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Sirtfood Diet - The First Three Days of Phase I


In previous posts I mention that in Phase I (why do I always think of Star Trek phaser guns when I say that?) of the Sirtfood Diet consists of a LOT of juice and only a few meals. The first three days of the week-long phase is only one meal per day...and some chocolate so yay that. I scoured the various recipes available that are high in sirtfoods to find the ones that would A. sound tasty to me and B. use up items I already have in the house. I gathered the recipes that I planned on making, opened each in a separate tab on my computer and laboriously jotted down everything I would need to buy and in what quantities for my shopping list. I was going to post that here for you but then realized you probably have a very different pantry than I do. The bf is a cooking aficionado and is partial to Indian food so we have a lot of items the average person might not have. Massive shout out to Chef Veena for the most incredible recipes, inspiration and instruction (we took an amazing class with her) if you are interested in learning how to cook Indian and other crazy flavorful foods.



I like to use Google Sheets to plan out my diets so I thought I would just copy and paste it here for you to see. I am such a nerd (could you tell from the photo above?). I love to make spreadsheets. It's like a hobby for me. I love to insert all the little check boxes and everything. 

 It might be a bit small there but I will give you the links to the recipes I decided to use.


Day 1 - The Matcha'll Getcha

There isn't much to say about drinking green juice except that it is there, it's green(ish), and you drink it. I found the flavor palatable at least. I had added the matcha to the entire batch which I will not do the next batch because it is a lot of caffeine to be drinking all day long. I was a little hungry towards the afternoon so I ate my 15-20g of chocolate...and when I say 15-20 g we all know I mean 20g so who do I think I'm trying to kid here? The chocolate and taking my dog to the park helped me forget I was hungry until I got home and started to look at recipes for the next week. 

Each square of Lindt chocolate is 10 grams. You get five 20 gram servings per bar

The meal I chose for this day is the Baked Salmon With Creamy Mint Dressing. It has 80 grams of mixed greens and spinach so I used a container of baby kale and spinach for the lot. It also called for spring onions which I put in one of but then I thought of putting in some red onion since it is a sirtfood. There is also a handful of parsely which is a sirtfood. So in my slightly modified version there are three servings of the top 20 sirtfoods in it. And it was tasty. It was HUGE but I happily ate it all and I am not a salmon fan normally.  I slept horribly if you even want to call it sleeping. I accredit that to the matcha. Moving forward I stopped drinking the juice in the afternoon until I was out of the matcha-rich stuff.

Weight loss: 3.6 pounds. Not surprising when one who considers a pint of ice cream one serving basically stops eating for a day.


It looked good enough to eat before the mint yogurt dressing!

I added a few extra mint leaves to the yogurt sauce for more flavor.


Day 2 - TOO Much Food?

This day was much more difficult due to the lack of sleep that was mostly my fault and not that of the diet. Fair warning to anyone who reads this though...do not add the matcha to the whole juice. The next juice I make I will add the daily dose of matcha to the first juice, mix it in and drink it in the morning only. If you have read any of my other posts you might know that I suffer from an illness that provides me with unlimited chronic pain. When I am tired I feel the pain all the more. Day 2 for me was not my favorite day. I rested most of the day between naps and barely dragged myself to the dog park so my corgi pupper could see his friends. Being at the park and seeing (from a great distance and through a mask of course) my dog owner friends really picked up my spirits. There is something about getting outside that can rejuvenate the body and spirit. This gave me the energy I needed...well, that and 20 g of dark chocolate...to cook the night's meal, Miso Marinated Baked Cod With Stir-Fried Greens. 

Asking for 7 oz of cod seemed to perturb the butcher but if it was a small amount, it sure filled me up!

It was my first time making buckwheat and I overcooked it a little but the taste was still there. I actually made twice the amount I needed to add to a future meal. With the buckwheat, miso, olive oil, celery, parsley, thai chili, kale and soy sauce this meal is freaking packed with sirtfoods. I feel like, even though my favorite veggie is green beans, they could have been left out because it was just way too much food for one person to eat. The plate had to have weighed 10 pounds! It did taste alright but I had to add a lot more soy sauce and salt to get the flavor I am used to in there. 

Weight loss: 1.6 more pounds for a total of 5.2 pounds. I will reassert the fact that this means little since I am starving myself of food. This rapid loss will end soon I am certain.

Day 3 - Mistakes Were Made

Sleep still eluded me and I still think it is a caffeine thing because I am wired. I have been staying up late on my new patio playing games on my phone and watching TV shows with the bf. It has been super hot out the last several days and the evenings spent outside have been lovely. I honestly think about just staying out there all night. Then I remember how many deer and skunks and mice come into the backyard at night. If not totally convinced by that I then hear the howling of the foxes and coyotes and think better of it. 



Tonight's one meal was Sesame Chicken Salad. It was terrific....well, it was terrific after I spruced it up. Sorry that the recipe is on facebook. It was the only place I could find it isolated. If you are not a member of FB, first of all, I commend you, and second, here is where you can find it as well, you just have to do a bit of scrolling. I made a few pretty big mistakes. I added more honey, sesame oil and soy sauce than was asked. The big mistake I made was making and eating too much. The two previous recipes I had followed were for one serving, despite them being gargantuan. Since this recipe produced yet another giant plate of food I didn't stop to notice that it was two servings. I ate the whole thing. Do I regret it? Not really, I was hungry and it was yummy. But I did gain a little weight. With kale, olive oil, red onion and soy sauce, this had a few servings of sirtfoods. Which means I had several servings. Which should be better! I call foul. Oh well.

Changes I made to the recipe (aside from eating double the amount I was intended to) were as follows. I added at least double the sesame oil and soy sauce. I also could not handle eating more raw kale so I sauteed the kale and pak choi (which I am pretty sure is just bok choi but I bought a bunch with both words on the label to be certain I was using the right ingredient) in some olive oil until they wilted and turned bright green. I then cooled them down in the refrigerator for a few minutes before I added them to the salad. You may also notice in the photos that there is a little buckwheat added in there. I had to use up the extra I cooked the day before so I figured why not in there.

Weight loss: 0.8 lb gain for a total loss of 4.4 pounds. 


Summary

I have chosen to not print the recipes here in an effort to keep the posting shorter. I have mentioned the changes I made in each recipe in the paragraphs following. This does not mean you need to make the changes as well but I thought I would be as transparent as I could be. I am accustomed to a lot more salt. Perhaps that is due to my use of the keto diet which calls for excessive amounts of it to stay healthy. 

I made a few mistakes, some on purpose (is it still a mistake then?), some by accident but in the end I have managed to stay steady on the diet. I lost a total of 4.4 pounds which is not bad for 3 days. I have also read that drinking water is a good idea and I feel like I may have not been doing that as much as I should have. 

I mentioned the match and it's sneaker caffeine so if you are sensitive to it be sure to watch out for it. Another tip is to make sure you drink your juice while it is still cold. A warm slurry of vegetables is good when it's called a soup but not when it's a juice.
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Sirtfood Diet - The Juice on The Juice

It's juice so it's a little easier to drink down than a smoothie. That's a good thing, right?


You can not do this diet without the juice. It is the driving force behind the everything. The Sirtfood Green Juice is the majority of what you will consume for the first week and you continue to drink it in smaller quantities during the weeks following. If you would like to know exact number of drinks  you will have daily please see my last post for more details.  I will post the recipe without further ado then I will give you some tips and pointers the ingredients, making it and drinking it. You will find this recipe in The Sirtfood Diet book, now called "Official" because there have been many copies and adaptations. If you are unsure if you are looking at the original book, make sure it is by the original authors, Aidan Goggins and Glen Matten.

Look for these authors for the real deal.


Sirtfood Green Juice Recipe

2 ounces kale
1 ounce rocket (aka arugula)
0.2 ounce flat leaf parsley
0.5 inch fresh ginger
2 sticks celery with leaves 
0.5 green apple
juice of half a lemon
0.5 teaspoon matcha

Juice all ingredients except for the matcha. 
Add matcha powder
Mix

This should make one serving of 1 cup or 250ml.


One serving??? 

If you are anything like me, it is a huge hassle to drag out my 12 year old juicer, cram and force relatively dry vegetables into it while it coughs and fights me the whole way. Then there is the fun clean-up afterwards. I do not have a dishwasher so it is a full sink of dirty parts. I will tell you what you need to juice nine servings which is three to four days worth of juice during the first phase. The juice will last fine for that many days in your refrigerator. Plus I found that nine servings is about all my juice pitchers will hold. 

Sirtfood Green Juice Recipe For 9 Servings

18 ounces kale
9 ounces rocket (aka arugula)
2 ounces flat leaf parsley
5 inch fresh ginger
18 sticks celery with leaves 
5 green apples
juice of 5 lemons
1.5 tablespoons matcha


If you are thinking...that's a whole lotta kale!!...you are correct. But wait til you are at the store weighing out enough for a week! Ok so you have you ingredients now what? Now you juice them. I have an old juicer that I did all this research on back in 2013. I even blogged about it with my awesome, high quality 2013 phone photos. It is clear that I did not then, and I do not now, have fancy blogging photo set ups. No ring shaped light. No white sheet backdrop...or even clean counters for that matter. But who of us is really reading blogs for the stuff in between the recipes? Thank you, by the way, those of you who are reading this far. 

NO ONE has this much fun juicing. What is wrong with you, sister??


