3 Ingredient Cookies!..YUMMY

A friend of mine turned me onto these little numbers through SkinnyTaste.com!  What to do with a couple over ripe bananas..throw in some oatmeal, fold in walnuts (or in my case glazed pecans because that’s what I had..) and Voila!  Breakfast, lunch or snack on the go ;)

Banana Oatmeal Glazed Pecan Cookies

Banana Oatmeal Glazed Pecan Cookies

For me the glazed pecans worked out well..cause I like brown sugar in my oatmeal and it replicated that, worked out perfectly lol

YUM!  Enjoy, the Recipe is Here!

 

Diabetes

A Clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“…TYPE 2 DIABETES, the most common form, often accompanies obesity.  As we, as a nation, continue to gain weight, our rate of diabetes spirals out of control.  The scariest figure?  1/3 of those people with diabetes don’t know yet that they have it.

You  know the situation is serious when our children, at the age of puberty, start falling prey to the form of diabetes usually reserved for adults over 40.  One newspaper illustrated the epidemic with the story of a girl who weighed 350 pounds at the age of 15, had the “adult-onset” form of diabetes and was injecting insulin into her body 3 times/day.

What is diabetes, why should we care about it and how do we stop it from happening to us?  Almost all cases of diabetes are either Type 1 or Type 2.  Type 1 develops in children and adolescents, and thus is sometimes referred to as juvenile-onset diabetes.  This form accounts for 5% -10% of all diabetes cases.  Type 2, which accounts for 90%-95% of all cases, used to occur primarily in adults age 40 and up, and thus was called adult-onset diabetes.  But because up to 45% of new diabetes cases in children are Type 2 diabetes, the age-specific names are being dropped, and the 2 forms are simply referred to as Type 1 and Type 2…”

To Be Continued….

More China Study Clips Here

 

Enchiladas Frozen Dinner by Amy’s

Tasty!! In continuation of “fast food” without sacrificing being plant based here is another great one to try and have on hand.  With rice…

Enchilada with Rice & Beans

Enchilada with Rice & Beans

Without Rice..

Black Beans & Vegetables Enchiladas

Black Beans & Vegetables Enchiladas

5 mins and you’ve got Vegan Mexican dinner…it’s not so bad not cooking sometimes ;)   YUM!!

Going in the Right Direction

Obesity is the most ominous harbinger of poor health that Western nations currently face.  Tens of millions of people will fall prey to disability, putting our health care systems under greater strain than has previously been seen.

There are many people and institutions working to reduce this problem, but their point of attack is often illogical and misinformed.  1st there are the many quick-fix promises and gimmicks.  Obesity is not a condition that can be fixed in a few weeks or even a few months, and you should be aware of diets, potions and pills that create rapid weight loss with no promise of good health in the future.  The diet that helps to reduce weight in the short run needs to be the same diet that creates and maintains health in the long run.

2nd, the tendency to focus on obesity as an independent, isolated disease is misplaced.  Considering obesity in this manner directs our attention to a search for specific cures while ignoring control of the other diseases to which obesity is strongly linked.  That is, we sacrifice context.

Also, I would urge that we ignore the suggestion that knowing its genetic basis might control obesity.  There was great publicity given to the discovery of the “obesity gene”.  Then there was the discovery of the 2nd, then the 3rd, the 4th and on and on.  The purpose behind the obesity gene search is to allow researchers to develop a drug capable of knocking out or inactivating the underlying cause of obesity.  This is extremely short-sighted, as well as unproductive.  Believing that specific identifiable genes are the basis of obesity (i.e., it’s all in the family) also allows us to fatalistically blame a cause that we cannot control.

We can control the cause.  It is right at the end of our fork.”

More China Study clips Here

 

My Family’s Pumpkin Bread :)

Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin Bread

My parents were in town for a night…my Dad LOVES the Family Pumpkin Bread….and I made it vegan.  I served it up to him warm, with vegan butter, unbeknownst to him…His exact words were “Heather, this is excellent”.

I’m having a last slice now with a cup of tea….YUM!! It combines cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, pumpkin..etc…moist, warm and a bit of vegan butter YUM..!

The Recipe is Here

 

Exercise

A clip from The China Study, by T.Colin Campbell

“….The slimming effect of physical activity is obvious.  Scientific evidence concurs.  A recent review of all the credible studies compared the relationship between body weight and exercise and showed that people who were more physically active had less body weight.  Another set of studies showed that exercising on a regular basis helped to keep off weight originally lost through exercise programs.

No surprise here either.

Starting and stopping an exercise program is not a good idea.  It is better to build it into your lifestyle so that you will become and continue to be more fit over all, not just burn off calories.  How much exercise is needed to keep the pounds off?  A rough estimate derived from a good review suggested that exercising a mere 15-40 mins/day, every day, will maintain a body weight that is 11-18 lbs lighter than it would otherwise be.

The advantages of combining diet and exercise to control body weight were brought home to me by a very simple study involving our experimental animals.  Recall that our experimental animals were fed diets containing either the traditional 20% casein (cow’s milk protein) or the much lower 5% casein.  The rats consuming the 5% casein diets had strikingly less cancer, lower blood cholesterol levels and live longer lives.  They also consumed slightly more calories but burned them off as body heat.

Some of us had noticed over the course of these experiments that the 5% casein animals seemed to be more active than the 20% casein animals.  To test this idea, we housed rats fed either 5% or 20% casein diets in cages equipped with exercise wheels outfitted with meters to record the number of turns of the wheel.  Within the very 1st day, the 5% casein-fed animals voluntarily “exercised” in the wheel about twice as much as the 20% casein-fed animals.  Exercise remained considerably higher for the 5% casein animals throughout the 2 wks of the study.

Now we can combine some really interesting observations on body weight.  A plant-based diet operates on calorie balance to keep body weight under control in 2 ways.  1st it discharges calories as body heat instead of storing them as body fat, and it doesn’t take many calories to make a big difference over the course of a year.  2nd, a plant-based diet encourages more physical activity.  And, as body weight goes down, it becomes easier to be physically active….”

More China Study clips Here

 

Black Bean Mango

This is the first of a new category of posts I’m adding – Fast Food/No-Effort Food/Food on the Go!

I hear often, ‘what about when you need to grab some fast food?’, or ‘there’s a lot of prep involved in eating plant-based, I don’t always feel like doing it’.  And I, like many of you, have many moments that I don’t feel like putting in the effort…which leads to ‘what can I just grab’…..

So, personally, I thought I’d share what I buy for my predictable, we’ll call it tired rather than lazy, moment(s), so I’m all set when the couch and I are inseparable etc. ;)

Kashi Black Bean Mango

Kashi Black Bean Mango

This is the first of many I like.  This costs me about $3.99 from my local grocery store (not so much at Wal-Mart grocery but your average grocery store), and is in my hungry little hands, feet up on the ottoman, in about 4 1/2 mins ;)   …and it’s tasty…  What’s in it?… Black beans with Onions, Roasted Peppers & Sweet Mangos, Kashi 7 Whole Grains & Sesame Pilaf with Zesty Mango Sauce…..I describe it as YUM to both my tummy and to appeasing my sometimes sedentary side ;)

I keep these handy for dinner, lunch, and to take to work.  I have even eaten them driving when I’m in a rush, I can nuke it on the way out the door lol I like the price when I compare it to ordering in, eating lunch out at work, or swinging through a fast food window.  And if you’re a bigger appetite sort, having 2 or 3 of these, mix up different flavors and kinds if you want, is more financially, and physically, savvy than a large dining in/delivery or fast food order ;)

I hope these posts help!!..and Enjoy!