Monthly Archives: April 2010
Sundried tomato and Basil Muffins
These muffins are a great snack, and a good alternative to traditional, sweet muffins. They rise beautifully, just like normal muffins.
This recipe is from www.nutrition4me.com.au
Makes 6 Muffins
Ingredients
2 cups loprofin mix
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp Orgran Egg Replacer
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup pizza sauce
200 ml Milupa LP drink
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
1/2 cup sundried tomatoes, roughly chopped
Method
1. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. Add olive oil, pizza sauce and Milupa, stirring after each addition.
3. Add basil and sundried tomatoes, stirring to combine. Do not overmix.
4. Spoon the mixture into a lightly greased muffin tray and cook in a moderate oven for 10 minutes or until cooked (I cooked mine at 180 degrees C for around 20 minutes, but bear in mind cooking times in different ovens vary greatly).
5. Cool on a wire rack.
Pumpkin Scones recipe
These scones are SO GOOD! Seriously, all I’m going to say is that I think I’ve found my new favourite snack. So easy to make too!
This recipe comes from www.nutrition4me.com.au
Ingredients
60g Nuttelex (or other dairy free margarine)
2.5 cups Loprofin baking mix
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup cooked pumpkin, mashed
1 tsp egg replacer mixed with 2 tbsp water
3 tsp Wards Baking Powder, sifted 3 times (I forgot to sift and they still came out brilliantly!)
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp rice milk
Pre-heat oven to 210 degrees C
Method
1. Cream Nuttelex and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Stir in pumpkin and egg replacer mixture, mixing well.
3. Add dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly.
4. Add the rice milk and mix into a soft dough.
5. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead lightly.
6. Roll out to 2cm thick and cut into round shapes using a 5cm scone cutter.
7. Brush with a little rice milk and bake for 15 minutes.
Healthy packed lunches for adults with PKU
This year I have been discovering that eating healthily with PKU is possible, and so is weight loss.
I have lost a total of 1.5kg since mid-January (Another .2kg this week!). Okay, so I know that is a very slow rate of weight loss, but as they say, slow and steady wins the race!
Slow weight loss is a good thing because it won’t push your levels up, plus the more slowly weight is lost the easier it is to keep off (and I think this may be where I have gone wrong in the past – previously I have gone at weight loss hell for leather, lost very, very quickly and usually either burnt out or injured… or both).
Anyway, onto my (very brief) topic for today.
It *is* possible to do healthy packed lunches for adults with PKU. I’m actually on my way to uni at the moment, so I will do a more comprehensive post on this later (probably tonight), but I just wanted to post a picture of my lunch today.
It is possible to have a healthy and satisfying PKU friendly packed lunch
Now this may not look that filling or that there is much ‘substance’ to it, but a lunch like this is surprisingly filling and healthy. The most unhealthy thing in there is the museli bar, which is my 2g of protein for lunch. By watching my fat and sugar intake (I have completely cut Coke out of my diet, and I used to drink it every day) and increasing incidental exercise I have started losing weight as a result of this.
PKU Spicy Fruit Buns recipe
This recipe is a slightly tweaked version of a recipe by Eileen Green – I’m guessing the original, using FATE baking mix makes absolutely amazing buns, but I have tweaked this to suit the products we have available to us here in Australia.
These buns are absolutely delicious warm out of the oven spread with butter and are great with or without the glaze. Personally, my preference is no glaze, simply because it is so sticky!
Ingredients:
- Spicy Fruit Buns… yum!
250g Loprofin Baking Mix
250g Wheat Starch (available for Asian grocery stores) – If you can’t get this use 500g of Loprofin
3 tbsp Unflavoured Metamucil (I think Benefiber would be okay too)
1 sachet yeast (in Loprofin box)
Pinch salt
75g Demerara Sugar
2 tsp mixed spice (or more if you like a really strong taste)
100mL oil
420mL warm water
250g dried fruit (just sultanas is okay)
Extra baking mix for shaping
For sugar glaze:
75g Caster Sugar
75mL water
PRE-HEAT OVEN TO 200 degrees C
To make the buns:
1. Place the baking mix, wheat starch, sugar, salt, spice, yeast and Metamucil into a bowl and mix well. Put the measured oil and water into a seperate jug.
2. Pour the oil and water all at once onto the dry ingredients and have an electric hand mixer with dough hooks ready. Start the mixer up on a low speed. The mix will be fairly runny at first but will thicken up after around 30 seconds.
3. Mix very gently on the slowest speed without beating for 1.5 – 2 minutes. Do NOT lift the mixer out of the mixture – just gently glide them around the bowl to ensure everything gets mixed in. The mixture will be smooth when it is ready.
4. Using a metal spoon stir in the fruit.
5. Take a piece of cling film and place it on your scales. Sprinkle it with baking mix (I didn’t do this and it worked just fine) and dust your hands with baking mix as well. Using a metal spoon weigh out about 100g.
6. Transfer the weighed mixture into your dusted hands and gently shape the dough into a bun shape. Repeat for the whole mixture.
Remember – as long as you have baking mix on your hands the dough will not be sticky!
