I’m ever-curious to test out different techniques and tinker with aspects of my lifestyle to improve my health. Most recently, I’ve been trying to bring inflammation levels down and improve my digestion. I am rather prone to stress and the littlest things raise my cortisol levels. So, I felt like I needed to take things up a notch and bring a better balance to the way I’ve been eating. Thus, I decided to give The Balanced Blonde’s, aka Jordan Younger’s, Plant Based Recipe Book and 22 Day Detox a try.
Today’s post is a review of The Balanced Blonde’s Plant Based Recipe E-book and my experience with the 22 Day Detox.
The e-book is a compilation of SOS-free, plant-based, vegan-friendly recipes that have helped her in her healing journey from Lyme Disease and a whole host of various symptoms like: inflammation, eczema, acne, bloating, IBS, and so forth. The recipes are so simple that it is almost a little silly calling some of the recipes “recipes” but when you’ve over-complicated the way you think you should be eating, recipes for easy meals are very fitting.
Just to give you all a little more information on the e-book, Jordan includes her tips for detoxing from chronic infections both food and non-food related, offers suggestions for dealing with detox symptoms, anecdotes about her experiences with spiritual healing and emotional eating, tips for dining out, and food-combining. Oh, and of course, explanations on SOS-free which stands for Salt, Oil, and Sugar-Free. So, the recipes in her e-book are all salt-oil-sugar-free and are adaptable for food combining.
All Vegan Mac & Cheese (with chopped broccoli) from Jordan Younger’s Plant Based Ebook.
Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of The Balanced Blonde and her Soul on Fire Podcast. I adore Jordan and relate to her in many different ways so this post is not a personal attack on her but a review of the plant based e-book and 22 day detox for anyone who may have heard of it or be interested in purchasing it and wants to know a little more.
If this is your first time here on my blog, let me give you a little background info about me:
It’s important to note that I’ve had disordered eating tendencies in the past so I hesitated before buying her e-book. I’m already primarily plant-based but do include some processed/packaged food items like protein bars, dairy-free store-bought cheese, tortilla chips, and kombucha. I knew those items needed to go but what seemed really intense was the thought of cutting out salt and oil. I have done sugar detoxes in the past and like to do them at least once a year to re-calibrate my taste buds. I know I have sensitive blood sugar levels and that makes my heart go from calm to racing from one moment to the next. This is just a physical representation of what is happening in my body–i.e. my cortisol levels levels spike. Basically, sugar is already limited in my diet because it has to be so I can minimize experiences like what I just described. I do however use a lot of pink Himalayan sea salt and cook with coconut/avocado/olive oil fairly often. So, I sought out Jordan’s book with optimism that a more plant-centric way of eating would help alleviate my concerns mentioned earlier.
My experience with the 22 Day Detox program part of the e-book:
I tried to follow Jordan’s advice for 22 days of SOS-free, properly combined, plant-based meals. During the first few days, I missed the salt for sure! I missed a drizzle of olive oil over my salads, and the taste of roasted vegetables just wasn’t quite the same without either of the two. By day 4, I’d say the worst was behind me and my taste buds were adapting. I was also committed so I found creative ways to make food tasty for me–usually that involved lots of lemon juice!
I felt like my digestion improved pretty soon after starting this way of eating. I liked the way each of her recipes used a LOT of plants so I was really loading up on the good stuff here. My appetite fluctuated before based on what I’d eat but Jordan’s method of structuring meals light to heavy seemed to work well…for a while.
A swiss chard leaf wrap with tofu, cabbage, romaine, tomato, avocado, cilantro, carrot, and a coconut aminos-lemon dressing. Not in the e-book but very inspired by the plant-forward recipes!
I enjoyed starting my day with fruit or a smoothie, like she does, but I can’t handle the amount of bananas or fruit she eats. I get brain fog an hour or two after eating too much sugar. Even if it’s natural from fruit, it just feels like too much for my system all at once. I love fruit but each day I felt like I was riding off of sugar until lunchtime rolled around so that wasn’t fun. I was also making her SOS-free desserts at first before I realized this was WAY too much sugar for me in a day so I cut those out.
Jordan says that once you get into a flow with SOS-free food, you’re not driven by cravings and it is easy to make no-fuss simple meals to eat for nourishment. I can see that but I also started to dread meal times. I felt bored with steamed broccoli and sweet potato over salad and just wanted to eat to fuel myself and be over with it. In some ways, this was great because it was breaking my emotional attachment to food.
