Today I want to take a moment to make a confession.  I have fallen in love. 

After decades of self-study in the area of health in order to understand my own issues and do the best I can for my family, I have, at last, found a resource that seems to be custom designed for me.

I’ve never struggled with obesity.  In fact, aside from a couple of photos of me as a chubby toddler, I spent most of my life in the string bean category.  Well, maybe a string bean with hips.  That is, until I went through something that is just about the biggest hormone screwer-upper ever – chemotherapy.  You can find more about that part of my story here.

As I sat in the chemo room listening to the others chat, I heard women saying that they’d gained as much as forty-five pounds during treatments.  Forty-five pounds!  The patients and their care-givers blamed it on the steroid anti-nausea drugs.  At that point, I didn’t care as much about the cause as I did the result.  The idea of that type of weight gain stayed in the forefront of my mind and at the top of my prayer list for the next four months.

Well, I didn’t gain forty-five pounds, but I did gain fifteen and in the following years, that fifteen has tried it’s best to turn into twenty.  As is my body’s tendency, it wanted to pack itself disproportionately below the waist, which may have paid off if I’d lived during the Renaissance and cared little for my modesty.  In those days, there was a demand for those who would, at artists’ requests, recline on couches with a bunch of grapes in one hand and a dove perched upon the other.

I tried various diets and joined the well-known support group that counts points. Since points were much simpler to count than calories, this worked for me.  In fact, it worked for me two or three times.  There seemed to be two issues.  They declared that “points are points” and we could consume them in any combination.  After a while, I learned that some foods’ points stuck to me like glue while others slipped off effortlessly after a period of over-indulgence. The other issue – and this one bothered me most – was that while this farm girl had been taken off the farm, the farm appetite hadn’t been taken out of the girl.  I wanted more food, dagnabbit!

After a prolonged period of stress, Stage 3 Adrenal Fatigue showed up, stayed much longer than I preferred, juggled my hormones even further and, if I may cling to that comparison, dropped all the balls.  My holistic M.D., along with treatment, advised a diet that would go easier on the glands and I gave up sugar and most grains.

A couple of years later, a long-time friend of mine lost around thirty pounds.  I had to admit that she maintained more joy than anyone I’d ever known on any type of “diet”.  She absolutely glowed and was enjoying herself.  I asked about it and she told me about Trim Healthy Mama.

Further inquiries led me to understand that the food on the THM plan was nearly identical to the recommendations of my doctor.  The only thing – and it seemed such a logical thing – that they recommended to people who wanted to trim away the pounds would be to separate carbohydrate fuels from fat fuels at mealtimes.

After toying with the idea and reading bits and pieces of their plan for a while as I was coming out of the adrenal struggle, I took their plan and began stepping into it at the beginning of this year, studying it and putting it into practice one day at a time.  Finally, I have enough food to eat!  I promised to grant myself grace to go off plan from time to time and to feel no guilt should I decide to go ahead and use up some off-plan ingredients along the way instead of throwing them out.  I think they’re all gone now (if you don’t count Smuffy’s cheat stash).

I needed to make friends with a few new special ingredients to help me in separating fuels, being kind to blood sugars and getting the extra protein I needed in my diet.  I’ve embraced a lot of new ingredients over the years, so it didn’t rock my world much.

I now have their plan books and cookbooks and since I have a big yard with lots of weeds to pull, have listened to over 130 Trim Healthy Podcasts (or, as we call it in THM Land, “The Poddy”) as of this date.  I feel like I’ve completed a crash course in getting to know the authors, Serene and Pearl.

I have lost several pounds and as my hormones steady themselves further, I’m sure the  number on the scale will continue to drop as I feast on real food and avoid even some of the healthy ones that are known to spike blood sugars and set off hormonal chain reactions.

In case you haven’t had the realization yet – hormones are everything! Messin’ with those will make you ugly inside and out, if you get my drift.

The best part, or what is referred to as a “non scale victory”, is that I feel good and do not feel the slightest hint of deprivation.  In fact, “junk” tastes like junk and I know that’s hard to believe if you’re still addicted to the SAD.  What a perfect name for the “standard American diet”!

I’ll post more about my journey with Trim Healthy Mama in the future, but today I wanted to share with you some of the great meals and treats I’ve discovered on this plan and give an honest review.

