Trim Healthy Mama Plan (15 page)

There is no denying the health benefits of this drink. Enjoy a half cup with your S meals and even more with your other meals. While most of the sugars in it have been eaten up in the fermenting process, a few remain, so it is best not sipped on all day.

So many diet plans force water on you. We're not going to tell you to drink a certain number of ounces per body weight. You'll no longer be chugging down sugary sodas, sports drinks, and juices, so your water intake should naturally increase. You can also use any of our All-Day Sipper drinks to help you stay hydrated and to bring more flavor to your life. You won't want to fully replace water with those options. You still need some pure water, but we don't want you obsessing over ounces and cups per day or making yourself feel like a dehydrated failure if you don't meet a quota. Some plans go too far with their rigidity over water. You're left sloshing around all day, constantly having to use the bathroom! Common sense is a good approach with water.

If you like a nice glass of
wine, either white or red, you can have it on plan in moderation. Be sure it is a dry wine, as sweet wines are fattening. We know it goes against all wine snobbery rules, but there are certain Trim Healthy Mamas who only like sweet wines so they add a tiny bit of pure stevia extract to their glass—please don't report them to the winery association! If you want to drink
beer, stick to a low-carb or light beer. The beer belly is aptly named for a reason.

Too much
alcohol can quickly go from being a health tonic to a health destroyer, so please know we are not advocating drunkenness here. If you are including too much wine, too often it can also interfere with your weight loss and that is even more true when it comes to beer. Go easy, but do enjoy from time to time if desired.

Y
ou can keep your sweet tooth. Why try to deny it? Life would be awfully dull without dessert, and what woman can live without chocolate? Not us! Healthy treats are part of the Food Freedom lifestyle.

As a Trim Healthy Mama you won't be eating
sugar (unless you choose to have an off-plan treat now and then). Please don't be fooled by packages of sugar labeled “organic” or “unrefined.” Sugar is sugar in your bloodstream and is still as inflammatory no matter how earthy the packaging looks or what buzz words are used to advertise it. Those earthy options will just cost you more.

Thankfully this sugar-free state happens naturally on THM. We don't start with rule number 1—STOP EATING SUGAR! That's just going to make you want to reach for the nearest candy bar. Instead you'll start eating healthy sweet-treat options that can take the place of the other health-destructive ones. Little by little you'll become more successful at finding fantastic subs for the treats you crave. One day you wake up to realize, “Hey, I haven't had sugar in a month and I'm not missing it!”

Go you!

So how do you get your sweet fix as a THM? Keeping with our theme that we are all unique with different preferences and challenges, you have a few natural
sweetener options to choose from. First let's look at what to avoid aside from sugar itself.

The fake sweetener industry is a billion-dollar one, but we predict that might begin to wane. Similar to what happened with cigarettes, the more that is known
about the harmful effects of artificial sweeteners, the harder it will be for these companies to keep people hooked on them.

Aspartame, sold under the brand names Equal or NutraSweet, has constantly shown dangerous side effects in independent research. It is a known neurotoxin that causes overexcitement in brain cells that lead to their death. Aspartame is now banned in many countries, yet sadly it is still the number-one sweetener of diet sodas here in the United States.

Sucralose, or what is more commonly known as Splenda, has been thrust forward as the healthier alternative but there are grave concerns that it disrupts the endocrine system. Some scientists call Splenda a “mild mutagen,” depending on how much is absorbed. Some researchers have put forth that it has more in common with pesticides like DDT than table condiments like salt or sugar. It doesn't come from anything grown in the ground, so we'll nix it, thanks!

Note: If Splenda is something you are having great difficulty giving up, you can still be a Trim Healthy Mama. We'll try not to nag you too much about it as nagging never works; but we do want to encourage you to switch over to the natural sweeteners mentioned here. We understand your tastes are used to one sweetener right now and it takes time to adjust. Do your best and baby-step your way in even if you have to cut Splenda from your life more slowly than abruptly.

