OK I admit it – this is not as easy as I may have led you to believe. I was feeling quite satisfied with my first two days but then after talking it over with my Mom – she’s better at reading the fine print than I am – I realized I need to cut the fat.
Already in the first three days I’ve made at least three mistakes – probably more!
It’s not just about losing weight. The point here, it turns out, is not just eliminating animal products from your diet. It’s producing a diet that will fuel your body like the high-performance machine that it is – and that includes, sadly enough, vegetable oils and fats.
So… mistake number one… the generous bowl of guacamole with organic corn chips (fried) that I had for lunch on Day 1. Avocado as everyone knows is loaded with fat – I thought it was good fat, though, so I made my peace with it and began eating a lot of it.
My Mom drew it to my attention.
“I think this is supposed to be a low-fat diet,” she pointed out.
“Well, but surely they didn’t mean avocados and organic corn chips!”
I made a beeline to the Kickstart folks to find out the bottom line. Turns out Mom was right. But there’s an easy fix.
Jill Eckart, nutrition programs manager for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, came to the rescue with a recipe for do-it-yourself corn chips without the oil, and for “mockamole” or low-fat guacamole, using a puree of frozen peas in place of about half the avocados.
The second mistake was the squash-blossom soup I improvised. Sauteing the onions in oil is a no-no; better to water-saute them with a little vegetable broth or Bragg’s. Here’s an article that explains the technique of water sauteing – when done correctly, the veggies taste almost like they’ve been sauteed in oil, as my mom has demonstrated.
My third mistake: coconut oil. Some nutritionists advocate the use of coconut oil despite the fact that it’s highly saturated because of its ability to convert bad cholestrol. But like other saturated fats, it behaves almost like animal fats in the body, Jill explained.
“I think that it’s really not that you messed up or you’re bad – it’s a process. It takes time for anyone to get their bearings – dust yourself off, learn, and get back on it.”
Let’s see how it goes today.
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