In the Swing of things: Perfect Health Diet and an Activity Challenge

Gnomes make me happy 

Since going all in with the Perfect Health Diet, I've set up a few guidelines that are keeping me feeling good:

• Refined Sugar is out (except small amounts of dark chocolate).
• Fruit is OK and I'm not limiting it at all (I wind up having 2-4 pieces a day). Knowing that this is always a sweet option makes me feel less panicy and restricted. 
• Starch comes mostly from things that contain resistant starch -- cooked cooled potatoes/rice, green bananas but also from sweet potatoes. I am limiting processed starches like rice noodles, etc. to roughly 1 x per week.
• Non-starchy veggies fill half my plate at every meal with the other half split between meat and starch. I have to purposely focus on this and it has led me to eating much less meat overall since my appetite has gone down.
• Mindful activity is a part of each day. I printed out a full year calendar and hung it on the fridge. Every day that I do at least 20 minutes of purposeful activity, I put and X over the date. I'm over 3 weeks in and haven't broken the chain. Yay! Sometimes I do more (like an hour yoga class), but keeping the goal manageable has been key to attaining consistency, which is what I was after. 
• Almond milk is a daily addition to my morning smoothie, in which I get to dump all my food-based supplements like collagen, probiotics, prebiotics, green bananas for RS, fiber, and even liver powder sometimes! Since the store-bought variety comes with additives and stabilizers, I decided to try my hand at making my own. I used this method (I just use the almonds, water, and vanilla) and bought this nut milk bag to strain it. Making homemade almond milk is way easier than I imagined and turns out delicious. It smells amazing whirring in my Vitamix - fresh almonds and vanilla - yum! 
• Almond meal is a lucky side benefit of making homemade almond milk. Who knew? When you strain the milk, you're left with very finely ground almond meal, which you can use to bake cookies. The milk recipe I linked to suggests drying it out in the oven, sending it through the blender again, etc. I am way too lazy. I just save it in the fridge and then make some cookies when I get enough of it. Since it's still damp, not at all like my beloved blanched almond flour, it's a whole different animal. I found I had to turn the oven temp down and bake them longer than usual, but they come out moist, chewy, and more like oatmeal cookies. I love the idea of using one raw ingredient to get so many yummy things! Talk about being thrifty. My Grampy would be proud. 

I am off to go try my hand at baking my low sugar (fruit sweetened) chocolate chip cookies. I'm going to refine the recipe a bit then come back and post an official version with pictures. Stay tuned!