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Aztec Diet, Diet, Food

Aztec Diet, Day 3: I’m Borscht

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Stats: This morning I weighed in with a 1 pound loss. Total loss: 5 pounds. Another 1/2″ off my waist. My BMI is down .7 since Sunday!
Breakfast: Avocado/Banana/blueberry/Spinach Lunch: Borscht Snack: 9 Triscuits Dinner: Papaya-Raspberry Yum Snack: 3 cups air-popped popcorn

I am a sometimes lab rat for North Cliff Consultants. I had an appointment with them after the dog park, so I had half my breakfast smoothie before the dog park and saved the rest for when I got back. This seems a much better plan than waiting until 11 am to eat.

What kind of appointment, you ask? Sorry, confidentiality rules. If I told you, well, you know the drill.

While I was waiting, I opened today’s paper to the food section. No, I didn’t want to torment myself. I was looking for the crossword puzzle. Really. It’s not my fault they tuck it in with the recipes on Wednesdays. On the front page in living color was a life-sized photo of a stack of 13 pancakes, dripping with syrup, topped with whipped butter. The lead article featured “wholesome” pancakes. There I sat, ambushed by an image of softly textured cakes, soaked with melted butter, oozing with sweetness, flavor bursting in my mouth . . . you get the picture. I turned the page.

The Aztec Diet is essentially a low-carb diet with some lovely bells and whistles thrown in. Dr. Bob talks extensively about “carb-bombs.” If you are interested in the Aztec Diet, you’ll find knowledge about cutting carbs helpful. Phase I includes a high percentage of raw foods, one of the things that attracted me to the diet. My biggest quibble is that Dr. Bob errs on the side of many people who are new to raw food by overdoing fruit.

All of the smoothie recipes except one feature fruit and a sweet taste. His only savory smoothie is the Gazpacho Gratitude. Even that has cantaloupe in it. For true satiation, you need savory and sour tastes as well as sweet. Thus my search for vegetable smoothies. Does that sound yucky? Call them “cold-soups-you-make-in-a-blender-and-drink-from-a-cup” if you like.

I love gazpacho, but tomatoes don’t like me. They cause excruciating joint pain when I eat them, so I don’t. Otherwise I would live on gazpacho and we would be very happy together. It’s a little known fact that nightshade vegetables (these include tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, chiles and eggplant) exacerbate symptoms of arthritis in some people. If you have joint pain, try cutting these out and see if you feel better.

I’ve got some beets my landlord dug up from the garden, so today I decided to make borscht. Raw borscht. Never having made borscht or even tasted borscht, I was not sure how to go about it. I asked Rudy (my landlord). Being Hungarian, he is an expert. He said beets and sour cream are essential. Everything else is up for grabs. I checked a couple recipes online. The ones I saw emphasized cabbage, carrots and vinegar.

I don’t have any cabbage on hand. I do have kale, a relative which is high on Dr. Bob’s list. Then I remembered some dusty jars in the top of my cabinet (Okay, they aren’t really dusty. That’s poetic license). A few years ago (3? 4?), I put up a batch of raw sauerkraut and forgot about it. Last fall I started eating it. A good raw sauerkraut ages like fine wine. It is sweet and sour and tender and delicious. It bears no resemblance to the slimy stuff they put on hot dogs. My version of raw sauerkraut has cabbage, carrots, celery, garlic and ginger in it, along with other things I’ve forgotten but hope I’ve recorded somewhere in this computer. And it comes with it’s own vinegar. So this is what I made for lunch:

I’m Borscht

    1/2 cup plain yogurt (or more, to taste)
    1 4-5″ pickling cucumber, peel on*, diced
    3 kale leaves, stemmed and torn up
    1 cup diced peeled beet.
    1/4 cup raw sauerkraut with an extra 2 TBSP brine
    2 TBSP ground chia seeds
    1 pinch Real Salt or Celtic sea salt.
    1-1/2 cups water.

Toss in the blender. Adjust to your personal taste. The result is chewy. This is fine, as long as you moderate your expectations. This is lunch, not desert.

