) and flax seeds--and it makes this butyrate that feeds your body and makes you not hungry and makes you lose weight.

Lots of people think they can just go take butyrate supplements, but most of the butyrate never reaches your large intestine which is where you need it.

Here is the most important sentence in this whole blog. I'll put in bold for you.

If I'm understanding it right, the key to killing your hunger is to feed it butyrate in your large intestine, and the only way to get butyrate into your large intestine is to have lots of little clostridium butyricum and feed them lots of onions, garlic, asparagus, okra and green banana, so they make you lots of butyrate.

Now I'm not a scientist, and I might be wrong about some of the details of all of this, but that's basically the gist I'm getting from the research I'm doing. And it coincides with what I've been experiencing. When I decided to EAT MY VEGETABLES finally, I just so happened to eat lots of onion, okra, garlic, asparagus, etc. and my hunger eventually started disappearing.

There are two things going on here:

1. I'm finally dealing with my malnutrition issues by eating lots of vegetables; and 
2. my gut is making lots of butyrate because I'm eating lots of the right vegetables

Those are the two things that have assuaged my hunger.

But it's not that simple. When eating vegetables (especially if you are older, overweight or sick), there are things you need to do alongside eating vegetables:

• you are probably enzyme deficient from not eating veggies in the past and because enzyme production diminishes as we age, so take enzymes (I'll do a post soon on this because not just any enzyme will do the trick for you)
• your gut bacteria is probably diminished and you need to get more (and the right kind) in there, but it's not as simple as just popping a probiotic (I'll do a post on this too)
• you need to eat healthy fats with your veggies because all those fat-soluble vitamins will not be absorbed without fat (duh) so living on steamed broccoli is not the answer
• some vegetables need to be eaten raw or lightly steamed, while others like spinach need to be boiled (and the water thrown away) to reduce kidney-damaging oxylates...so you really need to KNOW YOUR VEGETABLES

The final issue is this. It is hard to start eating veggies primarily when you are accustomed to eating them as a side dish or not at all. What do you eat? Salad is not satisfying enough to do long-term for most of us. So you need a whole new batch of veggie-recipes. Or a new way of looking at old recipes. Plus, all that cooking is hard to do when you're busy and if you've basically been living on tv dinners and fast food. Huge transition. Not as easy as it sounds.

But I'm figuring it out and this blog is about sharing what I'm learning.

When I used to wake up in the morning, I'd think about what I wanted to eat that day. Now I specifically ask myself: "Okay, what vegetables is today's main meal going to center around?"

I might do okra stirfried with onion and shrimp as my main meal, and I use two 12-oz family-sized packs of cut okra with 10 shrimp. Did you hear me right? I said I use two family-sized packs of cut okra. Just for me. That's alot of okra. But by the time I'm done eating all that okra, I am so full and I'm not thinking about chocolate cake or brisket. When I first started trying to follow this EAT MY VEGETABLES thing religiously, sometimes I had to do three packs to keep myself from falling off the wagon and going back to my bad eating. When I'm really wanting to binge, okra and shrimp with onions and Cajun seasoning, well, that really does it for me. 

You're going to have to find what does it for you when it comes to veggies. What veggie dish can you binge on instead of bingeing on something else. You might think you're not a big eater because you eat 1 processed breaded chicken patty, half a baked potato with margarine and fat-free sour cream, and 2 stalks of broccoli and drink 1-2 glasses of sweet tea or coke with it and have just one donut for dessert. But your body is starving and being loaded with hormones and chemicals and high-fructose corn syrup in that meal. If you counted the calories in that meal compared to my 2-3 heaping plates of okra and shrimp, my calorie count would be way lower than yours. And I'm eating like a pig. And my little chlostrida are feasting and churning out all kinds of butyrate. Your small breaded chicken patty has more calories in it than my whole shrimp and okra meal,which by the way is about 315 calories.

And I've been doing this for a few weeks--consistently, steadily--and my hunger is finally leaving me. For the first time in my life.

I used to love my mom's fresh green beans with small red potatoes and onions and garlic. Sometimes I make up a huge pot and just eat on that for days, with very little else. I put nitrite-free turkey bacon in it so I am not too troubled by my meat cravings. Nothing says satiety like a bacon flavor.

