Fair warning: 17 minute read on various lists of ingredients and colourful, tasty and nutritious food pictures

I started taking pictures of my food because it was colourful. As you may know, I am all about colours – on you, on me and in me. Having been brought up on eating fresh food – daily, I know what real food should look like and taste like. It should be colourful and nutritious. Once adulting and, later on, parenting, I researched – to the tiniest detail – the nutritional element of what’s on our plates every day. Then I researched it even deeper when I had a major but hidden chronic health trouble showing its presence in my inability to breathe effortlessly and, at times, painlessly. This is when my food picture-taking-for-posterity became a habit as well as a sanity saving self-service. Now it can help you eat better, look better so you can dress better, if that’s what you want.

At one point, my social media audience on Facebook started inquiring about sartorial solutions for menopausal women – for an enlarged abdomen in the lower region in particular. Well, I have always been a woman with a flat stomach (unless pregnant or have gained weight) and nature (still) deems me worthy of reproduction so while I can empathize, I cannot relate. However, I can advise because I have studied the subject and practiced it on real women of various ages.

There are three layers to this answer:

1. Nutritional: Eat less, but better so that you have no protruding tummy to hide. Focus on healthy protein sources and vegetables and leave out estrogen producing food such as chemically sprayed produce, hormone fed animals and soy products. Limit grain products. Limit products. Period.

2. Physical: Move! Choose to be active every day. Ok, not every day but only on days when you breathe.

3. Sartorial: Use colours, patterns and horizontal lines to take the focus away from your problematic areas.

While the third solution is undoubtedly the fastest one in execution, I much prefer and, therefore recommend, the first one. Once you take this approach, your problem no longer exists.

The purpose of this article is to focus on the first part of the list above – your nutrition. Most likely, nobody will like it. It seems restrictive, it requires work, and takes time. Yes to all but it’s rewarding. As a result, you have no tummy to hide or be ashamed of. Let’s see what it takes.

Before we start, I want to emphasize that I am not on any form of a diet by any means. My food is my nutrition, first and foremost. I consume what I want. Luckily for me, I want the healthy food. Do I eat sweets? God, yes! Do I binge eat while PMSing? Guilty! So how the hell do I still maintain a flat stomach?

Three things:

1. Walking. Daily. As much as I can. Sometimes I do the recommended 10,000 steps or more, sometimes I don’t. One thing is certain – walking helps with digestion more than anything else does. When you walk every day, you go every day. When you go every day, you don’t have a big belly – unless you are pregnant, overweight, or obese. If you are anything but pregnant, you probably have a big belly from nutritional ignorance. We’ve all been there. It’s intentional not to teach us. But that’s about to change.

2. Water. I drink mostly warm water with ginger or lemon or both. As much as I want. Fun fact: when I drink plain (filtered) water, I tend to drink less than when I add a few slices of lemon and/or ginger into it.

3. Waiting. I do intermittent fasting. 17 : 7 has proven ideal for me since grade 8.

Now let’s see what I actually eat.

Why only breakfast and dinner? Because in a span of 7 hours, during which I actually do feel hungry – which is the purpose for eating – I cannot eat three big meals. It’s too much. I physically cannot consume so much of a proper food in mere 7 hours. Outside of that time, I am not hungry.

I noticed this trend particularly around my mid-40s. My body needed less food. When I ate like I used to in my 30s, I gained weight.

Besides, and this is what most middle-aged women fail to see, when they reach menopause. Something stopped. Something that requires you to be reproduction ready every month ends forever. Your biological purpose is no longer needed. You are not expected to take care of a growing human inside you at any time going forward, so there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to eat for two as a preventative measure. Has it ever been?

My eating schedule is slightly flexible in timing but firm in the 17:7 time ratio. Typically, I eat breakfast between 10 and 11 am and dinner between 5 and 6 pm. I prefer not to eat dinner later than 5 pm because I don’t sleep well when I do. Unless I go for an evening walk as well. I walk most mornings for about 30 minutes within 2 hours after sunrise. 

