Coconut Curry Shrimp

This is a fun and quick weeknight dinner, super flavorful and colorful. You can use full-fat coconut milk if you’re at your goal weight, or light coconut milk on a weight-loss protein-sparing day. Other kinds of seafood can be substituted for the shrimp, like fish, scallops, clams, or calamari. Enjoy! Serves 2.

Ingredients:

Shrimp:

2 pounds of medium shrimp

1 T coconut oil

dash sea salt

Sauce:

1 can coconut milk, no gums - I like Native Forest

1 T fish sauce

1 T tamari sauce

1 t garlic powder

dash onion powder

2 t minced fresh ginger or 1/2 t ginger powder

1/2 t ceylon cinnamon

1/2 t turmeric, optional

3 T chopped Thai basil, optional

lime slices for serving

Instructions:

Whisk all the sauce ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside. Heat up the coconut oil a large cast-iron/stainless steel/copper pan on high until hot. Add the shrimp and the dash of sea salt, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon until the shrimp are pink and cooked through, a couple minutes. Pour in the sauce. Stir until hot and well combined, and remove from heat. Add more fish sauce and/or tamari to taste, for saltiness. Sprinkle herbs on top. Serve immediately with limes on the side.

Perfect Boiled Eggs

I’ve recently fallen in love with boiled eggs. They are perfect for protein-sparing days because they don’t need to be cooked with butter or other fat in the pan like with omelets, scrambed eggs, and fried eggs. All you get is the super-healthy fat in the yolk, which is 4.5 grams/egg. And with 6 grams of super high-quality protein each, they are super filling, delicious, and done in minutes! This recipe is choose-your-own-adventure, depending on whether you prefer your yolks runny, medium, or hard! Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Fresh eggs, soy- and corn-free (how many depends on the size of your pan: not more than will fit in one layer in the bottom of your pan, with some space around them)

Instructions:

1. Boil 3 inches of water in a medium sauce pan, being sure it’s not more than half full so there is room for your eggs after the water boils.

2. Lower fresh cold eggs into the rolling boiling water with a large spoon so they don’t crack on the bottom of the pan. Work quickly so that they don’t start cooking much before you get the timer set. Keep heat on high.

3. Set the timer immediately. Runny yolks = 7 minutes. Medium yolks (my fave) = 8 minutes. Hard yolks = 10 minutes.

4. When the water comes back to a roiling boil, lower the heat to medium, making sure that there are still simmer-bubbles in the water.

5. When the timer goes off, immediately pour out most of the hot water and add cold tap water to fill the sauce pan. Dump that water and fill it again with cold tap water to stop the cooking.

6. Peel, season with sea salt and pepper, and eat warm! Leftovers can be stored in the shell in the fridge for up to one week and eaten cold.

image: Photo by Anton Nazaretian on Unsplash

Protein-Sparing Modified Fasting

THIS ARTICLE NO LONGER ACCURATELY REPRESENTS MY BELIEFS. ALTHOUGH WE NEED TO KEEP PROTEIN ADEQUATE AND FAT LOW, I NOW BELIEVE A HEALED BODY NEEDS APPROPRIATE AMOUNTS OF HEALTHY CARBOHYDRATES AND ADEQUATE CALORIES. PLEASE REACH OUT TO FIND OUT MORE!

For many of us with weight to lose, intermittant fasting and ketogenic diets aren’t enough to get to our goal weight. I struggled for years to lose weight, especially the last 10-20 pounds that just wouldn’t budge. Then I discovered protein-sparing modified fasting (PSMF) and the last pieces of the weight-loss puzzle fell into place.

PSMF has been around for decades, but like most nutrition science it fell to the wayside when the fat- and meat-phobia of the 80’s began. Basically, PSMF is when one fasts most fat and carbohydrates but maintains a healthy amount of protein in the diet. It had magical results in my body and in many of my clients’ bodies, helping us lose the last bit of weight and keep it off. PSMF is still considered a high-fat diet, but the body is burning it’s own fat stores, rather than burning dietary fat.

More recently, Maria Emmerich of Maria Mind Body Health has been promoting PSMF, and she has an excellent calculator on her website for determining how much protein, fat, carbs, and calories to consume on “normal days” and “PSMF days”. https://mariamindbodyhealth.com/calculator/ I found this to be helpful, but slightly complicated. Also, Maria is extreme with it and i don’t agree with her super low numbers. If the calculator doesn’t work for you or you don’t/can’t measure your body fat, a simple method is to keep carbs super low (around 50 grams/day total carbs - not net carbs), keep fat as close to 50 grams/day as possible (with an option for weekly higher calorie refeed meals), and eat as much protein as you need for satiation. I found at first that my body wanted a lot of protein, and I was still losing weight. Maria even says in the small print that consuming extra protein is fine. Some days I ate as much as 150-200 grams of protein and still lost weight. The minimum amount of protein required during PSMF is one gram per pound of lean body mass (basically your goal weight, or what your weight would likely be right now if you had the same amount of muscle but very low body fat).

Easy ways to increase protein while still fat-fasting:

-Whole eggs everyday, adding whites if you’d like. Even though the yolks have 4.5 grams of fat each, your body needs at least 50 grams/fat each day and egg yolks are an excellent source. Some days I eat 6 eggs, and my favorite is soft-boiled.

-Fat-free lunch meat. Even organic lean pork and chicken are fine, because there is no unhealthy PUFA fats when there is no fat. It’s just protein. Be sure to check the labels and find organic lunch meat that is 0-1 gram of carbs and 0 grams of fat. Pure protein. Roll it up with pickle slices and mustard for an awesome lunch.

-90/10 or 95/5 Ground beef, super lean steak without much marbling, and beef liver. You can cook it in a dry cast iron pan with lots of sea salt and it is delicious. Maybe a bit of butter or ghee but count your fat grams.

-Nonfat greek yogurt with Nunatural Liquid Vanilla Stevia. I love the thickness and creaminess of greek yogurt. Be sure to watch for any additional ingredients besides milk and probiotics, especially “nonfat milk powder” which is pure lactose/milk sugar. You can divide the carbs listed on the label in half, because they are required by law to report the carbs in the milk, but the bacteria digests at least half of it. Or make your own yogurt and let it ferment longer and it’s basically carb-free. I like to add a few raspberries or blueberries on top, and it feels like a wonderful dessert on a PSMF day.

-Lean pork loin and boneless skinless chicken breasts for dinner.

-Lean seafood like white fish, salmon without the skin, shrimp, oysters, scallops, and. mussels.

There’s nothing better than losing weight while full. Please reach out for a nutrition session with me if you have questions!