site banner

Wellness Wednesday for August 21, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I have a genetic defect that puts me at extremely high risk for developing a fatal neurodegenerative disease in my 50s or 60s. Recent evidence suggests that reducing neuroinflammation might help delay or even prevent onset, and there's also evidence that a diet high in soluble fiber can reduce systemic and neuroinflammation through increasing production of butyrate and reducing production of lipopolysaccharides by gut bacteria.

Which is to say, I've been trying to eat more legumes, but legumes are kind of a pain to cook. I want to live, but I'm also lazy. Purely by chance, a package of ZENB spaghetti, which is made of yellow peas and nothing else, caught my eye at 7-Eleven, and I decided to try it out. With the caveat that I have eaten very little pasta in the past 20 years, and pasta enthusiasts may disagree, it doesn't taste much different from wheat pasta to me. Pasta's mostly just a vehicle for sauce anyway, right?

The more people buy it, the more likely they stay in business, and the less effort it takes for me to do everything I can to keep my brain from eating itself, so I'm pimping it out here. If you like pasta, but wish it had more protein, fiber, and potassium, with fewer empty calories and/or no gluten, try ZENB pasta! Your Italian grandmother will hate it, but you might not!

My regional home cuisine is very legume rich. I can recommend a few options. Legumes are only high effort because they need soaking & sporuting. Other than that, they are very easy to cook.

  • Kala Chana (black chickpeas) is very simple to cook.
  • Matki (moth beans) are similar and my personal favorite
  • Masoor Dal This is a classic first-recipe for a lot of India when they leave home. Shit easy
  • Lentils also make for great flatbreads

They may look daunting if you've never cooked Indian food, but it is genuinely super-easy once you have done it a couple of times. All of these are lazy 10 minute recipes. You just need to do 2 minutes of work the night before.

If you've never had these in a home-made style, then try out the ones you get at trader joe's. It's a good representation of what you can expect.

Generally, talk to people with celiac. They incorporate lentils into a lot of their meals.