CathyM Weight Loss & Health Blog

The Sonoma Diet has 10 power foods that are chosen because they are rich in nutrients with few calories. Strawberries are one of these foods. There are only 45 calories in a cup of strawberries and they have 4 grams of fiber. Strawberries have more vitamin C than citrus fruit and are believed to be anti-inflammatory. They are also high in folate, potassium and antioxidants. They also offer some protection against cancer and heart disease. For more information on the healthful benefits of strawberries, visit the LSU AgCenter News on local strawberries in Louisiana.

I am fortunate to live in California where we also have fresh strawberries. I can get them year round at the local farmer’s market but this time of year is the peak season. I picked up a 3 pack yesterday for $5. The strawberries are incredibly sweet! They are very ripe and should be eaten soon, I will probably finish them up tomorrow. Buying locally is good for the economy and also good for getting the freshest produce.

I have now lost 14 pounds on the Sonoma Diet. There are many aspects of the diet that I love and most important is the food is delicious and satisfying. This diet is not low carb or low fat. However, the carbs are unrefined – either fresh fruit and vegetables or whole grains. We’re talking 100% whole wheat or whole grain bread (not wheat bread but whole wheat bread). I currently have the whole grain bread from Milton’s which has 5 grams of fiber in a slice. Cereal also has to be whole grain and typically with 8 grams of fiber in a serving – you really have to read the labels to find cereal with that much fiber. I have also learned to cook with many new whole grains including quinoa, barley, and wheet berries. You mind think that these foods would be bland and tasteless but to the contrary, they have a natural nutty texture and the Sonoma Diet recipes include lots of spices and flavor.

There are so many health benefits to fiber. From a diet perspective, the high fiber foods take a little longer to chew and to digest – that is good – makes you fill up and burn calories eating. From a health perspective, fiber helps with digestion, lowers cholesterol, and stablizes blood sugar. This can help lower the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The Mayo Clinic has a great write up on the benefits of a high fiber diet.

Is there any downside to this high fiber diet? Yes, there is one, the food takes longer to cook. The Sonoma Diet will be tough to follow if you don’t have time to prepare the food. You’ll have to learn some short cuts, prepare ahead, and use your leftovers. For me, it has been well worth the extra time in the kitchen.

If this sounds like a diet plan for you, visit Sonoma Diet Online to try this wonderful diet.

Last month I left for New Zealand weighing 169 pounds and I came back at the same weight. That’s a great accomplishment for 3 weeks of travel! I found it easy to stick with the essentials of the Sonoma Diet Online in New Zealand. While arranging our trip, I looked for B & B’s that mentioned fresh produce as part of their breakfast (most did). Some even mentioned smoked salmon or whitebait fish for breakfast (I liked that too). I also knew that we would stay a week in a beautiful house where we would cook our own meals which would give me the oppotunity to cook Sonoma Diet style.

My expectations were met and exceeded. The first meal we had in New Zealand was at a beautiful restaurant overlooking the water. It was lunch and we wanted New Zealand green mussels. First, they don’t put white bread baskets on the table – yea! Second, they serve delicious fresh food in right sized proportions. The mussels were perfect, a great start to eating wonderful food in moderation in New Zealand. For breakfast the next morning at the B & B, I noticed that the 3 cereals offered were healthy choices. None of this sugar coated stuff like in the US. We tried the Weetabix – New Zealand’s most popular cereal – along with fresh fruit.

While driving through the country we of course noted the miles and miles of grazing sheep and cattle. Another great thing about the meat in New Zealand – it is all free range because they have so much grazing land! Likewise with the poultry, the chickens are also free range. Everyone in New Zealand lives pretty close to water and seafood is also a major component of their food. We enjoyed scallops, fish, mussels, oysters, crayfish (spiny lobster), and paua (abalone). All local and prepared in a variety of delicious ways. Fish and chips is a popular menu item, so not everything was Sonoma Diet compatable, but there was plenty of healthful food to satisfy me.

Just as much of the meat is free range, so also is much of the produce organic. While in Blenheim, we were able to shop at the Sunday Farmer’s Market. It was marvelous! The fruits were similar to what you would expect in summer in the US, strawberries, blueberries, plums, apples, and more. The vegetables were also great – green beans, cabbage, potatoes, tomatoes, and more. All was of a very high quality. We also picked up hazelnuts, and local cheeses, and bacon that seemed more like what we would refer to as Canadian bacon.

A part of the Sonoma Diet that I really enjoy is a glass of wine with dinner. Well, New Zealand has the perfect climate for wine and lots to choose from. We spent a day in the wine country and visited several wineries stocking up for our week on Arapawa Island where there are no stores. New Zealand is most famous for white wines especially sauvignon blanc, and along with chardonney, and riseling. We picked up some great wines to go with our many seafood dinners. We also found some wonderful pinot noirs.

