It’s time again to make some changes to my shake recipe, but it’s no longer a shake recipe!  As I’ve changed it so now I’m using it to bake bread 🙂  I was looking at the recipe…and it seemed to be getting weirder and weirder for a shake recipe, but after a little research I found it was perfect for a bread recipe!  It has various ingredients that are flour replacements, an egg, and applesauce is a apparently a good replacement for butter. So really the only difference is how I cook it.

So the changes to make this into bread are to ground up the apples into apple sauce and then cook it in the microwave for 5 minutes and that’s about it 🙂  To make sure it stays moist you need to put a cup of water in with it in the microwave. You can also add in some baking powder to make it nice and fluffy.

With this new version I’m looking to remove carbs from the recipe and bad macros to make it more healthy and better for weight loss.  I wrote up an article in the past on macro-nutrients which is my basis for making these changes.  I’m also changing back to Optimum Nutrition protein powder so it tastes a lot better :X  It does make it a bit more expensive, but I’m getting too tired of the chalky rice protein.

Bad Macros, before/after

• 2/3 sat fat
• 28/15.5 Sugar
• 225/same cholesterol

At this point I think I’ve lost all faith in Fooducate so I’m removing it.  After finding this review of dymatise protein and this review of the same exact product.  I looked over the nutrition facts and ingredients, and they’re identical.  The image of the product as well.  So why is one entry a C and the other a B???  I have made thoughts of my making my own food rating system that’s completely automatic, and seeing results like these show up in fooducate make me think their more human method just isn’t that reliable.  One result that’s really vexed me on there is how they can give Tina’s Burritos a B, I just can’t believe that a .80 frozen burrito is better for you than protein powder.

I’m also considering ordering some Citrus aurantium powder, since it contains Synpehrine which is an active ingredient in Shred JYM.  And I’m also thinking about trying lemon peel and peppermint.

1. Orange peel
2. Lemon peel
3. Peppermint

So my recommended spices would end up something like this:

1. Cinnamon
   
2. Matcha Powder
3. Licorice Root
4. Chia Seeds
5. Orange Peel
6. Lemon Peel
7. Peppermint

But I’m thinking of saving that for the next round, at this point I’m feeling like there’s not a lot of more advancements I can make while sticking to my original goals.  To make it better for weight loss I’d need to remove more carbs, but all the carbs are from the fruit and vegetable ingredients – which having those was kind of the whole point in the first place. The only ingredient in here that’s not an appetite suppressant is the pea meal, but after doing a lot of research there’s not many vegetables that are as low carb as the pea flower and none that are as cheap.  So I might be reaching a final version 🙂

I feel like after working on my protein shake recipe and exercising daily I’m in a pretty healthy place, which was my main goal.  But, it hasn’t helped my weight loss one bit!  It feels like balancing calories in vs calories out is really only half the story, the other half being exactly what those calories are made of.  I’m still quite a fledgling in these matters, so I’m making an easy summary of what calories are, and which ones are OK to eat.

I think it’s important to really understand what a calorie is.  I was a bit mind-blown when I first encountered an article that discussed what they really were, I never really gave it any thought before.  A calories isn’t something in your food – it’s a unit of energy.  A calorie is made up primarily of the three macro-nutrients: protein, carbs, and fats. Each gram of macro-nutrient gives it’s own calories, as explained here. And this article has some good formulas on calculating calories.

When I was growing up it used to be that “eating fat makes you fat,” but now it seems to be all about “good vs bad” fats.  Also, now it seems that carbs are the big problem, leaving protein as the last acceptable macro-nutrient.  So for this article, I’m going to do some digging into these three.  What kind of fats are good, what’s so bad about carbs, and what’s so good about protein.

Fats

I keep hearing “good vs bad” fats – but I don’t really know which ones are good and bad.  I found a nice article about it on BB.com, and the skinny of it is as follows:

Bad Fats

• Saturated Fat
• Trans fat
• Cholesterol (not really a fat, but still bad)

Good Fats

• Monounsaturated & Polyunsaturated Fat
• Omega 3 Fatty Acids

Carbs

For carbs, there are two kinds Simple/Bad and Complex/Good as explained here.  It seems in general simple carbs come from sugars and complex carbs come from starch. It seems tricky to figure out which ones are in your food, but I found this article with a simple explanation. So, in short:

Bad Carbs

• Sugars

Good Carbs

• Total carbs – sugars

Protein

I read a few articles, most notably this one, and it seems like they’re all in agreement: protein is good because it’s filing, and takes more energy (calories) to digest.  I did a little more digging to see if there where any kind of bad/good proteins, and I came across this thread and this article.   So, from what I can gather it’s a difference between incomplete/good and complete/best proteins – but it’s really not important enough to stress over.

