1. Start eating real fat.
Stop buying into the low-fat lie and eat FAT! The thing about fat is not cutting it, but the types and quality of fats we eat. For example, raw butter from grass fed cows can actually help your LOSE weight. That’s right . . . lose. The cream on raw unprocessed milk helps build myelin which is the coating around nerves that is 70% fat. Our brains are made of fat, our cell membranes are made up of lipids, which are fats. Get over the popular media already! Our bodies NEED fat!
But we can’t just start scarfing down hotdogs and margarine, the fats we eat need to be high quality REAL fats. There is a difference between butter and margarine, and butter is NOT the bad guy. I know we have been told by doctors and scientists that margarine is more healthy. That is a lie. Here is a little experiment from bestandworst.com
Try this:
Leave a tub of margarine in your garage or a shaded area. Within a couple of days you will note a couple of things: no flies, not even those pesky fruit flies will go near it (that should tell you something) It does not rot or smell differently because it has no nutritional value. nothing will grow on it. Even micro organisms will not a find a home to grow because it is nearly plastic. Might as well melt your Tupperware and spread that on your toast.
Have you ever seen mold on margarine? There is a reason for that — Margarine is one molecule away from being PLASTIC! My cat is a butter licker, and she will not touch margarine.
So how about those vegetable oils that have not been hydrogenated then? Like ‘heart healthy’ canola? Well, if you have read about how those oils are chemically extracted with industrial strength solvents, sure, you can believe they’re good for you if you like. I for one choose not to. And even if you use expeller pressed canola, consider the fact that these oils may be fine out of the bottle, but heating them as you do in cooking, causes the oil to change. You know how your pan gets this sticky coating on it that you have to scour off with a brillo pad? Try getting a brillo pad in your arteries, because that’s where you are going to need it the most. Olive oil is one of the only oils that is liquid at room temperature that can withstand heat enough to cook with it.
So, lets ditch those sissy fats, and get cooking with some REAL fat. Lard, suet, butter, and organic coconut oils. Yeah, I said lard. Let’s have some fried chicken! And for breakfast, how about some cracked wheat cereal slathered in butter, cream and raw honey? Mmmmm! Build your brain!
2. Switch to raw dairy products.
You may have noticed that I specifically stated RAW butter while talking about fats. Raw dairy is good for you. DO NOT skim the cream! Not only is it yummy, it’s good for you. Raw milk has vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and nutrients in it that are destroyed by heating. Vitamin B12, C, and D are destroyed by pasteurizing. Calcium from pasteurized milk cannot be absorbed, because the magnesium, which your body needs to be able to utilize calcium, is destroyed. Lactoferrin, which helps your body absorb iron, is destroyed by pasteurization. Lactobacilli, which enhance mineral absorption, are destroyed.
“Pasteurization destroys all the enzymes in milk— in fact, the test for successful pasteurization is absence of enzymes. These enzymes help the body assimilate all bodybuilding factors, including calcium. That is why those who drink pasteurized milk may suffer, nevertheless, from osteoporosis.” — Sally Fallon-Morell, RealMilk.com
These enzymes also facilitate digestion of lactose, which is why people who are ‘lactose intolerant’ can usually drink raw milk. This is also why people with milk allergies and asthma can often find relief by drinking raw milk, and why many autistic people see a reduction in symptoms when using raw milk. People have used raw milk for thousands of years, and the human race has survived. It has only been recently in human history that milk has become ‘bad for you,’ but that couldn’t possibly correlate with the relatively new processes of pasteurization and homogenization. Nah . . . it’s gotta be something else . . .
3. Cut white processed flour.
This is one thing that the health industry does get right. Whole grains. In lip service at least. Because the whole grain label is slapped on everything from fluffy sugar coated cereals to fake brown bread. The best way to get REAL bread is to grind your flour and make your own, which is great if you are at home all the time, which I wish I could be 🙁 To get the most out of your grains, you should have a good grain mill, because you will get the most nutrition out of flour where the grain has been soaked and sprouted before grinding. If you can’t make your own flour, you can still soak your flour before using it to bake with. Wheat comes in many varieties, and wheat is not the only grain! Get to know your flours. Bob’s Red Mill has a fantastic whole wheat pastry flour using a finely ground soft white spring wheat that makes awesome pie crusts! They also have spelt, rye, quinoa, oat, and a whole range of specialty organic stone ground flours. If you live in Oregon I am sooo jealous!
