I Don’t Fast Well, So I Learned to Work With What I Had

The evening “meal.”

By Jennifer Whitmire, MS, MEd, MH, CHES, NEP

If you know me, you probably already know this about me.

I’m a foodie, and I don’t fast well.

At the silent retreat, the recommendation was to fast after our noon meal to enhance the meditation process. If it was your first retreat; however, you could have fruit later in the day.

Well, this was definitely my first time, and I knew pretty quickly that I did not want to end every day after lunch with nothing but water until breakfast the next morning.

I also knew that if I was going to eat fruit in the evening, I didn’t really want to eat just fruit.

I started looking around to see what else I could find.

If you’ve been following my retreat posts, you’re probably noticing a theme here. I didn’t have access to my kitchen. I couldn’t run to the grocery store. I couldn’t bring in my own food, and I couldn’t even ask questions because we were to remain silent.

I had to work with what was available, and fortunately, by this point I had gotten pretty good at that.

I Started Adding Protein and Fat to the Fruit

At first, I added some protein and fat to the fruit that was available, then I remembered the little spice and topping section I had discovered at breakfast.

That gave me an idea.

Why couldn’t I recreate the breakfast I had been making, just without the prunes?

There was also a tea station with several different plant milks. Because the boxes were sitting there, I could read the ingredients and nutrition labels without having to ask anyone anything.

One of the soy milks had 9 grams of protein per cup. Perfect. It just happened to be the same exact one I buy at home. Organic soybeans and filtered water.

I poured the soy milk into a bowl, added ground chia and ground flax, and then topped it with the chopped fruit.

Instead of eating a bowl of fruit by itself, I had something that felt much more like a meal, and, more importantly, I had changed the composition of the meal.

Why Pair Fruit?

Fruit is wonderful.

I eat fruit, I recommend fruit, and I certainly wasn’t sitting at a meditation retreat worrying that a piece of fruit was going to ruin my health!

Fruit contains many wonderful nutrients including carbohydrates, and carbohydrates are broken down into glucose. How quickly that glucose enters the bloodstream and how our individual bodies respond can vary considerably depending on the food, the amount we eat, what we eat with it, our activity level, insulin sensitivity, and many other factors.

That’s why I tend to think about the whole meal instead of labeling a food as good or bad.

When I added soy milk, chia, and flax to my fruit, I wasn’t trying to make the carbohydrates disappear. I was adding protein, fat, and additional fiber to the meal.

The soy milk gave me a substantial source of protein. Chia and flax added fiber and healthy fats, and they also made the bowl more filling.

That’s very different from sitting down with just fruit.

I wasn’t going to be eating another meal later, so I wanted something that would actually hold me and keep me from getting hungry later on in the evening.

My Retreat Fruit Bowl

This is almost too simple to call a recipe, which is one of the reasons I love sharing it.

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsweetened soy milk
• 1 tablespoon ground chia seeds
• 1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
• 1–1½ cups chopped fresh fruit (I had an apple)
• Cinnamon, to taste

Instructions

Pour the soy milk into a bowl and stir in the ground chia and flax.

Let it sit for a few minutes, so the chia begins thickening the milk.

Top with the chopped fruit and plenty of cinnamon.

That’s it!

If you’re making this at home, you have even more options. Add hemp hearts, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, or a spoonful of nut or seed butter. 

You could also use my homemade nut-and-seed yogurt as the base.

The point isn’t that you need to make this exact bowl. It’s understanding why I made it this way.

Just be sure to allow enough liquid and enough time for the chia seeds to swell.

You Can Use the Same Idea With Other Foods

This is one of those simple nutrition principles that you can use almost anywhere.

Instead of eating an apple by itself, add some almond butter or walnuts.

Instead of eating berries alone, add them to unsweetened plant-based yogurt with chia, hemp, or flax.

If you’re having a banana, pair it with nuts or seeds instead of thinking of the banana as the entire snack.

This isn’t limited to fruit.

If I’m eating something that’s primarily carbohydrate, especially something I know tends to raise my blood sugar quickly, I think about what else I can add to the meal.

• Where’s the protein?
• Where’s the fiber?
• Where’s the healthy fat?
• What could I add instead of focusing on what I should take away?

Don’t Forget What Happens After You Eat

There are other things we can do to support healthy blood sugar that have nothing to do with eliminating carbohydrates.

One of my favorites is super simple.

Move after you eat.

A short walk after a meal gets your muscles working, and working muscles use glucose.

You don’t need to turn it into a workout. Take a walk around the block. Walk the dog. Clean up the kitchen and move around the house. Run up and down the stairs. If you can’t walk, do whatever kind of gentle movement works for your body.

Sleep is important, too,and stress, and building and maintaining muscle.

That’s one of the reasons I don’t like reducing blood sugar health to a list of foods we’re “allowed” to eat.

Our bodies are much more interesting than that.

I Didn’t Need to Follow the Retreat Perfectly

There’s another lesson in this that really doesn’t have anything to do with fruit.

The retreat had a recommended schedule, and fasting after the noon meal was part of it. I chose not to do that.

That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with their recommendation, and it doesn’t mean fasting isn’t appropriate for someone else. I just know me, myself.

I was already doing something completely outside my normal life. I was meditating for approximately 12 hours a day, sitting still for hours at a time, not talking, not reading, not writing, and not communicating with anyone outside the retreat.

I didn’t need to prove anything by going hungry, either.

I ate the fruit. Then, because I’m me, I figured out how to make it work better for my body.

The Bigger Lesson

I think sometimes we get so focused on following a health practice perfectly that we stop paying attention to ourselves.

We hear that fasting is healthy, so we think we should fast.

We hear that fruit is healthy, so we think a big bowl of fruit must work well for everyone.

We hear that carbohydrates are bad for blood sugar, so we think we need to eliminate them. I don’t think it needs to be that complicated.

Pay attention to your body, look at the entire meal, and instead of immediately asking what you need to cut out, look at what you can add.

Could you add protein?

Could you add fiber?

Could you add healthy fat?

Could you take a walk afterward?

My little evening fruit bowl at the retreat wasn’t anything fancy. It was soy milk, chia, flax, fruit, and cinnamon assembled from whatever I could find.

It allowed me to eat the fruit, enjoy it, and make the meal work better for me, and after several days of meditating for 12 hours, that was one health decision I didn’t need to sit and think about for very long.