Cook your Oats!

Before we began this plant based way of eating, our breakfasts were typical of most Americans.  I say Americans because that is all I know.  I have no clue what people eat for breakfast anywhere else in the world.

My husband ate 4 eggs and a few slices of bacon every other morning.  On the alternating mornings he ate granola (homemade) with yogurt (store bought sugar laden)

I ate whatever I was drawn to.  I always thought I was eating healthy.  I would sometimes have yogurt (homemade using raw milk, unsweetened) and granola (homemade)
Or I would have a bagel with peanut butter and a banana. Bread was usually always a part of my breakfast.  I would occasionally  eat eggs.

Sometimes, but rarely we would buy a box of cereal.  Whole milk for the husband, and nut milk for me.

Breakfast is now our opportunity to get a dosing of the super nutrition available to us in oats.  We eat oatmeal almost every morning.  If we don't eat oatmeal it's because we are doing a juice fast--that is another topic in the future.

When we have made oatmeal in the past we have just put water in it and shoved it into the microwave for two minutes.  At some point I learned to make a much yummier and satisfying bowl of oatmeal.  This is how I do it:

I use 1 cup of water -you may use milk or nut milk, or a combination as long as it is at least 1 cup.
 1/2 cup old fashioned rolled oats
 1 Tablespoon chia seeds--I alternated every other day with ground flaxseed

**if you like raisins, add a 1/4 cup to the saucepan with the rest of the ingredients
 If we want to have banana or berries, we usually add them to our bowl after the cooking is done.

Place in a saucepan on medium heat and bring to a simmer.  Simmer for 4 minutes.  When done simmering, remove from the heat and put the lid on.  Now wait 10 minutes at least.  The oats will continue to soften and puff up as will the chia seeds.

Transfer your oatmeal to a bowl.  At this point I add 1 tablespoon of coconut oil to the top of the oatmeal.  This is optional.  It adds a little bit of good fat to your meal and helps the cinnamon get yummy creamy!  I don't always do it for myself, but I do it on my husbands because some of his supplements require a fat to be eaten.

Sprinkle cinnamon over the top.  As much or as little as you like.  No cinnamon/sugar--just cinnamon! The bowl on the far right above has the fat--see how the cinnamon melts into it?

Drizzle maple syrup over the top.  I usually measure so I make sure it is no more than 1 teaspoon.

Making the oatmeal this way has made it into a much more satisfying breakfast.  We use mostly organic products and they are all readily available at the grocery or big box stores.  The best place to buy organic old fashioned oats is at a health food store (such as whole foods) that sells in bulk bins.  The organic chia and organic maple syrup I buy at Samsclub.

Breakfast is a very good place to start when you are trying to change habits.  I would suggest starting there and making eating a healthy, low sugar, high fiber breakfast a regular habit.

A new way of life

I've been wanting to write about our recent journey.  It's been hard to do it, but if I want nothing but positive things to come of it, then here goes.

Our journey began on April 10th of this year.  Really it began some time in March, but April 10th is the day we received the phone call that sent us on our journey.

The phone call came from the surgeon with the biopsy results of a tumor removed from my husband's colon. 

Cancer.

I looked at my husband and said, "are you ready to change our eating habits now?"

His answer was "yes"

I walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out 2 books that I have had for years.  The Hallelujah Diet and Patient Heal Thyself (which is now called The Maker's Diet, I believe)  I felt like God had been preparing me for this.  I felt like I already knew so much about what to do.  We dove right in.

So the journey I was referring to is a journey to GREAT health! 

With the help of those two books and countless hours on facebook groups and blogs about natural healing of cancer, together we devised a plan for battling this cancer.  We did all of this instantly, we had no idea of what extent this cancer was.  We just knew we needed to get super nutrition started in his body immediately.

**I truly believe that God healed my husbands cancer.  I will write about this separately.

A week later my husband's MRI and CT scan showed absolutely nothing.  The surgeon was amazed by the MRI because he was not at all confident that he had removed it all.  Yet no cancer was showing up.  Hallelujah!

This meant no chemo or radiation (praise God because knowing what we now know we would never agree to it)  The surgeon scheduled a resection surgery for a few weeks later. 

Another week later he called us back and said he wanted to send Jeff to a specialist a few hours away.  He wanted him to take a look and see if it was possible to have a less invasive surgery.  (the tumor was in his rectum)   We gladly went!

Upon being examined by the specialist (1 month after the initial diagnosis) it was found that the tumor sight was shrinking and healing--not growing!!  Hallelujah!  He said yes, he was a perfect candidate for the less invasive surgery.  He was very encouraged by the improvement in the site in one month!  We mentioned the excessive amounts of carrots we were juicing and the turmeric he was taking but he dismissed that as having any relevance.  hmmmmm.

Jeff had outpatient surgery ten days later.  When the surgeon came out to talk to me he said there was barely a mark where the cancer had been and he was highly confident it was gone.  He removed tissue at the site and the margins around it.  He told me he was surprised by how much more it had healed in ten days.  I told him about our diet changes.  He didn't dismiss it this time. 

A week or so later we received the call from the surgeon telling us that all labs came back clear! 

I'm telling this whole story because it leads into this lifelong journey we are now on.  It is a journey to be healthy in our older years.  We are 58 and 60.  We have been healthy thus far.  But colon cancer?!!  This clearly is diet related.  My husband loved to eat all of the things that were not good for him in the long run.  I have always been overweight and he had also put on excess pounds in the last 10 or so years.  This was a wake up call!  We have too much to be healthy for!

This journey we are on is called Whole Foods Plant Based eating.  We are not vegan.  We eat no more than 10% animal products.  Mostly less than 10%.  We eat organic.  Refined sugars are gone.  Anything processed is gone.  Coffee is now a treat twice a week.  Green tea and Red tea took its place.

We began eating this way almost immediately after his diagnosis, not quite three months ago.  He has lost 25 lbs and I have lost 22 lbs.  We feel so much better!  We have so much more energy!  And we are happier!

I am going to try to write about this way of eating in the hopes that it can help someone else.  There is so much information out there and I know it can be a daunting task to figure out what to eat and what not to eat!  I have kept a food journal since day one on everything that we have eaten.  I'm not going to lie and say this is easy!  I think eventually it will just be natural to us and easier.

My next post will cover the basics of how we eat.  I will try to outline it as best I can. 
Questions!!!  I would love to answer any and all questions. 
Obviously we are only three months into this, but so far we have seen nothing but good results. 
Only time will tell about the cancer, but right now we have no reason to believe it will ever come back.
I am hoping to keep us accountable through helping others eat healthier also!

Stay tuned!