I don't even try to fix real meals like I used to. I focus on what veggies I'm going to eat (with what fat and meat will enhance it). In addition to the veggies, throughout the day, I'll have a few nuts, an occasional piece of fruit, and every few days I'll do a bean dish (with lots of veggies in it). Sometimes when the meat-eater in me can't take it anymore, I'll do organic chicken or a grass-fed steak or hamburger steak from a source I trust and I'll surround it with lots of veggies and foods with high-antioxidant value. When I can't resist having a starch, I'll make a veggie dish with rice.

And on special occasions, I'll allow myself healthy versions of old recipes I love--like chicken gumbo using gluten-free flour and a healthy oil for my roux. I try to never use refined oils of any kind but for a roux, I use refined so they don't carry a taste. Refined avocado oil makes a fine roux, as does grass-fed butter. Everybody I know uses soy oil. Bad, bad, bad. Stop it. Some people are using flour-only roux that has no oil, but wheat in flour is bad, bad, bad. If somebody would start making a powdered roux with gluten-free flour, they'd make a fortune. (I gotta go talk to somebody about that).

There was a lot of info in this post. You might want to print it out. Or keep coming back and reading it over and over. In this one post on the blog is the key to kicking hunger to the curb. Don't think you can live the rest of your life like this? Do it for a little while. Lose the weight. Get healthy again. Then figure out what you can and cannot live without. And give yourself what you need. But don't start adding the bad stuff back in until you've gotten healthy and lost the weight. Once you're healthy and at a healthy size, occasional bad things won't kill us. But right now, they're killing us.

Get your gut healthy with enzymes, probiotics and fermented foods. Feed those little chlostridia tons of the right veggies so they manufacture butyrate to cut your hunger. Make sure to eat healthy fats with all those veggies. And read the Sweet Sixteen List every day to remind yourself about what you need to do. We'll talk about all the things on that list as we go. Work out the details. But today, we've got the big picture before us and we're on our way to the other side.

I'm doing a post soon on resistant starch foods, which maybe can help boost your chlostridia's production of butyrate. The jury is still out on that. Most people on the resistant starch bandwagon use Bob's Red Mill Unmodified Potato Starch (1-4 tbsp. in a glass of water first thing in the morning) or green banana or plaintain flour. It works miraculously for some, not for others. Why? Probably because either some people don't have many healthy chlostridia, or because it's being done alone without doing all the other healthy stuff in concert with it. So if you're feeding your chlostridia lots of resistant starch but drinking chlorinated water and using anti-bacterial soap and eating GMO-foods--all of which are killing your good intestinal bacteria, including chlostridia--it's hard to see the effect you're looking for.

My hunger is retreating with all the veggies and healthy things I've been doing. Let's see what the resistant starch does when added to the mix. I'm thinking I'm going to try adding some unmodified potato starch and green bananas in addition to all the other healthy stuff I'm doing to see if I can increase my hunger reduction. I'll keep you posted.

Below is a screen capture from my computer with the Bob's Red Mill Unmodified Potato Starch. That price on jet.com is unheard of and you can get it at that price with the 15% off you get on your first three jet.com orders. No I'm not getting paid for promoting this. You can't be an affiliate or get referral bonuses for jet.com just like you can't for Amazon. But when I find a price this cheap (with free shipping) how can I not share it with you? If you want to try eating more veggies and adding the potato starch to your routine, let me know how it goes. When the whole idea of resistant starch first came out, it was a miracle health-boosting weight-loss wonder. Now they're seeing it doesn't work for alot of people. But if you get your gut healthy and do it alongside those special clostridia-feeding veggies, it might work. We'll find out together. 

Our new mantra: feed the chlostridia.

I'm still looking for better ways than this to feed the chlostridia. I just penned a few notes to try to get in touch with Mr. Heisenbug (ever read that blog?) to see what he thinks. I'll let you know if I hear back from him.

A Midsummer Night's Dream: I can combine all kinds of superfood healthy ingredients into one dish...a pie?

You read an article that says you need flax seeds. You hear amaranth is a superfood replacement for grains and high in the soluble fiber that reduces cholesterol. Another one touts virgin coconut oil as the be-all end-all. Cinnamon and clove bring down diabetic blood sugars. Black strap molasses is the ultimate source for calcium and magnesium. Grass-fed butter is high in conjugated linoleic acid. Winter squash has superpowers.

It all came together for me when I was reading about the superfood qualities of the winter squash and realized that PUMPKIN is a squash. And then I realized: A pumpkin pie could be designed to be good for me and I can put all these superfoods into a piece of PIE.

No waaay? Yes way!

