Obesity Cure Quest

  Beyond Caricatures: A Patient’s Inner Dialogue With Dietitians... This blog isn’t a food diary in the usual sense, and it’s not a weight-loss chronicle either. It’s something else—something I need for myself, but also something I want to share, especially with dietitians and anyone working in nutrition. Here’s what I’m doing here: 1. An internal motivational tool. I need a place to keep long-term habit changes front and center. Writing keeps me accountable. The purpose is unapologetically self-centered—it helps me stay focused when the system around me makes it so easy to forget. 2. Talking to the “imaginary dietitian.” Think of this as my inner monologue, made public. Dietitians often ask, “What do you eat?” and I never have an answer, because I don’t eat in patterns. I eat when I’m hungry, and what I make is always a surprise—even before I cared about fiber. That’s why staples like beans, lentils, cabbage, avocados, and flax are a better fit for me than recipes or strict...

  Five Critical Shifts Every Dietitian Needs to Make... Let’s be blunt: obesity treatment often fails not because patients aren’t trying, but because the advice doesn’t fit real life—or worse, it shames them. Here are some simple but radical shifts dietitians (and doctors) can make: 1. Everyone’s different—stop with the stereotypes. People don’t need to live on donuts and french fries to gain weight. Biology alone can tilt someone toward fat gain, even on foods most of us would call “reasonable.” When you default to “cut sugar and fried foods,” you risk discounting the actual rhythms of appetite biology. Don’t assume the cause; look deeper. 2. Ask before you prescribe. Too many patients are treated like they’re ignorant of basic nutrition. They’re not. Ask questions: What do you already know? What’s your routine like? Often people already understand that broccoli is better than mac and cheese. The real gap is how to make changes fit their lives. Start by listening, not lectur...

  Cashews, Chicken, and the Long Shadow of One Snack... The night before last I ate way too many cashews. Not a polite handful, but somewhere in the territory of half a bag. They were good — salty, rich, crunchy — but heavy enough that the next morning I wasn’t remotely hungry, and perhaps I had a cashew hangover in a flipside sorta way.  So yesterday I grazed on almost nothing until dinner. And when hunger finally did hit, I made rice noodles and decided to conduct a honey-walnut chicken experiment. I cut up chicken tenderloin, bathed them in kefir, then gave them a kefir-egg wash. I showered the pieces with cornstarch and flour, and fried them up with walnuts, honey, soy, garlic, and ginger. It just sounded good. I wasn’t doing any kind of bean or veggie side — I just felt like having a belly-sinker type meal. I was also hoping my teens would eat it. They did not. This morning I eased into food with what I’d call a nibble breakfast : about five cashews, a handful of plai...

  Weird Sh*t I Ate: Walnut-Chia Cinnamon Pear Dessert I have the luxury of being home for lunch, and while I have ample time, I just want to do what I do and get food in the gut.  Who wants to be a short-order chef on their lunch hour? So, today, for some reason, the canned pears I bought for bringing in the fall really called my name.  Also, I'm a canned food savage. I love the crack, pour, eat advantage.  These pears where in their own juice.  I poured them in a bowl with the juice, crumpled some walnuts in, mixed in a table spoon of chia, then added vanilla and Ceylon cinnamon.  The chia gelled, and I slurped up what was a fresh-tasting, very sweet pudding--of sorts.  I'm cool, though. My random scrap for lunch clocked 13 grams of fiber and a good bit of omega-3s.    Recipe (or whatever) 1 can of pears in pear juice (yes, the whole can) 2 Tbsp walnut bits 1 Tbsp chia seeds A dab of real vanilla A generous sprinkle of Ceylon ...

Cool Sh*t I Learned: From Thunderclaps to Gentle Breezes (The Fiber Effect)... Beans, beans, they're good for your heart. The more you eat them, the more you fart. The more you fart, the better you feel, so eat your beans at every meal. Why do we fart when we eat fiber? It’s because fiber isn’t for you—it’s food for your gut microbes. When they chow down, they ferment it, producing hydrogen, carbon dioxide, a little methane, and sometimes sulfur gas as byproducts. That’s what makes you gassy—and it’s also what makes you healthier. Those same microbes are cranking out short-chain fatty acids like butyrate that soothe inflammation and strengthen your gut lining. If you regularly eat fiber, the “vapors” subside. Your gut bugs adapt, shifting their communities and enzymes to handle the load. The same bowl of lentils that once had you blaming the dog barely ruffles the curtains after a while. So yes, more fiber can mean more gas at first. But a steady injection of beans, veggies, gr...

