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Plant-Based & Vegan - support & recipes

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Comments

  • GoKale4320
    GoKale4320 Member Posts: 580

    DogMomRunner - the linguine recipe sounds divine. I love roasted vegetables, pasta and pesto.

    Moth - thanks for the link to the video. I had read something about the connection between cholesterol and breast cancer - and I have had high cholesterol for years leading up to my diagnosis. I will watch the video to see what else I can learn. After changing my diet last year for only a month or so, I had my cholesterol checked and it was much lower than I had seen it in a long time. So I am hoping to check it again in a couple months and see where it is. Fingers crossed that I have made huge progress.


  • GoKale4320
    GoKale4320 Member Posts: 580

    Has anyone gone gluten-free on top of being being plant-based? Or has anyone developed a gluten intolerance? I seem to be having gastro-intestinal problems after I eat wheat and I don't know if it's a gluten problem or just too big of a serving.

    I have a trip coming up a week from now and will be doing a lot of day hikes so I am thinking about experimenting with no wheat for a few days to see if I feel better before the trip.

  • hapa
    hapa Member Posts: 613

    GoKale - I feel kind of crappy any time I eat a lot of bread or pasta. I do okay with Ezekiel bread products, but I stay away from things like pizza, and if I do eat bread it's just a little bit. I think the pizza is so bad because it's hard to eat just a little bit, but it seems to give me migraines. If I eat pasta it is homemade and with a really healthy tomato and lentil sauce, but even then I don't feel great the next day. I think you get gluten intolerant the same way you get alcohol intolerant - I don't eat much of it anymore so now when I eat a lot I get a gluten hangover. I stick with whole foods most of the time so that limits my gluten intake.

  • dogmomrunner
    dogmomrunner Member Posts: 501

    Some of the stuff we buy (to get vegan) are also gluten free. We are not intentional about it though. Maybe Gokale it's more about it being more processed and less about it having gluten

  • exercise_guru
    exercise_guru Member Posts: 333

    I eat a lot of potatoes with soup,chilli, or sauce on it.

    Beans,oatmeal also make an appearance.

    Same for sweet potatoes, squash, rice etc so I am often gluten free without intending it.

    It would be very easy to do a gluten free trial . If you need good recipes look at chef AJ and her ultimate weight loss recipe book. It is whole foods,plant based and gluten free.

  • GoKale4320
    GoKale4320 Member Posts: 580

    I just wanted to let everyone know that last week on Friday, I didn't eat any wheat that day and I felt a lot better. I was able to do the race - just one mile - without feeling ill. So it was interesting that just one day of not eating wheat made a big difference. I will continue this for the next couple weeks to help me on my trip. When I return, I will just go very easy on the wheat. I don't want to become gluten-intolerant so I will just eat little bits of it here and there.

    Thank you for the tips!


  • Naesha
    Naesha Member Posts: 44

    hello everyone,

    My last day of radiation was on March 20th, 2019. Its been around 2 months. In between i suffered from lung inflammation . My RO prescribed Predisone steroids for 4 weeks. The lung inflammation was cured in 3 weeks so we decided not to take for the last week. However i am not getting the side effects of steroids. My RO said that our body needs time to adapt to get back to normal after stopping the steroids. So I am now getting some breathing problem, drowsy, fatigue. My RO said it might two to three weeks.

    I am just tired of these side effects. Chemo, Radiation, side effects, medicine to get rid of side effects , this is way too much to handle.

    Did any of you ladies also went through the same problems after treatment was done. How long it will take our body to get back to normal? Can anyone of you ladies share some of their stories please.

    Thank you

  • GoKale4320
    GoKale4320 Member Posts: 580

    On vacation, I had some interesting vegan meals and convenient prepackaged snacks. These Nakd bars can be bought online. But check out the ingredients; it looks so simple that maybe I can make them myself.

    imageimage

  • GoKale4320
    GoKale4320 Member Posts: 580


    http://www.lazydayfoods.com/our-shop/millionaires-shortbread

    Here's the link to Lazy Day Millionaires shortbread - a VERY scrumptious treat. These can be found online at Amazon though I wonder if a vegan shortbread recipe could be modified to mimic these.

    For real actual food, I had sandwiches made with gluten-free bread, hummus as a spread and vegetables for lunch. Roasted cauliflower dishes for two different dinners. Oatmeal for breakfast or muesli and fruit, and a bunch of other stuff that I cannot recall (should have taken pics)

    But the nakd bars are the thing I was eager to tell everyone about. Here's the website for the USA customers

    https://www.naturalbalancefoods.com/nakd-fruit-and-nut-bars/


    I put these two posts on the Diet and Lifestyle message board by accident. I apologize if you're seeing this for the second time.

