warrior meal: max out veg+fruits

My warrior diet has run for a few months since May (or Apr) 2020:

• 🙂 breakfast + lunch usually skipped
• many small snacks like starch, liquid and a wide variety
• 🙂 the big meal is pushed out as late as possible, average 11pm to midnight.

However, after the big meal, after I’m 60% full or 70% full, I often end up taking in quite a lot of comfort foods such as ice cream, bread cake. It’s like a supper right after the big meal. I think it is driven by the wrong-time  temptation because at this TIME there’s no real hunger. What can I do to reduce this supper?

1. I would consider fruits as healthy choice for this supper, but it seldom features fruits for some reason 😦
2. smoothie is another idea I have tried with limited success.
3. One idea I’m pushing is eating as much raw veg as possible in the big meal, and minimizing starch as much as possible but not deprivation

I can’t enjoy celery snack But..#other raw

In American culture, celery stalk is a popular snack. (So is baby carrot.) I often feel inferior and weak that I can’t tolerate these extremely healthy raw veg, but

• but most people brought up on Chinese food can’t tolerate it either
• but in U.S. most people would eat these raw snacks with a high-calorie companion such as cheese
• but I can enjoy raw reddish (including white), which is Not a “palatable” American snack
• but I can also enjoy raw onion, a common ingredient in Subway but not a popular snack by itself.
• …. In conclusion, I have a strong tolerance for raw veg. I won’t bother to debate on ‘stronger-than’.

This situation parallels yoga — where I’m constrained in many motions but very flexible in others. I tend to feel inferior and weak … unfairly.

increase tolerance4 raw veg#deeper-green

• The higher my tolerance for raw veg, without any taste-enhancer, the better my chance of long-term health. Similarly,
• The higher my tolerance for home yoga practice without any help, the better my chance of long-term health

Goal: slowly strengthens my tolerance of these absolutely healthy foods. Higher tolerance = deeper-green zone. Here are the toughest raw veg —

1. celery — Americans eat it raw but Chinese always cook it
2. carrot,
3. red cabbage

This tolerance goes a long way towards lifelong healthy diet habits. This habit is not easy to form, and extremely valuable. For eg, If I can tolerate celery, red cabbage etc, then I can basically eat any raw veg.

This blogpost on less-tasty foods  goes beyond raw veg.

Caution — if i can tolerate the extreme form of diet and celebrate it too explicitly, then I develop a negative perception of the less extreme yet worthwhile diets like fruits —

• Eg: raw celery without any dressing
• Eg: yoga — Sat morning yoga on hard surface .. is extreme, and when I decide to go realYoga studio I felt like a weakling
• Eg: no movie for a year .. is extreme. When I decide to use movie as a reward I hear a nagging zsms

leafy salad: G3 practical tips

raw-vegetable salad is the most healthy food, even healthier than fruits. (Also low cost and often pre-packaged 🙂 .) The only problem is taste. The creams are all very bad and I find most of the vegetables hard to swallow. Here are some tips

1. non-leafy vegetables are often more palatable — cucumber, radish, beet, pepper, cauliflower,.. If you dislike the texture of raw leaves, then don’t beat yourself up. Don’t forget the celery experience?
2. popular raw salad ingredients (pleasant to many) can be extremely unpalatable for me, so there’s absolutely no need to pretend I enjoy them — celery; raw carrot; bitter lettuce;
3. add fruits — Virtually all fruits are low-calorie.
4. add egg white? Much better than cheese dice
5. chia
6. mushrooms
7. onion
8. roasted carrot
9. —- beyond the top 9
10. crab meat, fish ball
11. air-fried potato chips
12. add chicken breast
13. avocado as creamy ingredient? See avocado: satisfying #veg-salad
14. olive oil? Small amount is fine. See olive oil: less harmful than other fats, still harmful
15. nuts and raisin?
16. —- disqualified
17. honey? Can it improve the taste?
18. yogurt as dressing? Not really satisfying to me
19. cheese? Not as wholesome as nuts and avocado

what2go with raw celery: fat-binge damageControl #西瓜

I don’t need yogurt, dips .. since I can easily live without them. Best “enhancer” for raw veg are the handful of highly identifiable ..

.. foods I wish to but can’t live without :

1. ice cream,
2. peanuts,
3. cakes — cheesecake, brownie …
   • Luckily I don’t stash them
4. chocolates,
   • luckily I don’t binge it
5. cold cut — usually higher calorie than i want, though one ham hits 90cal/100g
   • luckily not so calorie-dense

The harsh reality — if I abstain from these (albeit not-most-fattening) foods for too long I get restless… withdrawal syndrome.

Therefore, the raw veg lightens and cushions, if not neutralizes the nutritional + guilt impact of calorie-dense foods. A and B help each other but raw veg is giving more help and receiving less help !

So right now which calorie-dense foods need the most help from raw veg? 1) starchy cooking by grandma 2) ice cream 3) chocolate

For example, when I have bought too many peanuts and ice cream, I buy lots of (expensive) raw veg to help deal with the calorie footprint + the loss of control.

Metaphor — imagine a seriously polluting manufacturer contributing huge goodwill money (beside taxes) from its profits, so much so that local community more than forgives the pollution — locals actually accept and prefer the polluter to be there.

—

Celery remains the least palatable veg. Let’s try heating it and removing the bitter juice. After that, many dips would probably work.

Q: what to go with raw celery? Note the raw celery has lots of juice so the lighter “pastes” get terribly diluted. You can see the raw celery shrink to less than half after heating and losing the juice.

• watermelon — goes well with celery, both of them very juicy
• peanuts :):) overall better than ice cream and cakes
• roasted chicken breast :):) — more healthy than 老干妈
• spicy Chinese sauce 老干妈 :):)  esp. the chunky stuff
• chocolate and meat, esp. dried meat :):)
• BBQ sauce 🙂
• guacamole is helpful though not strong enough… hummus is slightly more effective and more resistant to dilution.
  • Note everyone (except those trained) finds raw veg hard to swallow, so the standard practice uses various salad dressing. If small amount of dressing then the combination is still healthier than other food choices.
• yogurt
• honey?
• 黄豆酱?
• 凉拌酱?
• yam paste
• onion-chop omelette

Sold at Trader Joe’s, the chopped mix with onion is palatable almost without anything added. Additionally, I could manually mix with peas and nuts though they contain some small amount of starch and fat. Plenty of guacamole proved a good taste-booster too. Let’s remember some tough foods like liver and 苦瓜 are extremely unpalatable, even awful if eaten in big chunks — must dice up or cut into thin strings

! Remember our goal (Tough goal) — reduce starch so as to reduce overall intake; calories is a secondary goal.

Celery isn’t a life-saving medicine. If too hard to swallow, then just eat a bit. No need for struggle with an obsession.

southern greens blend: far better heated

as tough as celery. Grassy taste and not acceptable by itself, but acceptable when accompanied by my tasty peanuts 🙂

I will try heating it.. Result? Far better taste and definitely acceptable.

The terrible tastes (whatever they are) are basically removed by heating. Without heating, you can’t neutralize that taste with any amount of ice cream.

Since i can’t eat it raw anyway, I think frozen version is superior — no pressure to finish; cheaper (throwaway price)

pre-washed cabbage #heating

1. raw without any dip — Tastes much better than celery, but (like raw carrot) needs some companion food
   1. I think it tastes slightly better than carrot in terms of size.
2. quickly heated without seasoning — (same pattern as the riced veg mix, and carrot) tastes 5 times better than raw, with a natural aroma.

30 cal/100g — extremely safe.

