lilmizcheezcake,
Imagine someone who has never been to your home, asking you over the phone, "How do I get to your house?
It would be very difficult for you to tell them if you don't know where they are coming from or how they are coming!
So, in the same way, if I don't know what specific information you are following (like in what books or by whose advice or instruction) nor what specifically you are eating, how can I or anyone tell you what adjustments you need to make?
That said, here are some recommendations that experienced macrobiotic people would have for you.
A Standard Macrobiotic Diet includes:
Eat three meals a day.
Have a savory soup with 1-2 meals every dayl and have sweet soups once or twice every week. Make one of those daily savory soups, a homemade miso soup.
Eat organic brown rice (short more during the cool to cold months, medium grain more during the warm to hot months) every day and other grains and grain products (grains should be 40%-60% of every meal).
Eat 20%-30% organic temperate climate (tc) vegetables (which may be boiled, steamed, sauteed, pressed, pickled, raw etc) daily and eat at least one vegetable dish with every meal.
Eat 5%-10% organic beans, bean products, & sea vegetables no more than once a day
White meat fish can be eaten once or twice a week.
Organic tc fruit desserts, as well as organic tc fresh and dried fruits may be eaten on occasion.
Organic tc fruit juice is okay occasionally during hot weather.
Organic tamari roasted pumpkin, sunflower seeds and almonds may be enjoyed as a snack or supplement.
Organic rice cakes, puffed whole cereals and popcorn may be enjoyed from time to time, together with above mentioned nuts and seeds.
Teas not containing aromatc fragrances or stimulants, such as roasted bancha (kukicha) twig tea, roasted brown rice tea, toasted barley (muigicha) tea, dandelion tea, and cereal grain coffee may be used on a macrobiotic diet.
Condiments to use with your food , particularly grains and/or in macrobiotic cooking include umeboshi plum, sea vegetable powders, roasted sesame seeds, roasted sesame seeds and sea salt (gomashio) and tekka.
Chew each mouthful until everthing is liquid before swallowing and eat no more than 80% of your capacity.
Get a copy of
Changing Seasons Macrobiotic Cookbook: Cooking in Harmony With Nature by Aveline Kushi, Wendy Esko to give you the complete picture towards practicing a macrobiotic diet and lifestyle.
Kristina Turner in her
The Self-Healing Cookbook: A Macrobiotic Primer for Healing Body, Mind and Moods With Whole, Natural Foods suggests much of the following to get enough calcium in your diet:
Eat plenty of steamed or quick boiled organic dark leafy greens such as kale, collards, watercress, daikon greens, turnip greens, bok choy, carrot tops, chinese cabbage, mustard greens, parsely, dandelion greens leeks, scallions.
Have a sea vegetable dish a couple times a week and have some finely sliced wakame, kombu, kelp, alaria or dulse in every miso soup
Serve your kids brown rice and beans without any vegetables and very soon they will crave them!
Then give them the dark leafy greans and don't give them the other vegetables until they've devoured the dark leafy greens.
As a child, I used to be picky with my food, avoiding certain ones that were served to me at the dinner table (and the dog that sat near my chair was getting fat) and then I was sent on a summer camping trip at Lake Arrowhead for a couple of weeks with other children and we slept in unheated drafty cabins where the temperature dropped twenty degrees lower than we were used to and when we woke up in the morning, we were starved, and pity the kid that was slow and meek when grabbing the food that was placed on our common tables at breakfast, lunch, and dinner!!!
My parents were shocked when I returned from that trip that I devoured everything that was served to me!
Macrobiotics is a balance of grains and vegetables and if we deprive someone of the component that is one side of that balance, very soon they will crave what's missing.
Hungry kids eat everything you feed them!
Read Kristina and Aveline's books and very soon, you will know more than me!
Thank you, very much.
Be well and somewhat hungry.
Bruce Paine