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Login Here Signup Here Signup using FacebookDoes anyone here eat monomeals? I was wondering what the advantages were for eating one type of food for the day? Can someone give examples of what their day of monomeals looks like?
The reason I am asking is because I've been feeling quite bloated lately, and I'm not sure if it's because of my food combinations. I mostly eat only fruits & vegetables, with the occasional nuts a few times of a week. Are there certain fruits and vegetables that should not be combined? I know that melon is one of them, but are there any others?
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I monomeal quite frequently. Actually the only time i dont, is dinner on occasion. When you monomeal, you dont have to just eat one type of food for an entire day- although mono on watermelon for 1-2 days and you just feel great.
If you think you are bloated from food combining, def. give one or two days of monomeals a try. All you need to do is stick to one fruit or veggie a meal.
Today, I had a watermelon for breakfast. At lunch i am going to eat bananas. Not sure for dinner yet.
If i get hungry in between my meals, i just make sure that food has already digested... Melons are about 30 min Bananas closer to an hour.
Just pick your fave. foods and eat only that one type of fruit for your first meal. Eat tons, but only one type. Yesterday i had a ton of pears for breakfast and then oranges for lunch.
There is a chart for food combining, and when i find it i will post it for you :-)
I mono meal most of the time. Just because it's simpler and I enjoy it. I'm sure I feel better too but it's just the natural thing to do for me. Like yesterday for dinner I just ate mangoes! Today I'll be eating bananas and who knows this evening!
I also do alot of green smoothies which isn't a mono meal but they definitely help with bloating.
I never monomeal and need to start. I've been very bloated lately and have a sour stomach. Kind of like when I'm pmsing. I'm gonna try monomealing today. I think I have about 8 bananas and 1/2 lb of spinach.
Oh that sounds like a good thing to do! I think that I am going to try this weekend. I thought monomealing was eating only one type of food for the entire day, but I guess it makes more sense that it's for an entire meal. So do you just eat as much of that fruit as you want? For example, would I be able to eat like 10 oranges for lunch? I really don't want to gain weight, and each orange has about 80 calories, so that meal would be about 800 calories. Isn't that too much?
Okay, firstly, the philosophy of mono meals is that you eat one type of food and then wait until it's digested to eat another type of food. That is how you rid yourself of bloating because that one type of fruit or whatever will all digest at the same rate.
Secondly, don't worry about calories, especially when it comes to something like oranges. Those calories burn so fast you won't know what hit you!
Also, I can't imagine eating ten of any fruit in one sitting.............maybe it's just me but my mango dinner was two mangoes and my banana lunch was four.
So if I were to eat only 1 type of fruit for a meal, when would I include my vegetables? Can I combine them with fruit? For example, could I eat 4 bananas with a salad of mixed greens, peppers & lemon juice.
Can anyone give me a sample menu for day to see what it would look like. Thanks!
well, it wouldn't be a mono meal with a salad....since mono means one. That might still be good food combining though. I'm not sure. I haven't really studied food combining much. I just know how I feel when I eat certain things.
Thanks! I'll try different things this weekend and see what works for me. Should I try just one monomeal a day to start or should I go full on and do an entire day?
I pretty much mono meal for breakfast and lunch and if i feel like having my greens that day, i do salad etc for dinner. Yes, with Monomealing, as long as you wait for your body to digest the food before consuming another food, you dont have to worry about the food combining.
the only time I have ever been strick about monomealing one fruit for the entire day/week is when im doing a "fast". I was not sucessful on a water fast, and read up about it, and fasting on just one food for a week like bananas or watermelon etc can produce similar effects.
Hope that helps! As long as you wait the alotted food time for digestion, you can eat your greens after that! Try to eat them at night though, when you are monoing because they take much longer to digest, so its good to have it the last meal of the day.
This is a rough estimate i found online... Not sure if it is 100% accurate, but i think it does give a pretty good estimate.
DIGESTION TIME OF VARIOUS FOODS
(approx. time spent in stomach before emptying). ........
Water
when stomach is empty, leaves immediately and goes into intestines,
Juices
Fruit vegetables, vegetable broth - 15 to 20 minutes.
Semi-liquid
(blended salad, vegetables or fruits) - 20 to 30 min.
Fruits
Watermelon - 20 min.digestion time.
Other melons - Canteloupe, Cranshaw, Honeydew etc. - 30 min.
Oranges, grapefruit, grapes - 30 min.
Apples, pears, peaches, cherries etc. - digest in 40 min.
Vegetables
Raw tossed salad vegetables - tomato, lettuces, cucumber, celery, red or green pepper, other succulent vegetables - 30 to 40 min. digestion. -
Steamed or cooked vegetables
Leafy vegetables - escarole, spinach, kale, collards etc. - 40 min. - Zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, yellow squash, corn on cob - all 45 min. digestion time
Root vegetables - carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips etc. - 50 min.
Semi-Concentrated Carbohydrates - Starches
Jerusalem artichokes & leafy, acorn & butternut squashes, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, yam, chestnuts - all 60 min. digestion.
and this is a food combing chart i was talking about earlier
Food Combining Chart
http://www.alderbrooke.com/chart.htm
xo
Do what feels best for you. You can def. do it all day with no adverse effects, so listen to your body and let us know how you feel!!
