August 2006 Archives
It's easy enough to say "everything in moderation" or "portion control is key" but in reality it's very hard to put those two phrases into practice. Unless you're eating at home or carrying a food scale and measuring cups with you every time you eat out it's extremely difficult to know how much you're eating. Restaurants give us huge portions and we're pleased because we think we're getting such a great value for such a large amount of food. And as studies have shown when we're given more food we simply eat more food.
When I eat at home I do measure everything and the digital food scale I recently bought has been an absolute treasure. I'm still struggling to figure out portion sizes in restaurants but I've found some particular visual estimates extremely helpful in knowing when that bowl of pasta is 3 times what I actually should be eating. To know if something is equal to one portion size you have to first know how much a portion size is. Here are some common items and their appropriate portion sizes.
Pasta = 1 cup
Rice = 1/2 cup
Salad Greens = 1 cup
Meat or Fish = 3 oz
Hard Cheese = 1 oz
Shredded Cheese = 1/4 cup
Peanut Butter = 1 tablespoon
Mayonnaise = 1 teaspoon
Cereal = 1 cup
Milk or Juice = 1 cup
Now the visual cues that I've found most helpful
1 cup = a tennis ball or an average sized fist
1 oz = 4 dice grouped together
1 tablespoon = 3 dice grouped together
1 teaspoon = 1 die
3 oz steak = a deck of cards
3 oz chicken or fish = a cassette tape
This recipe, from a few year's old issue of Cooking Light magazine, has become a fast favorite in my household. Coming in at 176 calories/4 Weight Watchers points per serving it's a really decadent treat that can easily fit in to a balanced eating plan.
3/4 cup fat-free sweetened condensed milk, divided
1/4 cup butter or stick margarine, melted and cooled
1/4 cup fat-free milk
1 (18.25-ounce) package devil's food cake mix
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
Cooking spray
1 (7-ounce) jar marshmallow creme (about 1 3/4 cups)
1/2 cup peanut butter morsels
Preheat oven to 350°.
Bake at 350° for 10 minutes. Combine 1/2 cup condensed milk and marshmallow creme in a bowl; stir in morsels. Spread marshmallow mixture evenly over brownie layer. Carefully drop remaining batter by spoonfuls over marshmallow mixture. Bake at 350° for 30 minutes. Cool completely in pan on a wire rack.
Yield: 2 dozen (serving size: 1 brownie)
Nutrition info
CALORIES 176(25% from fat); FAT 5g (sat 2.1g,mono 1.6g,poly 1.1g); PROTEIN 2.6g; CHOLESTEROL 6mg; CALCIUM 30mg; SODIUM 212mg; FIBER 0.8g; IRON 0.8mg; CARBOHYDRATE 29.9g
When I started Weight Watchers I slowly started incorporating exercise into my life. Since I have a dog I was already walking a little bit at least 2-3 times a day. So my first concrete exercise step was to increase the distance of those walks. Using Gmaps-Pedometer I plotted a 3/4 mile loop for my dog and I to take twice a day. After a week I moved up to 3/4 mile once a day and then 1 full mile once a day. After a week of that we started doing a two full miles 4-5 days a week. The remaining two days alternate between being a light day (a 3/4 mile loop and a mile loop) and being a little bit of a longer day (1.5 mile loops or a 2 mile hike).
Those two miles meet the minimum recommendations for exercise (30 minutes a day at least 3 times a week) but they aren't strenuous miles (my very small dog can only go so fast) and my body definitely needed to move more. So I decided to really take the plunge and get some serious cardio into my exercise regimen. I did a little research and found that I really wanted to try the Couch to 5K in two months running program.
For extremely unfit people or even those who are just brand new to an exercise program 5K can be an extremely scary phrase. It was to me but looking at in terms of just over 3 miles it didn't seem quite so scary. So on August 6 I began the program. I have two goals. The first is to be able to walk/jog a complete 5K by January without passing out from exhaustion. The second goal is to be able to actually run an entire 5K by May 2007. Obviously I'm stretching the 5K program out much longer than two months but that's ok. With my weight and lack of fitness it would be unreasonable to expect to go from 0 to 5K in two months. Look for periodic progress updates on my running program.
In the Summer of 2006 after many years of being extremely overweight I finally reached the point where I was ready to change my life and my body. I didn't decide to go on another diet that was destined to fail (I have experience enough at failed diets). I didn't decide to have surgery to reduce my weight. Instead I decided to become the active decision maker when it comes to my health. I decided to no longer let inertia, laziness, too busy-ness, work or anything else make the choices, by default, about my body and health. I decided to be a healthier person and live a healthier life starting immediately. I committed myself to the goals of a acheiving a healthy weight and size, enjoying a satisfying and healthy diet, and integrating a healthy amount of varried exercise into my life.
