Dear GreenSmoothieGirl:  I definitely have a binge eating disorder. This has been going on since I’m 13; I’m now 50! My husband, also 50 is very overweight and my daughter, 20 and in college is very overweight. I’m very interested in getting my family on track. What can you tell me about binge eating?

Answer:  Two things are usually at work when it comes to eating disorders.  One is emotional and one is physical/chemical.  Of course, you can’t entirely separate the two.  But let me talk about one for a minute and then the other.

First of all, we often “reward” ourselves with food because we feel low, or we are bored, we feel insecure or unloved, or maybe life just feels empty and food is the only thing we have to look forward to.  It’s helpful to know when we begin to eat something damaging to our health what it is, exactly, we’re hoping the junk food can do for us.  Is it going to ease the boredom?  If so, it may help to talk to yourself about that: “For five minutes while I eat these Cinnabon cinnamon rolls, I’ll enjoy them, but then I’ll have a blood sugar crash and be unable to do my work.  And I’ll hate myself because I was going to eat healthy today and then ate a box of donuts after lunch, instead.  Then my self-esteem will be lower, not higher.”

I find self-talk isn’t usually enough, though.  I also have to find something else to do to make myself NOT BORED.  (That’s my emotional trigger–boredom.)  Some people eat when they’re feeling criticized or ignored by someone they care about.  Some eat to cover up their sexuality because of intimacy issues.  There are so many reasons to overeat or indulge in processed foods that cause weight gain and health problems.

Second, when processed foods are in our daily menu, they screw up our tastes for other foods.  They change our ability to detect where the “off” switch should be in eating, because MSG, NutraSweet, sugar or corn syrup, and salt cause a chemical chain reaction of symptoms that lead us to not understand or tune into being satisfied by a small to moderate amount of food.

Those who eat to assuage their emotions AND have chemical addictions to processed food are doomed to overweight if they don’t tap into both sides of that equation.  I wrote 12 Steps to Whole Foods to address the chemical issues.  And Ch. 11 on healthy treats helps in the transition away from eating junk treats all the time.  Starting there—with nutrition—also helps on the emotion side, because even if unaddressed, you have much better options when you DO soothe yourself with food.

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl:  How much fats do you take in a day? From what I gathered from your book, it looks something like: 1 tablespoon flax oil in green smoothie, 2 tablespoons coconut oil on lips and skin, a handful of nut and seeds for snacks in the afternoon.  Am I right?  I am about the same age as you.  Would the above be too much oil in a day?

Answer:  That’s an appropriate amount of fat for an active person in her 40’s.  (Some of that 2 Tbsp. of coconut oil may be eaten—I couldn’t put that much on my skin—and I also might use a Tablespoon or less of extra-virgin olive oil for cooking dinner, too.)

I might eat a few hundred calories more than the average woman my age whose weight is healthy, just because I also work out hard and am really hungry otherwise0.  I used to put everything I ate into a program called DietPower (about $35 when I bought it at dietpower.com).  By programming in my workouts AND my food, and weighing every day, I was able to establish my EXACT metabolic rate.  I learned that at 5’8” and 135 lbs., I burn about 1600 calories a day.  (I burn more and can therefore eat more if I run 5 miles, for a 500 calorie expenditure.)

I no longer count calories or worry about that at all.  (Also, many whole-food items aren’t in the DietPower database.)  I find that if I don’t eat any processed foods, addictions don’t exist, and I can eat how much I want, within reason.  My friend Michelle says that she overeats anything (and uses oatmeal as an example—something she says she’ll eat four bowls of), but I don’t believe it.   Not if you go OFF refined foods for a short time to eliminate those addictions.  People not eating refined foods simply do not have a tendency to overeat legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables.  That’s because they’re natural and don’t distort hormones and the other finely tuned systems in the body to create unnatural cravings. 

When you eat only whole foods, you are tuning your body in to its needs.

I leave tonight on a redeye to Costa Rica for a week where I intend to get really brown and see some rain forest and butterfly farms and beaches and volcanoes.  While I’m gone, I will magically continue to blog!

Tomorrow 2,000 lbs. of raw almonds (again, sold only in 100 lb. increments) will go live in the GreenSmoothieGirl.com store for LOCALS ONLY (those willing to pick up in Lindon, Utah).  And, we have 14 more quarts of Anti-Plague ($50), and 25 more quarts of Colloidal Silver ($25) if you would like to order them.  Simply use the group buy form and just mark the almonds as 0.