All protein is good, yay!

After over a month with the last recipe, I ended up getting used to the taste.  Though, I wasn’t able to get used to calorie counting :/  Every time I try it ends up eating to much time and I can’t keep up.  So, instead I’ve decided to try and focus on appetite suppressants so hopefully I’ll eat less naturally.

So I want to change up this recipe to make it more filling.  To help get me started I reviewed several online articles to help pinpoint what foods I should try.

According to the results my current recipe already has quite a few appetite suppressants already, eggs, flaxseeds, and protein powder which only leaves cranberries and pea flour as the ingredients that won’t suppress appetite.  I was a bit surprised that apples were suggested by quite a few articles, so that seems like a natural substitution for my cranberries.

I found out that almond meal is a thing, it has a lot of fat, but my recipe as it is is a little carb heavy.  For now I think I’ll stay with pea flour because I have quite a bit left but also because, at $.53 a serving, almond meal is a bit pricey.  I really want to keep the recipe as close to $2 a serving as possible.

So here is my new recipe:

I guess it’s not surprising, but some of the prices have changed since last time, I went with vanilla protein since the chocolate went up in price, and bought the flaxseed meal in bulk.  And, happily, it ended up under $2 this time 🙂

One more addition is that I want to try adding in spices, I’ve gone through the list of appetite suppressants and filtered out the spices and herbs.   Some of these are kind of odd things to be adding to a protein shake, so I’m planning on experimenting with the flavor.  I’m not going to calculate any of these into the cost, since serving sizes are so small with spices.  Between the local dollar store and Herb Co I managed to get quite a few for a good price.  I may try more later, but initially I’m just going to stick to the cheaper spices. I’ll be coming back to cross out the ones that were just horrible x3

Appetite Suppressant Spices I purchased:

1. √ Cinnamon
   
2. √ Green Tea/Matcha Powder
3. Cayenne Pepper
4. Ginger
5. ~ Red Pepper
6. ~ Chickweed
7. Fennel
8. √ Licorice Root
9. ~ Psyllium
10. ~ Burdock
11. Garlic
12. √ Chia Seeds
13. Bladderwrack

The big winners here I’ve marked in green, the ones in black are just pretty meh and taste like dirt IMO – while the red ones were quite strong and even with a dash really gave the shake an unpleasant taste.  Licorice Root was the most surprising to me – it has a really nice sweet flavor, and tastes nothing like black licorice.  Apparently it’s used in soft drinks and other foods as a sweetener, but I’ve heard it can be bad in large doses – so a dab will do ya!

I’m also considering ordering some Citrus aurantium powder, since it contains Synpehrine which is an active ingredient in Shred JYM.

Expensive/Unavailable Appetite Suppressant Spices:

1. Mint
2. Dandelion Root (little pricey)
3. Garcinia/ Indica
4. Ginseng (really expensive)
5. Lemon
6. Wasabi
7. Hoodia
8. Aloe Vera (kind of expensive)
9. Evening Primrose
10. Seaweed
11. Gareinia Cantbogia
12. Cardamom (little pricey)

Like everyone, I want to loose weight 😀  Though, cutting calories back too far tends to have a bad effect on my quality of life (hunger pains, irritability, ect.)  Exercise helps, but ultimately exercising can’t make up for simply eating less.  Trying to exercise off one extra doughnut could easily run you an hour or more.  So I’ve decided to look into appetite suppressing foods, to help cut down without all of the nasty side effects.  I may give supplements a try in the future, but I’m first going to focus on more natural appetite suppressants. However, there seems to be a lot of variety out there as far as what foods are considered appetite suppressants.  So, to decide which ones I’ll try, or at least which ones I’ll try first, I decided to go through 20 articles, and rank food suppressants by how many articles they appear in.

