Going Old School: Meatless Fridays

Today is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Part of Lent is sacrifice, including abstaining from meat on Fridays. It used to be that Catholics would abstain from meat every Friday throughout the year. (Catholic pals, check this out. I didn't realize we were supposed to be keeping up Friday penance!)  Now, most American Catholics only observe the practice during Lent. 

Here's what I'm having for dinner (no pun intended).  I'll let you know how it turned out.

As usual, something we are supposed to do for our spiritual health has a collateral benefit. 

Now there are secular movements which recognizes the benefits of abstaining from meat once a week as the old school Catholics did and do. In a nutshell, "Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel." source

sorta-detox, day 9: Nearly there, and Lent nearly here.

Nearly there

The sort of detox is nearly over. Tonight we are having an encore of the favorite new recipe, chicken curry over brown rice. And then tomorrow night we are all going out to eat where we will not scour the menu for something that fits within our guidelines. I'm looking forward to my Pink Lady Sushi Roll of Crab, Masago, Cucumber, Avocado, Crunch, Soy Wrap, with Creamy Spicy Sauce. Drool! However, I will not order a diet coke- a new habit I want to keep- I still crave a big fountain soda, but no more pop for yours truly.

My goal was to post more throughout these ten days, including our recipes, victories, and defeats. I will likely post the successful recipes a little later, but for now, I simply give you a very simple, blank meal planner that you can hopefully print for your own healthy eating goals.

Meal Planner
	Breakfast	Lunch	Snack	Dinner	ingredients needed	prep ahead tonight
Saturday
Sunday
M
T
W
Th
F

I've found it takes far more time than expected to eat whole, or clean, or whatever you want to call it. It's a lot harder to get more calories than you need when there is no instant gratification and when you plan your meals. I haven't felt deprived, other than when I want something specific (cookies, ice cream) or just immediately (drive throughs). We've ate like kings yet we've lost weight. But the absolute best thing is that I haven't had headaches. Usually I get a headache every other day. Sometimes more, sometimes a little less- but through these ten days I haven't had more than an, 'I'm hungry headache' that went away within five minutes of eating. I don't know if the headaches are synced with my hormonal cycle so I've made another meal plan for the next 10 days and see if I can keep this thing going. I'm really curious to see if I'll go another stint without a headache.

Lent nearly here

Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, is really early this year: February 13th, in fact. I suspect my Lenten exercise will have something to do with this little sorta-detox experiment. I usually try to pick one of the seven deadly sins/heavenly virtues to work on in a specific way. Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. Last year was greed, only spending what I had to so that I would give the extra to a charity. Before that was sloth, getting up as soon as the alarm went off, not putting off tasks, exercising, and other ways of practicing diligence.  Sometime before that was pride, avoiding mirrors- (I think I misunderstood pride a little back then.) It's been awhile since I've hit gluttony, and I think this year I should revisit it. The last time I worked on gluttony/temperance I simply fasted, to better understand hunger, which so many of my brethren live with, and to practice the ancient tradition which I had never really fully embraced. This year, perhaps I'll continue on this path of whole foods and change it a little to make Lent special. I've learned that when you only eat what you've prepared and only whole foods, it can shift your thinking from living to eat to eating to live. I've not once ate out of boredom or regretted eating something these past ten days. I've been truly hungry each time I've ate and each meal has nourished me, not just filled me up. I plugged in a few of my days to my fitness pal, curious about the amount of potassium I was getting instead of trying to squeeze the most out of my caloric alotment. (Turns out I was coming in under the caloric budget every day, even with snacks)
Often when I say grace, I try to quickly realize where each food comes from, what it took to get in front of me, and pray for that farmer, or thank God for the animal, etc. With this practice, that process can happen earlier are allow you more time to consider it when you are cooking, and sometimes even when you are shopping. You feel and wash each item. When you do buy something packaged, you read the ingredients. Any ideas on how I could incorporate this eating exercise into a Lenten practice would be welcomed in the comments section.

Interesting article

http://m.voices.yahoo.com/10-incredible-health-benefits-fasting-11621130.html

sorta detox

So if you read this blog, you likely know me in real life, and may have heard my relatively recent understanding about how all sin is a perversion of something that was originally good and how such perversions are intrinsically harmful to our health (whether it be physically, emotionally, or as a society), often in ways that we don't recognize. So when God instructs us not to do something, it usually is for our own benefit. For example, sex outside of marriage and masturbation is a perversion of the sexuality God gifts us and harms our current or future spouse, ourselves, and harms society as a whole, messing with an individual's or society's ability to commit and creates families that have the odds stacked against them.

I also think that the root of most of our food/weight issues follow this same framework. Gluttony is a perversion of enjoying the bounty God provides for us. And it makes us fat, sick, and sad. God gave us diligence to work for his Glory, or 'stick-with-it-ness' to overcome difficulties in life. The human body is perfectly made for labor, but when we move away from that we embrace sloth. Sloth is a perversion and it makes us fat, sick, unsuccessful, and sad. On this note, I have also been more aware of the theory that when we mess with the make up of our food, we are treading this line of perversion that may harm us in ways we don't know. 

When we shove all our beef into concentrated animal feeding operations ("CAFOs") the cows stand in their own excrement, therefore we have to prevent them from getting sick and passing that sickness onto other animals and to us by using preventative antibiotics. That paired with growth hormones or steroids makes for some pretty altered food. I'm not saying that doctoring sick animals is bad, and I'm not saying that you're going to Hell for eating McDonald's. However, what I am saying is that this dramatic alteration of our food may be harming us in ways we don't understand. We're building tolerances to antibiotics, we're finding more and more people with endocrinology problems (raises hand), and even fish in our water supply are showing the effects of our country's dependence on medicinal hormones. http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/what-the-pill-is-doing-to-our-water-supply/

So, I'm swearing off soda, foods that have been genetically modified, and foods that have been so broken down that they only have one nutrient (white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sugar, bleached flour)for 10 days. I'm also skipping any artificial preservatives (sodium nitrate, that means no deli meats), picking organic fruits and veggies when able ($), and most importantly, avoiding any animal, or animal product, that has been raised with steroids, other hormones, or preventive antibiotics.

source: smitten kitchen

I'm only doing this for 10 days for a few reasons. #1. I'm expecting it will be expensive. #2 It's going to take a lot of meal planning, beyond what I usually do. #3 I'm addicted to carbs, breads, and cookies and to find/bake without processed flour and sugar is going to be very difficult for yours truly.  Fortunately though, I have two buddies willing to take the plunge with me to spur me on and to help absorb some of the duties of cooking and the cost of the groceries. I really shouldn't call it a detox because we're still going to eat a small amount of : complex carbs, sugar in the form of honey, meat, and dairy. Really, we're just trying to eat the way we should be already and searching for food in its original form without excessive poking and prodding from the food industry.

Here's an example of what a day will likely look like:

  Breakfast                                    Lunch                                        Dinner

Pumpkin spiced oatmeal

Greek chicken salad

Bulgur Salad with Chickpeas, Roasted Red Peppers and Spiced Cumin Dressing

See, no deprivation. But none of the foods are instant and they are in their original form.

If this is a success and isn't as difficult as we thought, I'm planning on doing a longer diet for lent.

I'll post my whole 10-day meal plan with some of the recipes here in a few days in case you want to do it with us. We start the 6th and go until the 16th.

I'll also post some of the names of documentaries that are great motivation for changing your diet. They are better at explaining how the body works with processed foods than I can explain. Sometimes they can get a little preachy and conspiracy laden, but they'll inspire you to forgo the 3pm diet coke and cheetos.......... Jesus help me; I love me some cheetos.