As you can see, I eat homemade meals 99.99% of the time. We have built a gourmet kitchen, we all enjoy preparing food for ourselves and we focus predominantly on our nutrition. Luckily, it’s super tasty so what’s not to love?

In addition, very few restaurants offer fresh high quality meals that I prefer to feed my family with. We never eat ready-to-eat prefabricated food from the frozen section in the grocery store, with the exception of frozen vegetables, if there is no fresh option for us. I don’t buy practically 99% of food products, which is 99% of the products of any grocery store content. What I absolutely don’t eat is margarine and most seed oils.

Meat: bison, bison liver, calf liver, chicken, chicken liver, turkey, duck, beef, bacon – from the local farmers

Fish: salmon (only wild sockeye, never farmed), tuna, trout, cod liver (my favourite), sardines, anchovies, shrimp

Eggs: chicken, duck

Fat: extra virgin olive oil, lard, butter, duck fat, coconut oil, sunflower oil (only for occasional frying because it’s high in Omega 6)

Dairy: plain Greek yogurt, sour cream, plain kefir (naturally fermented milk), ice cream (local), goat feta, tvaroh (unripened curd cheese from fresh cow’s milk), gouda, Parmigiano Reggiano (chunk – only this particular kind because it’s the best), bocconcini (small balls of mozzarella), occasional French or English/Irish cheese

Leafy greens: spinach, lettuce, arugula, chives

Cruciferous vegetables: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage (mostly homemade sauerkraut), kale, Brussels sprouts

Root vegetables: carrots, beetroots, celery, parsley, ginger, turmeric, potatoes, garlic, onion,

Other vegetables: asparagus, kohlrabi

Fruit: apples, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, sour cherries, nectarines, peaches, apricots, plums, watermelon, cantaloupes, grapes, raisins, lemons, oranges

Legumes: green beans, black eye beans, kidney beans, all sorts of lentils, peas, peanuts, chickpeas, various bean sprouts
Mushrooms: dark, white, shiitake

Herbs: Parsley, basil, thyme, chives, marjoram, lemongrass, rosemary, dill – all fresh or home dried

Spices: black pepper, paprika, chipotle, cinnamon, curry, turmeric, garlic

Seeds: sunflower, pumpkin, pine, sesame, caraway, cumin, poppy, Brazil nuts

Nuts: pecans, hazelnuts, walnuts

Drupes: almonds, cashews, pistachio

Condiments and other flavorings: salt, apple cider vinegar with a mother, pickles (homemade), grilled red pepper, Dijon mustard, Thai paste, butternut squash sauce

Grains: oats, barley, rye, rice, quinoa, corn, wheat (seldom)

Sweeteners: raw cane sugar, raw unpasteurized honey (local), maple syrup (local, eh?)

So there you have it.

Is this all I eat?

Of course not. This is what I eat the most.

I bake (mostly gluten-free) cookies, pies, cakes… I much prefer controlling the entire list of ingredients so I stay away from store bought pastry and other temptation.

Then there are things I shouldn’t eat at all but I call it a lesser evil because I eat less of it and it tastes devilishly good. Even from this lesser evil group I choose the lesser-er evil – sweets from Europe.

Why?

The short answer is because in general, there are too many to list harmful ingredients in North American’s sweets that the US FDA considers suitable for human consumption while most European countries and Japan mark them as potentially harmful or straight up toxic. While American food producers and regulators focus on the probability of negative effects, Europeans pay attention of the possibility of harm.

There are a few exceptions, of course. I was quite glad when my daughter discovered gluten-free WOW cookies (esp. the ginger-molasses and lemon ones) from Sumner, Washington (US) and Canadian gluten-free Made Good cookies. Their double chocolate and cinnamon cookies are delectable.

My biggest guilty pleasure is probably chocolate mousse by Camille Bloch from Switzerland. It’s delightfully light and airy and if I close my eyes while I eat it, it has zero visible calories.

Do I drink any alcohol? Not much. Very little actually.