This is the main (but not only) sweetener option on the plan. Please don't call stevia an artificial sweetener—you'll hurt her feelings. Stevia is a plant with leaves that have a natural sweet taste and, incredibly, this sweetness has no calories, carbs, or fat grams; so this makes it a fantastic chief sweetener if you need to lose weight. Now before you say, “Yuck, tried that and it's nasty,” give us a minute and we may change your mind. Stevia extract is the sweet powder that is extracted from the leaves, but be aware that not all powders taste the same. You know this from experience, especially if your first word was
blech
when we mentioned stevia. Don't be gun-shy about trying again once we arm you with
pointers for stevia success. We're going to teach you how to use this plant so it actually tastes wonderful in your treats, but we will also have to warn you about what to watch out for. Not all stevia sweeteners are beneficial to your health or waistline.

The rise of Type 2 diabetes and obesity and the recent spotlight on the hazards of artificial sweeteners have caused stevia to become more readily available. You can probably find it in your local grocery store, whereas it would have been extremely rare just ten years ago. Due to this growing demand for stevia, cheap, low-grade extracts are flooding the market. They are often mixed with fillers that are actually harmful to your health and your waistline. This brings us to the perfect setup for a shameless sales pitch, to convince you that the Trim Healthy Mama brand is the one and only stevia you must
buy, right? Nah! If you find another brand of stevia that meets our criteria and you like it, then go for it! We won't hold a grudge. (We'll try not to, at least.)

When we wrote our first self-published book, we had no idea of the response that was to come and never conceived that one day we'd have to launch our own line of natural sweeteners. We mentioned the brand of stevia we used at the time (which we had no association with) and how it was pure and tasted great. That particular company got swamped with tens of thousands of orders but, sadly, only a few months later they changed out their stevia to a lesser-grade extract. We got flooded with e-mails from women telling us their desserts suddenly tasted terrible and please would we do something about it and fix this mess!

We scouted the globe looking for the best-tasting, most pure and minimally processed stevia that our Mamas could come to rely on. We tasted hundreds of stevia extracts and most ended up right in the trash.
Ugh
was our most commonly repeated word. Serene sent her husband on a mission. He had to go to the source—across the globe to the farms where the plants are actually grown—and find something incredible for our Mamas.

We were beyond ecstatic when we tasted THE ONE. It almost felt like finding the Holy Grail. Major happy dorky dances were performed in our kitchens that day! Trim Healthy Mamas everywhere felt the same way once they got their hands on it. Their drinks and desserts tasted great again! Our stevia extract is completely organic and is made from the highest grade of stevia available—99 percent rebiana, which costs us a lot more but gives you better purity and taste. This extract and the blends we've created with it don't have that awful bitter aftertaste when used correctly. Having said all that, we do need to put a lid on the boasting for a minute to say, if your local grocery store provides you with a plan-approved stevia that floats your boat, then we're happy because we want you to succeed.
This plan needs to be doable for you and your unique situation. We do need to give you some pointers, though, on what not to buy.

Please read labels carefully and avoid any stevia blends that are mixed with the following:

If you are used to the taste of sugar, you're going to have to allow your taste buds some time to transition over to a new sweet taste. Even when using a non-bitter stevia sweetener, some can find the taste odd at first. Hang in there. Here are a couple of tips on how to make this transition smoother.

It's a good idea to always have some pure stevia extract in your cupboard. This pure form is the most budget-friendly way to sweeten up your drinks. There is no need to go throwing money into pound after pound of a blended stevia if you like lots of sweet drinks (such as our All-Day Sippers) when a couple or a few doonks will do the trick just fine and save you lots of money. A small pouch of pure extract can last you months, even using it daily.

But we gotta be honest, it is harder to get great baking results using a pure stevia extract alone. This is where a blended stevia option can really shine. Adding a little bit of pure stevia to either
xylitol or
erythritol, two natural sugar alcohols (or a combination of both of those in the case of our Gentle Sweet) can allow for baking success.

