Discussion Board

Wendy Jane - thanks so much for the suggestions. Those both sound yummy!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I pray that it will be a time of rest and renewal for you all, and a time of healing for those suffering from illness. I have had a rough week at work so I am ready for a little relaxation. But first I need to figure out what's for dinner! LOL!

Tex Girl -

Hope you are having a relaxing evening .

This is one of Mary's recipes. I love this salad. I sometimes add celery and cucumbers to it.

QUINOA GARDEN SALAD

Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 minutes
Chilling Time: 2 hours
Servings: 6-8

2 cups water
1 cup quinoa, well rinsed
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
½ yellow bell pepper, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 bunch chopped green onions
1 14.5 ounce can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
½ cup chopped fresh parsley
¼ cup chopped fresh mint
½ cup fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon soy sauce
several dashes Tabasco sauce
several twists of freshly ground black pepper

Place the water and quinoa in a saucepan, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and cook for 15 minutes, until water is absorbed. Remove from heat and set aside.

Meanwhile, combine the vegetables, beans, parsley and mint. Add the cooked quinoa and mix well. Add the remaining ingredients and toss well to mix. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.

God Bless,
Donna

Hi Everyone,

I have had such a busy, but fun week while the grandkids were out for spring break. I have had some trouble staying on my diet, but I think when things get back to a normal routine, I will do much better.
And hopefully by summer break, I will have this McDougall diet as a lifestyle and won't be so tempted to eat all those unhealthy things.

Proverbs31woman - Hello and welcome to our thread!

Jubilee - I am so sorry that you are so sick. I am praying that you won't have to have surgery. I know a very good urologist in Nashville, if you are interested in traveling there. He (and the Lord)
saved my mom's left kidney.

Tex gal - I found this recipe on this site somewhere for baked beans that are pretty good. Very easy to make

1 can vegetarian baked beans
1 apple cut into chunks
1 onion sliced and cut into rings

layer the onion rings on top of the beans
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 mins

Love the Lorax - I've had a bad week with food too. I haven't really binged (like I used to do) but I have been eating the wrong things.

kc - I am so glad you got to get out and have some fun in the sun!

dlb, Wendy Jane, luvoatmeal and pinkrose - hi.

I hope everyone has a wonderful McDougall weekend,
Cathy

Hi Tex gal, Where in Texas?

About 45 minutes from Austin. You?

Thanks for all your suggestions for a dish for the church pot luck. They all sounded great, but it seemed that I was missing a crucial ingredient for every recipe I looked at, and I didn't make the trip to the grocery store yesterday. So I looked at what I had on hand and wound up using parts of about 4 different recipes to come up with a veggie slaw. I chopped up green cabbage, red cabbage, carrots, green onions, red and yellow bell peppers. Then I crumbled in a package of ramen noodles and made an oil and vinegar dressing. It wasn't the greatest salad I've ever tasted, but it was very colorful and pretty! Of course most things on the buffet were NOT vegan, but I had my slaw and some baked beans, pasta salad, and fruit salad.

Hope everyone has a good Sunday afternoon.

McAllen, on the Mexican border.

Evening everyone,

Went to church this morning and night. Yesterday, I took the kids to six flaggs on crutches. We went for two days. Now my right arm hurts so bad I can't even think about my knee or my calf. I gotta laugh because if I don't I'll cry.

I think its tendonitis. Well, I am typing with one hand and I am going to bed. God bless all of you. kc

It does help to have a sense of humor! Please get some rest and try to take care of your body, KC!

I pray for your healing, peace and comfort. Keep us posted!

Good Morning Friends,
We have another rainy morning here, but I'm not complaining. Everything is so beautiful and green, and my fruit trees are bursting with blooms and new little fruits. I am excited about going outside and picking almonds, apricots, apples, figs and asian pears. YUM
I think I'll skip eating the almonds though and let the boys eat them!

