Pecans are nuts…but not as nutty as crazy diet fads!

It absolutely blows my mind when it comes to the extremes people will go to in order to lose weight. Nevermind eating less processed foods, taking in slightly less calories than you use in a day, and moving more. Let’s go on some crazy restrictive diet, use some weird piece of equipment, or take some snake oil pill washed up ex-athletes sell on late night commercials!

These diets and pill commercials all push the same lie, that you, dear reader, are too old, too weak, or too busy to lose weight. In fact, they tell you it’s impossible to lose weight at all for someone like you…unless you pay them $25 a month for their magic bottle of pills or weight loss socks. The latest craze sweeping the nation is taking diabetes medicine to lose weight. It’s expensive, has major side effects, and also is causing a shortage for people that actually…you know…have diabetes.

Honestly, if the only way you can lose weight is to take some high dollar medication with a list of side effects so long that it takes that old speed reader guy from the 80’s Micro Machines commercials to get through them all, then just embrace who you are and stay fat.

I’ve been fat, skinny, and every version in-between, and none of it is as bad as what these pills can end up doing to you. And besides, what is the end game? Pay for and take these meds the rest of your life? Go ahead and eat yourself into Type 2 Diabetes so you have a reason to keep getting it?

Here are some hard truths. Losing weight by taking a drug is a temporary fix to a lifelong problem. It will not help you get healthy or feel better. I understand, losing weight by eating a bit less and moving a bit more takes some effort. It’s slow, and it takes day in and day out dedication. But anyone can do it.

I believed the weight loss lie in my early 40’s. I thought I was too old and too fat and too tired to ever lose weight. Turns out once I stopped eating a bag of chips, Little Debbie snack cakes, and drinking Diet Cokes every day, 80 lbs fell off over about nine months. It’s slow, it’s steady, and it’s a sustainable lifelong change. It takes some work and effort, but anything worth having in life requires those two items.

Stop telling yourself you can’t work out, because you can. Stop telling yourself you can’t educate yourself and eat right, because you can. Mainly, stop telling yourself that you hate healthy foods, especially if you haven’t tried one since having a piece of broccoli forced upon you as a kid.

Instead of turning to pharmacy drugs for a quick fix, use food as medicine for real change and actually feeling better. Will you fail in your goals and expectations? Sure, we all do.

No matter where we are in the process, and this goes for everything in life, we are always looking to be better. Ethan Suplee has a good saying on his American Glutton podcast. You failed today, in whatever your goal was. Tomorrow, fail better. Keep going, keep setting goals, and each day, fail a little better than the day before.

One of the big lies of the diet/weight loss machine is that you can never have delicious, fun foods. Hopefully, I’ve proven to some that is not the case. If I haven’t, let’s give it another go.

Take pecans. They are delicious, packed with healthy minerals and vitamins, and are tasty all by themselves straight out of the freezer. It would take too long to list all the disease preventing powers pecans bring to the party. They also are not a low-calorie food, or a low fat food. The key is moderation.

Nuts, in particular, require a kitchen scale. I’ve been living this way for so long, I can estimate my daily intake now and be close to the calories I’m aiming for, but I still weigh nuts. Otherwise, I’d power through 5 servings and not even know it. The biggest key to weight loss is being in a slight daily calorie deficit, and it doesn’t take much absent minded snacking to blow that out of the water.

Besides just being a power snack, they are great in all kinds of foods, from smoked chicken salad to roasted vegetables, or sweet potato and butternut squash casseroles. But today, we make the most fun food we can…pie crust.

Not a pecan pie, mind you. A slice of regular pecan pie might be just about the worst thing for your health you can eat. It can pack more than 500 calories, 27 grams of fat, and 40 grams of sugar. But hey, then you might have a legit reason to buy those meds we were discussing earlier.

Even when I was heavy and eating anything I could, I would remember the feeling after eating pecan pie, and it was not a good one. But, we can make a pie crust out of pecans and enjoy all the great nutrition and taste without adding a jar of karo syrup.

Two tablespoons of the “light” syrup has 120 calories and 30 grams of simple carbs. Yikes! We won’t require any of that…ever. This pie crust is versatile as well, your choice of fillings is limited only by your imagination. I decided to keep it light and fluffy here with a pumpkin fluff filling.

This pie is fun to eat, has plenty of beneficial reasons to eat it, and as long as you are considering the calories by adjusting your other intake for the day, fits right in with losing weight or maintaining hard earned goals.

Eat real food, make it yourself, and that could be the only medicine you ever need, even when it’s in pie form.

Pecan Pie Crust with Pumpkin Fluff filling

Ingredients:

168 grams raw pecans

1 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp sea salt

1 tbsp grass fed butter, melted

1 egg white

1/4 cup Swerve Brown Sugar replacement

 

Pumpkin Fluff filling:

1/2 cup pumpkin puree

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp allspice

1 tsp vanilla extract, divided

8 ounces grass fed cream cheese, softened

1 cup grass fed heavy cream

2 tbsp powdered monkfruit

4 tsp water

1 tsp gelatin

 

Instructions:

 

Weigh out your nuts. If you don’t have a scale, it’s around 1 1/2 cups:

 

 

Process the nuts in batches in a food processor until it’s a fine meal. Don’t go too far or you will end up with nut butter:

 

 

Mix in the Swerve, cinnamon, and salt. Then add the cooled melted butter and egg white, mixing until a smooth paste forms:

 

 

Rub a glass pie dish with a light coat of butter, then spread out the dough. I like to wear disposable gloves with a bit of non-stick sprayed on to help push it around: