Author: Mark Velov
Time for reading: ~9
minutes
Last Updated:
August 08, 2022
Learn how to cook "Vesela Savova from No sugar: prepare your food in your own kitchen according to your goals and desires". Delicious recipe.
For some people, it is difficult to find words to describe them. Vessy is just one of them. It seems to be an open book for its more than 30,000 followers on Facebook, even without sharing their personal lives. We all know her, she's Vessie from No Sugar and it's as if that's enough and she says it all. And yet, for those of you who will now get to know her, she is a true connoisseur of the delicious, a true fighter for a healthy life, both for yourself and your family, but also for all of us who we follow her publications with interest.
Vesi is a volunteer at the Food Foundation, revolutionizes nutrition and creates unique desserts without a gram of sugar and presents nutrition as a simple and real pleasure. See what she will tell you!
Introduce yourself to our readers. Who is behind "No sugar", what do you do?
I am Vessela Savova, 37 years old, working family woman, mother and housewife. I am a person with many ideas and little time to implement all :)
Let's talk about your Facebook page first. Where did your desire to create such a different blog, in which the main focus is life without sugar, come from?
This is an extremely boring and trivial story - I have been "fluffy" and "big" all my conscious life. And in kindergarten and at school and in his student years. I have gone through all the known diets and I have achieved temporary success. I have tried the modern detoxes, cleansings, wheat regime, the zone, separate diet, vegetarian period and what not ... My main goal in all the above actions was just to lose weight and make it easy and if possible immediately. Well, it didn't work. The temporary effects were shifted from periods of indiscriminate malnutrition. I didn't understand why it didn't work, even though I ate too little food. I believed that my menu was extremely healthy - I satisfied my hunger during the day with lots of fruit on the stomach or a simple salad, I ate low-fat foods, cereals were at the heart of my menu, I ate whole-grain or bean meals prepared simply fat-free. In the evening, a hunger for sweets came over me and kept me awake until I destroyed a box of biscuits or two. This cycle was repeated indefinitely ...
So I decided that I had been doing the same thing for too long without any result, so it's time to turn the pyramid upside down. And I really did. I minimized the foods I had consumed until then and introduced others that were taboo for me before.
I gradually parted ways with refined sugar and flour, cereals and skim products. I rethought the consumption of fruit. I started playing sports - something I didn't find motivation for until then. And things started to happen headlong.
I lost a lot of weight (over 25) and continued to build.
In this process, I had to completely replace the products with which I prepare food. I discarded some and replaced them with new ones. I started to prepare strange and hitherto unknown combinations for me ... And I liked the result. I became acquainted with many different foods that opened up an unsuspected world to me. And so the idea of sharing was born, which I put on a Facebook page.
What is the reason for you to achieve such great success in such a short period of time? Is the Bulgarian interested in healthy eating?
First-person stories are always fascinating. And secondly - I do not impose an opinion, but simply share. I do not mentor or teach. It is very rare for me to give advice other than cooking. In addition, I define my recipes as easy, often with only a few ingredients, without complicated tools and cooking techniques. As a bonus, I always apply the nutritional value per portion, and I believe this is very useful for many. My advice is practical. Stimulated by the desire of my followers, I collected the best recipes - No sugar desserts in a book that will be a fact at the end of the year.
You follow a high-fat - low-carb diet, how long have you been on the diet? Apart from losing weight, what other health benefits have you found for yourself?
Five years ago, I started a low-carb diet, and later upgraded to a high-fat one. I've been trying a ketogenic diet lately. But actually my journey began when I intervened the healthy part in the part with weight loss. The lifestyle I follow is actually a mix of ideal practices (in my opinion) - workouts 5 days a week, consumption of mostly whole foods, a full range of useful fats of plant and animal origin, serious consumption of vegetables - raw and cooked, quality protein, wild fish, farm products, various fermented foods and bone broths that I prepare myself; strive for minimal use of cosmetics and aggressive detergents in your home. Whenever possible I use homemade ones. I strive for minimalism in terms of things, my home and my diet - I follow a fasting protocol and eat once a day. This gives me freedom for other favorite activities and care for me and my family.