Xylitol tastes the most like sugar. It is extremely gentle on your blood sugar so it is plan-friendly but with a caution: It does have a few calories (which can add up if you throw xylitol into all your treats) and when used in excess it can cause some tummy issues (gas and diarrhea). Using xylitol alone can also be another money burner because it is not quite as sweet as sugar so you have to use a bunch to get a good sweet taste. Adding pure stevia to xylitol as we have done with Gentle Sweet, makes most of its issues go away. You'll be able to use less of it, which solves the calorie problem, the money problem, and, for most, the gas and bloating problem.

Xylitol has another issue if you have a dog in your house.
Dogs cannot eat xylitol. It can make them very sick and in some cases can be fatal. Please keep treats made with xylitol away from your dogs. Dogs have vastly different digestive systems than humans.
There are other foods they are not supposed to eat, such as chocolate—so keep those chocolate cupcakes you make with Gentle Sweet well out of reach of your canine family members.

If you don't want to take any chances with your dog and xylitol, look for a stevia/erythritol blend; it won't pose the same doggy health issues. Trim Healthy Mama's
Super Sweet Blend contains no xylitol and no calories and is extremely budget-friendly. It is best to use small amounts of it or else it will be too potent, so try just a couple teaspoons in your shakes or smoothies or single-serve muffins and just three to four tablespoons in a big batch of muffins. If you can't get the right sweetness with it, purchase erythritol (which measures cup for cup like sugar) and mix one and a half pounds with your bag of Super Sweet Blend. It will then be only about twice the sweetness of sugar, more forgiving a taste if you put too much in your treats and easier to work with for your tastes. You should be able to find stevia/erythritol blends locally at most grocery stores, too. Again we must caution that you avoid needless fillers like maltodextrin and, although not mandatory, we do want to encourage you to seek non-GMO sources and to use brands that do not contain “natural flavors,” which is sometimes but not always code for monosodium glutamate (MSG). There is no good reason to put “natural flavors” in stevia, which is already naturally sweet. But that will be a personal choice for you so don't feel condemned either way.

You can find more details about how to use Trim Healthy Mama sweeteners at
www.trimhealthymama.com
.

Teeming with enzymes and minerals, raw honey has some undeniable healing abilities. Nothing shines like raw honey as a holistic allergy medicine, since it actually counters pollen allergens. Its antibacterial and antifungal properties make it an incredible wound healer. It promotes the growth of good bacteria in the intestine, and here's a biggie: It helps counter high homocysteine levels to help maintain a healthy heart. These are compelling reasons to keep a little raw honey around to ingest regularly.

Little
is the key word here.

While honey is a known biblical sweetener, Proverbs 25:27 wisely says, “It is not good to eat too much honey.” The problem in our culture is that when honey is used, it is
usually in the “too much” rather than the “little” category. Many whole-foodsy sort of recipes that are supposed to be so natural and good for you call for anywhere from a half to a full cup of
honey, which is then paired with grain-based flours! This combination of high carbs upon high carbs is cruel to cells that are already too stuffed with blood sugar from our modern diet. All the health benefits of honey can be quickly overshadowed by its ability to raise blood sugar—especially when paired with other starches or fruits, as it so often is. Putting it bluntly, honey can very easily make you fat!

But honey does not need to be ditched altogether. If you can find a good source for local raw honey, including one teaspoon per day as a holistic health supplement is fabulous. To figure where honey fits in your own THM journey, look at the season of life you are in with a good dose of honesty. Are you currently in the weight-loss part of your journey? Do you have blood-sugar issues such as insulin resistance, prediabetes, or full-blown diabetes? In these cases it doesn't make sense for you to be chiefly sweetening with honey on a day-to-day basis. It should only be used in the small medicinal doses we just mentioned. The exception to this would be for those who don't have a sweet tooth and who rarely have desserts or sweet drinks. If you'd prefer to just have the rare honey-sweetened treat, rather than frequently using stevia, that is a viable choice and it should not set you off track too much. But the majority of us THM's love our daily sweet drinks and treats. Sipping on a honey-sweetened drink all day will not work in your trimming favor.