Recently in Food Category
We've tried to eat fresh, local, in-season vegetables as much as possible. It's really been wonderful enjoying the bounty of summer. And while the end of summer is always tinged with sadness this year I'm almost ready to see it go because I'm ready for some new vegetables. When I say summer's bounty I'm not even kidding. We've had boatloads of yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, and bibb lettuce come our way. Boatloads people, boatloads. I'm terribly ready for butternut squash but yellow squash and I need to take a break. We both need our space so we can come back to the relationship stronger and healthier next year.
Today's weigh in marks one year of living a healthy lifestyle. One year ago I was still in Indianapolis coming off a wicked 6 month depression that kicked my ass. I had just turned 30 and knew that I couldn't keep living the same life I was living in the same unhealthy body I had been living it in. I don't want to make it sound dramatic, like I was sitting under a tree while a warm summer breeze blew my hair around my face with a John Williams score playing in the background when it suddenly hit me that I want to become a healthy person committed to a healthy lifestyle. There was no thunderbolt moment but instead a series of moments that made me realize how much I hated myself and my body and how it didn't have to be that way. I realized that I was 30 years and morbidly obese. That combined with my family history was completely setting me up for either early death, or if I didn't die young I'd be one of those old people that are really old. You know what I mean? One of those old people that can barely get around and are pretty much house bound. A year ago I said "Fuck that. Fuck early death, fuck being old and frail before my time." Now, I know that even with my healthy lifestyle I may still die young or become feeble. But a healthy lifestyle certainly gives me much better odds.
During this first year of my healthy lifestyle I've lost 141 pounds, become mostly vegetarian, and learned an insane amount about food, nutrition, exercise and how my body relates and reacts to all three. In this paragraph allow me dramatic license to say that it's been an incredibly rewarding experience to learn about healthy eating and living a healthy lifestyle and just how damn good both of those things feel. I feel good almost all the time. Seriously. If I'm not sick or having cramps (TMI? I can't decide) then I probably feel pretty good on any given day. When I don't eat right or I thoroughly overeat I pay for it. I feel sluggish and bloated and just generally yucky. I avoid the yucky as much as I possibly can.
Interestingly enough though I had a bought of the yucky over my birthday weekend. For my birthday and B's birthday my mom likes to take us out for a fancy dinner. This year was no exception. For a couple weeks before my birthday I scoured the online menus of lots of fancy restaurants here in town. Louisville has a great dining scene so naturally I found a lot of insanely delicious sounding dishes that a year and two months ago I would have been salivating over. I didn't walk away from my menu perusing with visions of tastiness in my head though. Instead I was lamenting the fact that gourmet/fancy vegetarian cooking doesn't really have a place here, save Asian restaurants. We're a Southern town that loves its pork, its steak, its chicken and even its frog legs. I can't fault anyone for loving those things, they just aren't for me much anymore. When I want things like steak or fried fish or some kind of pork I don't typically want it at a fancy restaurant. Instead I want it someplace where it's going to be prepared in comforting and familiar ways. So what I should have done was explained to my mom that while I appreciate her springing for fancy dinners let's instead hit a favorite burger spot or load up on insanely good pub grub at The Irish Rover. If I'm going to eat beef 5 times a year I'll take the backyard barbecue burger over the beef tenderloin with prosciutto, Parmesan and asparagus almost every time.
So I should have told my mom that I wanted to hit the burger place or the Rover but I didn't. I knew she really wanted a nice dinner out, as did B, so we went to a very popular old school place called Jack Fry's. There was literally one vegetarian entree. I can't recall there being a single vegetarian appetizer. So I had the above described beef tenderloin. It was good, very good, but I definitely wish that I had chosen to consume those calories elsewhere. I don't have any guilt over eating a beef based, decadent meal every once in a while, I just wish it had been a different one. The point of this story is that I knew I didn't want to go to this restaurant, I knew that I didn't want to eat that kind of meal but I did it anyway to make other people happier. What I knew but re-learned from this experience is that my eating habits and healthy lifestyle are incredibly important to me and I can't allow other people to dissuade me from the path I've chosen to be on. My mom would have been a bit disappointed had we gone to a more casual restaurant but she would have gotten over it and we still would have had a good time. It was my birthday and my caloric expenditure and I should have placed my wants in this situation first. That sounds selfish I know but taking care of yourself and making healthy choices everyday is a selfish endeavor, one that I think everyone should undertake.
