Yes, you read that correctly. Today we are going to talk about the food groups that rarely make it into my diet. I have been doing a lot of research and reading on lowering cholesterol the natural way because I have a huge problem with those particular medications (they make my joints ache) and I have bad BAD family history of heart disease and high cholesterol, bad LDL, and a not so good calcium scan a few years ago. In the last six months, I’ve lost some weight (not enough for my heart – if the waist to height ratio thing is to be believed). I’ve 98% given up white bread/carbs – and I’ve learned to get plant sterols/stenols into my diet, and I’ve reduced my body fat to protein ratio tremendously.
In a recent magazine, I read something about the work of Dr. Dean Ornish on reversing heart disease and I just read his book called The Spectrum. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m doing very well … but not enough. And the one big change I need to make is to add fruits and vegetables to my diet. If I do this, I am sure I will stop reaching for the tostitos (the 2 % of white carbs I find it hard to give up) because I just won’t be hungry enough to want to eat them anymore. Or so I tell myself.
I am the kind of person who needs things laid out for me. I’m regimented. I don’t like to experiment. Once I find something I like, I can eat it forever. I don’t need variety. Seriously. But reaching for fruits and vegetables as a snack or part of a meal isn’t natural to me. I need to learn how. And to do that, I need suggestions.
Easy suggestions on how to easily incorporate them into my diet. What will make them more tasty? What will go with them that’s healthy that might make me WANT to eat them? PLEASE …. beyond cut up an apple? HELP!
Carly Phillips would like to take 100% credit for all her stories but the truth is, Carly’s strength is writing family, emotion, funky elderly people and animals. She couldn’t plot her way out of a paper bag, which is why she smartly found her plotmonkey pals early on in her writing career. Thanks to their support, Carly is now a NYT Bestselling author of 23 plus novels. Because writing doesn’t keep her busy enough, Carly is also a wife, a mother of one preteen and one teenage daughter, the primary care giver of her soft coated Wheaten terrier and an expert carpool mom.
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Hi Carly!
My first suggestion is to look for organic fruits and vegetables. They often taste better. Start off your day with a banana. They are filling. Almost every night we have a salad with raw vegetables because they are best for you. Find a salad dressing that you like the taste of and you will enjoy the salad or you can put olive oil and red wine vinegar in a bottle with some herbs. Good luck!
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I think making eating fruits & veggies fun makes it easier to incorporate into your diet. At least that works for me.
My friend is good at this – and she makes it easy. Cuts up orange slices in octagonal shapes, adds blueberries and grapes for a lovely yet simple arrangement. She also is big on salads, but not just any kind – for lunch the other day she made a tropical salad, with red & yellow peppers, lettuce, pineapple, shredded carrots. It looked great and tasted wonderful. You could do the same with fruit – add apple slices and walnuts and/or berries and add a light raspberry vinagrette. I can actually eat the salad w/o dressing sometimes, then I don’t feel so guilty about extra calories.
Hope you find something that works!
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Most of the grocery stores sell the pre-cut carrot sticks and celery. Divide out servings into baggies for quick snacks. Red, yellow, and green peppers are also a great veggie snack. You can do the same with apples, blueberries, strawberrie and other fruits. My friend makes a wonderful salad with all sorts of veggies and adds artichoke hearts and hearts of palm. It makes the salad more filling and is wonderful with a light salad dressing.
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I don’t know if you like spinich or not but my mother in law makes this dish that my family loves.
Take cooked chicken breast (2 or3) and cut it up and set to chill.
Next cook up about two cups of wholw wheat past(Rotini’s, shells, ect…)
Rinse with cold water until cool.
In a large bowl mix Chicken, pasta and add crutons and a bag of fresh spinich. Then toss with your favorite brand of low fat ceasar dressing. Serve cold!
It is very yummy and filling!
Good luck Carly!
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I find that if the veggies and fruit are cut up, I am more likely to eat them. I don’t like to “work’ for them. LOL. I also have a chicken salad for lunch (ie. precooked grilled chicken strips from the deli section, prebagged salad and add some bagged brocolli/califlower mix and baby carrots and whatever I can find that I can just throw in….no cutting required). Then, I have a low fat dressing I like.
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I try to reach for baby carrots or carrot “chips” (sometimes you can find bags in the pre-made salad section) whenever I want something crunchy. Nacho Doritos are my downfall. I use low-fat or no-fat dressing to dip them in. Wishbone No-fat Bleu Cheese is good. Or I make the Lipton’s Onion Dip with no-fat sour cream.
Use oatmeal for a filler in meatloaf. I also have a recipe for Oatmeal Blueberry bread for the bread machine.
I’m not big on fruits and veggies either, but I’ll eat a ton of salad. Good luck, Carly! I need to get back on my diet so I look half-way decent for RWA.
