Every Wednesday at 10 AM we go live. Join next week’s Substack Live with Chef Martin Oswald here. Half a cup of red lentils costs about thirty cents. That’s what Chef Martin Oswald held up on our live today before turning it into something I’d never seen before, a homemade lentil tofu. He didn’t need any special equipment or hard-to-find ingredients. Just lentils, water, a blender, and a stockpot. Martin and I have known each other for over a decade now. We first met in 2012 at a dinner in Colorado hosted by another physician, where Martin was catering and sharing the story of his shift toward health-focused cooking at his restaurant in Aspen. We became fast friends, did a research project together, appeared on local TV, and eventually built what is now the Habit Healers community. He lives in Austria and I’m in the U.S., but every week we show up on screen together because the combination of clinical science and real culinary skill is something neither of us can do alone. Today’s session was built around a single question. How do you make a meal that’s low in calories, high in protein, and actually satisfying enough that you don’t raid the kitchen two hours later? That question matters more than most people realize. Why Protein and Satiety Matter During Weight Loss When you’re losing weight, whether through caloric restriction or with the help of a GLP-1 medication, the body doesn’t just burn fat. It can break down muscle, too. And muscle is your metabolic furnace, the thing that keeps your resting energy expenditure high and protects against frailty as you age. The way you prevent that comes down to two things. You need adequate protein intake, and you need resistance training. Even twice a week is enough on the resistance side. But the protein piece trips people up, especially when appetite drops on GLP-1 medications. If you’re eating less overall, every meal has to carry more nutritional weight. That means whole foods instead of processed fillers, and it means learning how to cook meals that deliver real protein, fiber, and micronutrients in a form your body can use. This is also where visceral fat enters the picture. That fat sitting around your organs is an active endocrine organ in its own right, pumping out inflammatory molecules that travel through the portal vein straight to the liver. Over time, the liver becomes inflamed and fat-infiltrated, and it stops responding to insulin the way it should. Blood sugar starts creeping up, the pancreas compensates by working harder, and eventually you’re looking at a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. Losing visceral fat reverses a lot of that damage. But the process has to be done in a way that preserves muscle and provides real nutrition, which brings us back to Martin’s kitchen. The Lentil Tofu Martin has been developing this recipe across five different lentil varieties, and he recommends starting with red lentils because they’re the most affordable and the most forgiving. The method is simple, even if the result looks like something from a professional kitchen. Soak half a cup of red lentils overnight. Don’t cook them. Just let them sit in water. The next day, drain and rinse them, then add the soaked lentils to a high-powered blender with fresh water (or vegetable stock for more flavor) and blend until very smooth. Pour the mixture into a stockpot and bring it to a boil on high heat, stirring constantly with a flat metal spatula. This part is critical because if you stop stirring, the bottom burns. As it cooks over the next ten to fifteen minutes, the proteins begin to coagulate and the mixture thickens to the consistency of a thick soup. Once it reaches that point, pour it into glass containers about halfway full. Tap them on the counter to release air bubbles. Let the containers cool to room temperature before putting them in the fridge, because the condensation from hot liquid will cause problems. Then refrigerate overnight. By morning, you have a homemade lentil tofu. Martin showed us the finished product on camera, and the texture was remarkable. Firm enough to slice but soft enough to melt in a soup. And because you control the entire process, you can season the liquid however you want before it sets. Think curry powder, smoked paprika, Cajun spice, miso, or anything that fits the meal you’re building. The flavor possibilities are wide open. Compared to store-bought tofu, Martin’s version is significantly cheaper, fully customizable, and made from ingredients you can see and name. The Carbohydrate Ladder Martin pulled out a visual demonstration today that I think is worth bookmarking. He lined up his pantry staples from highest to lowest carbohydrate content per 100 grams and walked through each one. White rice and sushi rice sit at the top with 78 grams of carbohydrates per 100-gram serving. Black rice and red rice are close behind at around 72 to 78 grams. Barley and buckwheat come in at 71, soba noodles drop to 66, and freekeh (roasted green wheat berries) and quinoa land at 64. Amaranth is slightly lower. Then comes the real shift. Lentils drop to around 40 grams of carbohydrates per 100 grams. Chickpeas and white beans, including gigante beans, fall to 15 to 17 grams. Lupine beans win the legume category at just 13 grams, with high protein and high fiber on top of that. I put lupini bean flakes in my oatmeal every morning and Martin says they can be used in everything from lasagna to bolognese. At the very bottom of the ladder sit konjac noodles, which have zero carbohydrates. Martin doesn’t recommend them as a permanent staple because they lack the nutrition of whole legumes, but he sees them as a useful transitional tool for someone who’s just starting to get their blood sugar under control. The point of this exercise isn’t that rice is bad. Martin still cooks with it for certain dishes. But if you’re managing blood sugar, knowing where your staples fall on this ladder lets you make smarter swaps without giving up satisfaction. And fiber plays a major role in all of this. When you eat whole grains and legumes with their fiber intact, glucose absorption slows down. Your blood sugar rises more gently and your gut microbiome gets the fuel it needs. Stripped grains like white rice don’t offer that same buffer. The Thai Soup That Ties It All Together Martin’s final demo was a Thai-style broth soup designed to be ultra-low calorie but genuinely filling. The base was a fragrant broth made with kaffir lime leaf, galangal, ginger, red Thai curry paste, lemongrass, and vegetable stock. He built it strong on purpose, because the rest of the bowl is intentionally light. Into the broth went konjac noodles, sautéed vegetables like shiitake mushrooms, leeks, broccoli, and red pepper, and cubes of his homemade lentil tofu. The reason this works comes down to viscosity. A clear broth on its own can taste good, but it doesn’t fill you up. You finish the bowl and you’re still hungry. When you add silken tofu, or Martin’s lentil version, it changes the body of the soup. It creates a creamy, substantial mouth feel that your brain registers as a real meal, giving you protein and fiber and volume without the caloric load. There’s a timing benefit too. Because soup takes longer to eat than most meals, your satiety hormones have a chance to kick in. It takes about twenty minutes for your stomach to signal your brain that food is arriving, and a bowl of broth soup naturally slows you down enough for that signal to land. Martin pointed to Japanese miso soup as the original model for this approach. A culture with roughly 5% obesity rates has been doing this for generations, building meals around light broth, silken tofu, vegetables, and slow eating. A Quick Note on Veggie Stock One of our viewers, David, asked whether you can make stock from vegetable peelings and end bits. Martin said absolutely, and that’s what he does at home. He keeps a pot going with trimmings, adds bay leaf, thyme, coriander seed, a dried porcini or shiitake mushroom for umami depth, tomato paste or a whole tomato, and cabbage as the backbone. If you don’t have time to make your own, a clean veggie stock powder with no MSG, no added sodium, and no oil works as a shortcut. The Habit Healers Community with Chef Martin If today’s session is the kind of content that makes you think differently about your kitchen, I want you to know this is what we do every single week inside the Habit Healers community on Skool. I run live coaching every Tuesday at 4 PM Pacific for ninety minutes. We work through one science-backed concept, I give one small habit challenge for the week, and we come back together to talk about what worked and what needs adjusting. Real coaching, real accountability, and a group of people who are actually showing up. Martin has an entire cooking school inside the community with videos, recipes, and the kind of practical kitchen wisdom you saw today. If you are looking for a welcoming community to take one habit at a time, one week at a time, join us here. Get full access to The Habit Healers at drlauriemarbas.substack.com/subscribe