What threw a wrench in my plans was the salt cravings that stirred up around Day 13. I got serious cravings for some salty tortilla chips and I tried to just eat my regular SOS-free meal but the craving would not go away. The next day, the craving for something salty persisted: chips, crackers, even some carbonated water would have been great at this time! On Day 15 I woke up feeling dehydrated and not even wanting to eat breakfast because of how drying food would feel in my mouth. It is on this same day that I write this review, after having enjoyed some Simple Mills sea salt crackers (PRAISE up that I had these in my pantry)! Now that I think of it, I was also feeling incredibly lethargic on the 13th and had trouble concentrating and that just continued all these days. I felt weak and super deprived and, knowing my past, I didn’t want to force myself to stick with something and disregard my best interest. In case you’re thinking something else could’ve been to blame for my low energy, that is possible but the dehydration was a dead giveaway that I needed something more so I decided to honor my body.
I’ll describe my takeaways at the end of this post but now I’ll review the e-book itself:
The anecdotal part of her e-book is very nice to read and her stories shine right off the pages. But this is a recipe book, so that’s what everyone is curious about, right? From the get-go, Jordan advocates for SOS-free, plant-based, and food combining as much as possible. I won’t dive into the details about what each of those terms means in this post, but I found some of the recipes conflicting in the food-combining aspect and deceiving in the SOS-free aspect.
TBB Go-To Everyday Salad, followed by her All Vegan Mac & Cheese.
From a purely critical standpoint, she uses a lot of nuts/seeds (cashews and tahini in particular) in almost every recipe. The nut-based dressings and dips technically do not combine with starches yet she pairs them with potatoes, legumes, or gluten-free pastas. There are also some smoothies that call for coconut milk in combination with fruit (which is meant to be eaten alone per food combining principles). You can be as strict with this as you want, of course, but I think this should be more consistent.
The SOS-free aspect also surprised me because a recipe or two calls for some special Bio-Salt and ingredients like salt-free mustard. Sorry, but these aren’t really accessible for the average person. (I tried searching online and couldn’t even find a salt-free mustard anywhere). For anyone who thinks oil and fat are the same thing, they are not. The recipes in the e-book do involve nuts, seeds, and avocado which are all delicious, and whole food forms of plant-based fats. I think they are used a little excessively, as I mentioned earlier. Lastly, the sugar-free aspect. Jordan explains that sugar-free does not mean no sugar at all. She believes natural sweetness from fruit is perfectly fine. Though, she makes a number of recipes that call for the addition of maple syrup and, to me, that’s an added sweetener.
The desserts are meant to be sweet, but they are mostly raw and very date and nut-heavy. I did forget to mention that aspect earlier–many of the recipes are raw. I’d say over half of the recipes in the cookbook are raw or involve raw, uncooked ingredients. This isn’t bad but it might take some getting used to if you are used to cooked foods. I feel like I haven’t shown the most positive experience but I do want to mention some recipes that I think are pretty stellar in her cookbook!
Iconic Green Warrior Smoothie
The Balanced Blonde Go-To Everyday Salad
Buddha Bowl
SOS-Free Pad Thai
I can recognize that all of the recipes in her book are ones she has felt good eating but they don’t always align with the food combining principles that she touts in the guidelines. The same with the SOS-free guidelines. I think my needs are specific and did not align quite as well with the recipes Jordan enjoys but for someone who is coming off of a Standard American Diet, transitioning off of processed food, or simply looking to eat more whole, plant-based foods, this recipe book would be great for you.
Jordans SOS-free Pad Thai with tofu on top.
This was an interesting challenge for myself and made me conscious of how much salt and oil, in particular, I use on a daily basis in my food. I feel I can eat many of the same planty meals salt-free and oil-free with ease. Yet, the inflammation aspect that I sought to alleviate with this way of eating did not change. Understandably, I only went 2 weeks instead of the full 22 days but I already ate a very plant-filled diet so I don’t think that changed much. What I do notice a difference in is how I don’t need as much oil as I thought I did. My body feels lighter and less congested without the oil so, moving forward, I’ll seek to keep oil to a minimum. When I did follow food combining principles, that also helped my digestion out so much. It’s hard to stick with (I’ve tried it before) but this detox reminded me how good my stomach feels when I don’t bombard it with tons of food groups.
Major praise to Jordan for putting out the e-book to do her part in helping people align them with their healthiest selves in the best way she knows how. I believe in the power of plants but there are also different ways to incorporate them for everybody so I hope this post proves informative and encourages you to find what works for you. If you want to share your thoughts, feel free to sound off in the comments below!