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I struggle with incorporating fruits and vegetables into my diet as well. I always feared the fruits/vegetables would go bad before I got the chance to eat them – and then I just wasted money — that’s when I discovered frozen fruits/vegetables. I’m literally addicted to frozen raspberries.
They’re sweet and tangy and just the right snack that I can eat them at any time of the day. Sometimes I throw in some blueberries and strawberries too – but you have to buy the chopped frozen strawberries otherwise it’s a hassle. You can also put these in cereal in the morning.
Another fun snack is the old banana and peanut butter (or apple and peanut butter)…very filling.
I agree that I don’t like to work for my fruits/vegetables either – the problem is if there is a watermelon cut up in the fridge already, I’ll sit there and eat the entire thing in one sitting. (it has to be cut in little chunks though so I don’t get messy – and you can certainly buy a watermelon and delegate the cutting of it
)
As you can see I haven’t mentioned anything about vegetables…I’m still trying to work that part out…
Hope this helps! And I’ll be checking back for ideas for myself…
<3 J
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Hi Carly!
Your blog popped up on my Google search for plant sterols and I noticed that you are battling high cholesterol, but have a down fall for tortilla chips. I wanted to let you know that you have a solution that allows you to enjoy your tortilla chips while helping lower your cholesterol. I started with a company called Corazonas just over a year ago at which time my LDL, “the bad stuff” was at 182. The reason I left my former company to join this one is that they make heart healthy snacks that are clinically proven to help lower cholesterol and since I have high cholesterol I thought it was a great fit. We infuse plant sterols into our chips that allow you to easily incorporate plant sterols into your daily regimen while enjoying a great tasting snack.
The reason I am such a believer and now a major investor is that I personally took the Corazonas Challenge and dropped my LDL from the 182 prior to starting with the company to 131 within 3 months of starting with the company. I was shocked as well as my doctor because he told me either drop your cholesterol or I will prescribe statins which I had no interest in. I make sure that I continue to incorporate plant sterols in my regimen by eating my 2oz a day with meals so I can keep my cholesterol in check.
I am not the only one who has seen these types of results. The clinical study Brandies University did on our chips showed up to 15% reduction in LDL cholesterol. All of our employees have taken the challenge and have lowered their cholesterol. We get letters all the time from consumers telling their story of how they took the challenge and dropped their cholesterol numbers by 12, 22, 38 points. We are very excited and passionate about what we do and I would encourage you to try our new Whole Grain Tortilla chips that provide 18 grams of whole grain, 3 grams of fiber and are cooked in what is called high oleic oils which means heart healthy oil. Best of all, they taste great. By the way, if you are a Costco shopper, our new Whole Grain Squeeze of Lime will be showing up in all Costco’s across the country by the end of April.
Good luck with your commitment to lower your cholesterol and I hope you find Corazonas chips a great way to lower your cholesterol while still satisfying your craving for a great tasting tortilla chip.
All the best,
Matt
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Small salad to start off lunch and dinner, if you don’t go with a meal-sized salad. Get the single serving fruit cups in the grocery store, for grabbing on the run when you don’t have self-contained fresh fruit (bananas, apples, pears, etc.) on hand. Get pre-sliced celery, carrots, etc. These make good between meal, low calorie snacks.
If you eat oatmeal, which you probably do since you’re fighting high cholesterol, add fruit to your cereal or always add a side serving. Fresh blueberries, sliced strawberries, mandarin orange slices, pineapple chunks, raisins, etc. Likewise, add fruit to your frozen yogurt.
If you still do fast food, which you probably try hard to avoid but slip like the rest of us from time to time, go to Wendy’s and get the fruit replacement for the fries. BK and McD might have similar, not sure.
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V8 Juice and the V8 Fruit Fusions- both give you veggies or fruit and you don’t have to work at it at all. Even though I do eat veggies and fruit- a lot-I find that they help out.
My big downfall is carbs too- I limit my bread to either 2 slices of toast or an enlish muffin in the morning with Nutella. It gives me my chocolate for the day and usually staves it off. Pasta is my downfall, but I have discovered Dreamfields by Ronzoni. It has only 5 grams of digestable carbs and is made for diabetics especially. Takes a little longer to cook, but is really good. Give it a try too.
Also, salads are great but it is the rest of the stuff you put on them that kills it. I dip my fork in dressing and then pick up the salad that way. I use very little dressing but don’t miss it being drenched in it. Non-fat is ok as long as there is some fat in the salad, ie Avocado. Without any fat, your body can not digest the food properly and it is absorbed as calories. So use low-fat dressing, or even a regular one. By Dipping it, you use so little you barely notice the difference.
I ate apples, clementines and bananas along with single serve packets of Emerald Trail Mix while I was on the road. I seldom stopped for lunch and still felt full before I stopped for the night. Worked great!