I dislike spirits in general, including whisky. I don’t understand what the fuss is about. On occasion, I drink a small glass of beer (try Golden Pheasant from Slovakia or Pilsner Urquel from the Czech Republic) in the summer and a few drops of Jägermeister (clearly from Germany) in the winter, esp. after skiing. It has 56 herbs and spices, so it’s practically a medicine.

Then there is port. Well, that’s simple for me. A small glass or two (max.) of Taylor Fladgate tawny port on Christmas (or practically anything from Taylor Fladgate) and Fonseca Bin 27 on a few occasions throughout the year.

And that’s about it.

Since I just showed you almost everything I consume, let’s talk about the why.

Well, edible substances enhanced with additives, artificial flavours, preservatives, artificial colouring such as cochineal (that’s the carmine red ‘natural colouring’ or E120 in your yogurt, pie, ice cream, soft drinks and donuts, which is actually a parasitic bug, harvested, dried and crushed up for dying wool, among other things) and other biochemical products presented and sold as real food have never been my thing. Yet, the vast majority of North Americans consumes them daily and finds it normal. When I moved from central Europe to North America, I was called weird, among other things, for refusing to be a groomed future cancer patient.

I rarely, if ever, eat things from boxes, cans (except for fish and cod liver) and bags. When I do, I regret it instantly (except for fish and cod liver). Then I walk more before I look and feel like Hindenburg. I really dislike what I do to my body and how it looks, poor thing, when I put on too much weight.

Too much weight for me is when my body acquires a less obvious shape than a smooth hourglass and when it jiggles like jello where it shouldn’t. Too much weight on me is anything above size 8 in the US, 12 in the UK, 38 in Europe, 40 in France and 44 in Italy considering my body type with my bone structure, my height, and my DNA. Obviously, it’s different for everyone.

But looks are not the main factor in my dissatisfaction, although they are more visible and irritating when fitting in suede pants is required. Having read what I read, listened to people I listened to and drawn my conclusions I drew from it, I dislike abusing my body by eating anything that doesn’t give it enough nutrition or worse – downright poisons it slowly but surely.

People often say eating healthy is expensive. That is not true. Not knowing what your body needs – ignorance is expensive. You pay the highest price there is – your health – if you don’t learn about nutrition and feed your body with it daily for decades. Your body can take only so much. Make your food your preventative medicine so that you won’t have to add your hard-earned cash to a huge pile of money for pharmaceutical CEOs.

When you turn the cereal lobby created and government approved food pyramid upside down, you will see that you should eat predominantly protein because your body is almost entirely made of protein – excluding water and fat. Your bones are made of protein, your muscles are made of protein, your innards are made of protein, your hair is made of protein, and so are your nails. About 10 kg / 22 pounds, which is about 15% of your body is made of protein.

Your body needs 20 different amino acids, which are proteins, to build tissue, repair it when needed and create enzymes and many different micro bio elements we are not going into right now. Your body needs 20 but can create only 11 non-essential amino acids. It expects to get the 9 essential ones from food. And guess where you can find them?

Meat, eggs, and milk are the highest quality protein sources. When you give them to your body regularly in the healthiest form possible, your body has what it needs to function properly as it was designed.

Not a big fan of meat? I don’t understand you but there are alternatives: eggs, leafy greens, milk products (not coloured cheese and sweetened yogurt that will expire in 2084), legumes, nuts and seeds.

See? It’s simple. If it grows, you eat it. If it looks like it’s from the stationery store, you don’t. When you eat produce over products, you give your body proper nutrition. If you give it the right amount, you lose excess weight. If you move, you get that gorgeous slender body and you can wear that pencil skirt knowing you look stunning.

Your body needs a minimum of 3 grams of an amino acid called leucine per meal. Leucine is a signal sent to your muscle to stop disappearing and being replaced by fat. To prevent muscle loss and fat appearance you need a minimum of 30 – 40 grams or 1 – 1.5 ounce of high quality protein per meal.

You need 1.5 g of protein per 1 kg of your body weight for total daily intake.