As a result, I enjoy energy without drops, beautiful skin and hair, tone, and last but not least, self-confidence in addition to the vision I achieved. In terms of health, along with the weight, I got rid of hemorrhoids, water retention, frequent headaches, I was able to regain my cycle, which had almost disappeared as a result of a low-fat diet, and I parted with several persistent skin eczema. A very big plus for me - I have increased my immunity many times and frequent illnesses, colds and inflammations are now just a bad memory.
Surely many people contact you for nutrition advice. What is the most common question you get?
I do not consider myself a nutrition expert and I very rarely hire to give advice. Perhaps the most common questions are about the exact formula "how to lose weight". In my page I share about my formula, which is probably different from the formula of many. I am extremely happy when my posts are an occasion for reflection, inspiration, change and self-care.
This year he took part in the "Food Revolution" project. What exactly are the goals of this campaign?
The main goal of the campaign is a change in children's nutrition and the education of useful eating habits. For the second year in a row, the Food Foundation, of which I am a volunteer, is organizing this day, along with many other such organizations around the world. Our goal is to have fun with children in the form of cooking, to talk and encourage children and their parents to eat healthily.
It is clear to all of us that just one day a year is not enough, that the change in children's nutrition is a complex process that depends on many different participants: parents, teachers, children, government institutions. And this is exactly what the Food Foundation is doing. Food revolution day is rather a holiday and a symbol that serves to attract attention and remind that children's health is in our hands and requires the unification of all stakeholders.
Child nutrition is an extremely important topic, which fortunately is often raised nowadays. You also have a school-age son, how does your child eat and what does healthy children's nutrition look like in your imagination?
My son is in the third grade and we have gone through a lot of puzzles - from the playgrounds, through the scandalous branches in the kindergarten and food boxes at school ... I can boast of some success thanks to my perseverance. In fact, children understand much more than we think. Sometimes you don't just have to say "this is bad and I won't buy it for you", you also have to explain why. How does food affect your body, or what prevents you from achieving it if you don't eat properly ... I am fully aware of the modern trends in chatter and the fact that shiny packaging attracts. At home, we generally follow the 80:20 rule - if 80% of the food is right, building, appropriate and filling, the other 20% can be "harmful", as we call it at home. I think it's fair. But I really want the food base to be enough,
Do you think that in general we pay enough attention to nutrition, not only in children but also in adults?
People are different - there are people who are not interested in the topic of nutrition at all, they consider it perfectly normal to feed teenagers with donuts, sandwiches, Coca-Cola and a croissant. There are also people who are very excited about the topic of "food" - read, are interested, enrich their knowledge. I am one of the latter. And the more I become literate, the more I find that I don't know anything yet. :)
The paradox is that most people start paying attention to their health only when it is shaken. The change in the diet plan is often accompanied by the treatment of various diseases or filling deficiencies. The sad thing is that attention is paid too late. It is right to constantly reward ourselves with care.
In fact, few people have the gift of eating donuts, pizza and ice cream without affecting their health or figure. Or at least for a while. Such foods simply do not carry any important nutritional information - they do not build - they are full of chemicals with bombastic doses of sugar, glucose-fructose syrup, cornstarch for volume, preservatives and insanely simple and cheap carbohydrates and hydrogenated fats that cause terrible damage. on the body. It's just not the food that the body wants to grow and exist.
What would you like to tell our readers?
If there is only one thing you can change in your diet, let it be to prepare your food at home. Whether you stumble into veganism, carnism or a moderate vegetarian, whether you follow the current paleo diet, whether you are a fan of high or low carb diet, whether you exercise and pursue certain goals and eat "clean", whether you go to school or maneuver between work and lectures - Just prepare your food at home. Dump ready-made chemicals, sweet electrolyte drinks in a pitcher, eating on foot at a nearby diner, pointless protein bars costing crazy money, turn your back on the "new modern" on the market in a shiny package that irradiates your child from another ad, forget about warm shop window and just prepare your food in your own kitchen according to your goals and desires. Plan and shop as a family.