This blog is about healthy food but I also have to mention that the people of New Zealand have to be the friendliest and most helpful people of the world. Always willing to help you find your way. And of course the country is beautiful – Have you seen Lord of the Rings? – this is the place! Outdoor activities are fantastic, we enjoyed some of the best scuba diving in the world. There is also unlimited options for tramping (hiking) as well as adventurous activities such as bungie jumping.

We had a perfect 3 weeks and are looking forward to an opportunity to return to New Zealand for another visit.

There’s an article yesterday about “Americans opt for healthy eating, not diets.” Eight out of 10 dieters said their goal was both to lose weight and improve their health. The Sonoma Diet tries to meet these goals with wholesome, fresh, and delicious food. I have just finished the first week and all of the food has been delicious.

I ordered The Sonoma Diet Book from Amazon and it arrived today. Although the online program is great, it does help to have the reference book too for quick answers on some things. One of my questions was can I occasionally substitute other alcohol for wine. The answer is no and the reason given is that only wine has enough healthy nutrients to make the extra calories worth it.

A couple of points from the introductory chapter of the book. The Sonoma Diet is not low carb or low fat. There are plenty of satisfying carbs and they are all whole grains – high fiber and healthy! The fats emphasize olive oil which has been shown to be heart healthy. By not depriving carbs and fats, this diet is satisfying and I hope one that I can continue with as an eating lifestyle for a very long time.

One thing I disagree with is the statement that it is “Simple for busy lives.” The meals take a long time to prepare. About 2 – 4 hours a day. Many of the lunch meals have as much preparation time as the dinners. I think that the longer I am on it, I will develop ways to shorten the preparation time or make substitutions but for now I am trying to stick fairly close to the menus offered online. I love the food and am willing to put in the time because of that.

I have a few more days on Wave 1 (1st 10 days of the plan are the most strict) and I look forward to seeing what new food alternatives there will be in Wave 2.

This one seems so obvious but we don’t always follow that wisdom. Why do we eat when we are not hungry? Because it feels good to eat. Maybe we are stressed, maybe we are at a party and the food just looks and smells so wonderful. If we stop to think if we are really hungry, we can be mindful of our eating behaviour. If we still want to eat after being mindful, we can take small portions. For me, often just a bite or two of that rich dessert is all I really want.

If for whatever reason, we don’t follow this wisdom and eat way too much, it can make us feel bloated, stuffed, and sometimes even nauseated. It’s best then to give the stomach a break for a day. Wait till you feel hungry, eat smaller high fiber meals, and drink lots of fluids (preferrably good old plain water).

Today I bought two cans of SPAM (yes they use all caps in the name) at the grocery store. The first observation is that spam doesn’t get a lot of respect, even at the grocery store it did not get much shelf space. Next observation was that the predominant type was turkey spam. That’s right turkey spam. Even spam is on the health kick! I did not buy the turkey spam, I wanted the real deal. I did purchase an original SPAM and a SPAM Lite to report what the difference might be. A serving size is defined as 2 ounces (the can is 12 ounces). I would think that a typical serving should be 3 – 4 ounces but based on 2 ounces we get in the traditional spam 180 calories, 16g of fat, 6g of saturated fat, and 40mg of cholesterol. In the lite version we get 110 calories with 8g of fat, 3g of saturated fat and also 40mg of cholesterol. Sodium drops from 790mg to 580mg. Spam has done a reasonable job of making their product more healthy! Now I might have to open both at the same time to give you my taste evaluation – later. The other thing that has always interested me about spam is that they eat a lot of it in Hawaii. For some humorous and factual trivia about spam, visit their website, SPAM FAQs.

So what is the real reason that I am writing about spam? I am really getting tired of the spam on the Internet. There are the spam emails (we all get them) and there are the spam forms (any website with a contact form gets tons of spam) and now there are the spam blog posts. It’s time consuming, frustrating, and annoying to have to deal with so much spam! It’s caused me to wonder if this blog was such a good idea and to loose some motivation for writing here. So now that I have that off my chest, time to go delete some more spam posts.

Coming soon, New Years Resolutions including writing more here, loosing weight, getting rich, being healthy, the usual stuff.

P.S. Just found a timely article from Computerworld on the Same Subject, Spam: The digital coal in your stocking.

There is a lot of concern about over-eating on Thanksgiving but really it’s just one day out of the year. And if we eat responsibly, it can be a healthy day too. Look at all of the good things we can eat on Thanksgiving:

Turkey – Low fat white meat.
Green Beans – Great vegetable.
Yams – Lots of beta carotene.
Pumpkin Pie – Also lots of beta carotene.
Mashed Potatoes – OK not so many vitamins here and a bit of a carb (we used to call that starch). I like cooking purple potatoes with the skin on and adding lots of garlic – that has to be good for us!
Dressing – Likewise a bit heavy on starch but add some oysters loaded with zinc and giblets with iron as well as celery, onions, and sage.
Cranberries – High in vitamin C, known to prevent urinary tract infections, high in fiber. Cannot say enough good things about cranberries! Too bad we need lots of sugar to make them palatable. I make a cranberry salad with oranges and pecans – delicious!

