Recipe for Joy
How to Get and Keep Joy in the Modern World.
Food power.
After many years of digestion issues, thankfully things seem to be on track for my health. I’ve discovered the power of healthy food. I’m going to share my recipes and my strategies for making great food part of my everyday life. It’s how I finally found digestive wellness and joy.
Everyone loves the feeling of being happy. Seeking pleasure is coded into our DNA. We are hard-wired to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and do so with the least effort.
Pleasure, although often intense, is fleeting.
Joy, on the other hand, is long-lasting and much deeper.
To me, joy has a spiritual element that connects me to the bigger picture, the grander story of life.
What’s the path to a well-lived existence? If there is a recipe for joy I want it.
The days of chasing short-term pleasures are thankfully long behind me.
These days I’m very much into making sure I can be as healthy and happy as possible and that means saying no to junk pleasure, junk food, and junk time wasting. I’m saying a lot of no, so I have room to say yes to more joyful pursuits. Pursuits that include holistic self-care, good nutrition, cooking delicious healthy foods, frugality, creativity, and the simple good life.
The best foods for babies are breast or homemade
In the mid-1950s when I was born, the modern industrial food environment was just starting to edge its way into the culture. Eating out in restaurants was quite rare for the average Joe and Joanne. Home cooking was the norm.
Some of my earliest memories are when I was around two years old. My stay-at-home mother was looking after me and my younger baby brother. Disposable diapers were not a thing yet, and so for mothers caring for families, it was hard work. Yet practically everything we ate was homemade.
Our cakes, pies, and desserts were often homemade. Most of the baby food in our home was homemade. I recall sitting at the kitchen table watching my mother make baby food for my baby brother. I could smell the delicious freshly steamed carrots, pumpkin, potato, and spinach that my mother was pureeing using a hand-grinder for my baby brother’s dinner. I remember begging my mother for a taste, and boy, did it taste good!
Fortunately for me, I did not grow up eating canned baby food. Yet as a TV-watching toddler, I was beguiled by advertising showing all those tempting convenience packaged foods. Naturally, I started wanting these. When my mum started working out of the home, packet cake mixes replaced her made-from-scratch baked goods. Even with my immature taste buds, I could discern that packet cake mix was inferior to my mother’s previous homemade from-scratch cakes.
Life Lesson:
Plain steamed vegetables taste delicious and are appealing to all ages.
The advertising trap
The TV ads would try to persuade whoever was watching to buy, buy, buy, and that buying would deliver great pleasure, convenience, and status. I still recall the advertising slogans for cigarettes - “The international passport to smoking pleasure’ of course I started to smoke cigarettes at a very young age because cool, sophisticated people on TV smoked.
As soon as I was old enough to work a job earning my own money I’d spend all my money on consumer goods - fashion, alcohol, cigarettes, junk food, music, going out, partying, keeping up with all the Joneses of my generation. As I look back I regret my foolish spending on things I thought would bring me pleasure and joy. How short-lived those fleeting pleasures were and what a total waste of money they turned out to be.
Life Lesson:
Advertising has a dark side when it persuades people to pursue the pleasure trap.
Joy vs bliss point
By the mid-1900s the food industry discovered that the trio of salt, sugar, and fat could be formulated to produce a state of satiety, pleasure, and hedonia in those who consumed them.
American market researcher and psychophysicist, Howard Moskowitz, termed this the “bliss point” or the point where the levels of saltiness, sweetness, and richness were perceived by the consumer as just right. When the processed food industry added a crunchy mouth feel to their bliss point formulations, a whole new generation of “crave-able” foods was created.”
Once the nervous system gets a taste for super-normal stimuli the expectations of the pleasure pathway are re-set. “When you play around with super-normal stimuli - food, alcohol, drugs, etc, “You re-set the expectations of the pleasure pathway to a different level” argues social scientist Dr. Jen Howk, “so you are kind of depriving yourself of the optimal joy of natural pleasures when you overstimulate these pathways”. Beat Your Genes Podcast #204. 50mins. My tastebuds were being reset to now want sweeter, saltier, fattier foods - let’s call it what it is - junk food.