  Weird Sh*t I Ate: A Can of Olives for Breakfast... Last night’s dinner was a full-on spice riot: turmeric yellow rice with chili dal. It had everything—brown and red lentils, onion, chili peppers, garlic, smoked paprika, turmeric, kale, adobo, and about three lifetimes’ worth of red chili flakes and cayenne.  Breakfast the next morning was rather random.  One entire can of black olives A couple stray walnut pieces (not enough to matter) One sad strip of beef jerky Chug of kefir.  High fat, high sodium, almost no carbs or real protein. Basically, if you condensed the Mediterranean diet into its most questionable form and then sprinkled in gas-station jerky. To feel somewhat okay with this, I chugged about a cup of plain kefir. It's not delicious like this, but I'm getting used to it. I'm thinking I'll round out the sodium spike with probiotics, calcium, and nine grams of actual protein. Let's call this a Mediterranean-deli-meets-dairy-farm fusion bre...

Weird Sh*t I Ate: Vodka and Pizza (not all days are high-health wins)... I ate vodka and pizza last night. This wasn’t intended, and vodka sure isn’t in my “let’s get healthy” plan. I also don’t really remember choosing pizza, but I can see I most definitely tried. Apparently so did one of my cats (my bet is on Scooter, since he and I share a certain motivation for food). There are bite marks, so at the very least, he must have licked it. It’s not the end. We have happy Fridays. The lentil kimchi meal I ate for lunch to celebrate Friday and asked, “Let’s see where this goes,” has a surprising ending. I feel fine this morning, greeting the day with green tea mixed with Harney & Sons Hot Cinnamon Spice—my favorite. I’m leaving this here. I need to remember these days. Today we bike ride and eat more beans. Recipe (or whatever): 1 reckless amount of vodka 1 pizza you don’t remember choosing Optional: cat saliva, maybe? There's bite marks--and I'm not sure if he got th...

  Weird Sh*t I Ate: Lentil Mush with Avocado, Jalapeño, and Kimchi... It’s Friday and it’s time to celebrate! Well, it’s lunch time, so let’s see what happens. Today I saved a two-day-old container of overcooked red lentils and half an avocado from certain death. Fiber-forward, folks. That’s where we’re at. Nutrition, fiber, chaos, and the grand satisfaction of not wasting food. I built a bowl: lentil mush base, jalapeños scattered on top, a scoop of kimchi, and the avocado just smooshed in like toothpaste. That’s what we’re celebrating mid-day on a Friday. I didn’t hate it. I liked it very much anytime I hit jalapeño or kimchi. Fiber, spice, probiotics — all in one questionable-but-edible creation. Lunch accomplished. Recipe (or whatever) 2-day-old red lentil mush Half an avocado at the edge of its career A scoop of kimchi Pickled jalapeños Reused take-out container Scoop. Assemble. Eat before you start overthinking it.

  What You Can Eat: Coconut Curry Mung Beans.. I'm trying to eat well. I'm not hyper-focused on weight or the  calorie-counted kind of eating that makes food feel like new complicated system.  It should feel intuitive. More than that, I'm interested in what TO eat, not what not to eat.  Obviously, I'm looking for sources if fiber, because almost every path I follow points back to it. Fiber slows things down, feeds the gut, balances cravings, and makes meals feel more complete. Fiber can impact gut health in a way that gets your system on track, I hope, naturally.  Really, it's not as complicated as I originally thought. You don’t need to weigh out grams or memorize nutrition panels. You just need to keep a rotation of beans, lentils, and grains on hand, and use them in a variety of ways.  Experiment.  So I thought the sound of coconut and spices sounded good, and I learned about mung beans.  I've never eaten them.  I made coconut curry mun...

 Cool Sh*t I Learned: Refrigerating Rice... Apparently, if you cook rice and then refrigerate it, some of the starches change into “resistant starch.” Translation: your gut bugs get more to munch on, and you absorb fewer fast carbs. So yeah — I suddenly feel less guilty about the leftover beans and rice hanging out in my fridge. In fact, I almost want to make a vat of rice just to cool it down and eat it later, like I’m meal-prepping for my microbes. Don’t get me wrong — white rice is still stripped of fiber. It’s not a halo food. But it’s cheap, real, and I love it. If I can enjoy it with even a little less guilt (and a little more gut benefit), that’s a win.

