Three ways to enjoy good for you foods....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 2-28-2012

Recently I got an email from Jillian Michaels titled: “Get Creative With Your Healthier Meals.”

It had examples from her weight loss customers of how they had made healthier versions of some of their old favorites with less health supporting ingredients by switching to better or less harmful ingredients.

That does work. Sometimes the healthier version tastes better than the original and it usually is as good or close to it.

That strategy we will come back to in the third part of this post.

But there are two other ways to enjoy good for you foods that weren’t in her email I wanted to add first.

1. The first way is simply to list and add to those foods you actually like from the list of foods that are unusually good for your health.

These “superfoods” are worth eating more of for health and for keeping fat off in most cases.

So, the more of them you find you like and have regularly, you win twice. You enjoy these foods and improve your health at the same time.

So to get a big list of such foods that work for you, list as many as you can that you like now. Find others and try them and keep buying and eating the ones you like.

Except for soy which is often in health harmful versions, the foods in the book, the SuperFoods books by Steven Pratt are a good place to start.

I’ve found I like unsweetened cocoa and dark chocolate and several kinds of tea and green tea. Kale cooked down at moderate temperature in extra virgin olive oil with garlic occasionally is good.

I like moderate amount of many kinds of red wine. (I would like more than that; but find it doesn’t like me and is not that health OK.)

I like pecans, walnuts, toasted almonds and almond butter, and Brazil nuts.

I like yams and sweet potatoes.

I like salads made with dark greens like romaine lettuce with extra virgin olive oil, diced onions, garlic, spices, and highlights like walnut halves or feta cheese or shrimp.

I really like coleslaw.

I like the mustard from Annie’s Naturals that is one of the very few that is MSG free. (Whole Foods carries it.)

I like organic wild blueberries and lowfat milk and oatmeal.

Though a bit less, I also like strawberries, raspberries, and sour cherries.

I like most flavors of pasta sauce but know to only buy oil free or made with extra virgin olive oil only. (I add the extra virgin olive oil myself to the oil free ones.)

I like most spices including basil, oregano, black pepper, garlic, curry blends, chili powder, and some cayenne pepper.

I actually like cooked pinto beans and lentils and black eyed peas.

I like hummus, avocado, and most guacamoles.

I like them less often but I often like salsas.

I like well cooked salmon and shrimp and scallops and lobster.

My wife has a raisin and tomato sauce and spices Crockpot lamb dish where the lamb is New Zealand grass fed only that I like a lot but not often due to the expense and time to fix it.

I would also like some beef dishes using 100% grass fed beef. But we don’t take time for them often.

And, I do like many recipes with skinless poultry. Chicken can be fixed using Chinese or Italian or American spices and recipes so that each one is different. I eat some of those on occasion.

Many people though not all also like many of these foods and drinks. But I wanted to give you an example of the variety of foods you can start with and the larger list you can build up to where all the foods are good for you and you actually enjoy them too.

2. Get used to eating the best health OK foods until they become like old friends.

I found out that eating raw broccoli florets a few times a week can cut my chances of getting the aggressive form of prostate cancer in half.

So, I just began eating some for my weekday lunches each day.

I eat them early in my lunch while I’m still hungry.

No I don’t like them as much as many of the foods on the first list. Sometimes they taste a bit grassy or harsher than normal. But I’ve always liked their crunch and how they fill me up and turn down my hunger quickly.

Now between being used them – like old friends – and how many health benefits I know they have, I look forward to them and would miss them if I couldn’t get them.

Dr Daniel Amen has a new weight loss book out. In that book, he relates how when his patients switch from fast foods to healthy foods, they find it hard at first. But many, many of them have reported this effect to him.

They tell him that it was a challenge at first to eat many of the foods on his very large health OK list instead of the junk foods they had been eating. But due to this effect, they now like the health OK foods and would miss them if they couldn’t eat them.

So, for the foods that aren’t great for your taste at first but aren’t really bad tasting either and are really good for you, pick several of the best for you ones and eat them until you get used to them.

3. Remake recipes you like but with health OK or almost OK ingredients instead of health damaging or fattening ingredients.

For example, many people like a spicy meatloaf.

But it’s not that great for you to eat the fatty hamburger from grain fed cows, bread crumbs from refined grain bread, and ketchup or BBQ sauce with high fructose corn syrup that is in some meat loaf recipes.

But like one of Jillian’s readers realized, you don’t have to make meatloaf that way.

You can get ground beef made from cows fed only grass. Since that kind of ground beef is a bit leaner, you can add some extra virgin olive oil to compensate.

You can use rolled oats, a whole grain food with no additives or bad oils in it, instead of bread crumbs from refined grain breads many of which do have things in them like high fructose corn syrup or soy oil or even hydrogenated oils.

You can use a good pasta sauce that does NOT contain high fructose corn syrup or MSG instead of a ketchup that contains high fructose corn syrup or MSG.

And, you can add canned sour cherries or walnut halves or diced onion or diced green onion for variety.

You can also try different spices. Garlic and basil for a pesto taste could work. Chili powder and a bit of cayenne pepper and some jalapeno peppers and some diced green pepper and some diced green onion would produce a different tasting meat loaf. A garlicky pasta sauce with added oregano would produce yet another taste.

In some recipes you can use no sugar apple sauce for some of the fat and extra virgin olive oil instead of butter. You can even do that and add a pat of butter after it’s cooked but still warm to add the butter flavor back using a sixth as much butter and half the total fat.

If you need a low glycemic substitute for wheat flour, you can use quinoa, pecan meal if those eating the food aren’t allergic to tree nuts, and there is even an almond flour.

If you need a gluten free version, you can use those things and you can get a gluten free buckwheat flour from the company Bob’s Red Mill.

You can change most recipes for healthier versions by deleting the bad for you ingredients and using a much healthier substitute instead.

That does work. Sometimes the healthier version tastes better than the original and it usually is as good or close to it.

But you often have to take your knowledge of what to edit out and substitutes that are not harmful or even good for you and try the new versions.

That’s why it’s a creative process as Jillian Michael’s email title suggests.

Or you can collect regular recipes where you can see easy ways to do this kind of substitution.

I also find it fun to take recipes that already are better than the older and less health OK versions and then upgrade them in two or three more ways.

Between these three methods you CAN work out ways to eat many kinds of food you like every day without eating stuff that will make you fat or sick.