How To Juice

So now you know I have a very old and inexpensive juicer. And maybe you have a nicer one or maybe they make them way better nowadays. If that is the case, lucky you. But if you are like me, then juicing is a physical sport. I can't just drop a snowflake of kale into it and out drips liquid green gold and I go on with my day all the healthier for it. Noooooo. I have a very picky juicer that refuses to juice dry vegetables and instead spins so fast that it emits a burning smell which I can only assume is not a good thing. I have learned from my previous juicing experiences that it takes some bribing to get it to do what I need. 

If you have this sort of problem here is what you do. I have to alternate the dry, leafy bits with the wetter beefier bits. With the parsley and arugula I put a layer of about a third of an apple followed by a bunch of greens then smash some more apple chunks on top. A couple layers of each is fine then top it off with a layer of the apple. I always book end the greens with the fruit. Then there is the kale. Kale is big and leafy and unruly. I take a whole stalk of kale and place apple chunks down the center like little baby Jesuses in a green manger. Then I place another stalk of kale over them. I sort of wrap it up and then cram it down into the juicer hole....for lack of a proper term. The celery and ginger go fine on their own. Although I do chop up the ginger, I do not bother to peel it. Lemons are great. I use a knife to cut off the pith and plop the naked lemon ball in. 
See how I cram place the bits of apple in with the kale?



The celery is one of the easiest things to juice but the least tasty.


How To Drink Juice

I can hear you saying, "C'mon, AirplaneFoodCritic, I'm over the age of five, I think I know how to drink fluids by now!".  I apologize for implying you didn't. But once you make this juice and take your first sip you will undoubtedly be saying, "HOW DOES ANYONE DRINK THIS STUFF??". And that is when you will be remembering this section of the blog. 

So how DO you drink this stuff? Well, I don't. Sorry. It's gross. I freaking hate celery. Never could stomach the stuff and of course it has to be a major sirtfood. But guess what else is a sirtfood? Plums. Black plums. And guess what's in season right now? You got it, plums. So I admit I also add a few plums to the 9 serving juice.

Juice of plums is a beautiful color red, in a borscht kind of way.
.
Juice before plums is a lush green.

Secret weapon to make the juice palatable, black plums.



The plums, in my opinion, make the juice totally palatable. This now means that I have added calories to my daily intake but I can remove some from the meals which are freaking massive anyways. Once you mix in the plum juice with the green juice you get a beautiful shade of barf. I say just close your eyes, or better yet, be like me and put it in an opaque mug to help you forget the nightmarish color. The taste is there, trust me. 

Think of it as a chocolate color. Forget I said the word barf at all.


Speaking of drinking vessels, I have the perfect ones to use. The original recipe was developed in the UK where they are smart enough to use grams and liters (it's far superior in cooking and baking) so they say one serving of juice is 250ml which is roughly one cup. Sure, you could measure out one cup OR you could find some cool European cups that are a quarter liter. I bought mine at the Christmas Markets in Munich and Salzburg. You don't have to go as far to find them. Search around your local thrift shop (I miss thrift shopping!) or ebay/etsy. Or maybe you have a favorite mug from a vacation you like remembering. I think the cup you drink it out of is half the fun. I collect mugs and dishes from all my various travels. The BF calls it hoarding. I call it a photo album you can drink out of.

Here is my collection of Christkindlemarkt mugs. 


The European mugs often have volume delineations on them. A couple of mine have 0.25L written on them with a line. This marks 250 ml exactly which makes it super easy. Other of my cups say 0.21L which means that the booth I got that mug at is stingy with their booze. I kid. What you can do with those mugs is fill them to the very top and I have found that is the same as 250 ml.
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Sirtfood Diet - The basics and beginnings

   


Well you know I had to try out the Sirt Diet. I am a sort of connoisseur of fad diets. I know some of you will say that Keto and Sirt are a way of life not a fad and that is certainly true for many people. But that doesn't mean it isn't a fad as well. I have been living life on Keto about a third of the year since I first posted about it a few years back. The other two thirds are a sort of feeding frenzy free for all. The BF says I ruin all the dieting I do by eating all the ice cream (RIP Three Twins Ice Cream), McDonald's and Percy Pigs among many other gloriously horrible for you things. I explain to him I diet for the sole purpose of eating like an animal the rest of the year! Obviously I am not a doctor and this isn't a recommended lifestyle but take what you will from my folly.

So what is the Sirtfood Diet and where did it come from?

Apparently it has been around for a few years where it was more popular in the UK than elsewhere. Nutritionists Aidan Goggins and Glen Matten published their book, The Sirtfood Diet. in 2016. It picked up steam and perked ears when Adele famously lost a whole lotta weight reportedly using the Sirtfood diet. And not just that but what sealed the deal for me (besides just being a fun new diet to try. Yes, I said fun, diets are fun for me) was that Adele's trainer, Pete Geracimo, believes losing weight should be 80% diet, 10% exercise and 10% rest. I modify it slightly for my needs and ability to 80% diet and 20% rest which means I am eating and sleeping to lose weight. I am very good at both those things!