7. Place the buns onto one or two greased baking trays, leaving room between them to rise (it is okay if they are touching a bit when they rise). Place the tray/s into large polythene bags and tie the ends up, trapping enough air inside so that the bag is well lifted above the buns. Place in a warm area and leave to rise until doubled in size – about 30 mins.
8. Place in a pre-heated oven (see above) for about 30 mins until golden brown.
If you want to make the glaze, do this while the buns are baking by placing the water and sugar in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for 5 minutes.
9. When the buns are cooked take them out of the oven and if desired immediately brush with glaze.
Store in airtight containers. Freezes well.
Another thought on PKU and weight loss
This is just going to be a very brief post.
I have not been paying attention to my scale weight at all recently, simply because it is so depressing to me. Well, I decided to be brave and got back on the scales today only to discover that since starting uni in February I have lost 1.3kg.
Nothing has changed with my diet, so this leads me to believe that my idea of activity being one of the biggest factors in weight loss for we PKUers.
Activity is the biggest change in my life since I last weighed myself. Pre-February I did very, very little. I sat on the couch job hunting for most of the day and went to the gym on the odd occasion. Now I am running to and from classes on Monday and Tuesday, teaching a year six class on Wednesdays and Thursdays (so running around after them and on my feet a lot) and I work in a children’s play centre running the cafe and co-ordinating kids’ parties on a Friday and one day on the weekend – in other words, I’m on my feet… a LOT.
It will be interesting to see how it goes in the coming months, especially now that I have taken the first step to getting back into the gym.
Anyway, some food for thought, so to speak! 
Eating healthily – FATE sweet potato curry recipe
As promised, here is the first of my healthy PKU friendly recipes!
FATE Sweet Potato Curry
This is a recipe by Eileen Green from FATE Special Foods in the UK. It is absolutely delicious, and as I discovered today it works brilliantly cooked either the way the recipe states or by following steps one and two, mixing in the curry powder and then throwing the whole lot into the slow cooker for six hours or however long you want to leave it. You can also do this recipe with different combinations of veggies. Tonight I did half sweet potato and half pumpkin and it is just as delicious!
However, if you choose to use a slow cooker, beware! It magnifies the heat of the chilli!
This recipe makes enough for you to have a hearty and healthy meal and then freeze extra portions. It reheats well in the microwave.
Ingredients
2 tbsp oil (I use olive oil)
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 – 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tbsp fresh ground ginger, chopped or grated
1 or 2 medium sized fresh chillies, chopped (you can tweak this to your own taste)
250g onion, roughly chopped
2 tsp ground coriander
4 tsp curry powder
2 tbsp fresh coriander, roughly chopped
1 tbsp tomato puree
500g sweet potatoes, cut into bite sized cubes
150g french beans, snapped into medium sized pieces
2 x 400g tins tomatoes
200ml water
Salt and pepper to season
Method
1. Heat the oil in a saucepan. Add the cumin seeds and cook over a gentle heat for about 30 seconds until they turn darker, but not burnt.
2. Add the chopped garlic, ginger and chillies. Cook for about 1 minute. Add the onion and leave to cook over a high heat for about five minutes, until softened and starting to brown lightly.
3. Add the ground coriander, curry powder and fresh coriander, stir well. Leave to cook for a couple of minutes to cook the spices. Stir in the tomato puree.
4. Add the sweet potato and french beans then add the tins of tomatoes and water. Stir and use the back of the spoon to gently crush the tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and leave to gently cook for about 30 mins or until the vegetables are cooked.
PKU Awareness Day 2010 – PKU Picnic in the Park, Melbourne
If you are planning to attend please let me know – the biggest reason for this is so I can let you know if we have a venue change due to wet weather!
An invitation to PKU Picnic in the Park in celebration of PKU Awareness Day 2010
The challenges of losing weight with PKU
Many of us know that losing weight on the PKU diet can be a real challenge. Of all the PKU people I know, a lot of us fight a constant war with weight issues. Some PKUers struggle to gain weight, but the majority of people with PKU I know struggle with weight gain, being overweight and obesity.
Despite what our dieticians tell us there is no easy solution to losing weight with PKU. I struggle a LOT with weight. I have 30 – 40kg to lose to be at my ideal weight, and my dietician has always told me just to focus on the diet and the weight will fall off. But you know what? It never has. I have been absolutely perfect on the diet for all of 2010 so far, maintaining levels below 500, and mostly around 200. That should mean, according to my dietician, that I would be losing weight but I’m most certainly not. If anything at all I have continued to gain weight, despite the fact that my lifestyle this year has been so much more active.
Something I read recently (I will try to find it) explained how the low phe diet actually counteracts weight loss. That isn’t much help to those of us with a bit – or a lot – of weight to lose, especially if like me you’re determined to stick to your low protein diet while losing it.
Recently I was talking to a couple of friends in the US and asking what they do to lose weight on the PKU diet. They all said that they go onto LNAA treatments for a while and follow a diet of lean meats, grilled chicken, grilled and steamed fish and plenty of fresh salad, fruits and veggies. Well, we in Australia can’t do that, but you know what? I’m not so worried about it because if I was on LNAAs I think I would probably be worried about the effect of all the phe in my blood doing permanent damage to my internal organs, even if it wasn’t affecting my brain.
