My New Friend...Chia!

Hooray! Week four has flown by. I am now half way through this detox eating program. I never thought I would be able to go 4 weeks without chocolate or cheese or chips. The most difficult night occurred when we had dinner at Provo's Brick Oven Pizza. My niece ordered the most scrumptious looking garlic chicken pizza. It smelled heavenly. The baskets of buttery, crispy garlic bread made my mouth water. Mmmmmm...Fortunately, there was a marvelous salad and soup bar. Unfortunatley, I forgot to take our own salad dressing. All they had available was creamy dressings and all the soups were either milk/cheese based or had lots of noodles. Becky and I decided to try the homemade chicken noodle soup and just pick out the noodles. It was mediocre. I can honestly say that I make a far superior chicken soup. My one downfall was the tablespoon of ranch-style dressing I put on my salad. I had already eaten a "dry" salad for lunch and I just couldn't face another one. I put egg and olives and other moist ingredients on the salad (protein day), but they didn't have any salsa or vinegar/oil dressings. So sad! Oh well. It turned out well, and we had a great time visiting with family.

My weight has plateaued, but that's okay too. I didn't start this focused on my weight as much as an attempt to gain better health. I do feel much better. Saturday, I steam cleaned the tile floors, base boards and kitchen appliances. A couple of months ago, I would have retreated to to a chair or even to bed and spent the rest of the day reading or watching a movie or sleeping because of pain. Instead, I had energy left over and went right to work on another project. Feeling better makes this whole idea totally worth the effort.

The newest food I am using is chia. So far I just put a couple of tablespoons in my green smoothie every day. The more I read about chia, though, the more fascinated I am with its nutritional properties. I think I will make some chia gel and try using it as a thickener. One article I read claims that you can use chia gel in place of fats in many recipes and cut the calories by almost 90%. Sounds too good to be true, but I will experiment and see. Chia does have calories, although not many, and it is the highest of land plants in omega-3 oils. It is high in fiber, iron, magnesium and potassium. oh, and then there's the protein and fiber and...yeah. lots of stuff! Chia lowers bad cholesterol and triglycerides and slows down the conversion of carbohydrates into sugars...thus stabilizing blood sugar levels.

We'll see how this week turns out. I want to add exercise to my routine now. Not sure how to make that work. It is difficult to justify spending the time on me for some reason. I think I will try going back to yoga twice/week now that the car is repaired. and maybe walk three times/week? I'll figure it out!

In the mean time...I have a huge research paper and two exams I need to take before the first week in April. Yikes!