Life Lesson:
People are susceptible to the intentional creation of pleasure traps.
The modern food environment.
Our modern food environment in the US is so plentiful with food and food is everywhere.
Along with supermarkets selling food items gathered from the four corners of the earth, there are farmers' markets in person or online, online shopping, food companies that cook for you and deliver food to your doorstep, bakeries, restaurants, cafes, and of course a lot of fast food chain restaurants.
It doesn’t look like anyone will starve or suffer malnutrition. Except if you are in a food desert - where the low socioeconomic population has limited access to food. Or a food swamp that lacks healthy food but where there are plenty of unhealthy fast food joints. People living in food deserts and swamps may be at higher long-term risks of diet-related conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. And we see evidence of these increasing health issues all around us.
Life Lesson:
Junk food is everywhere but we don’t have to eat it.
Me - My own worst enemy
Every time I go to the dentist I regret all the sugary sweets and candy I ate that led to all my tooth cavities. Ever since I was a young child I’ve had a sweet tooth. I love chocolate and cookies, deep-fried potato chips, fries, and sugary, high-fat foods. I love that instant pleasure and mouth feel.
Do you, like me, sometimes think you are your own worst enemy, saying yes to things you know you will soon regret?
A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips, is true.
That exquisite pleasure from eating my favorite sweet salty crunchy fatty foods was a recipe for disaster for my body type. Several times I became not only overweight but officially obese - which was the total opposite of joy.
Now I’ve learned from painful experience that for me and my body type it’s very easy to store excess fat. Now that I understand how my body responds to the modern food environment I know that some foods are no-go. Added oils for example.
Life Lesson:
I’ve made serious errors in my judgment in the past. My teeth know what’s good and bad. My fat stores know that eating fatty oily food is a bad idea.
The yo-yo beginning
While in my early twenties, I went to Weight Watchers meetings with my mother. She was on a diet forever. That’s when the yo-yo dieting for me began. And with each passing year, a few more pounds would be added. I was smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and eating lots of animal protein - living the typical average lifestyle like all others in my circle. Smoking seemed to distract me from eating the addictive drug-like foods that I enjoyed.
After I stopped smoking in my mid-20s, the pounds started to pile on, and by my mid to late 30s, I was starting to get a little too flabby. Looking at myself in the mirror with a big gut sticking out, and no longer fitting into my jeans is a horrible feeling. It made me feel like I’d lost control of myself and let myself down.
And as much as I hated that feeling, even worse was when my body started to react to my poor food choices beyond just excess stored fat.
Throughout the years I’d experimented with some crazy diets including Weight Watchers, Atkins, Fit For Life, Vegan, Cohen Lifestyle Diet, Keto, Bright Lines Eating, Intermittent Fasting, elimination diets, anti-inflammatory diets, total cleanse diets, and other restrictive programs.
Did any of these work?
Yes, up to a point, and while some did help me shift the excess weight, some were so restrictive that they were extremely low calorie and tiny amounts of food which was unsustainable for the long term. Also, they did not fix the constipation or other health issues I was having.
Life Lesson:
A lot of different diets can’t solve the basic problem - eating too much of the wrong kind of drug-like food.
It's all about convenience foods
Supermarket shelves, fridges, and freezers are packed with ultra-processed convenience foods that may tickle my taste buds and not take a lot of my time to prepare, but these are not healthy choices. Manufacturers are not about keeping food pure and simple. Far from it in fact.
Take Wonderbread, one of the leading brands of bread sold in the USA. Here is the ingredients list.
Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Sugar, Yeast, Contains 2% or Less of Each of the Following: Calcium Carbonate, Wheat Gluten, Soybean Oil, Salt, Dough Conditioners (Contains One or More of the Following: Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate, Monoglycerides, Mono- and Diglycerides, Distilled Monoglycerides, Calcium Peroxide, Calcium Iodate, DATEM, Ethoxylated Mono- and Diglycerides, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid), Vinegar, Monocalcium Phosphate, Citric Acid, Cholecalciferol (Vitamin D3), Soy Lecithin, Calcium Propionate (to Retard Spoilage).