But still, where does that leave us? Well, we can do exercise and we can reduce sugars and fats in our diets, though given that a lot of what we can eat is based on sugars and fats that isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Cutting out soft drinks will help a lot with this – if you’re like me and this is something you find exceptionally difficult, Golden Circle does a range of sugar free fruit flavoured soft drinks that are diet and sweetened with Splenda.
I think perhaps exercise is the most important element to weight loss with PKU, as well as attitude. I recently signed up to a website called No Excuses Workouts and I get a motivational email every day with a fitness challenge in it. Now admittedly I haven’t done the challenges but I’m going to be making a concerted effort to do them when I get home from my break in Queensland.
So lets talk a bit more about exercise. Firstly, I would like to dispell one HUGE myth. Weight training WILL NOT make women bulk up. So many women avoid weights because they truly believe that they will end up looking big and buff if they do weights when in actual fact, weight training is an absolutely essential component to fat loss.
It is absolutely essential when trying to lose weight to do a combination of both cardio-vascular exercise and weight training. Cardio exercise fires up your heart rate, gets you sweating and gives your metabolism a boost – helping you to burn fat. Cardio exercise is anything that raises your heart rate – walking, dancing, swimming, cycling, running etc. Basically you want to be able to be puffed but still able to hold a conversation, and contrary to popular belief you don’t need to run your little legs off. If it gets your heart rate up it’s doing its job. One of the best cardio exercises you can do for fat burning is intervals. That means you get your heart rate up and then you have a short rest before doing it all over again. Rinse and repeat. So, as an example you could do a five minute gentle warm up walk, then walk at a good place for one to two minutes, then jog for three. Do that for half an hour, including a cool down at the end.
If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch you can download free interval applications that will help you with timing. I have downloaded the GymBoss application and programmed in an interval workout from the No Excuses Workouts website and it’s great. Only thing is, I pushed myself too hard and haven’t done it again, but more on that later.
The metabolic boost you get from cardio is short but sweet. It’s FABULOUS for fat burning, but within 7 – 8 hours your resting metabolic rate (the rate at which your body burns energy at rest) will drop back down again.
Weight training, as I said, is just as essential, if not moreso, for weight loss. Weight training build muscle, the more muscle you have the more energy your body burns. When you do a weight training session your resting metabolic rate will stay raised for the next 24 hours or so, and when it drops down it will stay just that bit higher than it was before you worked out due to the fact that you will have gained muscle.
I should point out right about now that just because I say weights it doesn’t mean you have to do weights. Anything that provides you with resistance will give you similar results AND incorporate a cardio element at the same time. Some examples of this are swimming, walking with wrist weights, water aerobics and Zumba (as long as you use the toning sticks!).
Of course, if you want to you can join up with your nearest gym and ask them to design a weights program for you. Many gyms also offer classes that will help you on your way including spinning/cycling, body pump (a weights class to set to music), yoga, pilates, aerobics and even dance classes.
You want to be trying to exercise 3 – 5 times per week for at least half an hour to start seeing results, but bear in mind these things don’t happen overnight and attitude is key. You need to ensure you have manageable realistic goals (if you have a big goal like me then break it down into more manageable, ‘bite-sized’ goals so its not so overwhelming). Don’t beat yourself up about messing up with food or missing a day of exercise – just get back on the wagon the next day. According to personal trainer Jonathan Roche, 90% of failure when it comes to weight loss is because people quit before they start to see results.
Click here to check out the No Excuses Workouts site – you can even download a free interval workout and a weight/resistance workout that you can do at home without any special equipment (just your own body weight), and I keep hearing about people getting really good results after they’ve been incorporating these workouts 3-5 times per week into their lives.
There has been some speculation that doing ‘hard’ cardio (for example a spin class) can actually raise our phe levels because it burns so many calories that it can send our bodies into a catabolic state. I’m not sure about this – personally I believe that if you eat a small, healthy snack before hand and have some formula after this shouldn’t happen (especially given that formula is full of protein). I’d be interested to see what everyone else thinks of this.
Obviously with weight loss diet is very important too, but this is a huge stumbling block for we PKUers, especially if you are very restricted. For obvious reasons we can’t do ‘traditional’ weight loss diets like Lite n Easy or Jenny Craig, however I should point out that some PKUers have done Weight Watchers with some success (if you’re one of them I’d love it if you could comment about your experiences below!).
Over the coming weeks I’m going to try to dig up lots of healthy PKU recipes that might help us on our respective weight loss journeys and I’ll post them as I find them. I’m contemplating going and buying a slow cooker and I will see what sorts of concoctions I can come up with.
Okay, that’s me done for now. Please feel free to add anything you feel is relevant to this discussion as well as any hints or tips you might have. I’d also recommend you check out PKU and Healthy Too if you haven’t already – the author, Hunter, is a PKU adult and a registered dietician, and she makes some great posts about these sorts of things. She told me just the other day she was going to write a bit about PKU and weight loss and I can’t wait to see what she has to say!