The lie here is that using whole grains means you have to sacrifice and give up that nice soft fluffy bread that you know and love. Just remember all of the many grains we have. The higher the gluten content in the flour, the better it will rise, (sorry to any celiacs 🙁 ) so use very fine grind soft white spring wheat for quick breads and use a nice hard red turkey winter wheat for baking yeast breads. Soak your flour overnight, and then beat the sponge (dough that has not had all of the flour added yet) with a good industrial strength mixer until it starts to get stringy. Then, only add enough flour so that the dough is still really sticky, and then butter your hands really good to handle it. That is how you get nice soft whole wheat bread 😉
If you don’t have time to bake, you need to become a super label reader, and make sure you know what all of those long words are on the bread bag, because the second best place to canned goods for hiding food additives is in baked goods. The fewer ingredients the better.
Always use whole grains and don’t listen to that fat bottomed little food pyramid guy that’s running after you whining “Hey, you only have to eat whole grains 80% of the time! C’mon don’t make my buddies Nabisco and General Mills mad at me!” Make the switch from white rice to brown rice, use whole steel cut rolled oats instead of quick oats, find recipes that use whole grains, or add whole grains to recipes you already have!
4. Eliminate refined sweeteners such as sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
If you want to see your body stack on the pounds, this is the way to go! Refined sugars not immediately used by the body for energy go straight to fat. And here we blamed fat for that! Well, when we eat sugar, our bodies create a bunch of insulin to stabilize the rise in blood sugar, and bam! It starts stacking up. Most people do not use the amount of energy in one day that would be necessary to burn all of the extra sugars that we eat. High fructose corn syrup is in almost everything. Read the labels! It is even in places you might not expect, like in processed meats. If you have food allergies, you have learned this already.
Raw sugars, like raw honey, contain minerals and enzymes, and are less likely to cause severe fluctuations in blood sugar and insulin levels. Our foods already have many natural sweeteners already built in. When you cut back on added sweeteners, or forgo them altogether, you will find that things like candy, or baked goods with a lot of sugar are now much sweeter than you like . . . for recipes calling for sugar, you can often cut the amount of sugar called for in half without compromising the results. Or you can substitute raw brown sugar, honey, or maple syrup. Some things you should know for substituting natural sweeteners in recipes:
“A cup of granulated sugar weighs 8 ounces. A cup of brown sugar weighs only 6. But a cup of maple syrup weighs 11 ounces and a cup of honey weighs 12. So if you were to substitute honey in a recipe that calls for brown sugar, you’d be adding twice the amount needed.
In addition, honey and maple syrup add moisture to a recipe, which can upset the texture of what you’re making. Honey adds acid to a recipe, which you might have to neutralize with the addition of a pinch of baking soda. And honey can cause baked foods to brown more quickly. Brown sugar, on the other hand, attracts moisture, so it will keep baked goods from drying out so quickly.”
- In spite of their difference in weight, you can substitute raw brown sugar for granulated white on a 1 to 1 basis, and the most significant difference will be taste.
- To use honey in place of sugar, use 7/8 cup for every cup of sugar, and reduce the liquid in the recipe by 3 tablespoons.
- To use maple syrup in place of sugar in cooking, use 3/4 cup for every 1 cup of sugar.
- To use maple syrup in place of a cup of sugar in baking, use 3/4 cup, but decrease the total amount of liquid in the recipe by about 3 tablespoons for each cup of syrup you use.
(Taken From O-Chef)
5. Switch from canned vegetables to fresh locally grown organic produce.
Canned vegetables are cooked to death, have a LOT of added salt, and have lost most if not all of their nutrients. If you have a freezer (which I highly recommend) switch to frozen vegetables. Of course fresh is best, but I find I have a lot of waste if I buy too much at once, and it is really hard to find time to go shopping as often as you need to to keep fresh vegetables on the table. That doesn’t mean frozen are best. . . Definitely the ideal is fresh, and the best way to have fresh veggies is to have your own garden. This gives you fresh vegetables as long as they are in the ground without the worries of spoilage. Of course some get to big, overripe, etc. A few hens running around will take care of that – and the side effects? Fresh eggs! Just make sure that you fence in your garden, because a few hens can decimate an entire garden in less than a day. You can read more about chickens in my backyard chickens series. Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew is the best for getting high organic yields out of very little space.
Another way to find less expensive fresh organic produce is to check your local classified adds. I have found potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, green beans, free fruit (u-pick in someones back yard) berries, and many other things in my classified ads!
These are just the basics. Some other fundamental switches would be to change your iodized table salt for unrefined sea salt, switch your meats to natural free range grass-fed beef, free range chicken, wild caught fish, and wild game, use water filtered with a reverse osmosis water filter, and quit using fluoridated toothpaste that contains glycerin. Using raw unprocessed dairy and natural foods will also eventually free you from the need for chemical underarm antiperspirants. (Yay!)
I’m sure that there is so much more that I could add, but for those of you just starting on this journey, this could possibly be really overwhelming.
So, God speed in your quest and start enjoying your new found health – You can use that extra energy to kick the big five (General Mills, Nabisco, Oscar Meyer, Meadow Gold, and Monsanto) a swift one in the rear!