  • dogmomrunner
    dogmomrunner Member Posts: 501

    So chemo has kind of killed my love of salads and most green things. My husband thinksit's the iron in some of the green veggies that makes them taste even more metallic. Did anyone go through this and did you ever get back to liking green veggies?

  • GoKale4320
    GoKale4320 Member Posts: 580

    DogMomRunner - sorry about your taste buds being funky. Are you still undergoing chemo? Many foods tasted either bad or bland when I had chemo. Oddly, the only thing I liked was vegetables and plain seltzer water. There’s hope that your taste buds will return to normal, but I cannot remember how long it took after chemo was done. Probably 3 weeks to a month.

  • moth
    moth Member Posts: 3,293

    DogMomRunner - everything tasted bad to me during chemo and for weeks after. It went away eventually. The taste buds are close to the surface of the skin in your mouth & just as hair & skin are affected, so are they. Once hair, brows & lashes, nails etc are growing normally, the epithelium in the mouth also starts healing and going back to normal.

    Smoothies are good way to get your green veg. Just blend raw ones, add raw frozen berries etc to cut the flavour. Google green smoothie recipes if you need some tips & proportions.

  • dogmomrunner
    dogmomrunner Member Posts: 501

    GoKale- yes I am still getting chemo. Next week is my last so I can start on the taste buds going back to normal - hopefully.

    Moth- we are doing smoothies. It's just my go to for lunches at work were veggies and salads. Now it's mostly peanut butter sandwiches. :

  • ksusan
    ksusan Member Posts: 461

    Hi, everyone. My wife and I are trying 12 weeks of Barnard's plant-based diet (like FOK, but far fewer nuts). She has food intolerance issues as a consequence of a medical treatment, which makes this a challenge. My wife can't eat most beans and legumes, gluten, celery, or some nut milks, and can only eat apples and pears sparingly. We have to rotate the legumes she can eat, so while I can have leftover lentils the next day, she can't. I'm trying to reduce the soy since my MO has said that she doesn't want me to eat more than one serving a day, and she wants me to avoid soy protein isolate. However, we're doing okay at the 2-week mark. It helps that we're both good cooks.

  • exercise_guru
    exercise_guru Member Posts: 333

    Ksusan

    My gut is still not back from Chemo. I make a lot of stir frys with veggies and I have to pick those I can digest.

    I have read that if you soak the lentils in Kombu and then cook them with new water and kombu that really helps on digestibility. I also can't eat canned beans I soak them overnight and cook them in my insta pot. Still I only use around 1/4 of a cup.

    I stick with black beans , chickpeas, cannenneli, mayacoba, and red lentils.

    I really like the 7 day rescue book by the engine 3 essylstyne fire guy. he has a lot of combinations that make it easy to adjust ratios for a meal.

    I cook the beans and freeze them in small batches. They thaw wonderfully and go in everything with no problems so thats another idea when you are cooking for 2.

    post a link to Neal Barnards meal plan. I really like him I want to have a look.


  • dogmomrunner
    dogmomrunner Member Posts: 501

    ksusan - that's some tough food restrictions for your wife. My sister has an intolerance for soy so I try to find things that she can eat. It's hard to do at times.

    I am back to eating salads. Yay!! They taste decent again

  • kayak2
    kayak2 Member Posts: 9,028

    Not just for cervical cancer....for breast cancer too! Eat more (or start eating) cruciferous vegetables.

    https://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/cabbage-beats-chemo-cervical-cancer-2

  • ksusan
    ksusan Member Posts: 461

    Here's a Dr. Neal Barnard link: https://www.pcrm.org/news/news-releases/vegan-starter-kit-neal-barnard-md-provides-fast-track-health

    The issue for my wife isn't digestibility, but a celiac-like response to other foods to which her (non-cancer) chemo over-sensitized her. She can eat garbanzos, lentils, dal, soy, adzuki, limas, mung, and scarlet runner beans, and those need to be rotated and not eaten on sequential days. She can get away with a serving of black eyed peas once in a while. She can't eat green beans, peas, kidney beans, black beans, pintos, white beans, or any from the Phaseolus vulgaris group. She also lost eggs, dairy, celery, safflower oil, and gluten. We do pretty well with substitutions in recipes but it makes, say, most commercial veggie burgers off-limits. It took many, many months of elimination diets to sort this out! Western Europe is great for our travel because restaurants mark all the allergens, including celery.