How many of these ingredients are in my kitchen? Maybe five-six - but not 27. In my kitchen, I have wheat flour, salt, water, sugar, and vinegar and if I look hard enough, I may find some yeast. These other 21 ingredients, instead of being food for my health, are simply to make the product softer, whiter, and have a longer shelf life.
For the majority of foods I’m eating these days there is NO ingredient list. When I buy a potato or a berry, it’s just that. Of course, there are pesticides that will be used, so organic, small farm or homegrown is the only way to possibly reduce exposure to these toxins.
My mostly whole plant food diet consists mainly of vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and seeds.
Am I vegan?
I prefer to call myself a flexitarian. This means I can enjoy the majority of my diet as whole plant food bases and still enjoy a small amount of animal protein occasionally. Maybe an occasional meal may have some animal protein.
Because my husband still enjoys eating animal protein and we eat a lot of our meals together, I’m not going to try to convince him to join me. Nobody likes to be lectured and preached to. He’s cut back on the amount of animal protein he now eats and we’re both happy with that.
Life Lesson:
Big Food is not on our side for our health. We have to be our own health advocates because no one else will.
The poop dilemma
Constipation is a big business
Laxatives are a billion-dollar industry in the USA. How big? Try 1.77 billion U.S. dollars in 2022 for over-the-counter sales of laxatives. It’s a 26% increase in sales in just 4 years Looks like there are a lot of people stuck with a lot of constipation.
9-20% of people in America have chronic constipation. Unfortunately, I was one of them. Constipation, as I mentioned before, was something I struggled with for decades. This issue brought on other health woes like varicose veins and prolapsed pelvic organs.
Apart from the time when I had a colonoscopy, I did not use laxatives, because I don’t love the thought of taking pharmaceutical medication. So to try to get things moving I took regular dietary supplements like Psyllium Husks and Slippery Elm - neither of which made any significant difference. However, a couple of times I did do a salt treatment which thankfully got things moving, but it was a temporary fix.
Life Lesson:
Millions are suffering from chronic constipation and laxatives just address the symptoms not the cause of the problem and dietary supplements are of little help.
Today’s food environment is a minefield of booby traps. With all the misinformation and hype it’s difficult to find the truth and the causes of what is making us so sick. Eating too much rich food devoid of dietary fiber is the cause of many health issues including constipation.
Healthy pooping at last
I thought I was quite a healthy eater. I avoided fast food and ate mainly free-range, grass-fed, wild-caught animal protein and organic grains and veggies. Yet still the constipation issue and unwanted weight gain continued year after year. Could my diet be the cause of my constipation? I would soon find out after I finally adopted a whole food plant-based high starch diet on the McDougall Starch Solution.
Finally, after many experiments with my diet, I’m now enjoying eating the most healthy, nutritious, filling, delicious food. Now I eat mostly whole plant foods. And best of all - that chronic constipation that I had for decades has now gone. It disappeared without surgery, pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter drugs, laxatives or supplements. Yay!
This was achieved through a whole plant-based diet with an emphasis on eliminating all animal protein and oil. My home cooking continues to play a big part in my being as healthy and joyful as possible.
Now I’m more aware of the hidden traps in the foods we eat including the marketing hype and the industrial-sponsored misinformation about what constitutes healthy food.
And I am clued up on how widespread the problem is and who is involved. Nutrition is a confusing mess by design and it seems the entire agricultural, medical, and pharmaceutical industries are doing all they can to get as many people as possible hooked on their unhealthy products.
If you, like me, have wondered why diabetes, obesity, and heart disease are so prevalent in our modern world then all you have to do is take a visit to any supermarket.
Now thankfully, joyfully, daily poops are my thing. I never thought I’d be able to say that after struggling with chronic constipation for over 20 years. And now I’m regular as clockwork, I’ve happily found my way to successful eating that works for my body type and genotype.
But here’s the thing to remember.
What works for me may not work for others and vice versa.