*These are thin skinned and not waxed. I get them around the corner at Francis International Market. You can find the at many Asian markets.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to get back to my Work-In-Progress. On Friday I left poor Detective Dourson contemplating the joys of asking the next-of-kin for dental records. I mean, How do you tell someone that not only do you believe their missing loved one is dead, but that the remains are unrecognizable? Not an enviable task, and he’s been stewing on it for five days while I’ve been so obsessed with the Aztec Diet. I know the poor man just wants to get it over with. Then there’s that rash of Drano bombs at the local high school. The man needs me.

Papaya-Rasperry Yum

1/4 of a football sized papaya, seeded and peeled
1/2 6 ounce container of raspberries
1 handful cashews (raw, if you can get them)
1 handful walnuts
1 handful spinach
12 ounces water
2 TBSP ground chia seeds

dump it all in the blender and hit that button!

Aztec Diet, Diet, Food

Aztec Diet Day 2 Taming the Wild Coconut

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OMG! Down three pounds! Woo HOO! Down 1/2″ on my waist! I am doing the happy dance!

This morning, I forgot about taking a couple cuties to the park with me. Fortunately, I had about 4 ounces of water in the car. I was shocked that this was enough to curb my morning hunger pangs. Note to self: Keep water in the car. I would keep cuties in the car, but they’d probably freeze.

Breakfast today was my own concoction, “Tropical Bliss.” The recipe is at the bottom of the post, along with tips on handling young coconut.

Anna showed up early for our monthly shopping foray out to Costco for dog food. Oops. Didn’t have time to make my lunch smoothie. Grabbed a half-carton of cottage cheese, an apple and a bottle of water. Told Anna as soon as I got in the car that I was on a liquid diet, so no chili-dogs! Ate the cottage cheese s-l-o-w-l-y while we ran Anna’s errands. Drank the water. Picked up some young coconut and seasoned nori at the chinese grocery. Nori isn’t on the approved list, but It’s low-carb and only has forty calories. I figure it’s okay. I said no when Anna asked if I wanted to share a pint of green tea ice cream. She put it back.

Then we got to Costco, and the nice lady was offering samples of artichoke stuffed chicken breast. Just these little bites, hardly a mouthful. I wasn’t hungry, but damn, I do love artichokes. Surely that won’t hurt? It’s low-carb, after all. So I had four samples of different items. Only low-carb stuff. I skipped the ravioli, the fried fish and the kettle corn. Apparently artichokes are a gateway food for me.

Ate an apple, slowly, while Anna made a quick dash into Target. That was my afternoon snack. We won’t talk about those samples.

On the way home, Anna asked if I wanted to come over later this week for Chinese spare ribs. I said no.

Had a Spinach/Portabella smoothie for dinner.

Made it through day 2, only slightly bruised. Thankfully, no more trips to Costco until I’ve completed the Chia Challenge. Will my gustatory indiscretion cost me? Stay tuned . . .

Tropical Bliss

    Water and meat of one young coconut
    huge handful of baby spinach
    One “thumb” of fresh ginger, sliced against the grain.
    1-1/2 cups of frozen tropical fruit mix (mango, pineapple, strawberry)
    2 TBSP ground chia
    1 TBSP ground cacao nibs
    1 TBSP green powder

Toss everything in the blender except the green powder, blend until you see a well formed whirlpool, then open your blender and dump the green powder in the center. This prevents your green powder (which typically contains spirulina) from clumping and sticking to the sides of your blender.

Wow! Sounds good, you say, but about that young coconut???

Young coconut forms a great base for a smoothie. The electrolyte balance of coconut water is so close to human blood, it was used to give emergency transfusions during WWII. Yes, you can buy coconut water in the grocery store. For less money, you can get the yummy flesh, too. And it hasn’t passed through human hands or factory processing.

I have seen so many ridiculous methods for getting into young coconut posted on the internet by Westerners. The peoples of the Pacific surely post these well-meaning instructions on their Facebook pages just to laugh at us. I tried most of these methods until I learned a secret. The people who grow young coconut process them in a way that is counter-intuitive to the naive end-user.

Young coconut shows up at the market as a a squat, fibrous cylinder with a conical top. This is the cut-down husk. The coconut is inside. It looks cute, like a tropical hut. Makes sense that you are meant to cut off the pointy end, right? Wrong! That side is hard as a rock underneath. Every instruction I’ve ever read about getting into a young coconut says to cut off the top. That doesn’t work. I have the mangled knives to prove it.

Turn your young coconut on its side and take a large kitchen knife (a serrated bread knife also works well for this step) and saw off 1/2 – 1″ of the bottom. Yes, the flat end. If you have removed enough, at least one white “eye” will appear (there are three) If only one “eye” appears, you’re good to go. Poke your knife in the “eye” and a hole will easily open up. You may need to poke around a bit to find the soft spot, but I promise you, it’s there. If you have exposed two or three “eyes” choose the largest one. It’s always the largest one. The hole will vary in size. If it’s large, the water will pour out easily. If it’s tight, take a drinking straw, cut it in half, and stuff the ends of both straws into the hole, upend your coconut over your blender, and Bob’s your uncle. Air will rush into one straw, coconut water will rush out the other, nice and neat.

Okay, easy-peasy for the water. We still want that lovely, soft textured meat. What about getting into that shell?

Take your 8″ kitchen knife (I bought a cheap one, just for this purpose), a hammer and your now-exsanguated coconut. You can do this on a butcher block or on the floor, but it’s likely to make loud booming noises. I step outside the kitchen onto my concrete terrace. Lay the coconut on it’s side on old newspaper. position the knife edge across the “waist” of the coconut. Tap the back of the blade with the knife to set it firmly in the shell. Now hold the knife handle with one hand and move the hammer down the back of the blade to the end just above tip, which should be protruding beyond the coconut. Tap here firmly, and keep going until it slices neatly through the nut.

Take your halved booty back to the kitchen and scoop out the flesh with a soup spoon. You might get a little “skin” from the inside of the coconut. Some people are fanatics about picking this off. It blends in easily and just gives you more fiber. But pick off any bits of shell.

Aztec Diet, Diet, Food

Aztec Diet, Day 1-1/2

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When I got back from the grocery store yesterday afternoon, I posted the following poll in my writer’s group:

I just spent $70 on fruits and veggies in anticipation of starting the Aztec Diet 2 week chia smoothie challenge. It’s almost dinner time. Do I:

    Order a fully loaded pizza; tomorrow we diet!
    Nuke the bacon double cheeseburger in the fridge; it’s a sin to waste food
    Give the burger to the dogs and make a savory spinach portabella smoothie

The pizza got 13 votes. I got a write in for “Put it all off until tomorrow. If it’s that important it can wait.” The smoothie got a measly 2 votes (not counting mine).

I guess for most people, the words “spinach” and “smoothie” just don’t belong together. Or maybe the whole concept of nothing but smoothies is off-putting. I must be weird. I couldn’t wait to get started.

I woke one pound lighter this morning. I was one pound lighter if I stood on my special spot on my scale. But I always stand on my special spot, so it counts! So much for pizza binges!

One of the things that attracted me to the Aztec Diet Dr.Bob’s claim that all the Omega 3s will improve brain functioning. I suffer from TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury), which means I cope daily with debilitating physical and cognitive fatigue. Last night, while sipping my dinner smoothie with the GROUND chia seeds, I whipped through my blog entry. I was able to maintain focus twice as long as usual. It’s too soon to tell if this happened because I was virtuous and had a smoothie instead of a pizza, or if I was just so jazzed about starting the diet. I am maintaining cautious optimism.

One snag in this diet. I take my dogs to the dog park first thing in the morning, and I usually have a couple handfuls of nuts on the way. Today I substituted with a couple Cuties (Mandarin oranges). I figure that’s in keeping with the spirit of the thing.