  Why the Weird Sh*t I Eat Works (Potato–Avocado Medley Example)... I don’t cook like a chef. I don’t have time for elaborate prep or ten dirty pans. I need food now , not in an hour. That’s why so much of what I eat looks weird on the surface — it’s quick, scrappy, and actually livable. We’re used to thinking that eating healthy means chef-inspired meals or bougie ingredients. And yes, sometimes I borrow chef tricks (like tossing lentils into sauce), but mostly it’s about bypassing all that. A microwaved potato with avocado and kimchi is proof: simple, real food that hits the system right. Why It Works Whole food, not filler. Weight problems don’t start with donuts. They start with normalized packaged foods — sauces, frozen dinners, shelf-stable staples — that mess with gut health long before you “look” overweight. My meals work because they strip it back to basics. Fiber is built in. Americans eat half the fiber they need. Potatoes, avocados, beans, cabbage — cheap, pl...

  Why I Believe Obesity Starts Before We Look Overweight... At the core, I believe we’re breaking our metabolic systems long before we hit the clinical definition of obesity. You don’t have to be eating donuts six times a day for the damage to begin. The ingredients that chip away at gut health, hormone regulation, and appetite signaling are hiding in everyday “normal” foods: sauces, frozen meals, shelf-stable pastas, packaged breads. And over time, the system buckles. What I’ve Observed People in the U.S. are heavier than in other developed countries. Weight gain creeps up slowly but steadily across adulthood. Our diets are chronically low in fiber. Many thin people still eat poorly, but don’t gain weight in the same way—because not everyone carries the same genetic risks. These things together point to a deeper story. The Questions That Bother Me Why do so many of us keep gaining weight over time? If diet alone is the culprit, why aren’t all people overwe...

  Weird Sh*t I Ate Last Night: Lentil-Meets-Spaghetti Edition... Last night I decided to break a few of my own food rules. I poured myself a glass of Winking Owl sweet red wine from Aldi (yes, I know… not exactly sommelier-approved) and set a pot of wheat durum pasta to boil. For the sauce, I started with canned tomatoes, garlic, and fresh basil. I didn’t have the patience to let it simmer down into a rich, slow-cooked dream, so I hit it with the mixer instead—mashed, blended, improvised. Then came the twist: red lentils. Yes, I cooked a batch and stirred them into the sauce. Because why not sneak in some fiber while making what was rapidly turning into a Franken-meal? To give it more heft, I browned some ground beef. My younger son had already claimed his own bowl of “not-really-chili” (taco-seasoned beef and red beans, nothing more, nothing less). I tossed a few crumbles into my spaghetti sauce, keeping the lentils my little secret. Meanwhile, my older son kept popping out of...

  Fixing the System Before It Breaks You... Let me get this out of the way: I don’t want to live my life counting macros. I don’t want to scan barcodes with an app that cheers me on for logging a “protein cookie” made in a lab. I don’t want to weigh chicken breasts or enter “0.25 cups lentils” into MyFitnessPal like I’m preparing for a math exam. Food is not supposed to feel like homework. Here’s what I’ve come to believe: our systems get disrupted long before we ever see obesity. Long before the scale groans at us, satiety signals get muffled, gut microbes get cranky, and cravings sneak in like bad roommates. One day you’re eating pasta because it’s dinner. The next day you’re eating pasta because some bacteria in your gut won the shouting match. By the time you’re “overweight,” the system’s been hijacked for a while. So the solution isn’t another round of food journaling or a diet with its own Facebook group. The solution is to fix the system before it spirals. And that means...

  Weird Sh*t I Ate: Chicken, Kefir, and the Wok That Could Last night’s dinner was a mix of planning and chaos — the way most of my meals end up. I chopped up some chicken tenderloin, started a wok with avocado oil, and decided garlic needed to be the base note. Then I threw in paprika, turmeric, and more garlic (because why stop at one clove when you can layer the flavor?). Next came the vegetables — green pepper strips and mushrooms. They softened into the spice-scented oil while I remembered I’d already chopped the chicken. Instead of tossing it straight in, I soaked it in kefir. That was partly instinct, partly curiosity. Kefir is tangy, probiotic-rich, and honestly a surprisingly good tenderizer. I added more seasoning — pepper, turmeric, paprika — and finished with a sprinkle of red chili flakes before sliding the chicken into the wok. It all ended up over a small bed of rice and quinoa, the kind I refrigerate and reheat for that resistant starch kick. Why This Worked (Be...

