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Bee Pollen & Almond Milk


TBinSD

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Thanks Tom! I just can't add smoothies to my 'don't do' list, so I can live with the 2nd rate choice as long as I'm compliant. The rest of my meals are meat & veggies, so that's decent enough news for me. Do you know about Bee Pollen? That I have cut due to the honey restriction.


You can get good results doing a Whole30 even while drinking smoothies. No one was discouraging smoothies when the Whole30 was first started because the effect of converting foods to liquids was not well understood then. If you look over my website, you will find a section devoted to Whole30-compliant smoothies. I drank smoothies for a while several years ago and made good progress. I was not, however, able to sustain myself with 3 meals per day back then. I ate 4, 5, and sometimes 6 meals per day. I am sure it was not just the smoothies, but that was probably one factor that helps explain why I stayed so hungry.

Bee pollen should probably be set aside during a Whole30. I gather there is some honey in it and then there is this warning from WebMD:

Is Bee Pollen Safe?

Bee pollen appears to be safe, at least when taken for a short term. But if you have pollen allergies, you may get more than you bargained for. Bee pollen can cause a serious allergic reaction -- including shortness of breath, hives, swelling, and anaphylaxis.
Bee pollen is not safe for pregnant women. A woman should also avoid using bee pollen if she is breastfeeding.
Bee pollen may cause increased bleeding if taken with certain blood thinners like warfarin. Check with your doctor before taking bee pollen if you take any medications, over-the-counter medicines, or herbals.

My general rule is if a food can cause this much trouble for some people, I would rather not eat it myself. Now maybe I am inconsistent in this regard. I have found similarly negative warnings about kombucha, but I drink a bottle every day.

 

Update: I removed all the smoothie recipes from my site. It just did not make sense to keep explaining how to make a smoothie when I believe people should not drink them.

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I'm trying to use the guildlines to create a plan that works for me, so if some choices aren't the best, well that's okay. Maybe on my next run I'll try to be a bit more disciplined with regard to the smoothies, but I just don't have the patience to re-start from this point.

We all just do the best we can. Believe me, no-one's saying restart. The guidlines are just there because we really want people to get the best possible out of a W30 but none of us are perfect just carry on doing the best you can. good luck

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Tom, I read that on WebMD too. I've been taking the stuff for a bit, so I don't have any allergy issues at all. I stopped taking it soley because honey was on the don't list. I wasn't sure, so I kept it out. I can deal with that for 30 days for sure.

As far as getting enough food in my belly . . . the smoothies work fine and are very satisfying for me. 3/4 cup of strawberries and 3/4 cup blueberries or raspberries, 1 cup almond milk or 1/4 cup of coconut milk with 3/4 filtered water, and one small banana. That's my smoothie. I'll throw raw almonds in from time to time too. I don't feel hungry at all after and like I said, I eat solid meals the rest of the day. Getting to 2000 calories and above has been a challenge, but I haven't felt hungry (which is probably good). I workout at least 5 x a week and burn about 500-700 cals during each workout, so my weight loss has been substantial and my energy levels sustained, so I think I'm heading in the right direction. The weight loss isn't a goal as much as a side effect. Again, thanks for your input. I'll apply what I've learned here today to the next 20 days! TB

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While we are on the subject (again) can someone clarify why blended soups don't warrant any kind of warning against liquid calories. I have had many alongside my meals, sometimes AS my meal. Is it a fruit issue with the smoothie or is drinking soup just as "dangerous"

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For me it is all about the meal template. Smoothies don't work for me because they would encourage me to have much more fruit and much less protein and fat than I need. I don't see a veg-heavy green smoothie eaten along-side some protein as a huge problem, probably not ideal, but not a huge problem. The issue is with anyone actually doing that--I know if you asked me before I started my whole30 (back in my green-smoothie for breakfast every day days) I would have said the smoothie alone was perfectly healthy and satisfying. Now, after almost a year of solid food (protein and veggies) for breakfast? I know solid food satisfies me better. SO for soup I would ask: does the meal including the soup meet the template? If it does, in my opinion, you are fine. Of course that is just my opinion :) ps. 3/4 cup of strawberries + 3/4 cup blueberries or raspberries+ small banana is more fruit than I eat in an entire week now--lots more than is intended for a single meal following the template.

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Thanks missmary. For my first run at the Whole 30 I'm going to keep fruit in my diet. In fact I may never change that. I get the concept, but it's going to be very difficult to convince me that eating fruit everyday is somehow bad. It seems the fruit/smoothie issue is more about how full people feel and the possible cravings, neither of which affect me. Like I've said earlier, I'll stay compliant, but I have to do what works for me on a regular basis. And at this time smoothies are a once-a-day thing for me.