So what’s so bad about Thanksgiving meals? Nothing really except that sometimes we eat too much. Ok, we should watch the butter and whipped cream too. As always, moderation is the key!

The waters have been warm off of California. What does that have to do with my diet? The warm waters bring in fish to the area that otherwise might not be here. In particular, the seas are full of bonito. Bonito are related to and resemble tuna but are smaller. For the last few weeks they have been plentiful and we troll for them along the coast. We catch a half dozen or so, bring them home and make sashimi, spicey tuna rolls, poke, tuna salad, and my favorite is the bonito pan fried with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and coarse salt.

There is lots of research about the benefits of omega 3’s. Just today in Yahoo! New from the American Journal of Preventitive Medicine:

Fish oil could potentially save more lives than cardiac defibrillators, devices used to revive individuals whose hearts have stopped beating and to prevent and treat life-threatening heart arrhythmias, researchers estimate in a new report.

I believe that fresh fish is always better than frozen and that fresh food is almost always better than supplements. I found that the Australian Consumer’s Association Choice agrees with me (or I agree with them): Oils ain’t oils in the frozen fish world

Now is this bonito diet helping with my weight loss goals. Maybe. Because of my rotator cuff injury, I have been doing far less exercise than I normally do. I also have not been focused on dieting. Yet I have managed to maintain my 10 pound weight loss. That’s good.

I will see if I can find some nutritional information on bonito and come back and post that later.

Social eating can be a problem when trying to loose weight. The first week of this diet I avoided it all together. I needed to get a good start without any temptations. It is very easy for me to say to myself that I will enjoy a party and worry about my weight the next day and then the next day. To really loose weight, I can’t do that.

I survived the first week with no social life and decided that from here on out I would try to eat and drink in moderation at social functions. Most weight loss tips will recommend bringing your own food to social gatherings however there are times when it just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. On Sunday this week a couple had prepared a home cooked, full Southern breakfast for all of us to partake of at our yacht club. I decided in advance that there was probably a good chance that she would have fruit and that in any case I would eat everything but in limited quantities. It worked out fine because I thought it through beforehand and followed my plan. Fortunately it was a buffet and a I was able to serve myself small quantities of each food and there was fruit too! I made sure that I had a water bottle in front of me at all times and again was glad that no one encouraged me to drink champagne. Its hard for me to turn down a drink but this diet is important and a little champagne was not what I needed. This upcoming week-end will be a challenge, 3 different eating events. Saturday afternoon, a gathering for a friend that passed away this week. Saturday night tri-tip dinner at the yacht club, and Sunday, our turn to host a Father’s Day lobster brunch at the yacht club (and I will bring fruit).

Key Points for Social Eating:

It’s a wonderful time of the year for fresh fruits and vegetables. I am fortunate to live in Southern California and have close access to the Torrance market. In order to sell produce at the farmer’s market it has to come directly from a California farmer. Today I picked up strawberries, blueberries, nectarines, apples, tomatoes, purple potatoes, green beans, okra, onions, cucumber, and cabbage. Some good things about these choices:

You can see from this list why I say that strawberries are one of the best fruits, especially when you are trying to watch the calories.

Blueberries are excellent too and I was surprised to see how much fiber they have. Blueberries are known for their antioxidants which “help neutralize harmful by-products of metabolism called free radicals that can lead to cancer and other age related diseases.” This is from the Blueberry Council website. I do not always buy organic but the farmer today told me that his blueberries were organic and that most blueberries are not. A search in Google for blueberries pesticides does come up with quite a few discussions on pesticides on blueberries so I am glad I bought organic today (although they were more expensive).

Nectarines – I just love to eat them and they are high in vitamin C and potassium and a fair amount of fiber and antioxidants.

And you know what they say about apples, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. This saying dates back to 1866 according to the Friedman School of Nutrition. I was on a popular diet plan about 20 years ago that included 2 fresh fruits every day, one of which was an apple. They encouraged us to get the biggest, juiciest apple we could find. Too bad I didn’t know about the farmer’s market back then!

I am doing this first week of my diet/exercise program by myself, with the help of this blog! I also plan to research some of the online diet programs and when I find one I like, give it a try and write a review. One of my main criteria for choosing a plan will be that it has a strong emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables (no diet shakes or pre-packaged foods for me except as occasional fill in when there is no time to prepare fresh).