My body is probably very different from yours.
My body easily burns in the sun even after a few minutes. My body gets very cold in winter and overheats in summer. My body is super efficient at storing fat. My body loves sweet treats. My body needs a lot of green vegetable fiber for my digestive system to work properly.
So now that I understand my body’s unique requirements to keep me healthy and feeling satisfied, I can do my part and give my body what it needs.
Life Lesson:
Constipation is easily fixed by eating lots of green and yellow vegetables. Eating a pound a day is a good way to get things moving fast.
How much protein do we actually need?
There’s a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about protein and human health.
Contrary to the zeitgeist of today, it’s virtually impossible, NOT to get enough protein if we eat even a moderate variety of plant-based foods. Most people don’t think of breads and vegetables as protein foods, but in fact, a slice of bread contains 2 to 3 grams, while a half cup of broccoli is about the same.
OK yes, it’s a small amount when compared to a chunk of steak or eggs. But here’s the thing. According to unbiased health and nutrition experts we don’t actually need as much protein in our diets as the animal protein pusher marketing machines would have us believe.
We are being misled, even lied to about how much protein we need. Human breast milk provides all the energy and nutrients that the infant needs for the first few years of life and yet contains just 1% protein.
Takeaway points about protein in our diets:
• Protein should make up only 8-10% of the calories in our diet.
• A reasonably varied plant-based diet will easily provide enough protein.
• Animal protein promotes cancer, while replacing animal protein with plant protein may stop carcinogenesis.
More people are enjoying adopting Meatless Mondays as a way of cutting back on animal protein while at the same time doing something good for the planet to reduce global warming.
Life Lesson:
There is a lot of industrial-hyped misinformation telling us we need more protein when in fact we don’t. Eating a diet of mainly whole plant foods provides sufficient all our protein and calcium requirements.
Home cooking is the way to wellness
Joyous living is the outcome of holistic wellness. To me, holistic long-term health is more important than short-term pleasure or convenience. That’s why I love home cooking. That’s why I make it a priority. I want to be as healthy as I can and not ever have to rely on pharmaceutical drugs.
I am so grateful I can work from home.
Even when I was working away from home I still loved home cooking. To make home cooking fit your life all it takes is a bit of prioritizing, time management, planning, and organization. Otherwise, what’s the alternative? Relying on packaged food, restaurants, or ready-made convenience foods. No thanks!
Naturally, there are many deviations, distractions, and wrong turns to navigate. And I’ll touch on some of these as well.
Here on this website, I’ll be posting some great recipes for delicious foods. I’ll also write about ways to get more organized. Plus I’ll share about healthy cooking, creativity, music, contentment, minimalism and frugalism, and a bunch of other things that I haven’t even come up with yet.
Life Lesson:
Healthy food is essential to well-being. Living a healthy balanced life is easy when you’re organized.
The joy of home cooking
A big part of my personal self-advocacy for my health and well-being has been developing my skills for creating nutritious and delicious meals at home. Don’t get me wrong - I adore eating out with my husband. We both enjoy eating foods from the world's greatest cuisines and exploring exotic and new flavors and dishes.
However, eating out ends up typically with us consuming way more unhealthy levels of fat, oil, salt, sugar, and other nasty additives sneaking into the food. In the past, I’ve been careless about these health-diminishing ingredients and although highly pleasurable at the time, did not lead to long-term joy and well-being. Now I know better, I can do better.
Life Lesson: Nobody is going to take care of me as well as I can take care of me. And some of the healthiest food you can eat is the food you cook yourself because you have total control over what you eat.
Home cooking strategies
As I promised right at the beginning of this article, I’ll be sharing my strategies for making good food part of my everyday life. These strategies can help you become a skilled home cook and make the job even easier. And let’s be honest here, home cooking is definitely ‘a job’ - just like doing the dishes and taking out the garbage are jobs.
I’ll be sharing about how to organize a home kitchen - even if you have a small kitchen like me. And if you have a super large kitchen it’s just as important to have it organized well.