When I searched I grabbed articles from the first two result pages with the following search terms “Natural Appetite Suppressants,” “Herbal Appetite Suppressants,” and “Appetite Suppressant Spices.” I would have added more, but a lot of the same articles started popping up even with different keywords, and most of the articles past the second page where promotional items for specific appetite suppressant products.

Water was a no brainer 🙂 And a lot of the top items are all things I heard of before.  Apples really surprised me, which makes me wish I didn’t hate them :X  Another thing I found surprising is that Saffron wasn’t mentioned in any of the articles, though I’ve heard that it can be used as an appetite suppressant.  I’m wondering if price was taken into consideration with some of these lists, as Saffron can be quite expensive.  I expected Mint to be higher, I purchased a Mint reed diffuser to help with appetite suppression after hearing that aroma therapy can help.  Whether or not aroma therapy works for appetite suppressant seems rather shaky, but worse case scenario is that my office smells nice – so it’s worth it in my opinion 🙂

Here are all the suppressants, that had more then one entry, ranked:
The numbers following each item are how many articles that item appeared in

1. Cinnamon 11
2. Green Tea 10
3. Water 9
4. Almonds/Nuts 8
5. Cayenne Pepper 8
6. Apples 8
7. Oatmeal 7
8. Flaxseeds 7
9. Coffee 6
10. Soup 6
11. Ginger 6
12. Avocado 5
13. Mint 5
14. Red Pepper 5
15. Chickweed 5
16. Dandelion Root 5
17. Fennel 5
18. Eggs 4
19. Leafy Greens 4
20. Salmon 4
21. Licorice Root 4
22. Garcinia/ Indica 4
23. Psyllium 4
24. Siberian Ginseng 4
25. Lemon 3
26. Sweet Potatoes 3
27. Dark Chocolate 3
28. Tofu 3
29. Wasabi 3
30. Vegetable Juice 3
31. Hoodia 3
32. Aloe Vera 3
33. Burdock 3
34. Evening Primrose 3
35. Seaweed 3
36. Gareinia Cantbogia 3
37. Coconut Oil 3
38. Garlic 3
39. Chia Seeds 2
40. Yogurt 2
41. Whey Protein 2
42. Umeboshi/Plumbs 2
43. Cardamom 2
44. Bladderwrack 2
45. Pineapple 2
46. Chillies 2
47. Kelp 2

And here are all of the articles used:

• http://www.popsugar.com/fitness/Natural-Appetite-Suppressants-Keep-You-Feeling-Full-16417130
• http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/diet-tips/top-25-natural-appetite-suppressants
• http://weightloss.allwomenstalk.com/safe-and-natural-appetite-suppressants
• http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/appetite-suppressants-work/story?id=20807807
• http://www.emaxhealth.com/8782/dr-oz-top-4-appetite-suppressants-compared-natural-suppressants-fighting-belly-fat
• http://au.askmen.com/top_10/fitness/top-10-appetite-suppressants.html
• http://www.livestrong.com/article/495954-homemade-natural-appetite-suppressant/
• http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/health/2013/07/29/appetite-suppressants/#slide=1
• https://natural-herbal-remedies.knoji.com/safe-herbs-that-reduce-appetite-and-hunger/
• http://www.thealternativedaily.com/3-herbs-curb-appetite/
• http://www.livestrong.com/article/85072-appetite-suppressant-herbs/
• http://www.myspiceblends.com/glossary/herbal_properties_glossary/Anorectic.php
• http://wiki-fitness.com/natural-appetite-suppressant-foods-herbs/
• http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/11/26/herbs-and-spices.aspx
• http://www.womenshealthmag.com/nutrition/appetite-suppressants
• http://www.livestrong.com/article/90542-appetite-suppressant-spices/
• http://www.boldsky.com/health/wellness/2013/healthy-spices-suppress-appetite-034304.html
• http://www.ehow.com/list_6949053_spices-suppress-appetite.html
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1383610/Weightloss-From-cinnamon-seaweed-foods-naturally-curb-appetite-help-shed-pounds.html
• http://www.holistic-online.com/remedies/weight/weight_herbs-for-obesity.htm

Here’s everything that was only mentioned once:

