You Don’t Have To Be A Certain Type
Apr 20, 2013 8:34:07 GMT -5
steffanie3 and milkmaid1980 like this
Post by Pearl on Apr 20, 2013 8:34:07 GMT -5
The Trim Healthy Mama plan is for all women, no matter what dietary back ground or persuasion. If you are a Drive Thru Sue who feels overwhelmed in the kitchen – take a seat in the THM living room, you are welcome! If you are a Farm Fresh Tess who can’t bear the thought of even one additive in your food, sit down on the sofa, right next to Sue. The two of you will get along great and both receive slimming and health benefits from the plan.
You see, nobody has to be a certain “food type” to be a Trim Healthy Mama. You can learn the basic principles of the THM plan and then implement them with as much purism as you like or you can enjoy store bought short cuts if you are not the ‘from scratch’ type. No guilt trips from us either way.
Serene and I take our own approaches to the core plan, we jokingly fight about it. She gives me a hard time about using a microwave now and then – horror! I tell her she needs to live a little. Who cares if there is a preservative in my store bought dressing on occasion! I still make my olive oil dressings too! But we do this while smiling. I respect her approach as she does mine and we have both achieved vibrant health and goal weights we couldn’t be happier with.
We have many Mamas on plan who raise cows for fresh raw milk, skim off the cream for their coffee or make butter out of it. They culture the left over milk into yogurt then strain to make it Greek style. Sounds like lots of work but they love it – and the health benefits this brings to their families. Others of us buy our Greek style yogurt at the store – all done! We could not imagine milking a cow but we respect the Mamas that do. Some of our Mamas grind their own grains and sour dough their bread, others of us buy plan approved bread items at the store. Some Mamas make their own unsweetened almond milk; others of us would rather buy it in a carton. Go with your own convictions on all these difference but in the end we can all love each other and not insist one way is loftier than the other.
So let’s bring this attitude to the sweeteners that are used on plan. There is a sweet solution for all types. If weight is an issue, we encourage the use of stevia. Once you are at goal weight a little raw honey becomes an acceptable sweetener and if your children don’t have weight issues, honey is fine for them.
In the book we mention two main stevia sweeteners, Nustevia Pure Extract Powder and Truvia. Some of our purist Mamas have issues with Truvia. It combines Erythritol and pure stevia in a blend. The main issue with this is the Erythritol used. While Erythritol has no impact on blood sugar and in our opinion is the best of all the sugar alcohols, it comes from corn. Unless corn is organic or says otherwise, it is usually a GMO food.
The purist solution to this is to use only the Nustivia pure extract we recommend (without maltodextrin), or make your own Truvia using non GMO Erythritol. We link you to a recipe for this in our book and there is also one at our FB group www.facebook.com/groups/trimhealthymamas/. In the files at the group you can also find a recipe for SJC (sweet juice concentrate) which is a way of fermenting pure stevia powder in water to remove every trace of bitterness. Serene uses only the pure stevia extract for all her sweetening needs, I primarily use that too as it is much more budget friendly, but for some recipes I like the added bulk of Truvia. Since we are both at goal weight we sometimes opt for a little raw honey to sweeten things up too.
Many of our Drive Thru Sue’s like the ease of purchasing Truvia at their local grocery store. Honestly, a little GMO doesn’t really spook them too bad, nor does the processing process. It looks more like sugar to them and it is easier to measure. Those little things can be “make it or break it” deals for our Sue’s as they are just starting out.
Our eating plan lowers the amount of corn and wheat in the diet to much safer levels overall. That means GMO consumption usually goes dramatically down versus up – even if the use of Truvia possibly contains some “GMOness”… ha ha, that’s my new, made up word for the day.
Let’s be gentle with one another. We don’t want to thump our Sue’s on the head about these things when they are making such wonderful health and weight improvements eating the THM way and not feeling deprived! Some of our Mamas start off as Sue’s and progress slowly into a little more purism. But we mustn’t force this on them. They certainly begin to cook more, use far more real food and eat far less packaged food than they did previously. Baby steps – we preach this and it works!
So let’s party on! Some of us will microwave our “Muffin In Mugs”, others will bake them in the oven for ten minutes but we’ll all enjoy them – and that’s the main thing. This plan is enjoyable. Let’s rock it out together no matter what type we are.
Love Pearl
PS – I’ve seen the links to the many blogs that are all riled up about Truvia. Please don’t post them as comments here. This post was just an exhortation; I truly don’t want it to become a debate. You can use the search engine over at the FB group to see the many discussions on the Truvia links over there.