Planning Meals
In This Chapter
- Eating more fruits and veggies
- Cutting the fat from your proteins
- Eating responsibly at a restaurant
- Getting friendly with goitrogens
A lot of people have the notion that healthy meals take too long to prepare, aren’t as tasty as processed food, and are too expensive.
None of those things are true. Preparation time is essentially the same. It’s just a matter of getting past the learning curve of working with different ingredients. And fresh, natural food is considerably more delicious than processed. All that’s required is giving up the unhealthy stimulation provided by additives such as MSG and corn syrup. As for expense, fresh produce is typically cheaper than processed foods. You can even buy organic at reasonable prices if you’re a smart shopper who supports local farms.
This chapter offers suggestions on how to create meals that are healthy for your thyroid and your whole body, and will help you lose weight. The meals are broken down into three basic components: fruits and vegetables, proteins, and carbohydrates.
Fruits and Vegetables
Produce should ideally take up half the volume of a meal. We suggest buying your fruits and vegetables as fresh as possible, which ensures they contain lots of antioxidants—special molecules that help maintain your overall health. An added benefit is they’re more delicious when recently picked. If possible, buy organic to obtain a denser level of nutrients, better flavor, and fewer toxins. Alternatively, mix mainstream and organic produce strategically.
If you don’t have time to shop for all fresh veggies, the next best thing is frozen vegetables, which are typically preserved at the peak of their freshness. Just take care to buy ones that are minimally processed and have nothing added to them.
Strive to buy as many different colors of produce as you can. The variety of a fruits-and-veggies “rainbow” helps ensure you’re getting all the nutrients your body needs.
The USDA has set the serving size of produce to be a cup raw (about the size of your fist) or half a cup cooked. Studies indicate 10 such servings a day of fruits and vegetables drastically reduces the risk of disease, including heart problems, stroke, and most cancers.
Like your parents have always said, eat your vegetables. They really are good for you.
Thyroidian Tip
If a fruit is starting to lose its freshness but you aren’t ready to eat it, consider freezing it for later use in a smoothie. This is an especially useful strategy for bananas; simply peel them, toss them in a sealable plastic bag, and then store them in your freezer until you need a healthy sweetener for a blended drink.
Proteins
Protein is a vital component of any healthy diet. Your body uses protein to make and transport your hormones (including your thyroid’s T4, T3, and T2). It also uses protein to grow and repair your cells.
A protein should comprise about a quarter of the volume of a meal. The serving size should typically be around the size of a deck of cards.
As with produce, organic is the best choice. You can often find bargains via local family farms and ranches (see Chapter 18). But whether organic or mainstream, if it’s an animal protein, it should be as low in fat as possible. The toxins animals eat are stored in their fat, and you don’t want these poisons passed along to you. So buy lean, cut away fat, remove skin, and favor white meat over dark.
Great protein sources include fish, shellfish, white meat poultry, and lean red meat such as buffalo and ostrich (preferably grass fed). Also great are eggs, cottage cheese, tofu, tempeh, and seitan. Regarding the last three items: even if you’re not a vegetarian, it’s wise to have a large number of animal-free meals as part of your menu plan for variety, and to lessen the load on your system from any toxins you might be consuming when going up the food chain.
In fact, a lifestyle gaining popularity is that of the flexitarian. This is someone who mostly eats vegetarian dishes but eats meat as well. It’s a way of minimizing toxins while still having access to the complete protein meat provides.
Carbohydrates
A carbohydrate-based food should fill up the remaining quarter of your meal. As suggested in Chapter 19, focus on carbs with a lot of fiber. They’ll take longer to enter your bloodstream, making it more likely they’ll be burned as fuel rather than stored as fat. And the fiber will both fill you up (so you feel satisfied with less food) and enhance your overall health.
If you’re trying to lose weight, you should aim for 40 grams of fiber a day, which means any meal should ideally contain 10-15 grams. Along the same lines, keep sugar low, because it’s likely to kick your body into food storage mode and pack on pounds. A good goal is consuming under 40 grams of sugar a day, which translates to under 15 grams per meal. That means staying away from soda, sauces, fruit juices (stick to fresh fruit), and even sugary yogurts.
As with all foods, vary your choices. If you have brown rice one night, have bulgur wheat the next, and couscous after that. This ensures you’re not missing any nutrients; and it makes meals livelier.
Thyroidian Tip
Cook quicker and easier using modern tools. For example, bread machines allow you to choose your own ingredients—which can include organic flour, and as much fiber as you like—and can be set to turn on while you’re at work so you can come home to fresh-baked bread. And a rice cooker lets you just pour in the grains, along with water or chicken broth, and have brown rice come out perfect every time. The cooker also does a great job with other grains, such as steel-cut oats, amaranth, and quinoa.
Balancing Meals with J. J. Virgin
In case your main interest is slimming down, we’re also sharing the advice of J. J. Virgin, a renowned fitness and nutrition guru (see Chapter 20).