Ideal body weight* for women is 49 kg + 1.7 kg for every inch above 5 feet (calculator.net).

Let’s say you are woman from Netherlands where the average height is 170 cm (worddata.info), which is 5.6 ft.
Your weight should be 49 kg+ 1.7 kg x 6 inch
49 kg + 10.2 kg = 59.2 kg, which is 130 lbs. Your weight should be somewhere around 60 kg or 130 lbs.

If you weigh 60 kg you need approx. 90g of daily high quality protein intake. Divide this into two or three meals and you know exactly what you need eat.

Plant based proteins are not as rich in amino acids as animal proteins are. It means you need to eat more food and more often. I find in super inconvenient and impractical.

*There are several formulas and methods to calculate ideal body weight. All of them were designed to be applicable to masses without considering your individual figure. Take it as a guide, not a gospel. I think it’s a rather reliable indicator of healthy ergo ideal body weight though.

I eat mostly meat and eggs combined with protein loaded vegetables (spinach, avocado etc.) daily. A few times a week I eat a bit of grains. Nothing nutritious I consume in a day costs more than 10 dollars. The truth is, I prepare our food myself or other family members rustle it up. It does make a difference since I don’t have to calculate in the labour costs while preparing the meals, and the labour costs after I finish eating the meals like washing the dishes and cleaning the stove, or the cost for the fuel I use when I get to buy the groceries, as restaurants do. Eating nutritious homemade meals is cheaper but I am sure you know that.

Still, my daily nutritious meals don’t cost me more than $10 (before inflation) even though I buy the best products I can – bison meat, wild salmon, pasture raised hormone free chicken, local farm vegetables etc. When it does cost more than $10 a day, it’s because I added sweets (products) to it, which are neither healthy, nor cheap.

Let me show you an example of two:

This is one of my two meals a day – a breakfast. This one in particular has two eggs, half a bison sausage, some spinach leaves. Then there is a salad – three small tomatoes and 1/3 of avocado. I don’t count the salt and paprika or dill.

We buy eggs for $7.30 per dozen. If I eat two, they cost me 2 x $0.60 = $1.20.
The bison sausage is $12 for 4. If I eat a half of one, it costs me $1.50.
A box of spinach leaves costs around $7. If I eat a handful, it costs me about $0.50.
Tomatoes cost $6 a pack of 15. If I eat 3, it costs me $1.20.
An avocado costs $2.00. If I eat 1/3 of it, it costs me $0.66.
A spoonful of lard we bought a bucketful of for $15 from the farmers is about 2 cents.

So, this particular breakfast was $5.68. I don’t always add avocado and sometimes I eat cheese instead of meat. Breakfast typically costs more than my dinner, for which I have a lentil soup or bean or chicken soup or salad or salmon or potatoes – in various combinations. It rarely passes the three-dollar mark. Salmon sometimes does. But when I have salmon for dinner, I eat oats with berries, cinnamon and honey for breakfast for less than $1.50.

Wild sockeye salmon costs $ 35/kg. I eat about 150 g portion, which is $ 5.25. I eat salmon or other fish 2-3 times a week. Therefore, on average I eat for about $10 per day, considering only healthy food.

Say, I crave chocolate. A dark mousse bar with hazelnuts from Camille Bloch costs $6. If I eat 1/2 of it, it costs the same as my healthy meal. Whereas my healthy meal gives me enough nutrition to function properly until evening, the chocolate gives me quick pleasure with no guilt but little to no nutrition. If I eat the whole 100 g bar (shame on me but sometimes I cannot help it), it costs $6, I consume thousands of empty calories that will soon turn into saddlebags on my hips and shake, shake, shake.

Yes, preparing healthy meals is time consuming. Yes, our kitchen often looks like a battlefield with all those pots and pans and plates and cutlery with knives flying around. Yes, our kitchen floor is messy, so we either clean it often or step on crumbs, if we are too busy, too tired or too lazy to sweep and mop it. The latter applies to me, mostly.

Despite it all, I think it’s worth it. I think we are worthy of the effort.