Now that temperatures are just starting to dip below the 80s here in California, I’ve been getting excited for soup season. I’ve been particularly pining for pumpkin soup to meal prep for work, but noticed that all the recipes I’d found weren’t nearly hearty (read: starch filled) enough to get me through the day.
So, I came up with my own! I wanted to add as much starch, protein, and fiber as possible while staying true to pumpkin soup flavor & texture, so I decided to add my favorite secret soup ingredient: chickpeas. Not only do they pump up the nutrition, but they make the soup really creamy.
This experiment once again confirmed my conviction that chickpeas are magical, and can and should be added to just about everything. (Including oatmeal–it’s good, I swear!)
Oh, and I whipped up a cream to top the soup with that looks and tastes fancy, but is super easy.
Did I mention this recipe takes only takes 20 minutes to make, and a serving (1/3 of it, about ~400 cals) has 19 grams of fiber and 24 grams of protein?!
Today I’m sharing a staple in my kitchen: veggie sushi. Summer or winter, rain or shine, sushi is always a hit with me! And, bae requests it non-stop… even before he was vegan 🙂
A key part of our sushi addiction is dipping it in teriyaki–it just takes it to the next level. It’s also really flexible in what you can add for fillings, as long as you have avocado and carrot on hand as a base. It’s both light and filling somehow, and packs in those veggies in a way that tastes totally addictive!
Cook the rice in a rice cooker or on the stove. Stir in seasoned rice vinegar, and set aside to cool while you prepare other ingredients.
Cut avocado in half, and slice each half lengthwise into ~6-7 slices.
Using a vegetable peeler, peel the carrot into ribbons. Or, if preferred, cut into matchsticks.
Slice cucumber or other ingredients into a similar size.
Get a small bowl with 2-4 tbsp of water in it, and set near your sushi-rolling area.
Place a nori sheet onto a sushi mat or clean tea towel. Spread half of the rice evenly across the nori, leaving the top 1″ free. Lay half the veggies on top of the rice about 2″ from the bottom, layering them in a stack. Dip your finger in the small bowl of water and wet the top rice-free 1″ of the nori; this will make it stick to itself!
Lift the bottom of the nori + rice sheet and roll it over the vegetables, and keep rolling it over itself all the way to the top. Add more water to the outside of the seam if necessary. Squeeze the roll a little bit to keep everything together. (Check out a nice sushi rolling guide here.)
Repeat steps 6 & 7, but using the remaining half of the rice and veggies.
Slice into 1″ rolls, or keep them as sushi burritos (my preferred way to eat them!)
Dip in teriyaki, soy sauce, or spicy vegan mayo, and enjoy!
I’m a spring and summer person through and through. I’ve been loving doing my PhD research in my hammock, outside in 90 degree weather, sipping on cold-pressed juice I just made. (Cucumber watermelon has been my go-to lately.)
One acceptable part of fall for me, though, is the pumpkin. And the baking. (Yellow leaves and hot chocolate are nice too, I guess. 😉 )
The other day I got the idea out of the blue to make these biscuits (I guess fall is creeping into my subconscious, despite being in denial), and I’m amazed at how well they turned out given how easy and healthy they are. So in honor of this being the first week of fall, I wanted to share them with you!
They’re fluffy but not dry, and oh so versatile. You can make them sweet by adding more maple syrup or sugar, or pair them a savory dish by leaving the syrup out. My current favorite way of eating them is for breakfast with a chocolate date spread, and I’m excited to try pairing these with black bean chili.
Thankfully, it’s still 85 degrees out so I can pretend it’s summer for a few more weeks. (While sitting in my hammock, eating these biscuits. 😛 )
Makes 8 biscuits.
Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
Dash of salt
1/3 cup nondairy milk (I used soy)
3/4 cup pumpkin puree (unsweetened)
1 tbsp maple syrup (optional, or add more for sweet biscuits)
Dash pumpkin pie spice (optional)
Chocolate chips (optional)
Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl: flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt.
Add in the nondairy milk, pumpkin puree, and add-ins. Stir just until combined.
Use a spoon to drop the batter into 8 even piles on a baking sheet–no need to form them into shapes.
Bake for 10 minutes, or until the bottoms begin to turn golden brown. Best eaten immediately, but they also keep well!
Hey friends! Today I have advice & a super cool study for you on how to stop negative emotions from making you overeat or binge eat. This study also has useful advice for how to feel fewer negative emotions generally!