When I’m back from Costa Rica on approx. Jan. 5, I will notify those of you who got the last 2,000 lbs. that you can come pick them up.  Act quickly because I have an email list demand I haven’t notified yet that far exceeds the supply.  So when I notify them if there are any remaining when I get back, they’ll be gone that day.  And this will be all we have until next year’s crop in fall ’09, as the only rancher who would work with us has gathered up every bit that wasn’t declared to the Almond Board and it’s all GONE.

Dear friends, thank you for your support of the GreenSmoothieGirl mission in the first full year of this web site’s operation.  I am trying to post photos but it won’t work today, so I’ll try to troubleshoot later.  I hope you have a blessed Christmas and a wonderful 2009!  Here for you is my favorite quote by one of this world’s greatest Christians and authors, C.S. Lewis.  I find it so profound that I carry it around with me and read it over and over to help me remember who each person I meet really is:

The Weight of Glory

By C.S. Lewis

It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour.

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.  It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.

All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.

It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.

There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.  This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.  We must play.

But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.  And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.  Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.  If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl.com: I’m a working single mom.  I know you are, too.  How do you make breakfast, lunch, and dinner for your family?

Answer: I don’t spend a lot of time doing things that don’t matter.  I’ve just learned the high-impact things that ARE worth my time.  I also teach my kids how to cook and clean up, and we all pitch in and take turns.

Green smoothies are a high-impact item.  Once a week making a gallon of kefir, and a big roasting pan of granola, also high-impact and worth my time.  Making a salad for dinner is another 5-10 minutes that is worth the effort.  Those are the things I do every day.  Sometimes, but not always, I’ll make a quart of salad dressing, something from Ch. 3 of 12 Steps, to last several days.  If I don’t do that, then a splash of raw apple cider vinegar and olive oil dresses the salad, with maybe a sprinkle of Trocomare and/or kelp.  I spin my romaine in a salad spinner so that the salad dressing “sticks” instead of getting diluted with water at the bottom of the bowl.

And then, I keep my dishes simple when I do cook, and I often double batches, having some for a second night, and some to freeze.  Before I go to work, I take a pint of pesto sauce or an 8”x8” pan of wild mushroom rice bake or a Tupperware of vegetarian chili out of the freezer.  Once a week we end up having “leftover night.”

Whichever child I need to spend some time with, I’ll often call into the kitchen to help me.  I have a child who loves potatoes, and she likes to come in and scrub some potatoes while I make a salad.  While we do that, we catch up on what happened to her that day at school. 

Speaking of that, I have a brand-new YouTube video out about how to get your kids invested in nutrition.  They have to care about it, themselves, if you want them to leave home and do what you’re doing (prepare and eat whole plant foods).  Here it is:

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=R-O0voLkxBI

(If you subscribe to my videos, then when I release new ones, you’re notified via email.)

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: I know you make a green smoothie and take it to work in a quart jar.  But what about when you get up late, don’t have time, and you’re out in town and STARVING?  What do you eat?

Answer:  Here, locally (Utah County), my favorite thing to do is go to New York Burrito at about 1600 N. State, Orem.  Get a vegetarian wrap on a whole-wheat tortilla.  Skip the white rice (they don’t have brown rice, but mention that you hope they start using it).  Instead, get lots of black beans.  (They don’t salt their black beans.)  Then ask for TONS of extra romaine and tomatoes, and have some onions (and guacamole and salsa) for plenty of RAW.  You’re out the door for under $5 and 5 minutes, with a whole-food lunch that tastes great—and New York Burrito doesn’t even cater to the health conscious.

You can look around for healthy options like this and know where to head on a day you’re crazy-busy.  If you’re in Springville, anything you get at Ginger’s is really tasty and also raw and really nutritious. 

If I’m in a sit-down restaurant with friends, I try to avoid Mexican and Chinese, because they rarely have a lot of raw ingredients.  And I mostly stick to salads.  Ask for special things in it—like, skip the chicken, please, and give me extra spring greens and lentils instead, or whatever.

At Pizza Factory, I get pasta and veggies—only the pasta I order is actually the steamed yellow squash noodles (this dish is fantastic with any sauce).  And instead of going to the salad bar where the lettuce is iceberg, I ask them to bring me a plate of romaine and build my salad from there.  (Iceberg lettuce is nutritionally pointless; darker greens are so much better for you.  Every time I do this in a restaurant, everyone else at the table does it, too.)

Any tips you have for each other would be appreciated.