  • exercise_guru
    exercise_guru Member Posts: 333

    Well I don't want to derail the thread but I belong to a group that has implemented Whole Foods plant based. I have figured out through the process that given there is no food addiction involved 50% of people feel fantastic switching to the WFPB with very little troubles, just a bit of bloating and that goes away as their body adjusts to the fiber. They notice wonderful benefits, lose weight, drop cholesterol, Lower Blood Pressure, Reverse Diabeties. This group does great on Neal Barnards program, Mcdougal, Engine 2, CHIP and really any WFPB program . Easy they are quick responders with no extra challenges.

    Then there is a percentage that it doesn't work for right away but they are just normal people without extra health stuff going on. That group just needs to learn about calorie density and increase volume and decrease calories in the WFPB eating. Then they have success with these modifications.

    OK thats the easy group and its atleast 60% of the population. The rest take some real finess and detective work. I have found a few groups that it is tough for those groups I always suggest reading Valter Longo's work on the longevity diet and the fasting mimicking diet because his program might help to heal the gut Biome and turn things around.

    1. The Cancer group: these people really focus on Valter Longo and work on a lower methionine diet if they are WFPB they usually gravitate towards his eating plan and fasting in some form. They also add supplements and recomendations from nutritionfacts.org that help prevent cancer from coming back or slow it down if they can't eradicate it. I started with Neal Barnard and then progressed to this group.
    2. People who don't have insulin resistance and can't lose weight. For this I recommend Chef AJ and Mcdougall program for Maximum weight loss. Lost of fiber though so you really need to be able to digest food. I started here but still have problems digesting raw food.
    3. the insulin resistance and often plus Menopause group ( thats me post cancer plus menopause) I have eaten this way for a year and still have blood sugar problems and tamoxifen isn't helping. I have had to convert to "Mastering Diabeties" WFPB style of eating. I eat with Glycimic load and its like 1/2 of a sweet potatoe 1/4 cup beans and the rest veggies and fruit. I will update when I see if that works.
    4. the colitis and stomach issues group. My mother in law has this problem, She has something wrong with her bowel I can't remember the reason. She can only eat a small amount of soluble fiber and I can't imagine how I could ever find a way for her to eat this way. She seems to do best on FODMAP with very lean meat and no dairy. Honestly she would benefit from going to the True North Center in California and staying there for a few weeks . They are the only doctors I have come accross that know how to eliminate the food and introduce it in a way that She could digest a WFPB diet. If my situation doesn't improve I am going to go there.
    5. Autoimmune conditions: WFPB doesn't get them there. Its far stricter and my husband is in this group. I have strongly recommended No oil/no gluten WFPB following "The Paddison Program" but he isn't interested in looking into it.
    6. Neurologic ( Depression, Dementia , alz prevention, MS ) stuff needs extra care as well. Lots of greens and Cruciferous there is a program There are some scientific papers using WFPB by a fellow name Dale Bredesen so I usually refer for that
    7. There is one more but I group but I will fill it in.


  • ksusan
    ksusan Member Posts: 461

    We're coming up on the 3-week mark and still doing well. My wife experiences more energy, though I don't. My fasting blood sugar has generally been lower and I've dropped 7#. I'm sure my cholesterol and triglycerides are better, too.

    We've been playing with rice or lentil "pastas," tofu, tempeh, and garbanzos quite a lot, as well as hot cereals and fruits and vegetables. My MO has agreed that I can have two servings of whole soy in a day, though she doesn't want me to overdo it.

    For prepared foods, the Trader Joe's broccoli and kale pizza crust works pretty well. It helps me to think of it as a flatbread rather than a pizza crust. Tofutti products have more fat than we're aiming for but are a nice treat. I visited a big Asian grocery and picked up a lot of new staples to try (like konjac), as well as bean curd skins and rice wrappers.

    At my semi-annual oncology appointment this week, I ate at a Veggie Grill and had a good tempeh, arugula, and tomato sandwich (hold the vegan aioli, hold the dressing) and a bowl of barley soup with TVP. They have gluten-free bread available, so I'm sure we'll be back.

  • moth
    moth Member Posts: 3,293

    don't know if anyone has this bookmarked in their favourites but I need some help

    I'm recently dx'd with a Stage IV progression and having probs maintaining weight already - & I haven't started chemo yet.