Today, for lunch, I made “Mama’s Famous Meatloaf” (page 157 of the Trim Healthy Cookbook) and topped it with a sauce made from “Trim Healthy Ketchup” (page 482). It had great texture and was moist with good flavor, just as you’d expect from an old-fashioned meatloaf like Grandma used to make.  However, we tend to like things with a bit more “zip”, so next time, I’ll probably make it my own by adding a bit more spice.  I’m not sure why the topping is more orange than red as I did follow directions, but it was tasty!

The ketchup recipe can be called a tomatoey sauce, but it is not ketchup to me.  However, I had already developed my own recipe without any refined sugars and it tastes just like Heinz.  As soon as I take the THM one and marry it to mine by having one of my kitchen lab brainstorms, I’ll post it here on the blog.

What is meat loaf without mashed potatoes?  Well, it’s fabulous if you serve up “Mashed Fotatoes” (page 264 of the Trim Healthy Table Cookbook).  Who needs all those starches and carbs?  Not me!  I’ll never be sorry I left white potatoes behind after seeing how easy it was to whip of this cauliflower version in the food processor in a matter of seconds. 

I found them heavenly.  Smuffy requests that they have a little less garlic next time.

Smuffy’s been growing okra in his garden, so I served it up alongside just the way we like it.  I stir together my own “baking blend” with equal parts almond flour, golden flax meal and coconut flour.  After slicing the okra into half-inch pieces, I tossed it in about three tablespoons of this mixture and stir fried it in a skillet I had pre-heated on medium-high heat with a tablespoon of refined coconut oil and a tablespoon of real butter.  It’s browned and beautiful in no time at all. 

All this made a delicious Satisfying meal.  (The THM plan defines “S” meals.)

I struggled with whether to assign this post to my “Thrive!” page because of the health benefits of Trim Healthy Mama, to my “Feed Me” page because it is good food or to my “Reviews” page because I can’t say enough good things about Trim Healthy Mama.

I have tried many recipes from their books and have only found a couple that I considered “duds”.  Pearl and Serene, I don’t know what you were thinking.  Perhaps they are a hit in Aussie culture, but “Slender Slaw” (page 266, Trim Healthy Table) and “Tzatziki Cucumber Salad” (page 266, Trim Healthy Table) are both odd.  Not horrible – just odd – and not a hit at our house.

To give a completely honest review, I must make one negative comment on the cookbooks. Pearl and Serene, I love you, but whomever is compiling your indexes needs to be assigned to a new job. You’ll notice how many flags are protruding from the books in the first photo. That’s because, once you find a recipe, you’re going to have a dickens of a time finding it again, and I know how to use an index. Recipes need to be listed by under categories, by actual name and by featured ingredients. Just sayin’.

I’m loving “Wonder Wraps” (page 251, Trim Healthy Table) and the first recipe I made from this cookbook, “Creamy Garlic Spinach Spaghetti Squash Bake (page 135).  That one got me off to a good start and I couldn’t wait to share it with friends.  However, the day I attempted to do so tried my soul and you might want to brace yourself before reading about it here.

I have only two words to say as I prepare to go downstairs and sneak a couple out of the refrigerator – “Superfood Mounds”, people!  Forget about those candy bars we grew up with.  Stir up a batch of these (page 424, Trim Healthy Table) in a saucepan and get ready for awesomeness!  Another super-easy treat is “Two Minute Truffles” (page 422, Trim Healthy Table).  I’d make extra if I were you and skip dusting them.  They are better when smooth.

In case you haven’t met them, Serene Allison and Pearl Barrett are sisters from “down under” who have ended up in the hills of Tennessee along with their husbands, children and extended family.  After writing a book to share with friends and acquaintances who asked them for the science and “how-to” on how they stay so trim and healthy, they found themselves on the best-seller list!  Now their sensible, scientific and doable approach is available to us all.

Thanks, Serene and Pearl!

Are you a Trim Healthy Mama? Are you toying with the idea? Never even heard of it? I’d love to chat about it so leave a comment!

What’s all the fuss about eating healthy?  We shouldn’t just survive, we should thrive!  Check out my Thrive! page.  My Feed Me! page offers recipes with free printables.  Not every recipe there is THM compatible, but most can be altered to work and I’ll try to make edits in the future to help you with that. 

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