Ok so that's the where and the what is pretty similar to the idea of the Keto diet except instead of creating ketones you are creating sirtuines. Sirtuins are a family of seven proteins that regulate your health on a cellular level. Their primary function was only discovered in the 1990's so there is more studying to be done to determine all the health benefits and functions they can provide.  We do know that sirtuins play key role during cell response to a variety of stresses, such as oxidative or genotoxic stress and are crucial for cell metabolism. To over simplify it, they help you metabolize better and faster and help you live longer.

Now it is all so clear, right? Photo from this article

 I have read many scientific articles about the process and benefits of the sirt proteins and this is one of my favorite studies. It is published by The National Center for Biotechnology Information and it literally calls sirtuins the fountain of youth. It reads, "These benefits include protection against cancer, cardiovascular diseases, insulin resistance, and cognitive problems." and "several clinic trials have shown encouraging results for resveratrol: reduced oxidative stress and inflammation; improved cardiovascular function; enhanced cognitive function; inhibition of cancerous growth; decreased insulin resistance in diabetic patients; and improved metabolic profiles for obese and aged individuals." Resveratrol being the enzyme that triggers the sirtuins. Which brings me to this diet...

Now we kind of know what sirtuins are, we need to get our body to produce them. It has been found that there are certain foods that are rich in polyphenol-antioxident reversatrols which can boost the body's sirtuins ten-fold over other methods of production. The diet categorizes 20 specific foods as being the best in producing sirtuins in the body. There are then other more minor producers. It is claimed that if you eat foods rich in these 20 foods you can metabolize fat and be all around healthier. To quote the sirtfood.net website,

 "By eating a diet rich in the top 20 Sirtfoods you can mimic the effects of fasting and exercise and achieve a healthier body"




The top 20 sirtfoods from sirtfooddiet.net

There is the Sirtfood diet in summary. There are lots of websites and probably even more scientific papers on the subject if you want to delve deeper into it. But if you don't want to, just trust that I did and summarized it for you here. Feel free to ask me any further questions you have or if you want anything clarified. I may have not in the mainstream workforce for many years but I do have a master's degree in science and I was a chemist for the majority of my career as well as a college professor so hopefully I can read through the science jargon and regurgitate it to you in easier to understand format. 

Meals, Phases and Plans

You now know the idea behind how it works, now all you need to know is what to do. The basic principle is to eat a lot of foods from the top 20 list. But for whatever reason they want you to begin with a juice fast. So for the first three days you drink three quarter liter glasses of the Sirtfood Juice and then one sirt-approved meal. Then the next four days you get two juices and two meals. After that is the second phase which is 21 days of one juice and three sirtfood meals a day. This is not only supposed to make you lose weight but to also feel and be healthier. I have to say that the Keto diet did all that for me but there is always room for new ideas and new ways of looking at food. Below I will consolidate the phases with my specific plans. I will also put up the juice recipe because that is a critical part of starting the diet. 

Phase I - One week of restricted calories

Restricted to 1000 calories/day
Day 1 - Three green juices per day and one Sirtfood meal, 20g of 85% Lindt Dark Chocolate
Day 2 - Three green juices per day and one Sirtfood meal, 20g of 85% Lindt Dark Chocolate
Day 3 - Three green juices per day and one Sirtfood meal, 20g of 85% Lindt Dark Chocolate

Restricted to 1500 calories/day
Day 4 - Two green juices per day and two Sirtfood meals, 20g of 85% Lindt Dark Chocolate
Day 5 - Two green juices per day and two Sirtfood meals, 20g of 85% Lindt Dark Chocolate
Day 6 - Two green juices per day and two Sirtfood meals, 20g of 85% Lindt Dark Chocolate
Day 7 - Two green juices per day and two Sirtfood meals, 20g of 85% Lindt Dark Chocolate

Phase II - Three weeks of clean eating meals high in Sirtfoods
(they say two weeks but I like rounding it out to a month)

Day 8-30 - One green juice and three Sirtfood meals, 20g of 85% Lindt Dark Chocolate, 1 glass red wine*. 

What if you don't like red wine?

*Red wine tip:
The red wine should be a rather dry wine (meaning not too sugary like you might get in a cheap jug or boxed wine) so you aren't loading up on sugar and calories. If you do not like red wine, try a fruity wine like zinfandel, merlot or sangiovese and put it in the refrigerator. Chilling red wine can cut some of the flavor and make it more palatable.  If you still don't like it or if you do not want alcohol you are fine if you skip the wine all together. 

This week I will be starting Phase I and will document exactly what I am eating and drinking and how it goes. 
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