Thanks Lee: Fasting – Now I get it!
On Saturday I was lucky enough to attend a book launch at Oken’s Kitchen in Warwick (Warwickshire, United Kingdom) organised by Warwick Books.
Lee Homes came to talk to us about her new book ‘Fast your way to Wellness’ and demonstrate some recipes from her book.
Lee is Australian, as I am, but until a few days ago I hadn’t heard of her or her work. So when my friend Katherine suggested we go to the launch I checked out her website www.superchargedfood.com
Here I was introduced to Lee’s philosophy and her work with food. It was very refreshing as I discovered it to be very inline with my own values and beliefs. Whole foods cooked from scratch, simple, fresh and made with love. Healing for the gut and the soul as preparing food is once again approached with mindfulness and gratitude. Very much the food ethos I grew up with on our farm in South Gippsland (Victoria, Australia).
Meeting Lee I discover a lovely, laidback Aussie who is living a wholehearted life with wholefoods. Through her own health struggles Lee found her way to health again through wholefoods. Lee certainly knows her stuff, and was able to fill in a number of blanks for me so that I now have a better understanding of how fasting works and how it is really good for your body.
My understanding of fasting has changed too. I thought fasting meant going without food, but apparently you can eat 500 Calories on your fasting days! And with Lee’s new recipe book to give some amazing ideas about what those 500 calories might look like. Lee helped dispel my fear of being hungry all the time (the main reason I have put off embracing it wholeheartedly for so long).
So for me today is my first official fasting day…
Peppermint & Liquorice tea before the school run kept the hunger away.
My workout at 9am – before breakfast, unheard of for me as that mantra of “must have breakfast – it’s the most important meal of the day” always plays in my head. Right there – an underlying belief that I can just give the boot, after 46 years!
Breakfast at 11am – Orange and Cinnamon Buckwheat Porridge (p119)
I used several of Lee’s tricks to ignore the hunger pangs and then it was…
Lunch at 2pm – leftover ginger stir fry from Friday nights dinner (Not Lee’s recipe – but one of my favorites).
Dinner at 6pm – I’m planning the Vegie Nori Wraps (p250) to which I will add some sausages and maybe mash to keep the 3 boys in my house happy (but which I can skip).
So begins the first day of the rest of my fasting life. Two days of extra mindful eating (that makes more sense to me than ‘fasting’) will allow me to eat mindfully for the rest of the week and not feel guilty or like I have to count calories on those other five days. Sounds great to me!
Thanks Lee for your inspiration, and your recipe book. I look forward to trying the rest of the recipes!
Have a fastastic day!
Tina
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