• Astragalus
• Brewer’s Yeast
• Fengugreek
• Guggul
• Mushrooms
• Legumes
• Black Pepper
• Mustard
• Termeric
• Cumin
• Pomegranate
• Stevia
• White Kidney Bean
• Ephedra
• Grapefruit Oil
• Hibiscus
• Orange
• Spirulina
• Cacao
• Acai Berry
• Carob
• Coleus
• Forskohlii
• Guarana
• Black Tea
• Gurmar
• Oolong Tea
• Hawthorn
• Kola Ntu
• Parsley
• Queen’s Flower
• Bee Pollen 4
• Bladder Wrack Kelp
• Gymnema Syvestre
• Nettles
• Cascara sagrada
• High-fiber cereal
• Alfalfa
• Apple Cider Vinegar
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Rosemary
• Basil
• Skim Milk
• Hot Sauce
• Rye
• Beans
• Vinegar
• Edamame

This is still very much in-progress, but I’ve been working on a recipe for a cheap, healthy meal replacement shake so I can be healthier without killing myself or my bank account x3

The macros are based on data from the IFFYM calculator I did adjust them to fit the ingredients a bit, and the macros are based on my height, weight, and gender, so this recipe isn’t truly universal.  I still have a lot to learn about macros, so as I said before this is still a work in progress.

I also graded each ingredient (whenever possible) on Fooducate to do my best to verify that I was using healthy ingredients.  Fooducate it a handy app that assigns a letter grade between A – D- to take a lot of the guesswork out of determining what food are actually good for you.  Not all of the ingredients where on Fooducate, so for those I found grade for similar items to approximate their letter grade.

Lastly I got all the food items off of Amazon.  I choose Amazon because of their selection, and so I could really take my time and look through all of the nutrition facts of each item.

I couldn’t find the powdered eggs or pea flour anywhere on Fooducate.  But all of Bob’s Red Mill flour and peas all got straight As, so I think it’s save to assume the pea flour is also an A.  And for the eggs, I couldn’t even any kind of powdered eggs with a letter grade D:  But liquid eggs and regular eggs all got As, and I did a bit of research and everything I found had nothing but good things to say about powdered eggs.  That they kept all the nutrients while staying for much longer without having any drawbacks, so I’m assuming it’s an A.

My only big issue here is the cranberries, and their only issue is that there is too much sugar :/  But the ingredients are just ‘Cranberries, Sugar” and sugar is the only issue with them, so it could be worse.  There are healthier alternatives to that specific brand of dried cranberries, but their cost per serving is crazy!  They’re one of the more expensive items on the list as it is, and the sugar does improve the taste quite a bit, so it’s hard to complain too much.

And, while the rice protein is also a B, it’s top of it’s class according to Fooducate so I’m pretty happy about that.  This is actually my second rendition of this recipe, and I was using Optimum Nutrition’s protein before.  I was pretty shocked to discover it got C’s and worse for it’s flavors.  It’s worse graded flavor even got a D-, which is the worst grade you can get on Fooducate!  I am concerned about the flavor or NutriBiotic, but I’m happy that it’s a much healthier, or at least more natural, alternative 🙂

So, for a smudge over $2 a meal, I can get 500 calories a day of pure goodness, including a serving of fruits and vegetables 😀  And for me, I plan to eat whatever I want for my remaining calories, as long as I stay under my calorie limit.  So I can be healthier, without getting tied down to a restrictive meal plan! 😀

EDIT

After trying it out for a few days I have determined that NitriBiotic is in fact nasty x3   The pea flour is very bitter too, but if you mix it in water and pop it in the microwave it evens out.  I have been experimenting with adding in a hint of sugar, cinamon, and lemon juice, and it’s potable – but not quite enjoyable :X  I’m looking into different combinations, and after reading this article about spices with health benefits I’m considering trying coffee, nutmeg, mint, lavendar, and saffron.

I also think I’ll try some of the other highly rated protein powders and different flavors too, but after looking through comments I’m not too confident.  If all else fails I can always go back to optimum nutrition, it’s less natural, but very tasty 🙂  These are some of the other protein powders I’m considering:

• Nutribolic Rice Protein Vanilla/Mixed Berry
• Bob’s Red Mill Hemp Protein Powder
• Jarrow Formulas Whey Protein
• Nutivia Hemp Protein
• Tera’s Whey (I think this one is real expensive :X)
• Perfect Fit Rice Protein
• Garden Of Life Organic Vanilla Flavor Meal Replacement