After the dog park, I had my usual cacao/blueberry/bananna/avocado smoothie with my special blend green powder. Plus chia. Dr. Bob talks about having a smoothie “base.” His go-to base is greek yogurt. He also suggests almond, hemp or soy milk. My preference is water with a banana and an avocado. Then I add whatever fruit sounds good. The banana and avodaco make a lovely creamy smoothie that is naturally sweet. It may have more carbs than Dr. Bob likes. I’ll have to research this. Meanwhile, as I am learning new recipes, it’s nice to have something familiar for at least one meal of the day.

I’m having Dr. Bob’s kale/apple/carrot smoothie for lunch. I substituted ginger for lemon and cashews for sunflower seeds. It’s tasty. The kale is a bit chewy, but I don’t mind. For this smoothie, you juice the carrots first.

If you aren’t an experienced juicer, here’s a tip: Immediately after you finish juicing, pull the centrifugal screen out of your juicer and scrub it out. If pulp dries in the screen, it’s murder to get off. I clean my juicer before I do anything else, because it makes my life much easier to do this. Otherwise, I would not engage in behavior that is so aberrant for me.

Tip #2: At some time in your life, you will get a carrot jammed in the food chute of your juicer. Don’t panic. Get a steak knife and patiently hack away at it until it’s skinny enough to slip through. And next time, check your carrots by seeing if the fat end fits in the chute before you jam them in there.

My landlord gave me some beets from his garden recently. I’m thinking of making a raw borscht for dinner. If I do, I’ll add the recipe here. Do I like borscht? Hell if I know. I’ve never had it before.

Later: I wasn’t hungry, so I skipped dinner. Had a grapefruit. Made it through my first full day. Woo Hoo!

Aztec Diet, Diet, Food

Channeling My Inner Aztec

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Despite my blood-thirsty proclivities, I am not about to play soccer with someone’s head. Just so you know.

A little over a week ago I picked up a copy of Women’s World magazine at the supermarket because the cover read : “Better than Lap-Band Surgery! More energizing than Red Bull! Lose 30 LBs in 30 Days eating the world’s most nutritious food!”

I don’t normally go for fad diets, but I made important changes in my eating habits 6 months ago. I lost 10 pound pretty quickly and over the last four months I’ve had to chisel the pounds off, one by one for a total loss of 15 pounds. The day before I saw the magazine, I weighed myself and saw that I’d gained back 3 pounds. Now in addition to dieting, I’d been taking green coffee bean extract AND Raspberry Ketones, which are doing wonders for a friend of mine. Not for me.

That afternoon, I got a horrible jones for a Papa John’s pizza with sausage, mushrooms, pineapple, black olives and three-cheese blend. I said to hell with it, ordered the pizza and ate half of it piping hot and loved every minute of it. I saved the rest of it for breakfast.

I don’t regret this, but it did bring me to a fork in the road, or rather, the kitchen. What was I going to do now? Did I really want to gain it all back and keep going?

I’ve lost weight before. I dropped 60 pounds in less than a year on a 50% raw food diet while having a Master Cleanse lemonade for breakfast and sometimes dinner. This time that didn’t work for me. This weight gain was much more stubborn, precipitated by medication that is otherwise a lifesaver for me. It was time to try something different.

The article touted The Aztec Diet by Dr. Bob Arnot. The initial phase of this diet consists, as reported by WW, 2 smoothies a day and some limitations for lunch. An afternoon snack was allowed. The gimmick was the addition of chia seeds to the smoothies to absorb water and keep you feeling fuller, longer.

I really liked this idea. I love raw smoothies. My only problem is that they don’t fill me up like a regular meal does. And I already put chia seed on my oatmeal. So I read this and thought, “I can do that.” I hunted up the book on the library web-site. It was on order. I checked for it on Amazon. It wasn’t even out yet! The book was being released Tuesday, February 12th. I put the book on hold at the library and decided to do the diet according to the WW article until I got better information.

I did not stick strictly to the diet guidelines for lunch. I did not lose the vaunted 1 pound per day, but I also didn’t suffered for my pizza binge and I dropped those 3 pounds I gained. So, not so bad. I did not feel any extra energy. I’m not going to use myself as an example for that, though, because I have suffered from extreme fatigue since I had a brain injury 11 years ago. It would be a pretty neat trick if the Aztec Diet could resolve this chronic issue in less than a week, but I wasn’t expecting it.

