Fast(ing) Food - Honey Bean Salad

Day 67, Feast Day #35

I have been struggling to eat a decent amount of iron lately without eating a good hunk of beef or a bowl of steamed clams it seems like. Due to the constraints of my time and my income, I can't be eating steaks or mollusks weekly. It also appears that Zach and I didn't buy enough iron-rich veggies this week.So I whipped together a more primal version of a classic potluck dish, a marinated three-bean salad, in hopes of getting a little more protein in my diet on the cheap. I substituted refined sugar for honey and avocado oil for vegetable oil  Canned beans are not an ideal food for both primal (stricter people do not condone eating legumes) and non-primal reasons (the can), however, they are cheap. Zach's got to finish his doctorate degree before my pantry lacks cans of beans in it.

Note: Avocado oil is not cheap normally, but remember, I basically got this avocado oil for free. Olive oil is a cheaper substitute that you are more likely to have on hand. Also, I don't consider myself a 100% primal eater, I just have aspirations to transition to a more primal diet.

Marinated bean salad preferences are very prone to individual tastes (like meatloaf, barbecue sauce, and grits recipes). So feel free to adjust the salt, vinegar, and honey to whatever combo of sweet, sour, and savory floats your boat. Add in bell peppers or celery. Go crazy.

Honey Bean Salad (Yields 6 servings) ~153 kcal/serving
Takes 5 minutes
*BONUS* Cost me 50 cents a serving

• 1 can of beans, drained and rinsed (I used light red kidneys) ~385 kcal
• 1 can of green beans, drained and rinsed ~70 kcal
• 1 can of wax beans (sometimes called butter beans), drained and rinsed  ~70 kcal
• 1/4 of a large onion, chopped (I used a yellow one) ~15 kca
• 1/2 cup of vinegar (I used white, white wine or red wine would also work well) ~11 kcal
• 2 tbsp of honey ~120 kcal (if you aren't a big vinegar fan, you can go with even more honey, or less if you want a more sour marinade)
• 2 tbsp of avocado oil ~240 kcal (olive oil would work too)
• 1/4 tsp of celery seed ~2 kcal
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme ~1 kcal
• kosher salt to taste, I used a bit less than a tsp
• black pepper to taste (I used 1/4 tsp at about ~2 kcal)

Mix up the vinegar, honey, oil, celery seed, thyme, salt, and pepper in a large bowl, creating the marinade. 

Plop the beans and onion into the marinade. Mix. You can eat it immediately or chill in the fridge until your potluck or picnic.

Week 7 Summary

Day 51, Feast Day #27

I woke up this morning to good news from the scale. I have lost another 2 lbs, for a total of 16 lbs lost. I also started taking waist and hip measurements this month, and I have lost a half inch from both my waist and my hips. So now I am averaging a little over a 2 pound loss per week. My clothes are beginning to feel looser and friends are starting to notice the change. Here are the numbers:

Calories
Week 1: 1,437 kcal or 76% of baseline calories
Week 2: 1,938 kcal or 102% of baseline calories
Week 3: 1,680 kcal or 89% of baseline calories
Week 4: 2,196 kcal or 116% of baseline calories
Week 5: 1,829 kcal or 96% of baseline calories
Week 6: 1,531 kcal or 81% of baseline calories
Week 7: 1,954 kcal or 103% of baseline calories

While ADFing: 1,795 kcal or 95% of baseline calories
Baseline Days: 1,896 kcal

All Feast Days: 2,966 kcal or 156% of baseline calories
All Fast Days*: 471 kcal or 25% of baseline calories

For reference
Week 1: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
Week 2: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 3: 3 fast days*, 4 feast days
Week 4: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 5: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 6: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
Week 7: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
*Includes faux-fast day that was my mama's birthday dinner.

So I ,obviously like collecting data and using it to evaluate my behavior. I am kind of a numbers junkie in general. I use SaveUp as a free tool to track the money I use to pay down debt and save money. The thing with SaveUp, is you get rewarded in credits for the money you save or pay debts with and you can use credits to enter into raffles for prizes, lotteries, or play other luck-based games. After a little over a year of using SaveUp, I finally won a raffle for a $100 Whole Foods gift card. I don't normally shop at Whole Foods, but $100 of free groceries is awesome. 

I took this gift card as an opportunity to try some non-grain flours and meals and non-corn oils so Zach and I can work on eating less processed and refined corn and wheat products and start eating more primal food, in addition to the produce and meat we'd normally have on our grocery list. Tonight we enjoyed some bison sirloin steaks with mashed red potatoes (without milk) and sauteed asparagus from our grocery trip. Yum! Bison steak is great because it is leaner than regular steak. My 7 oz. steak was only ~210 calories with 47 grams of  protein and 35% of the DRV of iron. In comparison, the same size and cut of steak from a cow has ~368 calories, 44 gram of protein, and 18% of the DRV of iron.