The first concrete step toward these goals was to dive head first into learning much more about nutrition, exercise and my own personal issues and demons with food. The next step was to sign up for Weight Watchers online. Yes, sigh, Weight Watchers. I need help to change my life and my body and the Weight Watchers system makes sense to me. The program helps me figure out what moderation really means and what portion sizes should actually be in practical, useful terms. It helps me figure out how much I should be eating everyday, what I should be eating less of, what I should be eating more of. One of the foundations of a healthy life I think and of the Weight Watchers plan is that no food is forbidden. Everything is allowed in moderation.
My only concern with Weight Watchers was that I'm not anti-fat and I'm not anti-women's bodies. What I mean is I don't find fat offensive or horrible and I think that women can be and are beautiful at any size. I don't think every fat person on the planet needs to lose weight. I don't think fat people should hide in shame until they can present a smaller version of themself. I don't think fat people are stupid or lazy. I don't think there is any number on a scale that people (women in particular) should strive to meet to make them feel good about themselves. I think people should be healthy and happy and not wrapped up in what size they fit into. In fact I suspect I'll always meet the textbook/bmi chart definition of fat. Though Weight Watchers insisted that I have a goal weight that I'm working toward it is completely a ball park figure. If I'm 15 pounds above that "target weight" but I feel good and am acheiving my specific healthy life goals (which include some travel and exercise milestones among others) then I'm perfectly fine with that. I don't think Weight Watchers is but I am. So I'm no longer struggling with being a betrayer to the cause of fat and body acceptance. I've come to the conclusion that doing what you want to do because it's good for you, healthy for you and is something you really want so you can live a very long, healthy life is absolutely the right thing to do. My way is of course not the way for everyone and I'd never want to even hint that it is.
I have always loved really good food and it pleases me to be able to make and create good food myself. This has not changed because I am working toward a more healthy life. If anything I love cooking good food now even more because I know if I'm going to work a piece of cake into my eating plan for the day it's going to be made with good ingredients and care. In short, it's going to be worth it. This is where A Healthy Appetite comes into the picture. A couple years back I had a cooking and food blog called Domesticity that marked the progression of my interest in cooking, baking and things of a domestic nature. I very much enjoyed writing about and tracking my progress in the kitchen. Though my family is filled wth many absolutely fantastic, traditional Southern cooks I never learned to make anything besides a cake from a mix growing up. Cooking and baking simply couldn't hold my attention. I was an expert at eating to be sure but never really cared much about how things were made, why some ingredients were better than others, or why it was important to use technique X instead of technique Y. This all changed in my mid 20s. I was woefully underemployed with time and energy to spare, had (and still have) a very busy partner who couldn't cook as much as she used to, and I was getting tired of making spaghetti and jarred sauce every time it was my turn to cook. I started slowly. I quickly worked my way through a great cookbook I had bought (but never used) in college called Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen by Kevin Mill and his mom Nancy Mills. The book was perfect for me because not only were the recipes pretty simple they also utilized ingredients I probably already had in the house and there were lots of "Mom Tips" that explained basic cooking techniques, acceptable common substitutions and why something had to be done a specific way.
After trying all the things that interested me in Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen I moved from the kiddie pool to the deep end without much trouble. I read a lot of cookbooks and online food writing and I slogged my way through until I felt pretty comfortable in the kitchen. I went from being an absolute recipe follower (if it said beat batter 50 times with a wooden spood I would count to make sure I had beaten the batter 50 times with a wooden spoon) to using recipes as guidlines and allowing myself to improvise and modify what I was making. Surprisingly I found that I really enjoyed cooking and I really loved baking. I'd get extreme pleasure from baking a batch of cupcakes completley from scratch and taking them to my day job or sending them to work with my partner. I even showered my neighbors I didn't like with homemade baked goods but it was such a natural high to see someone fawn over my food. The end result of a baking project is bliss.
So now I'm a woman committed to living a healthier life with concrete health and body goals I'm working toward. I'm also a woman who loves food, cooking and baking. I don't think those things are mutually exclusive. A Healthy Appetite is my place to prove they aren't. Part recipe box, part product review notebook, part exercise journal, part public accountability stage, part Weight Watchers for a more hipster-inclined set, A Healthy Appetite is where Michelle Jones writes about food, exercise, health and things related to all three.