Thursday, I checked the Library website, it said my book was “in transit” so I stopped by Thursday afternoon, hoping it was in. It was not. I stopped by Friday morning when the library opened at 10. It had not been on that morning’s truck. I called Saturday morning, the truck wouldn’t be there until around noon. Finally, the book came in around 1 pm.

I picked it up on the way to a lunch date with my very favorite former boss, the lovely and compassionate Debbie Roller. I thought, no sweat, I can have a really great salad for lunch. Only the place we were to meet did not serve lunch on Saturday. Nor did Debbie’s second choice (we were on her turf). We wound up at Pompillio’s, an Italian restaurant famous for being the location for the “Rain Man” toothpick scene.

Italian is so not on the Aztec Diet. I surrendered to circumstance (when in Rome and all that) and ordered their house specialty, lasagna, followed by a lovely tiramisu. I would worry about the diet after I had a chance to read the book.

I Picked up another half pound of chia seeds and some cacao nibs on the way home from lunch and started skimming the book. As I was flipping through the pages, I saw a little inset box with bold type. It said that you should NOT add whole chia seeds to your smoothies, because they would pass right through and you would miss out on all the super nutrition. I’d been doing it WRONG. I needed to grind them up. Okay. I could do that. And you need to keep sipping water afterward to give the chia more to soak up. Okay, I can do that, too.

I read about the Chia Challenge. Women’s World had misrepresented this. There is no solid lunch. Three smoothies a day with an afternoon snack if you need it. Well, maybe a little harder than I was hoping for, but still do-able for me.

I checked the recipes. They sound really good. I love the emphasis on raw food, at least for the smoothie challenge. I am definitely going to get the book. Can’t decide yet if I want hard-bound or ebook, there’s only $3 difference in the price on Amazon.

I have a couple quibbles with the book. He makes it sound like you have to spend $400 on a Vitamix to get a decent smoothie. Not True. You need at least 1/2 hp motor (375 watts) to grind up greens. I found a 475 watt Black and Decker blender on sale for $30 a few years ago, and it works fine. A Vitamix will last forever. I have a friend who loves hers. She also wears ear protection while she’s using it. And it’s not as easy to clean as a typical blender. Or you can pick up a blender for under $50 that has enough power, and use it until you kill it. I’ve had this blender for maybe three years. At that rate, I’ll be dead before I spend $400 on my cheap blenders.

Also, he suggests using ice cubes in some recipes. Freezing cold food is harder on your digestive system. I suggest cool to warm food. I do wish he had more savory smoothies. But truly, these are just quibbles. The plan looks good, and I can use some of my own recipes.

Sunday is when my landlord takes me to brunch. I help him walk his dogs, so he feeds me brunch. I went this morning and let him know this was going to be my last meal out for a while since I was going on a smoothie diet.

After brunch, I read the first three chapters and made a grocery list. Bought $70 of fruits and veggies (including a 5 pound papaya) and the allowed snacks, which should get me through the two week Chia Challenge. I also bought some quart baggies because I know I’m gonna have to freeze some of that papaya.

I invented a savory smoothie to use up some portabella mushrooms. I’ve been sipping on it while writing this blog entry. Here’s the recipe:

Spinach Portabella Smoothie

    One huge handful of baby spinach leaves (I bought the organic washed leaves) This expands to 3 cups in the blender.
    1 4-5 inch portabella cap, torn into pieces
    1/3 cup cashews (raw, if you can find them)
    Pinch Real Salt or Celtic sea salt
    2 TBSP ground chia seed
    2 TBSP grated parmesean
    8 – 12 ounces of water

Dump everything but the water in the blender. Add a cup of water and blend. Add water as needed until you get a smooth, thin smoothie (remember, the chia is going to gel up on you). You should have about 3 cups. Sip slowly. When you finish, continue to sip water.