While at Whole Foods, I also bought GT's grape chia kombucha on the recommendation of a friend, since my first kombucha experience was unpleasant. I basically had taken a swig of a friend's kombucha on a hot, humid day not knowing what I was putting in my mouth. All I could taste was a funky, fungal flavor---not refreshing like I had expected from refrigerated tea on a hot day. 

Kombucha is a fermented tea made with fungus that is becoming increasingly popular as a "living" food (there is bacteria and yeast in it). I doubt kombucha is becoming popular because of its vinegary and yeasty taste. However, the glucuronic acid in kombucha may reduce one's risk of cancer, which seems like a good trade off. Luckily, one can find kombucha in flavors, since I am too much of a wuss for the unflavored stuff.

This grape chia flavor kombucha tasted a lot better than the non-flavored kombucha I had previously, although there is more sugar from the flavoring. I like the chia seeds in there because it reminded me of drinking bubble tea. I think the mistake I made with kombucha this time was drinking it on nearly an empty stomach at the end of a fast day. My stomach was making all kinds of strange noises and I think it triggered my heartburn from the acidity. I will try to drink the rest of it on a full stomach and see if that is less cruel to my stomach. Otherwise, I may have to scrap kombucha.

Week 6 Summary

Day 45, Feast Day #24

I finished off Week 6 of fasting. I have dropped one more pound for a total of 14 lbs lost over the last 45 days. Finally the freaking scale moved after 18 days of a plateau. I think it helped I didn't go out to eat with friends during the week, and therefore I drank a lot less calories in the forms of wine and beer. Here are the numbers:

Calories
Week 1: 1,437 kcal or 76% of baseline calories
Week 2: 1,938 kcal or 102% of baseline calories
Week 3: 1,680 kcal or 89% of baseline calories
Week 4: 2,196 kcal or 116% of baseline calories
Week 5: 1,829 kcal or 96% of baseline calories
Week 6: 1,531 kcal or 81% of baseline calories

While ADFing: 1768 kcal or 93% of baseline calories
Baseline Days: 1,896 kcal

All Feast Days: 2,942 kcal or 155% of baseline calories
All Fast Days*: 477 kcal or 25% of baseline calories

For reference
Week 1: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
Week 2: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 3: 3 fast days*, 4 feast days
Week 4: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 5: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 6: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
*Includes faux-fast day that was my mama's birthday dinner.

I feel like I am back on track with this diet now that most of the birthday festivities have passed. It was good to finally see the fourth fast day in my week to be honest. I have become very accustomed to alternating between the up days and down days and just don't get as hungry nowadays. On yesterday's fast day I ended up not eating all of my allowed calories because I had so many chores and other tasks to catch up on. I finally ate around 5 p.m. when Zach was cooking some of the Amylu chicken sausages for his dinner and I finally took a break from laundry, emails, finances, organizing my life calendar, etc. to make a salad for myself.

I am still not happy with the amount of sugar I have been eating (I am my own worst critic). Although I consumed 30% less sugar this past week than my baseline, it is still not what I was aiming for. We had bought a huge amount of strawberries at Costco, so a lot of the sugars were from fruit at least.

Also, this week was my highest so far in average potassium consumed. I think I seriously need to plan my entire eating schedule around potassium if I am ever going to average the recommended amount. This past week I only averaged about 44% of the DRV, which is up from where it was. Once our avocados ripen, that should help boost those potassium numbers. 

I ended up getting a Charley horse in the early hours on Saturday morning despite my increased consumption of potassium. I haven't had a leg cramp like that in years, so I looked back at my food diary and my potassium or calcium weren't low that day, I actually met my calcium needs. It might have just been hormonal or some other fluke. Maybe it was the result of the wedding day nightmares I have been having. I think I need to keep a bottle of tonic water in the house. The quinine in tonic water is shown to lower the incidence of muscle cramps. I luckily like tonic water, although it is better with the gin and lime.

Zach and I also discussed working on cutting more of the wheat and sugar from our diet and eating more "Paleo" or "primal." We are going to work on using up the grains and processed foods we already have, since we don't want to waste money or food, and then just try not to buy more. I have to do some more research in to how primal we want to eat, since like ADF, everyone seems to have a different Paleo rules they follow. I also frankly want to do a bunch more research on the "caveman" diet itself. I am curious about this diet since I have read a lot of people having success with not only losing weight on it, but fixing their own gastrointestinal problems.

Meanwhile, I am working on compiling a list of the science papers I have been citing on a new tab for this blog. I haven't had as much spare time as I had anticipated, but hopefully I will get that done soon.