Family Plan

The Family Plan is for those of you who must accommodate someone else's taste or who find it difficult to do a quick switch. These gradual steps will help you and your family from feeling deprived and from missing your favorite foods. I've listed them in the order in which they're the most effective. The first four steps are the most important, and if you do nothing but these four things you'll be a long way on the road to weight loss and better health.

Fruit First: Start by making fresh Fruit the first thing you and your family eat in the morning. If this doesn't fill you up, blend up some hearty Fruit shakes (using only fresh Fruit and Fruit juice). If you still must have something besides Fruit, try veggie sticks, celery and lettuce digest best with Fruit. If your kids won't touch a carrot stick unless it's accompanied by ranch dressing, mix up one of our dips to keep them happy. If your family won't eat Fruit, serve fresh Fruit juice, wait twenty minutes then serve one of the transition foods listed below.

whole grain pancakes, made with pureed tofu in place of eggs, and topped with pure maple syrup, or a little butter and/or a dash of cinnamon, nutmeg or pumpkin pie spice.
Grape Nuts (not Grape Nuts Flakes, they contain sugar) with nondairy milk. If they won't touch the "weird" milk then use nonfat milk. If they still don't like it, beef it up by adding nonfat milk powder or mixing half and half with regular milk.
whole grain toast with butter used sparingly, or just plain honey. Add a dash of cinnamon (not cinnamon sugar).
whole grain zucchini bread made with pureed tofu in place of eggs

Note: children under 18 months of age do not have the enzyme necessary to break down starches, so you will want to give them only fresh Fruits and vegetables until that age. Avoid protein as long as you can. We don't need to eat protein to produce protein. Your children (and you) receive enough protein from fresh Fruits and veggies to satisfy their bodies' needs.

Separate Your Food Groups: You may not be able to get your family to eat whole wheat bread and soy cheese, but you can structure their meals so that they're not eating Starches with Proteins or Fruit with any other food. If they're used to meat and potatoes it will be a little difficult, but if you're serving some of their favorite veggie dishes with their meat, and nixing the rolls or using Protein Rolls you should do okay. If you anticipate lots of objections, start by using the Protein Rolls for a week or so and then every now and then eliminating the potatoes, until you find what satisfies.

Foods like fried chicken which combine a Protein and a Starch (the bread coating is a starch) can be easily converted. Some great substitutes for the flour coating on any Protein food are: ground sesame seeds, ground pork rinds, protein bread crumbs, soy flour or a mixture of any of these. Make sure to check out Protein Substitutes on the Recipe Index page.

Instead of immediately serving dessert after a Protein dinner, wait at least 2 hours, preferably 3 hours and serve dessert while watching TV, playing a game or around a roaring fire. There are also some great Protein Desserts which you can serve immediately following a Protein Meal, but Starch desserts are easier to hide the fact that you're cutting out the sugar.

Begin substituting 1/4 of the dairy in your Starch recipes with rice or soy products. Then try 1/2, then 3/4, then all rice or soy. See Starch Substitutes for more ideas.

Add raw veggies to every meal. This could be a salad, raw veggie sticks, fresh garnishes added to soup, pasta or rice dishes.

Switch to Whole Grains: Zucchini Bread and other batter breads (coming up in future recipes) are easy to switch from white flour to whole wheat flour without anyone complaining. This tactic works well because these breads are considered treats and if you start serving them with a Starch Meal instead of white flour rolls your family will love it.

Rice: Start by serving wild rice instead of white rice, or half wild rice and half white rice. After you've been serving wild rice for a time, start substituting brown rice for 1/4 of the rice dish. Try a really delicious brown rice recipe every now and then, until your family gets used to the taste. If they ask for white rice, add lots of veggies, so they'll be eating less white rice. Note: wild rice is just as healthy as brown rice. I suggest starting the grain switch by adding wild rice because it's more familiar to your family than brown rice.

Bread: If your family won't eat whole wheat bread try rye or pumpernickel, or pick up some really delicious fresh baked whole grain breads at your local health food store. The mass produced breads aren't mouth watering enough to convert someone. Some supermarkets sell fresh baked whole grain breads.

Pasta:Mix 1/2 whole grain and 1/2 of your family's regular pasta and serve with your regular tomato sauce. Semolina flour is white flour. The only way that semolina flour would be favorable is if the package label says that it's whole grain semolina flour. After they're used to the 1/2 & 1/2 pasta switch start serving uncooked tomato sauces. Check out Flash Cooked Tomato Sauces coming up in Monthly Recipes. Tomatoes shouldn't be cooked - ever - as they become too acidic and interfere with digestion. The last step is to make the complete switch to whole grain pastas.

Skip the Potatoes if you're trying to lose weight. Go ahead and serve them to your family, but limit your potato intake until you reach your goal weight.Occasionally is okay though.

Drink distilled water10-20 minutes before each meal (including breakfast) and wait at least 2 hours after a meal before drinking. If you're really thirsty before the 2 hours are up, a celery stick or two should cure that.

Eliminate processed foods, chemicals, sugar, chemical sugar substitutes, alcohol, vinegar, carbonated beverages and any foods on the Forbidden Foods list. Occasionally you'll eat a forbidden food either by choice (who can resist a slice of chocolate cake now and then) or because it's what's in front of you. Don't be hard on yourself, just get back to The UnDiet.

Cooked tomatoes are too acidic and will wreak havoc with your digestion. Eliminate them and check out the UnDiet recipes for pasta sauces, soups, etc. that use fresh and dried tomatoes to achieve delicious results. Dried Tomato Paste, & Pasta Sauce .

Chicken broth is too acidic and will also wreak havoc with your digestion. Just substitute vegetable or yellow/white miso broth. You can purchase boxed vegetable broth in every health food store and some grocery stores, but the substitute I've liked best is a powdered vegetable broth that I buy from the bulk bins at a local health food store. It tastes remarkably like chicken broth and nobody has noticed the difference! You'll need to experiment to find a substitute that works for you. Don't give up if you try one or two that you don't like. Read the ingredients carefully as many contain large amounts of sugar (dextrose and other "ose" ingredients) which isn't necessary for the broth to taste good.

Childproof Recipes will help you avoid the "I'm not eating that" blues, (generally in a C-minor whine).

Step By Step

If you'd like help getting started with the UnDiet I'll e-mail you with a new UnDiet step each week, which will also provide you with tips, recipes utilizing that week's step, and encouragement to keep on following through with previous steps.

There's no charge to give the Step-By-Step E-Mail Program a try. When you request one month of FREE UnDiet Steps you'll also be added to the UnDiet Update list which will notify you when new recipes and info are added to this site.

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last revised January 22, 2005
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Family Plan

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