For the highlights, check out the video:
And now, the details & how to use the strategy into your own life:
Emotions are a MAJOR cause of overeating–in fact many scientists think it’s THE cause of binge eating disorder (BED).
So in this study, they tested whether a simple psychological trick could prevent people from overeating when feeling sad.
They had two groups: a group of 39 overweight women with BED, and a control group of 42 overweight women (weight-matched) without binge eating. Their average BMI in both groups was 34. The BED group was bingeing 4x a week on average, for at least the last 6 months.
They had the participants watch a really sad movie, had them use one of two emotional regulation strategies, then looked at how much they ate afterwards from bowls of biscuits and chocolate M&Ms.
They split the BED and control groups into two strategy groups: suppression and reappraisal. For the people in the suppression group, they told them to suppress their emotions:
Try to hide your feelings. Try to behave in a way that someone watching you would think that you don’t feel anything at all. Try to hold a neutral expression so no one can read your feelings from your face. You can feel whatever you feel, but try your best not to show it.
For the people in the reappraisal group, they told them to try to change how they felt about the movie by focusing on different aspects:
Try to distance yourself from the movie and see it objectively. Whenever you sense a change in your feelings while watching, try to internally step back. For example, think of how the photographer and actors succeeded in presenting the scene.”
(Instructions in studies tend to be REALLY repetitive to make sure participants get it, so I paraphrased 😉 )
Suppression means doing nothing to actually help you stop feeling the feelings, but just hiding or ignoring them. Reappraisal means trying to be less involved in the negative emotion–focusing on other aspects of the situation, distancing yourself from the situation, or looking at it as sort of a scientist. Reappraisal is actually a big reason why some people cope better with negative emotions than others: they naturally do more reappraising. (More specific advice on this below!)
So the participants watched a movie scene about the loss of a loved one, and other studies have shown that the movie scene makes people really sad. After the movie, both groups of participants rated themselves as feeling more sad than before the movie. But, the group that had done reappraisal during the movie felt less sad.
Then, they gave each participant a bowl of biscuits and a bowl of M&Ms, and told them they were doing a taste test to see how the movie affected their ratings of how good the food tasted. They had 15 minutes to eat & fill out questionnaires about how good the food tasted. They had all been told to eat a regular meal 2 hours earlier, so they weren’t coming in hungry.
The Results
Participants in the suppression group ate 40% morethan the reappraisal group. And this applied to both people who binge ate, and those who didn’t. Over 15 minutes this amounted to 30 extra calories, but imagine…
If you would usually have eaten 1100 calories in a binge, this strategy could make that an 800 calorie binge instead.
And, more importantly, learning reappraisal can help you deal with negative emotions better over time (tons of other research has shown this) and break the bingeing cycle completely.
BED = binge eating disorder group; CG = control group
Interestingly, the group with BED tended to use suppression in daily life much more than the control group, and used reappraisal a lot less. So that may explain how binge eating arises in the first place.
So, how can YOU start reappraising?
Reappraisal means changing the way you think about a situation. Most of the time, we only feel negative emotions because we decide that a situation is bad: for example, for one person starting a new job might be exciting; for another, it might be terrifying. Same situation, different perspectives.
So how do you reappraise a situation?
Let’s say your significant other breaks up with you. A natural reaction may be to feel worthless, self-loathing, etc. A reappraisal strategy here would be to focus on how maybe the situation isn’t the worst thing ever. Focus on the ways in which it might be a good thing: maybe he wasn’t a great match for you anyway, maybe he prevented you from seeing friends or pursuing your hobbies, and there’s definitely someone better out there for you.
Suppression, on the other hand, would be to “put on your brave face” and make it seem like the breakup didn’t affect you.
With reappraisal, challenges become opportunities for growth.
Try asking yourself questions like these:
What did you learn from the situation?
Can you find something positive that might come out of it?
Are you grateful for any part of it?
Are you better off in any way than when you started?
Could it have helped you grow or develop as a person?
So, next time you’re feeling overwhelmed with emotions, try reappraisal. It may help you feel better instead of leading to a binge.
A few weeks ago, I was on vacation in San Diego: aka a vegan foodie’s paradise. It was a great opportunity to be challenged and grow in my intuitive eating, and more importantly, to learn some insights to share with you!
For years and years, going on vacation meant a constant cycle of binge eating at restaurants, feeling guilty about it, trying to eat less at the next meal, failing, packing in as much cardio as possible… rinse and repeat.
Followed, of course, by the post-vacation constant, failed dieting attempts.