I recommend every meal include protein, healthy fat, non-starchy veggies, and a high-fiber carb. The amount of protein you eat should be based on your lean body mass (LBM), using a formula of 0.7-1 gram of protein per pound.
If your current LBM is far from the LBM you want to have, though, then add the two numbers and divide by two, and use that average for the formula. (And remember to keep adjusting the average as you get closer to your goal.)
Once you determine your ideal amount of protein, spread it across your three daily meals. In addition to protein’s health benefits, it tends to suppress the production of the hunger hormone ghrelin, helping you to feel sated and eat less.
As for fat, I recommend 1-3 servings at every meal. Fat triggers the release of a chemical in the small intestine called cholecystokinin that tells your brain you’re full. When you’re not hungry, you’re not as likely to overeat.
You should stick to healthy fat, though: raw nuts and seeds, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, coconut milk, avocados, and olives. Ideal are omega-3 and monounsaturated fat, which are anti-inflammatories that help protect you against disease. They also make your cell membranes more fluid and better able to communicate with your hormones.
Crash Glanding
You should not include peanuts on your list of “healthy fat” nuts. Despite their name, peanuts are legumes; and they’re also inflammatories.
The foods I want to see most on your plate are non-starchy vegetables. Every day you should ideally eat 5-10 servings. This will give you plant nutrients, called phytonutrients; and fiber, which (like protein) keeps ghrelin suppressed so you’re not hungry. Fiber also speeds food through your intestine, lowers bad cholesterol and raises the good kind … and helps you develop buttocks you can be proud of.
Finally, you should eat 1 or 2 servings of a high-fiber starchy carb and low-sugar fruit. Examples of these includes brown rice, sweet potatoes, black beans, and lentils; and berries, apples, peaches, and plums.
So a typical meal could be some salmon (protein), a cup of lentil soup (high fiber carbs), and some spinach and mushrooms (veggies) sautéed at low heat in extra virgin olive oil (healthy fat).
Eating Out
In our fast-paced world, it’s become common to obtain a large percentage of our calories by eating out. Restaurants are convenient, but they typically aren’t focused on your health. Their goal is to serve flavor enhancers and calorie-intense foods delivering an addictive sugar jolt that keeps customers coming back. You can get a nourishing and moderate-calorie meal at a restaurant, but it requires some smart planning.
First, be prepared to be picky about condiments. Figure on skipping the sour cream, mayonnaise, butter, syrups, sauces, and oils. Instead, focus on low-fat and low-calorie condiments such as mustard, ketchup, salsa, vinegar, and chutney. Along the same lines, always get dressing, gravy, etc., on the side. You can then have precisely as much or little as you want. For example, instead of pouring dressing on your salad, dip your fork in the dressing and then dig into the salad. You’ll get the flavor of the dressing, but with way fewer calories.
And speaking of salads, be sure to have one with your meal. If a salad isn’t included with your entrée, order it as a side dish or as a substitute for something unhealthy such as oil-soaked french fries.
Also be aware that a restaurant will typically serve you twice as many calories as you really should consume in one meal. If you’re eating with a group, consider ordering fewer entrées than the number of people in your party and sharing the food among yourselves communally. That way you can collectively eat everything on the plates without anyone feeling stuffed.
Alternatively, if you’re eating alone, ask for a take-out container at the same time you’re ordering, and when your meal arrives put half of the food in the container. This ensures you don’t overload your system with calories and trigger your body’s food storage mode; plus it provides you with a delicious meal of leftovers for the next day.
Throat Quote
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
—Calvin Trillin
Embracing Goitrogens
You may have heard that cruciferous vegetables—such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and kale—are bad for your thyroid. They do contain indole-3-carbinol, which can inhibit your thyroid’s ability to absorb iodine. As a result, they’re sometimes called goitrogens because when consumed in large quantities they have the ability to spur hypothyroidism, which in turn can lead to goiters. But if you eat normal daily amounts of these veggies—up to two cups (100 grams) raw or five cups cooked—you needn’t worry about this. Cruciferous vegetables are among the healthiest foods on the planet, so don’t deprive yourself of them.
You may have heard similar negative things about soy products, which are also goitrogens. That’s because soy contains isoflavones, which can interfere with iodine being digested properly and reaching your thyroid. However, you’d have to eat an awful lot of soy for this to become an issue. As long as your daily consumption doesn’t go above two servings—100 grams of soy food or six ounces of soy milk—don’t worry about this, either.
The Least You Need to Know
- An ideal meal in volume should be half fruits and vegetables, a quarter protein, and a quarter carbohydrates.
- Buy a rainbow of produce to get a variety of nutrients, and eat produce fresh to maximize antioxidants.
- Minimize your consumption of toxins from meat by buying lean, cutting away fat, and eating more vegetarian meals.
- Plan on eating only half of a calorie-intense restaurant meal and taking the rest home for the next day.
- Enjoy cruciferous vegetables and soy products, which will do your thyroid no harm when eaten in moderation.