Oddly enough my dr says my numbers are really good- right where they should be so she has a hard time finding a reason to justify yelling at me about loosing weight. I am just one of the lucky ones I guess, but I still try to eat healthly.
I refuse to totally give up chocolate and carbs though!!
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I am not big into fruit either but I do try to keep a bowl of washed grapes setting on the table and if I need a snack I will grab some of them and I do try to keep bananas around, I need all the brain fuel I can get.
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Carly, I can’t imagine a life with fruits and veggies. My body just naturally craves them I guess. One thing you might want to try is “Soluble Fiber Forumla” by Yerba Prima. You can order it off the internet but you should also be able to get it at your local vitamin/health food store. Your cholesterol will plummet! Mine is “157″. My husband’s dropped 40 points in one month. My mother’s dropped from 250 to 209 in one month. Exercise will also help drop your numbers. Get yourself a treadmill or elliptical trainer or whatever kind of machine you think you can use on a regular basis. Set up a television and DVD player so you can watch TV or a movie while you’re working out.
The following is a tasty, healthy recipe for Fruit Salad with Honey Dressing to help you get fruits into your diet. You could have this for lunch or a cup for a mid afternoon pick up.
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, plus the juice 1 lemon
1 1/2 teaspoons poppy seeds
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon prepared mustard
1 apple, cored and diced
1 banana, sliced
1 avocado, peeled and sliced
1 (11-ounce) can mandarin oranges, drained
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
Directions
For the dressing, combine the honey, orange juice, oil, 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, poppy seeds, salt, and mustard in a jar with a tight lid; cover and shake well. Toss the apple, banana, and avocado with juice from 1 lemon to prevent the fruit from turning brown. Combine the fruit, raisins, and nuts in a glass bowl. Add the dressing and stir gently. Serve on red leaf lettuce.
Hope this helps
Cher, I just love those “party group” guys
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One thing I was told by my nutritionist (for my low sodium diet) is also to not ‘beat yourself up’. One bad meal does not kill the whole diet. Just get back on it.
McD’s does have apple dippers. My middle son eats them all of the time instead of fries (and chain sit downs also have fruit options instead of fries for kids, so ask :)). Just don’t do the ‘dip’. It’s not really that bad.., but you know.
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Since I love fresh fruit & veggies I don’t have a problem including them in my eating. That said, I also have a sweet tooth that I have trouble ignoring! I love cookies & chocolate, I try not to eat to many. Pretty soon it will be to warm to bake so there won’t be cookies, but I will probably find something else in their place!! Oh yea, ice cream!! My doctor said it is a terrible invention!! I only buy the good stuff. I eat a banana almost everyday. Once in awhile I don’t make it to the store, then there aren’t any for me to eat!! I am looking forward to our Farmer’s Market starting again in May for all the yummy fresh vegetables & fruit to eat. There is one vendor that has lettuce with such a good taste just thinking about it makes me crave salad. Almost everyone at our Farmer’s Market sell organic fruit & veggies which makes everything not only taste better but is healthier. Yum, yum!
Good luck, Carly. I hope you find a soultion that works for you so you are healthier, which will make you feel better. A good walk everyday will help also. I did almost 2.5 miles this morning.
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Hi Carly, I have to say i love green vegetables! Asparagus and artichokes are my favorite. If you want to flavor it up you can put a little oil and a touch of garlic into the water while cooking the asparagus, for the artichokes once they’re done cooking i like to sprinkle a fat free raspberry vinaigrette into the leaves, then a put a little dressing into a bowl and dip the leaves for extra flavor! Precut baby carrots are always good to snack on, apples and peanut butter is a really good munchie! During the summer, strawberries, raspberrys, and blackberries are the best. If you have a farm stand near you i would recommend going there first, the fruit will be fresher. Good luck
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You guys are the best! I will print out all these comments and see if I can work them into my day. I also eat something called Kardea bars (www.kardeanutrition.com) and they are delicious. But that’s cholesterol. I’m going to try the chips Matt suggested too! And then you guys for the fruit and veggies!
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How about a fruit smoothie in the mornings for breakfast? You can use fresh/frozen fruit and blend it with low fat milk and low fat yogurt! Or, you can make one for a snack!
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My husband had an heart attack .so i had to swich his diet around he
would not reach for an piece of fruit so i had to finds ways to get him to eat it.so i would make fruit drinks for him.