Wow thanks Lobo! That is really going to help me. So if I want to eat cantaloupe and a salad for dinner, could I eat my salad, wait 40 minutes and then have cantaloupe?
I had a 1.5 cantaloupes (about 2.5lbs) for breakfast after my workout. It was SO GOOD! It was cool, juicy and refreshing :)
Now what to have for lunch?
avl, after i saw that you had a cantaloupe for breakfast, i immediately made a cantaloupe smoothie. it's so delicious. just water and cantaloupe. i've been wanting to make the cantaloupe a bowl so i could put other fruit in it, but i always end up using it for smoothies.
joannabanana, I have never made a cantaloupe smoothie before. I sounds delicious, maybe I'll go by more melons and make a smoothie for later or tomorrow. Since the melons are already very juicy, do you add a lot of water to your smoothie?
avl, i usually add 1 mug full of water. i stuff the blender with as much cantaloupe as i can so i guess it depends how much fruit is in there. it's just amazing how frothy and creamy it gets because cantaloupe is such a watery fruit.
OMG you make me want to have one now! But I just had lunch, so I'm definitely going to get some cantaloupes later today!
Sometimes I do....sometimes I try to but I mono eat something and then want another food right after.
I ate mono grape tomatoes an hour ago.
Just had two cucumbers. But then I decided I wanted some spinach.
joannabanana, I just had a cantaloupe smoothie. It was so good. I didn't know that it would get all frothy like that! I had put my cantaloupe in the fridge, so when I made it, it was nice and cold.
I went to the grocery store today and bought 3 melons. The cashier probably thought I was having a party with tons of people! Little does she know that they are all for me and are probably only going to last me until tomorrow!
superfood2, I know what you are talking about. This is my first day mono eating, so I'm not used to it yet. This morning I only had cantaloupe, but at lunch I made myself a salad with lots of different types of vegetables and some fruit. I felt like having a variety of foods, instead of one. But then this afternoon I had 2 apples. Tonight I had just had a cantaloupe smoothie, and I am waiting about 45 minutes before having my zucchini spaghetti with tomato sauce. I'll have to see how I can handle it.
avl, haha you sound just like me. did you get watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew? those are the 3 i always get. the other 2 also taste really good as smoothies too, but they don't beat the cantaloupe.
I got 2 cantaloupes and 1 canary melon. They were $3.99 each! These are going to be expensive meals! TheyI made the smoothie with a cantaloupe, but I'm sure they all taste really good.
I got three pineapples one time at the store and they asked what I was making. ....uhm. Just eating them!
Same with bananas.
superfood2, that's so funny. the banana thing happened to me, too. i brought about 4 bunches up to the register and the guy was like "let me guess... banana bread?"
I just combined a bunch of different fruit tonight, like strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, banana & a peach after my zucchini pasta. Oh boy do I ever feel bloated! My stomach is protruding a lot and I feel really uncomfortable :( I had a cantaloupe smoothies 45 minutes before my zucchini, so I think that I waited enough time before eating. Could it be the other fruits causing the problem?
Hey AVL,
I think you're supposed to eat fruit before all other foods cos they digest much quicker. It was probably having them for pudding that caused the problem. I always get bloated too if I have fruit straight after other foods.
I think in food combining they say its best to always eat melon alone as it digests so quickly and then other fruits together but away from other foods.
I always have fruit in my green smoothies and that doesn't seem to affect me, maybe because it all already quite broken down by the blender.
x
Tulsi, I agree with you with putting fruit with greens. I usually make a smoothie in the morning with a banana, strawberries, VEGA powder and spinach and it doesn't cause me any problems. But I think that having had fruit after my vegetables made something weird happen in my stomach. I had some serious bloating.
This morning I had some melon (3 lbs) in order to clean my system out. So far, I've gone to the bathroom 3 times! and it's only 9:40am!!! Holy emptying!
I'm going to steer away from mixing fruit with other foods today and hopefully I feel better.
AVL, just wondering how your doing today! You will figure out what to eat via trial and error, so dont worry! But yes, i never eat fruit after i eat anything else. Fruit always first! It takes less time to digest, so when you eat it after something else that is still in you stomach/small intestines, it ferments and makes you gassy.
Hope you feel better today!! :-)
Hi Lobo,
Thanks for your concerns. Well I'm feeling better today. Yesterday morning I also had 3 lbs of cantaloupe for breakfast, which cleaned me right out. I went to the bathroom 6 times! So today I decided not to have melon, since I had to go to work. And being a teacher, it's difficult to always leave my classroom! But I must say that I really do like eating that after a workout. So Since I will be off for the summer, starting Friday, I will be able to eat more of it.
I find that some fruit combinations don't bother me as much, like strawberries or any berries with bananas. I don't know why.
Glad you are feeling better. Melon really has a way of cleaning us out. ;)
I mono-meal almost all my fruit meals as well. I enjoy the taste of just one fruit at a time and my digestion is always better with just one.
swayze, I still need to practise eating only one type of fruit at a time. I really like combining then, in a fruit salad. It's funny because before eating so much fruit, I used to crave it so much. But tonight, I didn't even want to eat fruit, all I wanted were vegetables, like zucchini and cucumber! It's so weird!
I know what you mean. I often get cravings for non-sweet foods like cucumber and bell pepper in the evening. I never thought I would enjoy the taste of "bland" salad foods without dressing! ;)