$.170/10oz at Trader Joe’s

decision — can buy as much as carrot, or radish, cucumber

carrot #frozen

As of 2019, Carrot is my #1 raw veg, eaten in higher quantity than tomato, cucumber…
As of 2020, Carrot is my #1 raw veg tied with lettuce at the same overall quantity, higher than tomato, cucumber, onion,

• can eat raw, frozen, or heated, or add to a soup, each with a different natural flavor in each case.
• 🙂 if frozen (rare), can go with ice cream, peanuts, cookies
• 🙂 if heated, can substitute starch to some extent
  • fairly satisfying at low calorie — rare combination. I tried on 29 Dec 2019 and ate at least 0.9 of a full pound packet of microwaved carrot with fish 🙂
  • The carrot at Stuff’d salad shop tastes very starchy and satisfying. Not boiled like my wife’s. Possibly steamed.
• ridiculously low-cal
• cheap, available

Q: what to go with raw carrot? hummus:):) guacamole:) ham:) cooked meat/fish:) chocolate:) ice cream 🙂

The baby carrot is not always better tasting !
Warning — about 5-20% of the baby carrots I tried taste much less palatable though not rotten, and should be discarded right away. Usually the thick ones. Also, the big carrots in Singapore all taste less palatable, less sweet. The regular baby carrots have a slight sweet taste and free of grassy taste. I tend to believe the closer to the heart, the higher the chance of being slightly sweet

sugg — buy the thinner ones. Half the times I don’t notice the difference, but the other times I find the thinner ones more palatable.

Sugg — heating improves the taste 3 times, with a natural flavor.

starchy — For my tiny raw carrot from TraderJoe’s, heating brings out a starchy texture, better than the starchy texture in the boiled big chunks. Even if roasted carrot somehow contains more starch and calories, it is still a very healthy food.

— raw carrot milkshake, a good use of extra carrot at home.
#1 tip: remove the big butt that tastes less sweet

Carrot is not creamy as avocado, banana, mango. Therefore, i add peanut butter and milk.

Ice — dillutes everything but in a positive way. It’s prudent to add ice incrementally to avoid over-dillution. If over-dilluted, then add milk.

Sugar — is crucial just as milk and ice, but should not be added in abandunce. I added a teaspoonful of honey but I don’t know how effective it was.

## 11 raw veg I often eat without condiment or juicing

Half ranked by unfamiliarity

1. shredded cabbage #washed
2. steamed broccoli — easy
3. celery is the toughest, least palatable, but see suggestions below
4. bell pepper slices — i ate it often in subway, more palatable than broccoli, carrot
5. carrot — one of the toughest unless heated
6. radish — (including the white) unique sharp taste
7. spinach?
8. onion
9. lettuce
10. tomatoes, with sugar. Grape tomato is often considered a fruit.
11. cucumber

celery and carrot — see raw-veg: top5″relief”foods #questionable reputation and what2go with celery+carrot #give up if too hard

I feel proud and strong about my raw veg diet. I hope to increase the variety. How about

• eggplant
• pumpkin
• garlic

G9 relief-foods for raw-veg #peanut

Re specific relieves targeting celery, see what2go with celery+carrot #give up if too hard

Common Feature #1 (a qualifying Criterion): These foods can make my raw-veg diet more palatable, less off-putting

With their help, I could end up eating more raw veg and less starch.

Common Feature #2: many of these foods had traditionally been linked to weight gain and bad nutrients, but now some research cast doubts.

1. TheSaladShop foods
2. hummus and guacamole — completely safe as a dip for my raw veg
   • Note hummus is much leaner than peanut butter
3. tuna in water
4. century eggs, non-oil fried egg white
5. quick noodles + egg
6. peanuts with shell? more natural, more fibrous, than processed foods
7. red-bean buns?
8. chocolates esp. dark? I seldom binge
9. flavored yogurt? Not so effective
10. low-fat ice cream.

–Now the “relief” foods that are too dangerous and not recommended. I only use them as occasional relief

• full-cream cheese
• ice cream .. feels better than cakes thanks to the water content
• 😦 creamy cakes .. felt worse than brownie or other cakes
• 😦 butter
• 😦 full-cream salad dressings
• 😦 ghee in Indian desserts.
• deep fried