  When Life Gives You Green Bananas… Fry Them... Kroger sent me a bunch of very green bananas. Not “almost ripe.” Not “another day on the counter and we’re good.” I mean green-green. Days later, they were still green. Nobody in my house wanted them, so I did what any reasonable person would do: I sliced them up, fried them with garlic, red pepper, and chickpeas in avocado oil, and then topped it all with avocado and cabbage. Weird sh*t I ate, but it worked. And it turns out, there are reasons to cook with green bananas besides just not wasting your grocery order. Why Green Bananas Might Be Worth Eating Resistant starch powerhouse. Green bananas are high in resistant starch, which acts more like fiber than sugar. Instead of spiking blood sugar, it travels down to your colon where gut bacteria ferment it into short-chain fatty acids like butyrate — fuel that helps reduce inflammation and support gut health. Blood sugar support. Because they’re less sweet and more starchy t...

 Weird Sh*t I Ate: Refrigerated Rice with Quinoa and Avocado Today’s entry in “Weird Sh*t I Ate” features a bowl of refrigerated rice and quinoa, reheated, with avocado plopped on top. I'm sure it wouldn't reach Instagram glory, and thus, photos are completely unnecessary. Here's a bonus: I fed this to my 14-year-old son before we went on a 7-mile bike ride, and he didn't balk at the quinoa nestled between the rice grains.  Super note: When you refrigerate rice or quinoa and then reheat it, something subtle but important happens: the starch changes form. It becomes what’s called resistant starch —a type of carbohydrate that resists digestion in the small intestine and makes it all the way to the colon. And that, my friends, makes for easy leftover--you know-lazy microwavable health meals. Resistant starch is basically dinner for your gut bacteria. They ferment it, and in return, they pump out short-chain fatty acids like butyrate, which help calm inflammation, regulat...

  Firmicutes, Psoriasis, and Me: Notes from a former pasta addict who found hope in green tea, lentils, and a changing microbiome... I think my psoriasis is trying to heal. One of the larger lesions that has camped out on my skin for years is almost gone. I don’t know if I should credit my diet or chalk it up to hormonal shifts—at 47, I could be sliding into menopause, though I won’t know for sure for months. Either way, I’ll take the improvement as a good sign. Over the past several months, I’ve reshaped how I eat. I drink green tea every morning. I take fish oil and vitamin D. I eat lentils so often that my husband jokes he’s “down with the Lentil Life.” (I keep trying to make #LentilLife trend, but I have zero social media game.) Fermented foods are regular guests in my kitchen—kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, even the occasional Yakult. Olive oil and avocado oil have become my default fats. I eat fish regularly. Red meat isn’t banned, but it rarely shows up. Artificial sweeteners ar...

  Not-So-Weird Sh*t I Ate Today: Rice Cooker Brunch... I set out to throw things in the rice cooker and ended up with something suspiciously respectable. I mixed rice with quinoa, tossed in some lentils, and added a little kale I had in the freezer. From the garden I picked some basil, because apparently I’m that person now. Also, basil is one of those plants that actually grows itself in my garden, versus all the other things I either over-water or under water. The gift that keeps on giving.  Anyway, I crushed a garlic clove, drizzled in olive oil, and scattered a few pine nuts on top just to prove I wasn’t kidding. Plus, really, I like pesto. For protein, I laid in a piece of flounder, because nothing says “weekend effort” like putting fish in a rice cooker. I squeezed on some lemon juice at the end, because pesto. Also, lemon goes well with fish, no? The result looked far too much like a real brunch to qualify as one of my usual experiments. It was balanced, filling, and...

  Weird Sh*t I Ate Today: Mixed Veggie Mystery Bowl... Lunch was not planned. I don't do meal planning.  It did fit my plan, though.  I pulled out a random can of Kroger mixed vegetables—the kind with corn, peas, carrots, and green beans all chopped up like confetti—and decided it was time they earned their keep. I dumped them into a bowl, added some leftover chickpeas, and then spotted half an avocado that was heading toward the point of no return. That went in too, because wasting avocados is a crime. From there I did my usual routine of “sprinkle health on top”: nutritional yeast, flax, and a spray of olive oil to pretend I had a strategy. Then I saw the walnuts. Finally, a purpose for the bag that usually just stares at me from the pantry. I crushed a couple and tossed them on top. Suddenly it wasn’t just a sad pile of canned vegetables—it was a fiber bomb. Chickpeas, avocado, flax, walnuts… I might not have planned lunch, but somehow I boarded the fiber train with...