see how far we have to go between the station and the meeting place. Not many of us would get to our jobs or our meetings on time if we didn’t do all this. We need an inner map. A road plan.
We need this for food as well.
This is what I have to learn – that in the pause between feeling and action, there’s a rainbow leading to a pot of gold, and it’s easier to find that pot if I’m well prepared.
My basic plan becomes this: I plan how I’m going to eat as soon as I wake up in the morning. I plan for a good day. Many people do that anyway when it comes to work, family and leisure activities. Why not do it for your own health as well?
In Rita’s plan I wasn’t given calories, quantities or forbidden foods. Instead, I have a number of guidelines. The most important thing is to eat food that is as unprocessed as possible – food that you could pick, fish or hunt. ‘Made by nature, not by man,’ as someone I met said.
Rita doesn’t just want me to reduce sugar – something that I’ve known I should be doing for a long time – but also to avoid bread and pasta, which get broken down into glucose, or sugar. She wants me to replace these with sweet potato, quinoa and brown rice. She wants me to eat protein-rich foods, often and in large quantities. Four or five times every day, I’m supposed to eat eggs, turkey, mussels, prawns, fish, meat or vegetarian protein. Can I even eat that much protein? I’m supposed to eat lots of leafy greens and vegetables, preferably four times a day. And good fats like olive oil, coconut oil and nuts. All this advice goes into planning four or five meals per day.
Now this advice needs to be transformed into habits that will work in my everyday life. Then I have to have time for work and also exercise four times a week. It’s stressful. How is that supposed to happen?
I can be undisciplined and lazy, with a tendency to overeat. Even worse, I tend to eat for emotional reasons: when I’m anxious, bored or exhausted; or when I just have a craving for something good and make the usual mistake of satisfying this craving with food that ends up giving me only momentary relief.
How am I supposed to manage to eat in such a disciplined way?
I face several big challenges, which begin as soon as I wake up. I continue to look for a new standard breakfast. I don’t want to have to think in the morning, when I’m a little sleepy and everything’s spinning around in my head. What can I come up with?
Most of what goes into a typical Swedish or British breakfast is wrong, according to the new thinking. Juice, bread, yogurt, cheese, rolls, cereal – none of that works anymore. So I look for something that can become the new breakfast.
I test different things and arrive at smoothies for breakfast. Almond milk, berries, nuts and protein powder. It breaks up our family’s mornings, since my habits are so different.
Snacks are simple: a couple of hardboiled eggs and a tomato; nuts and fruit. But dinner demands more thought.
I was no cook before I became a mother, but once I had children I became interested in cooking to nourish the family and create a happy mealtime. In my old life, it was easy to make food taste good and dress things up with extra butter, sugar, cheese and breading, or by frying, adding good bread toasted with garlic butter, and so on. There were soup and pancakes on Thursdays. My husband cooks just as often, usually with extra everything.
ANTI-INFLAMMATORY VEGETABLES AND MUSHROOMS
Think of the rainbow – purple, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. The more colours you eat every day, the prettier your plate and the more beautiful you will be, inside and out, since each colour represents a certain kind of active polyphenol.
• Asparagus
• Aubergine
• Beetroots
• Pak choi
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Cabbage – white, red, cauliflower, green cabbage
• Celery – celery root and stalks
• Courgettes
• Cucumber
• Dandelion leaves
• Endive
• Fennel
• Kohlrabi
• Mushrooms – white mushrooms, ceps, oyster mushrooms, chanterelles
• Nasturtium
• Nettles
• Onion – red, yellow, garlic, leeks, spring onions
• Parsnips
• Peppers – red, orange, yellow and green
• Radishes
• Salad – rocket, iceberg, mâche – go wild!
• Spinach
• Sprouts – alfalfa and all others
• Tomatoes
• Watercress
Certain vegetables, like beetroots, parsnips and celery root, have a higher glycaemic index (GI) value than others. Mix them with vegetables that have a lower GI value, for example beetroots on a bed of rocket with a dressing of vinaigrette and nuts. Perfect!
I still want to eat good food, feel satisfied and enjoy food together with my family, by myself or with friends or colleagues, so I have to become more creative. But I don’t have all the time in the world.
I decide to compromise. I plan meals with food that is natural but with a little glamorous twist. A little more taste, a little more spice, good sauces and dips made of tomatoes, avocado, grilled vegetables, spices, oils and garlic.
The trick is to achieve good proportions. A plate divided into four parts, where 25 per cent is protein, 25 per cent salad, 25 per cent other vegetables and 25 per cent rice or quinoa – more or less.
But there are many challenges.
‘Where’s dessert?’ asks my son, with his big brown eyes. ‘You used to make that good chocolate cake.’
It’s true. Since I started cooking with my new method, I’ve increasingly lost interest in baking big, fluffy cakes. It’s not about body weight but just the feeling that I want to serve my family something other than 2 cups of sugar, which my former prize cake contained.
So I experiment, with mixed results.
‘Sorry, Mum, but this is a failure,’ my blue-eyed son laughs when I serve his best friend some courgette cake.
The friend is too polite to say anything, but he stares listlessly at his piece of cake. A few strips of courgette are swimming around like threads in the dry almond flour.
My brown-eyed son brings his new girlfriend home, and I serve them some protein muffins. I’ve found a recipe with protein powder, sweet potato and almond flour. The new girlfriend smiles but doesn’t take seconds.
My son grunts.
‘What is this?’
It sounds like I have spoiled children, but I don’t. They’re just used to a different kind of food. It’s said that Chinese children don’t like cinnamon buns. Why? Because they never eat cinnamon buns. You like what you are used to. This way of eating is the opposite of how we used to eat, and the change takes time. But I don’t really care; I have patience. I feel happy in some way. It’s not just the spring light. It’s something more – that’s hard to put into words.
Then