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The liquid food problem is similar with pureed soups - the potential of eating too much because satiety signals come slowly and the potential of becoming hungry quicker than if we had eaten whole foods. However, unlike smoothies, soups tend to be veggie based rather than fruit based and often include more protein and fat. And people are rarely as committed to soup as they are to smoothies. If people had a smoothie once a week, it would matter very little. The problem is that many people want to eat a smoothie every day and that is a drag on getting all the hormonal rhythms in line.

I don't think eating soup every day is a good idea. Personally, I have trouble with hunger when I try to make a meal of soup. For me, the best thing is to have one or two mugs of soup as part of a meal and not as a meal itself. Maybe one reason I could not make it on three meals per day when I did my first Whole30 was that I made a lot of soup/stews. As I was getting into the swing of cooking, I tended to dump lots of things in a pot with chicken or beef broth. I called most of it a stew, but calling it a chunky soup would have been fair.

For my first run at the Whole 30 I'm going to keep fruit in my diet. In fact I may never change that. I get the concept, but it's going to be very difficult to convince me that eating fruit everyday is somehow bad.

Fruit is good food, it just isn't as good as veggies. It is helpful to walk through the produce department at Whole Foods where they list the ANDI scores. Veggies have higher ANDI scores than fruits across the board - lots higher. The person who eats lots of veggies gets more good nutrition than the person who eats lots of fruit. Fruit is way better than mac and cheese, cereal and soy milk, etc,, staples of the standard American diet, but doesn't offer nearly as much as kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.

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That will be my next mission -- homemade almond milk. It appears I still have some work to do to get my meals a bit more up to par, but I'm not going to start over. However, I will likely make this a Whole 35. . . just for good measure.

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Whole foods that have been converted into a smoothie do not function the same way in the body as they would if you ate them as bites of food instead of drinking them as a liquid. The blending makes the food pass through faster and that messes with your hunger signals and make it easy to over eat and then be hungry sooner than you ordinarily would have if you had eaten whole foods.

Good point, didn't think of those issues from the average person point of view, as opposed to my "trying to gain weight" point of view!

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JBB -- look at the Trader Joe's unsweetened vanilla (or plain). No carrageenan in it. In fact, most of the almond milk I've found doesn't have carrageenan in it, but a lot do have sugar. It's the coconut milk that seems to have carrageenan in it with every brand. That's why I switched to almond milk.

They must have changed their formula recently because I stopped buying this brand because of carrageenan.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The Whole9 discourages smoothies because it interferes with healthy digestion, hunger signals, meal-timing, and maybe a few other things.

Smoothies digest too fast and leave you satisfied too briefly in comparison to whole foods. The quicker digestion and brief satiation hinders getting your hormones into a healthy rhythm. In addition, fruit-filled smoothies are sugar bombs. They are not banned during a Whole30, but smoothies measure up as a second-rate food choice.

Whole foods that have been converted into a smoothie do not function the same way in the body as they would if you ate them as bites of food instead of drinking them as a liquid. The blending makes the food pass through faster and that messes with your hunger signals and make it easy to over eat and then be hungry sooner than you ordinarily would have if you had eaten whole foods.

I don't see how you can overeat on vegetables, though? That's the main reason I add juices & smoothies to my meals, because I simply cannot eat that amount of vegetables without bloating & stomach cramps. I never add fruit, aside from cucumber, however, does this make a difference? For instance, I will have a bowl of raw or steamed greens, plus a juice or smoothie. I find juices particularly good as it allows me to eat veggies like kale & broccoli that I usually can't digest with all that fibre.

I'm a bit confused as to why the template includes so much fat & protein and such limited vegetables - what happened to 7 serves a day? Just that if the program is designed to focus on only nutrient-rich foods, I don't see how a plate that is 70% chicken is particularly nutritious?

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I'm a bit confused as to why the template includes so much fat & protein and such limited vegetables - what happened to 7 serves a day? Just that if the program is designed to focus on only nutrient-rich foods, I don't see how a plate that is 70% chicken is particularly nutritious?

Where are you seeing limited vegetables or a plate of 70% chicken?! The template calls for a palm sized serving of protein, a "thumb" sized portion of fat and a minimum of "the rest of your plate" filled with vegetables. Unless you are using dessert plates, that likely means 2-3 cups of vegetables at each meal. There isn't a restriction on these, but a minimum. eat your veggies!
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There was a post a month or two where a mod explained why you don't want to ingest a truckload of kale every day...wish I could find it. But yeah, they aren't limiting the amount of vegetables you eat/chew. Drinking changes things a little. There's a ton of topics on smoothies in this section of the forum.

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  • 1 year later...
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Bee Pollen is fine.

 

In future, google is your friend for finding answers on the forum.  Most everything has already been asked and answered on the forum. Just go to Google and type in "Whole30 Bee Pollen" and you will get your answer without having to wait!  ;)

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