CUBAN BATIDO
1 1/2 CUBED FRESH PINE APPLE
1 CUP ICE
3/4 CUP MILK
1/2 CUP ORANGE JUICE
3 TABLES SUGAR
COMBINE PINEAPPLE,ICE,ORANGE JUICE,AND SUGAR
IN BLENDER PUREE
MAKES 2 TALL GLASSES
AN BERRY GOOD FOR YOU SMOTHIE
1 1/2 CUPS FRESH OR FROZEN STRAWBERRYS
1 CUP FRESH OR FROZEN BLUEBERRYS
1 CUP APPLE JUICE
I 6OZ CONTAINER MIXED BERRY OR VANILLA YOGURT
1/2 CUP FRESH OR FROZEN BERRYS
3 ICE CUBIES
COMBINE STRAWBERRYS BLUEBERRYS ,APPLE JUICE JUICE ,YOGURT AND BLUEBERRYS PUREED AND MIXTURE IS SMOOTH.
ADD 2 ICE CUBES BLEND UNTIL SMOOTH
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Hey guys….there are so many wonderful suggestions here…I don’t really watch what I eat, very bad girl, I am…and I am not partially to just picking some veges and stuffing my face, so these could come in handy…
When I was younger, the best way to get the required fruit intake was through juices…growing up in Jamaica, we made juice out of most fruits…my fav will always be mango juice…but, the fruit punch my family made, with what they call organic fruits now, was the best source…I ate a lot of avocado because I loved it…I learned later that it was what they call good fat, so of course I upped the ante and ate it more often…sometimes I ate it by it self or made an avocado sandwich…I have tried the V8 fusion drinks and those are pretty good…I was leery at first, but they really aren’t that bad…good luck Carly….
Peace and love,
Paula R.
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Also, freeze cut up berries (individually, of course, not in the container they come in).I have heard it is delicious!
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I’ve always really enjoyed fruits and some vegetables. My favorite has always been apples and applesauce.
However, my mom has adjusted her diet through Weight Watchers because she needed to lose weight and has since discovered one of her favorite snacks is frozen red grapes. She’ll buy them in large bunches, rinse them off, and then put them into containers, without lids, and freeze them. They have basically replaced all the sweets she used to eat.
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Carly, I have the same problem. It’s not that I don’t like to eat fruits & vegetables, I just don’t like to go through the trouble of preparing them! When I do make the effort, I’m always glad I did.
Fortunately, the girls are good at assembly-line salad making!
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Karen, I love Clementine tangerines (think ev mentioned also them–hi, ev…) They are easy to peel, don’t have seeds & taste great. They are, however, a “winter” fruit, so, they will be unavailable in a month or so. But, before they are gone, buy a box (a big one [sort of a small flat], not one like you get with strawberries). You’ll love them.
Patricia
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I can’t do the statin meds, either. I tried the low-carb thing and it gave me acid reflux.
Okay, for the veg…My fried does a vegetable chili. She does the regular meat, beans and tomato part (ground turkey) and then ‘hides’ the good-for-you stuff. She finely shreds carrot, zucchini and broccoli stalks to make them less visible. I think she also throws in some tofu. The more spicy you like your chili, the more stuff you can hide.
Vegetable broth can be used to cook things like pasta and rice. I use it to steam other vegetables.
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I can’t really add much that hasn’t already been said, but I’ll say it anyway.
I find fruit smoothies for breakfast are a really straight-forward, easy way to get fruit into my diet (since I don’t eat it any other way). One piece of advice I have been given though – is be careful when consuming smoothies or juices as they usually contain more fruit/veges than you would be able to eat if they weren’t in drink form.
In terms of other meals – sometimes its just a case of making myself eat veges. Almost anything that uses minced meat can be good for getting in veges – just grate the veges and stir them in.
I don’t mind chopping up my veges, but if I haven’t chopped up the carrots, celery etc ahead of time then I’m more inclined to grab a chocolate bar. Hummus and salsa are good for dipping carrot sticks into just be careful that not too much is used.
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When I taught Home Economics, I had my students make plans to “eat the rainbow” in their recipes. Have something red, blue, green, and yellow on their plates. These usually turned out to be fruits/vegretables.
I also taught them that the least amount of things done to a foodstuff, the better it is for you. It should be as close to its original form as possible. Instead of the applesauce, eat the apple.
There are alot of hints for how to fix fruits and vegetables on websites. If you like avocados or apples, just google that and you will come up with alot of hints by such places as the Wahsington Apple Assocaition, California Avocado s, etc.
Try to include nuts and seeds and yogurts; these are easy ways to provide an added taste to them.
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Hi Carly,
Keep up the good work! I’m also on a diet and I find that a banana or apple in the morning is filling. You may try cutting up a variety of fruit to make a fruit salad or to just add to a yogurt of your choice. The yogurt is good for the calcium intake also.
I like a nice crisp salad to go with lunch or sometimes dinner too. I like mine with vinegar. I’ve read that vinegar is so good for your health in so many different ways! So, 2 birds with 1 stone, right?
I’m just waiting for those summer time veggies—Red Maters, Cukes, etc… I think they just taste better then, not like winter cardboard.
Good Luck and Keep us Posted.