Having the right kitchen tools can make a huge time and effort-saving difference and I’ll give you my recommendations for my must-have kitchen tools.
Having good knife skills can make home cooking so much easier, and I’ll let you in on some of my best knife skill tips to cut the prep time down.
Refrigerator organization is another great skill to have under your belt for home cooking. I’ve got some very cool fridge organization strategies to help save time and get more in and out of your fridge whatever the size or design.
Herbs and Spices make healthy food taste even better. When home cooks can access a good herb and spice collection their food can taste just as good or even better than any restaurant. I’ll show you how I’ve been able to create a herb and spice system that makes it so easy to create wonderful dishes from a wide range of cuisines.
Batch cooking is a skill that can help busy people fit home cooking into their busy lives. I batch-cook almost all my meals - breakfasts, lunches and dinners. And when you don’t have much time it’s a great feeling to be able to grab some ready-made goodness from the fridge and have a healthy meal in minutes. I’ll share my favorite batch cooking tips.
Homemade stock is so easy and it’s a great way to save money while at the same time creating a super healthy delicious vegetable stock without any industrial chemical ingredients. There’s an easy way to do it and I’ll show you how.
Homemade Soups are wonderful and healthy time savers. I absolutely adore soups - I can happily eat soup every day and often do. Having a big pot of soup is not only a fantastic way to enjoy beautiful home-cooked goodness, it’s also a great time saver as well for busy people. Just heat, eat, and enjoy a nourishing easy meal. And if you’ve made a big batch you can freeze portions for later. I’ll share recipes for my all-time favorite go-to whole-food plant-based soups.
Stews and one-pot meals are super easy and delicious. Like soups, they are ideal meals for busy people to make ahead of time and can be made using a slow cooker. Refrigerate what’s left so you can heat and eat for a super fast healthy meal. These stews and one-pot meals are great for taking to a potluck so you can guarantee there will be some super healthy food you can enjoy.
Salads are sensational ways to get more raw vegetables and high-fiber foods into your life. And you don’t need to add all the unhealthy items like bacon bits, cheese, and oils to make a salad taste good. I’ll be sharing my favorite salad recipes with you.
Bowls are super popular. And you can make a beautiful bowl of goodness to enjoy for any meal time. Breakfast bowls, lunch bowls, or dinner bowls are easy, especially if you have your ingredients ready to assemble as I do with my made-from-scratch oat groats.
How to get more joy into your day.
Here’s my personal top 10 list.
Get enough sleep - 7-10 hours each night is perfect.
Do some daily stretches like yoga
Have a 20-30 walk each day
Eat a pound of non-starchy vegetables every day to be as regular as clockwork
Find a subject you enjoy and learn something new every day
Learn to play a musical instrument and play it for 5-10 minutes each day
Eat several delicious homemade whole-food plant-based meals every day
Say no or limit things that do not bring you joy
Give yourself some ‘Me-Time’ for self-care each day
Let yourself have a laugh and some fun every day.
Conclusion
Humans and animals are genetically wired to seek pleasure and eat the richest foods to survive and reproduce. That’s our nature.
With our modern environment delivering on-demand pleasure 24/7 as close as our fingertips, We’ve now engineered our environment to ensure cheap food with high levels of animal protein, and cheap thrills to surround us at every turn in abundance.
However, the downside of our modern engineered good life is illness, disease, addiction, obesity, depression, and a host of other bad health outcomes.
Although joy, happiness, and pleasure are often mistaken for each other, these emotional states are quite different. Pleasure is short-lived. It’s about the dopamine rush.
Happiness is a longer-lasting state and is more often a result of internal factors such as self-esteem, connectedness with others, and perceived success in social and trade interactions.
Joy on the other hand seems to have a transcendent component beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience. It appears to not rely solely on external or even internal factors and is experienced at such times when the individual is meditating, in prayer, or engaging in wisdom, spirituality, or contentment.
Paradoxically, when we limit our pleasure-seeking to minimize the dopamine rushes, and instead tap into our spiritual dimension we can experience health, wealth, and wisdom for more joy and such - the true good life.