My first thought was that I'd have to wait til fall for fresh organic pumpkins, then I realized how cheap and nutritious canned pumpkin is all year long. Canned pumpkin is CONCENTRATED pumpkin and is super high in fiber. CONCENTRATED GOODNESS. My sweet tooth wants to be fed now and since I'm trying to eat more squash and all those other superfoods...pumpkin pie in mid-summer it is.

Now use either fresh mashed pumpkin or canned pumpkin--but not pumpkin pie mix (which is loaded with sugar). This recipe is designed to be healthy: sugar-free, gluten-free, grain-free and can be vegan (if you leave out the egg).

And speaking of concentrated goodness, let's talk about the soluble fiber in this recipe. Oats are renowned for their cholesterol-reducing soluble fiber, right? Let's compare oats to the amaranth and flax in my pie crust. There are 4 g of soluble fiber in a cup of dry oatmeal, but 9 g of soluble fiber in a cup of dry amaranth, and 13.8 g in a cup of flax seed. More than double for amaranth, more than triple for flax. And amaranth and flax aren't troublesome grains. Between the amaranth and flax in my crust and the pumpkin and figs or prunes in my filling, this pie is a soluble fiber dream. Goodbye cholesterol.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think just a 1/7 slice of this pie should meet your soluble and insoluble fiber requirements for the day (which most people never accomplish on a regular basis).

How is it good without sugar? The ceylon cinnamon oil from Florihana is a big part of it. Sweetness without sugar. Taste it and see (diluted of course). The blackstrap molasses is a low glycemic index sweetener that goes a long way toward making it taste like traditional pumpkin pie, but the high sugar taste comes from your prunes or figs, whichever you use. Think of them as concentrated goodness as well. You would not believe the research on how healthy prunes and figs are, in spite of their sweetness. I used to chew six of them every morning and it would spike my blood sugar more than I liked.  But mixed in with all the healthy ingredients in this pie, your blood sugar will behave normally and spike as it should when you eat normally. Your blood sugar won't reveal that you just had dessert. You should make this pie weekly and eat a slice every day. It'd be like a fun way to take your vitamins and get your soluble fiber.

If you get tired of pumpkin, replace it occasionally with sweet potato or carrot or butternut squash or even fresh pureed pears (also high in fiber). Play with your superfood pie recipes.

Midsummer Night's Dreamy Pumpkin Pie

To make your filling:

1 can or 15 oz. organic pumpkin puree
7 prunes or dried figs
2 tbsp ground ceylon cinnamon
10 drops ceylon cinnamon oil (manufactured by Florihana ideally-see link below)
3 drops clove oil
1/2 tsp ground clove
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/4 cup organic blackstrap molasses (unsulphured) preferably Plantation brand
1/3 cup coconut milk, almond milk, or organic half-and-half (or your favorite "milk" alternative but not conventional canned condensed or evaporated milk--bad for you!)
1/4 cup virgin unrefined coconut oil (melt on low heat before adding to mix and when it cools it will solidify)
1/8 cup sprouted organic flax seed meal (see Note on sprouting flax seeds)
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1-2 pastured eggs (optional, you can leave out the eggs if you are vegan, since the coconut oil and flax seed meal will both replace it and firm up your filling when chilled)

Blend all ingredients until smooth and mixed well and pour into raw pie crust using recipe below for crust:

1 cup sprouted organic flaxseed meal
1/2 cup sprouted organic amaranth flour (see link below)
2 tbsp grass-fed butter
1 lg pastured egg white
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 cup water (add more as needed to form dough)

I just mixed the crust ingredients in the pie plate, first the dry flax, amaranth and salt, then I cut in the butter, then added the egg white whisked together with the water, mixed it with a fork, formed it into a ball, then flattened it and pressed it into the plate to form the crust. Then I poured the pie filling into my raw crust and baked it 30-40 minutes at 400 degrees (covered loosely with a cheap aluminum roasting pan you buy for a dollar that keeps things from burning without touching them).

I made this tonight. It was scrumptious. My sweet tooth is so satisfied. And this was so much more fun than taking cinnamon capsules, chewing flax seeds, eating stewed prunes in the morning, steaming fresh squash or eating a tablespoon of coconut oil for its health benefits. The trick is: don't eat the whole pie.

I'll have the links for where you can easily get any hard-to-find ingredients in the next few days. I'll also have the Note for the sprouting of the flax seeds. Keep checking back if you need those.