    I seem to remember there was a recommendation for a vegan cookbook specifically for cancer pts which included high cal density recipes? Does that ring any bells?

    thx

  • dearlife
    dearlife Member Posts: 634

    Hi Moth

    Here are a few links that may help:

    http://www.gloriouslyvegan.com/worry-free-high-calorie-vegan-recipes/

    I seem to remember you don’t like to cook, so here are a few basic foods to focus on:

    https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/high-calorie-vegan-foods

    And here is a simple plan for 3000 calories a day

    https://blog.eatthismuch.com/3000-calories-vegan-diet-plan/

    I have been thinking about you and am glad you are gearing up to be as strong as possible to kick this thing into the dust!

    ❤️

    Pearl

  • moth
    moth Member Posts: 3,293

    thank you Pearl! I do despise cooking but I have people who will do it for me if I just give them recipes

    thx for your support

  • nonomimi5
    nonomimi5 Member Posts: 184

    Hi Moth - What are your favorite foods? Do you eat Tofu? Do you have a slow cooker? I always make a vegetable stock with leftover vegetable scraps and the use that broth to make all kinds of soups. Eg. Put lentils with chopped onion, carrots, garlic, etc. and the lentil just melts into a creamy deliciousness. Minestrone. Vegetable chili. You name it...slow cooker is great for anyone who doesn't like to cook b/c you just put everything inside and forget about it. Let me know what you like to eat and I'll be happy to send some recipes your way. I don't think you should eat sugar soI would get my calories from nuts, legumes, potatoes, black and red rice. I am mostly plant based and trying to lose weight but I cook everything. I would love to develop recipes for you centered around what you like

  • nonomimi5
    nonomimi5 Member Posts: 184

    imageHow about hummus? Made with chickpeas, Tahini sesame paste, lemon, garlic. Sprinkle some pine nuts and olive oil. Keeps well in fridge. Soak 1 1/2 cups of dried chickpeas in Plenty of water with a tablespoon of baking soda over night. Drain and rinse the chickpeas and cook in 5 cups of water with 1/4 tsp of baking soda. You can also use the slow cooker. Cook until soft and reserve the cooking liquid. Remove the skins when cooled. Put the chickpeas in a food processor with 2 cloves of garlic, 1 lemon juice, 1/4 cup of cooking liquid and 1/4 cups of Tahini. Add salt, olive oil, parsley, pin nuts ....whatever you like to taste.

  • GoKale4320
    GoKale4320 Member Posts: 580

    Moth -all I can think of are individual foods that are calorie dense like avocados, nuts, pumpkin seeds. Nonomimi- I forgot about tahini. I make a simple sauce with it - 1/2 cup tahini, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of maple syrup, and enough water to make a pourable consistency (maybe a couple tablespoons to start). Then just stir. You can put that on a rice and vegetables dish.

    I used to make my own hummus, but now I buy pre-made to save time.

    Then there is almond butter- I buy it at the store.

    I hope you feel better soon



  • moth
    moth Member Posts: 3,293

    thx for the tips. I'll add nuts to the shopping list as I like snacking on walnuts and hazelnuts. I like hummus so can try to add that in.

    I just remembered that we stopped making creamy vegan sauces for pasta because they're nut based and rich but I will ask someone to make that for me. I also like tomato based pasta dishes. I eat tofu. Blending tofu into tomato sauces would add calories and protein

    I also like indian food. my favourite dish is creamed spinach with either tofu cubes or potato instead of paneer. Maybe someone can make it extra creamy. Coconut milk might be good calorie filler.

    It's partly that I'm not eating enough because I feel so bad but also my liver mets mean my liver is not breaking things down properly. i have low albumin right now, though my total serum protein is still normal. thank you for your replies. This sucks so bad :(

  • nonomimi5
    nonomimi5 Member Posts: 184

    imageRecipe for Scrambled Tofu and Avocado Toast. I am reading Longevity Paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry and he swears by olive oil. So use it generously on everything if you wish. This a breakfast for champions...which you are, Moth.

  • nonomimi5
    nonomimi5 Member Posts: 184

    imageCreamy Walnut Tomato Sauce. Put all the ingredients in a food processor until smooth and add in cooked pasta and spinach. If the sauce seems too dense, put some pasta water in. For added flavor and crunch, put all the breadcrumbs ingredients in food processor and toast it in oventoaster for about 5 minutes. Plate pasta and sprinkle bread crumbs on top.

  • GoKale4320
    GoKale4320 Member Posts: 580

    I saw this video on NutritionFacts.org about Nutritional Yeast. It looks promising to me.

    https://nutritionfacts.org/video/benefits-of-nutritional-yeast-for-cancer/

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