I hope you caught my 'Recipe for Poets' post: nettle pesto is a lovely thing. I also mentioned in there that I've been eating 'other' again. Monotonous, not strict. Not a mono-diet, but rather a 'tetra' diet.
Yams,
and some homemade coconut kefir.
I harvest about half a cup of kefir cream every two days, so that places a maximum on consumption.
I'd thought about doing just yams, but they're really not good raw, so carrots are a big staple. And since nettles, which I adore, are leaping and bounding up here, it just seemed wrong not to eat them.
My usual m.o. is to bake up a bunch of yams all at once, and then either eat them cold or warm them in the water in which the nettles have been steaming. I eat a bunch of nettles, some yam, and as many carrots as needed to fill me up. A mouthful or two of kefir at the end if necessary. Before I started, I'd thought I could make all kinds of interesting versions of texture and flavor, with spices and mashing and julienning, etc but--maybe partly just being busy--I haven't yet been drawn to do anything other than the simple bake and steam.
Another 'rule' for me is that I should 'break' this at times. If we're having dinner with friends, I'll bring salad and eat some. I'm also having one 'cheat day' per week. The purpose of this is to have one day where I can eat 'off the program,' give my metabolism a boost. I'm curious to see how well I do with that plan, since my usual rhythm when I go on a restricted diet is to dive into it with the tunnel vision of a mole and not even think of other foods. This tunnel can last a long time and can take some dangerous turns that I'm determined to avoid.
That said, my last week's 'cheat day' was pretty unadventurous: it was a yam smoothie with some coconut oil and cacao and mint extract, but so much spirulina that you can't even see the chocolate color!
The 'cheat day' and flexibility are also to honor the fact that I'm working out. Doing extra exercise isn't a time to encourage super-neuroticism around food. My exercise tolerance continues to be marvelously more than it had been for years, and I'm enjoying getting in shape. I decided to take on Prevention's 'Fit and Fabulous in Four Weeks' program, which consists of cardio intervals twice a week and weight training twice a week (so, lots of rest days!). Phil made me some weights out of railroad spikes and purple duct tape.
I like the idea of following a routine and progressing with it; also like that it's supposedly for a finite period, although I can already see that I would enjoy continuing with something similar thereafter. 'Enjoy?!' Whoever would have thought I'd say that? It feels so good to have an association between enjoyment and exercise. I haven't only been doing those workouts either. We've been doing some hiking, I've ridden my bike some, bounced on the rebounder, and of course continued my morning routine of 5 Tibetans and some others....
So, why am I doing the 'tetra diet' and for how long? The 'why' is mostly that I'm curious to see how I feel doing something like that. It's a higher 'cooked' percentage than I would prefer, but it's also very low fat, which is something I hadn't tried for quite a while. I'm approaching the end of my three month yeast cleanse and, as I've mentioned several times before, am looking forward to reintroducing fruit. This yam-carrot-based thing was to be a stop-gap until I can do that more fully. I suspect that it's also wise for me not to lose sight of the fact that coconut does me good. I'm planning to do this until the end of the month (so, really not that much longer) and then start being more fruit-based in June.
I'll post again soon about how I'm feeling with this regime and what changes I've noticed.
What do you think? Sound like a plan? Have you ever taken on a weird diet of your own devising for a short time?