I am showing a consistent one pound loss for the week, so I'm encouraged about that. All praise and glory to God. I think that focusing more on God and His Word, keeping active, and using plain air popped popcorn as my "I'm craving something quick and crunchy for a snack" snack instead of raw nuts has helped alot. I'm also not eating after 4 p.m. and drinking lots of water instead. I'm trying to slow down and think before I just mindlessly put something in my mouth. I'm asking myself - will this help me or hurt me? Pretty simple, but I'm a slow learner.

kc - I sure do pray that you will feel better soon!
welcome to texasann!
Hi to catmatt, Wendy Jane, texgal, pinkrose, dlb, Love the Lorax, and Jubilee. I appreciate you all so much and am so thankful for this great group of people and how encouraging and kind you are. I'm praying for you all every morning.

God Bless and have a great Monday!

Where we live we have an Aldi's grocery store. For those who aren't familiar with them, it's a place for dirt cheap food! They have a few ways to save you money. One is the "one size fits all" method. An example of this is that if you are going to buy peanut butter, you will find only one size jar of peanut butter. There won't be 2 or 3 sizes, only one. If you want to purchase a larger size you either purchase more jars, or go someplace else. And if you want a smaller size, well there isn't one.
The other way they save you money is by stacking everything. If you ever went into an Aldi's you'd know what I mean. Food is just left in the cartons it comes in, and they stack the cartons one on top of another with big fork lifts. Prices are found over the cartons on yellow paper in red letters. Aldi's employees don't unpack anything, they just stack up the cartons. They open the cartons in the front, and you can take what you want.
They also save you money, because they don't put your groceries in bags or boxes. They just scan things and put it back into your shopping cart. You must pack your own groceries. But when you see the savings, who cares? We have boxes that are left in our car just for Aldi's. They have a place inside the store where you can pack your own groceries before taking them out to your car.
Well, they have about the best produce in our area. In the middle of winter when everyone else had green tomato's, Aldi's had red ripe ones, and dirt cheap! We paid about $2.00 for 4 tomatoes still on the vine. The tomato's came prepackaged and nicely sealed. They also sell 3 prepackaged heads of rommaine lettuce for $1.99 for the entire package. No, it's not organic, but who can beat that price? We do have a health food store, but unfortunately, their produce is much too expensive.
You do have to be careful, because they sell a lot of processed food, which we avoid naturally. But they do have a "fit and active" line. Yes, some of this line is processed, but we have found some things that were McDougall friendly.
Over the weekend we discovered Aldi's fit and active Apple Cinnanon rice cakes. There were few ingredients, and I sure liked the first one--brown rice! So for $1.25 for 12 rice cakes we snacked over the weekend.
So next time some of you may be looking for a quick snack, perhaps you should think rice cakes. Not all rice cakes are alike, so read your labels. But we sure liked what we read here, and we loved the price.

Hi all,

It's 10pm califor time. I just got home from my writers group. we are all christians working on different genres. I've known them for about 9 years and are all such a blessing.

My knee is better, Praise God. I am trying to still stay off of it as much as possible. My wrist is pretty bad. I put it in a thing from the pharmacy to keep it still. I think it's helping.

YOUR PRAYERS ARE SO ENCOURAGEING. I AM TRULY PRESSING IN GOD AND SO THAT IS A GOOD THING.

I took hash browns and put them in a casserole dish. Then I squeezed the liquid out of chopped spinach and layered it on the browns. And then another layer of hash browns. On top I made a cream sauce with onion flakes and garlic and poured it on top. There was probably 3 tables of oil in the earth balance I made the sauce with but this made a huge casserole. I baked it for an hour.
Anyhow, it was delicious. I ate it for dinner with some mock mashed potatoes. (cauliflower)

Well,I'm gonna go to bed. Bless you all, kc

I see the little foxes running around in here again! I have been afraid to post here because I know what I want to say will ruffle some feathers. But, I know that others saw me doing the same thing and did me the huge favor of telling me what I was doing wrong. So here goes. Please take this as being the truth spoken in love!