My last few vacations since getting the hang of intuitive eating, however, have been a world of difference.
This last vacation was an especially tricky case, because I was set on making a guide & video to the best vegan restaurants in San Diego… all over the course of a week! And I wanted to try as many dishes as humanly possible for it. (Luckily I collaborated with some of the restaurants, like Kindred in these photos, so I didn’t spend alllll the money.)
In the past, this would have spelled disaster: trying so many things would have meant cleaning my plate for every. single. dish.
But this time, I went with my gut, quite literally. And it went wonderfully. No binge eating, no guilt, no restriction… and all my clothes fit the same when I got home.
So here are 5 tips I’ve picked up along the way: how to make sure you’re eating just as much as you need (no more, no less!) while eating out at restaurants, being on vacation, or having any other big change in your usual diet!
1. Eat slower.
Your body has learned the approximate mapping between the volume of food you put in your stomach, and the amount of energy that volume usually results in. If you’re used to eating less calorie-dense food, like vegetables and grains, this is an especially important one. With salad or bread, for example, you might need to eat ~5 cups of it to get 500 calories. With the types of food you tend to get at restaurants or while on vacation, though, you could easily get 1000 or 1500 calories with 5 cups of food.
Now, I am DEFINITELY not advocating you count your calories. (Repeat: do not count your calories!) Rather, try some strategies to be more mindful of your hunger and satiety signals. Try eating slower to give your body a chance to catch up, start digesting a little bit, and realize that you gave it more calories per volume than it expected. For me, this is as simple as having appetizers first, then letting myself digest for the ~15 minutes it takes for the food to come.
Don’t think this would help? There are studies showing that eating slower actually reduces the amount of food and calories that you eat!1
2. Get appetizers.
To piggyback on the last tip, if you’re really hungry when you get to the restaurant, ordering appetizers (to share, especially!) can be surprisingly helpful for preventing overeating. Paradoxically, getting appetizers ends up making me eat LESS because I’m not ravenously hungry when it’s time to start on my entree. And not feeling as hungry to start with will help you pace yourself and be more mindful of when you’re satiated.
3. Plan to take home leftovers.
Unless you’re sure you’ll need to eat all the food to be satiated (which is totally reasonable, I usually finish a whole entree), go in with the mindset that you’ll take some food home.
This is NOT the same idea as the tip I’ve seen circulating in the dieting world, saying “put half your entree in a leftovers box when you get it to stop yourself from eating it all.” This is simply aimed at preventing you from going in with a “clean your plate” mentality… if you end up wanting to eat it all because you’re not full yet, you should absolutely go for it!
Bae sneakily pulled out the camera while I was eating 😛
4. Don’t force yourself to eat your next meal.
This is the most important tip so far, because it’s an example of how intuitive eating works beyond the level of an individual meal: your body’s ability to regulate your intake (so you eat what you need) operates over days, weeks, even months (thanks, hunger hormones!). It may sound weird, but hear me out.
Not forcing myself to eat at prescribed times has been huge for me. In the past I subscribed too heavily to society’s “3 meals a day” norm, and it got in the way of me listening to my body.
When I eat at a restaurant, I usually eat way more calories in a meal than I would at home, simply because my body is so used to eating a large volume of food. AND THAT’S OKAY! (Tip #1 can help, but probably won’t completely prevent it.)
Once you’re used to eating intuitively, you can trust your body to know what to do with those extra calories.
This tip helped me the most. My first day in San Diego, I ate a ton of incredible food at this brunch. I was still full around 5pm, 5 hours later. But my family wanted to make dinner together.
So naturally, I joined in. I was still mostly full, but I ate quite a bit anyway–because I had pretty much shut off communication with my hunger signals by choosing to eat when I wasn’t hungry in the first place. After feeling sick and overstuffed (on veggies, beans and rice, no less), I realized that eating dinner was not staying true to my body’s signals: it was telling me “I’m good, thanks”, but I ate dinner because I felt like I should.
No one can tell us when we should or shouldn’t eat. Only our bodies know that!
I redoubled my dedication to listening to my hunger, and it worked beautifully over the rest of the trip. How it usually worked was one day I’d do a big breakfast and dinner, with no lunch. (I’m like a snake when it comes to restaurant meals: I stock up, then feel full and satiated for like 8 hours. 😛 )
Then the next day, I wouldn’t feel hunger signals all morning because of the leftover energy from that big dinner. Then I’d get hungry around lunch, eat a big lunch, and feel full the rest of the day. Then repeated that two day pattern.
