The Diet in Brief

Oddly enough, now that I've had my chest cracked open, and my heart fondled, I've found a diet that gives me great lipid panel scores. 

This is my understanding of the Esselstyn diet.  Forgive me if I didn't get it right, but the test scores are pretty good, so I know it must be close.

The basic meals are plane food, starting with boiled oat groats and ground flax put into it for breakfast.  I do add some sweetener, as in three cut up dates (I leave the pits out), perhaps a bit of maple syrup.     

Lunch and dinner are basically the same soup which usually contains kale or spinach cooked for more than five minutes and I may add grains that I've cooked previously and left in a bowl in the refrigerator, so I can put some into each batch of soup.

Millet is the only grain that's missing an amino acid (l-lysine) I usually add several of the four or five grains I hold in reserve.  Barley, brown rice (I have both short and long grain), farro which is either emmer wheat or a variety of spelt; other gains are millet and bulgur.                  

I'm interested in the fiber that each grain has to offer, because my gut bacteria are at least reported to love it.  They've got vitamins in them too.

The soup has quite a bit in it, and sometimes I just have a taste for a few things, so I just cook that.

I avoid things that are said to be vegan but pretend to be something resembling meat, cheese or ice cream.

For eating something sweet, I have Wasa crackers that I put blackberry preserves on, and cocoa that I make by heating water and mixing in cocoa, some stevia, a bit of maple syrup and some salt.

Took me a while to get used to that, and I had to stop eating those dark chocolate bars I loved so much.

I don't fry anything.

Basically, I avoid all oil or nuts.  Too many omega sixes will kill you; I got chest pain.  

For my omegas, I swig a bit of cod liver oil, daily or almost daily.  The good stuff which is Carlson's.  I'm sure the other Nordic stuff is just as good.

The proper six to three ratio is four to one, or so I've been told and I'm slightly higher on the sixes than I should be but mine is better than five to one.

Probably not being strict enough on nuts.

I started attempting to get a better omega profile almost two years ago, and spent at least six months eating ground flax seed before coming to the conclusion that something was wrong.  I tried some old fish oil that had been in my refrigerator for a year or more and it did nothing. Finally, in desperation, I started drinking cod liver oil and that worked.  I started to put on muscle, and my omega scores gradually got better. 

It takes a long time to build up omegas when you start at zero. 

Think of your homely gut bacteria, and feed them accordingly, I like to give mine large quantities of Bubbies Sauerkraut.  I'm sure the oat meal (made from oat groats) with flax seed helps too.  A variety of vegetables helps too.

So that's it.  If I'm off somewhere on vacation, I'm not so strict because a week of eating things that are not so great is probably not so bad, as long as I'm strict when I'm at home.

I still stay pretty much vegan when I'm on the road but sometimes there's olive oil on my pasta or some grated cheese.  Still, if i can be mostly vegan when I'm away from home I can recover.  It won't kill me unless I do it regularly.