Rice cakes can really sabotage you, even if they aren't the kind with illegal ingredients. (Do you read labels? Jeff's DVD on label reading is invaluable!) Calorie density is the culprit with foods that are filled with air!

Using a little bit of oil or vegan margarine, at least for me, is like just a little bit of cocaine. Not that I've ever used cocaine, but you know what I mean! One handful of popcorn made with oil or butter and I totally lose control.

If you keep tempting yourself with things like this and telling yourself that a little bit won't hurt, you are setting yourself up for cravings and falling off the wagon.

If you find that you are having to cook SAD for family, then stop. It is not helping you or THEM. You don't have to announce it, just stop cooking SAD items.

There is no restaurant cook who has your health and well being at heart. Subway sandwiches are not a healthy option, read the ingredients on their nutrition information page online. If you MUST go to a restaurant, be prepared and eat ahead of time, have baked potatoes and apples in the car to eat when you leave, or just sit and drink water or unsweetened tea and visit with your friends/family! You will actually be wasting money if you spend it on SAD restaurant food! In the long run you will spend even more on prescriptions and medical treatments.

If you are traveling, look for a grocery store - always one near the restaurants in a town off the interstate - and go in and buy bags of apples, oranges, kiwi, or containers of prepared fresh fruit and bottled water. You can cut kiwi in half with a plastic spoon handle and scoop out the fruit, toss the peel. Also those little cans of Bush's vegetarian beans are probably OK too, but read the label. You will survive until you can get to a place with a microwave, then you can cook potatoes. I lived on baked potatoes, carrots and apples for a full week last summer when my father died. It was the fastest easiest thing to eat and I was fine. I had tons of energy and was amazed at how good I felt.

We know that God numbers the hairs on our heads and our lives are in his control, but that doesn't mean we should pray for success yet continue to tempt ourselves with foods that we know contribute to poor health! So chase out the foxes and reinforce your fences around the vineyard!

KC -

This is a 100% fat product. It also has soy proteins in it. Altogether not a healthy thing to be eating. It also just keeps those cravings for fat going. You don't need it. Even a little bit (and I don't agree that 3 tablespoons it a little bit) will do harm. It will keep you from getting the results you want.

With the health issues you are having, I would love to see you get beyond products like this. God has brought the McDougall program before you for a reason. I am praying for you.

God Bless,
Donna

Mrs. D -

We were posting at the same time.

Foxes indeed! Thank you for posting that. I feel the same way as you.

And I too say all that I do in love. I want the best for everyone here.

God Bless,
Donna

It seems to me (as a relative newcomer here) that there are basically 2 points of view - (1) this is an excellent plan and 100% compliance is the best way to get or stay healthy, and any deviation from it is harmful for what it does to you and, maybe more importantly, for the doors it opens to even more temptation; and (2) this is an excellent plan, and if you comply with it 90% or even 75% you will receive so many health benefits over eating a SAD diet, and if that's what it takes to transition yourself or your family over to healthier eating, then that's OK.

I am sure that #1 is best, but #2 may be what some people need. I am not saying this to argue with Donna or Mrs D - I think you both are speaking the truth and perfection is a wonderful goal, and it is great to be reminded of how those "little foxes" can sneak in and deceive us. But I also feel that #2 has merit, and someone struggling hard to make progress needs to know the truth but also needs encouragement. And given the choice between a vegetable casserole with a bit of oil vs a steak and french fries ... well, it's obvious which is the better choice.

Of course, for someone with serious health problems, including the need for maximum weight loss, the stricter the better as far as all food choices. I agree with everything Donna and Mrs D said, but I also don't want someone to give up on this plan because they feel they can't reach perfection, or can't give up eating out completely, or that they have to provide some non-McD food for their family.

I pray that we will all have the strength to make wise choices about our health, and that we will also be guided in how to deal with any family tensions or "flak" caused by our attempts to bring healthier eating to our loved ones. I pray that we will release to Him any guilt we may be carrying about past choices and the consequences we now bear for them. God is so good. I pray that He will renew our strength daily to resist every kind of temptation, in Jesus' name.