It was the usual 3 meal routine, just with double the meal size, spread over 2 days. And I felt great. No ravenous hunger, no feeling overstuffed, just eating when hungry & stopping when satisfied. I didn’t have to think about food at all in terms of what or when to eat, I just focused on enjoying myself. The bonus was I could spend less time finding food & more time at the beach!
Another way to think of it is naturally occurring intermittent fasting. Without the whole forcing-yourself-to-eat-in-a-prescribed-time-window part.
I don’t recommend forcing yourself to eat like this, at all. Some people do better eating more frequent meals, whereas I tend to prefer the snake-type eating style.
The main lesson from this tip is you may have to throw your usual eating routines out the window, and fly without the autopilot of habit: rely more on your hunger and fullness signals instead!
A shot from our favorite beach activity: boogie boarding!
5. Go easy on yourself.
If you do overeat til you’re sick, just dust yourself off, move on, and try again. Vacationing and eating at restaurants is about relaxing and enjoying your life (and your loved ones), not feeling bad about yourself! You may be tired of hearing it, but self compassion is an absolutely KEY part of intuitive eating.
Maybe you’re working on getting the hang of intuitive eating, maybe it’s your first time trying to do it while on vacation. Maybe you’re an old pro and it was just difficult this time. (Newsflash, no one’s perfect!)
That’s okay. If you gain weight, it’s not the end of the world. Feeling guilty can only make the situation worse, but self compassion can prevent and reverse it. Work on loving yourself where you are and the rest will follow!
* * * * *
I hope these tips can help you the next time you find yourself thrown out of your eating routine with the fun of restaurants and vacation. And most of all, I hope you enjoy yourself!
I’m sharing the recipe for the salad I’ve had 3 days a week for the last four months. (I almost never do that, usually I’m all about variety with lunch & dinner.) This salad is the reason I’ve had to become mindful of my chewing, because I (almost) literally inhale it.
Making it is just so intuitive to me, I’d toss in ingredients by the handful and never really measured. But I finally got myself together and did it, because “2 handful of tomatoes, 4 handfuls of romaine…” is not going to cut it here. 😛
This salad keeps popping up as my lunch because…
a) it’s DELICIOUS and so satiating, I crave it every day
b) it’s whole food plant based and packed with protein, fiber, and fresh veggies
c) it’s the perfect way to use up garden tomatoes & chiles, and is so versatile with substitutions
d) it’s cheap & easy to keep the ingredients stocked all the time
I would even go so far as to say it’s my favorite salad of all time. My holy grail kale salad used to hold that title (which I’ll share in winter), but now this guy has stolen the crown.
My personal name for this? Sexmex salad. For lack of a better name 😉
Serves 1 if you’re like me, serves 2 for most people
Ingredients
1/2 cup brown rice or quinoa, uncooked
1/2 – 15oz can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups chopped romaine hearts
1 diced green onion (~1 tbsp)
3/4 cup halved cherry tomatoes (or chopped normal tomatoes)
1/2 chopped avocado
3 tbsp salsa
Salt to taste
Hot sauce to taste
Optional: juice of 1/2 a lime, minced hot peppers
This salad is really versatile, so change things up to suit your tastes! Add more romaine for a lighter feel, add double (or triple) the avocado if you’re an avocado lover, or swap out the pintos for black beans. The world is your oyster.
Directions
Cook brown rice or quinoa according to directions.
Add cooked rice to a microwave-safe bowl along with pinto beans and salsa, and microwave until warm but not hot; about 1 minute.
To your salad bowl, add rice and beans, and add all the other ingredients (and lime if desired).
Today I have a video for you where I go over a recent study on how eating processed versus unprocessed foods affects how much you eat, your weight gain vs loss, your hunger hormones, your satiety and satisfaction level, etc.
This study is a really nice one because they actually had people eat an unprocessed food diet for 2 weeks, then switch to a processed food diet for 2 weeks (or vice versa), so everyone tried both diets. The researchers measured exactly what they ate, and looked at how a bunch of macro and micronutrients, and other diet & eating measures, predicted differences in eating amounts & weight gain vs loss between the two diets.
The coolest part to me is that this is a particularly good example of how the typical “calories in versus calories out” view of weight loss and gain just does NOT apply a lot of the time. Specifically, the unprocessed diet led people to lose weight despite eating more calories than they burned, and there are differences between the processed and unprocessed diets’ weight loss vs gain that can’t be explained by the differences in calories.
See the video for the details and more fun & crazy findings!
