I wrote about my diet journey a few weeks ago. Today I’m going to share some of my limited knowledge of Trim Healthy Mama (THM).

It’s been about ten years since sisters Pearl and Serene shared their dietary plan with the world. They have a fun, upbeat, chatty style of writing. I actually enjoyed reading their books. Oh, I should let you know that the original book they came out with in the beginning, from what I hear, was quite large and quite verbose. About five years ago they released the plan in one book and the recipes in another. Both books are hefty but much less so than the original, so I understand.

I’m now going to give you the plan, as I understand it, in a nutshell.

• sugar free, yep, like many other plans out there, you are simply going to need to get off of those sugars. Not to fear, there are plenty of good for you, natural sweeteners available and on plan. I wrote about our favorites (although I’m not sure about the fiber syrups and the sukrin gold, as to whether they are on plan or not).
• all meals are anchored in protein, some with healthy fats and others with healthy carbs
• no white potatoes, white rice, or regular pasta, you can, however, have sweet potatoes, brown rice, and miracle noodles.

Ha! That’s the nutshell version; the biggies that you need to know about this plan.

Here are a few details.

• S meals = satisfying meals These meals are the ones where protein is anchor to fats. These are the meals that are like keto meals. So these are the ones I am most familiar with and lean towards for dinners. It is recommended that you have lots of leafy veggies and good low carb veggies with your S meals. However, we don’t want to abuse calories by having an excessive amount of fat. Fat does curb your appetite though, so eat enough.
• E meals = energizing meals These meals are where you get to eat those lovely energizing carbs. Think oatmeal for breakfast or sweet potato or quinoa with dinner. Once again, this meal is anchored in with proteins, but ones of the low fat variety. Low carb veggies are good here too, as with all meals. The difficult part of these meals is only having 1 teaspoon of fat. I’d love to smear button on some sprouted grain bread but alas, only a bit is allowed.
• FP meals = Fuel Pulls  These recipes are so low carb and low fat that they can be used with either S or E meals. They can occasionally be used as a stand alone meal to keep your body furnace guessing.

With this way of eating, the idea is to switch up the fuels so that your body doesn’t get lazy and only burn glucose and stuff all the fats on your body. But also so it doesn’t slow down in its burning of fats by only getting those as fuel.

Another key principle is to not eat less than three hours after finishing a meal. This gives the body a good amount of time to use up all of the fuel you have given it at which time you can switch fuels without  fear of burning both fuels at once. Once you are at or near goal weight, an occasion tandem fuel meal or crossover as they call them, is a good thing. These keep you from losing too much weight.

If you are hungry before the three hours, you need to take note of what you ate and add either more veggies or a bit more protein next time. For the time being, you can eat a FP snack or drink.

We’ve enjoyed having oatmeal and smoothies, quinoa and brown rice. It is nice to have these foods again, even with the limited fats allowed. In weeks to come, I’ll share some of our favorites with you.

I highly recommend reading the Trim Healthy Mama Plan book. Our local library had it and the cookbook, so I could try it before I bought it. I loved it so much that I purchased them. If you are looking for a balanced approach to eating, this is definitely it.

OH! When I saw that THM had products for sale, it ‘turned me off’ but somewhere, in the book maybe or in a podcast or somewhere, I learned the reason was because products that they recommended had changed and no longer viable products. After that happening several times, they resorted to making it themselves. They are also very careful to provide items at a very reasonable cost. In spite of starting out a bit skeptical, I ended up completely impressed.

I hope this has helped you get an idea of the program.

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº