I learned at a young age that my Mom was always one step ahead of me. She demonstrated it when the occasion was appropriate many times. But what I didn’t know was that our whole family was on a stealth diet when I was growing up. In fact I didn’t figure it out until I was an adult. When I graduated from college I had put on a few pounds that I definitely didn’t need. I came home for the summer while looking for a job and complained about the extra weight and my Mom handed me a list of foods.
I said what’s this? She said it was a list of foods that required more calories to digest than were contained in the food. As I reviewed the list I saw many common elements of our meals when we were growing up. The list contained many fruits like oranges, apples, grapefruits and vegetables like asparagus, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, beans, sweet potatoes and more. There was also whole grains and oatmeal, eggs and yogurt, and several nuts and berries.
I said this looks like your grocery list when you used to take me grocery shopping with you when I was a kid. She nodded her head and said yes, that’s pretty much what she usually buys at the store. I thought back to all the applesauce that she always made for an after school treat. No hostess cupcakes at my house, homemade applesauce with a sprinkle of cinnamon and homemade oatmeal cookies with nuts and cinnamon were the standard treats.
My Mom did make the best applesauce I’d ever had. Her recipe was simple but added a little twist. She would take five or six fresh apples and one orange and throw them in the blender. When she served this applesauce she would sprinkle cinnamon on the top. The orange added a special tang to the natural sweetness of the apples and cinnamon.
All of a sudden I started remembering other little tricks she used in our meals. No salt or sugar on our table but plenty of different kinds of pepper. Sorbets rather than Ice Crème, frozen fruit juices rather than Popsicles, and pies with any kind of berry or other fruits. I’d been on a healthy diet from birth that is until I went to college and majored in fast foods like pizzas, fries, and cheeseburgers. No wonder I gained some weight!
As these thoughts were running through my head my mother was looking at me with a slight smile on her face like she could read my mind. Which she often did anyway and always drove me nuts. So I said out loud, so you had me on a diet the whole time I was growing up? She said not necessarily but she did always try and prepare healthy and balanced meals that were nutritious and low in fat. The kicker was that most of the foods had this ability to burn more calories than they contained.
Chalk another good one up for Mom. I always figured it was a money thing since most of the fattening foods were also more expensive. I never guessed it was a health issue rather than a cost saving scenario. And we certainly never went hungry; there was always plenty to eat. Just no sodas, candy, or other sugar and calorie laden foods around the house.
So I asked her if she had the recipes that went with this shopping list.
She said sure and handed me a handmade list of recipes that I recognized immediately. There were at least 150 different items from entrees to desserts. She said you can copy that and give me back the original. I just shook my head and said OK.
As I was reading through the recipes and remembering the different times I had eaten all these things over the years I realized how smart my mother was in all things. I decided I needed to pay more attention to how and what I ate in order to lose the weight I had gained. And this shopping list and recipes could also save me a few bucks too.
Almost every item on her shopping list was a food item that burned more calories than it contained. I could see how this would help anyone lose weight in a natural and easy way. Throw in a little exercise after each meal and you have a pretty good diet plan for losing weight. The secret on losing weight was to burn more calories than you consumed and this type of food did that for you.
As I was reading through the recipes I heard my mother say, “There’s some applesauce in the fridge if you’re hungry”. That sounded good to me, so I went and got a dish of applesauce to eat while I was reading.
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