Losing 141 pounds is probably the most selfish thing I've ever done. I did it just for me. I did it to make myself feel better, look better, give myself a better shot at aging healthily. It was and is all about me. I hope to lose another 40-60 pounds. I can't say for sure I'll reach that goal range and it's ok if I don't, but if I do those next 40-60 pounds will be just as selfish. I hope to maintain a healthy lifestyle including good eating and exercise for the rest of my life, this too will be completely selfish on my part. I like feeling good, I like looking good, I like moving my body. Maybe that selfishness should be the theme of my responses to questions like "how have you done/how do you do it/what should I do?" Maybe I should say "I love myself enough to know that I deserve a healthy body and I'm selfish enough to adhere to a lifestyle that helps me get one." I like that answer.
We moved back to Louisville a couple months ago. We were very lucky and landed exactly where we wanted to be. Our neighborhood is incredible, absolutely incredibly. It's terribly walking and biking friendly and we try to take advantage of that as much as we can. We walk or bike to the bread shop, the coffee shop, the grocery for small items, and of course the farmer's market every week. Ah, the farmer's market. At the same time my eating habits have changed for health reasons my eating habits have evolved because of food politics and philosophical issues. Those two things combined have given me some pretty strong guiding principles about what I eat, what I don't eat and where I get what I eat. In a nutshell my food philosophy is "eat as much local, seasonal produce as possible. Eat organic whenever possible. Eat more whole foods, less processed foods. Bake with really excellent ingredients. Support farmers and sustainable agriculture by buying direct from farmers whenever possible. Supporting farmers includes supporting meat and dairy farmers so buy humanely raised and slaughtered meat products and humanely cared for dairy and egg products."
So each Saturday morning we walk to the farmer's market and load up on whatever is good and fresh. Then we build our week's menus around those fresh items. Obviously we don't eat farmer's market produce at every meal but it does make up the bulk of our meals. It's glorious.
Being back home in Louisville gives the opportunity for more fresh, local produce than we can shake a stick at actually because we're now quite close to my family and the farm country I grew up on. In the past two weeks two different aunts have come to visit, each with bags full of fresh veggies from their farms. Between the two of them (I'll be seeing them both this weekend), the farmer's market, and our own backyard tomatoes we buy very little product from the grocery store and we eat glorious fresh vegetable based vegetarian dishes at almost every meal.
From this embarrassing wealth of fresh riches comes fabulous lunches and dinners including this Summer Vegetable Saute that I made last night for dinner. I didn't measure the vegetables exactly so I can't give you exact nutritionals but a good estimate is 90-100 calories per cup of veggies so 2WW points if that's your bag.
Summer Vegetable Saute
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small eggplant
1 small red onion
2 yellow squash
1 small zucchini
1 bell pepper
1 can diced tomatoes, undrained (I used diced tomatoes with peppers and onions)
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Dice all vegetables into small but not tiny pieces.
Over medium heat saute minced garlic in oil. Add bell pepper and onion. Cook for about 3 minutes until onions start to soften. Add all of the remaining vegetables. Cook for 8 minutes. Add tomatoes, stir the tomatoes and vegetable mixture really well. Add your salt, pepper, and oregano. I can't even give you estimates on the amount because it's completely dependent upon taste. Just experiment until it tastes well season to you.
Cover pan and cook on low-medium heat for 5-10 minutes depending on how much firmness you want your vegetables to have and how cooked you want your tomatoes to be.
Serve over whole wheat pasta. 2oz dry pasta is 4 points so if you have 4 points in pasta, 2 in veggies you've got a really hearty, really delicious dinner for 6 points. Since there are only 2 of us we ended up with a good amount of leftover veggies.
In just a few minutes I'm going to take 1 fat free tortilla, 1/4 cup 2% Mexican shredded cheese, and 1 cup of these veggie leftovers to make a simple and tasty veggie quesadilla for lunch. Yum.
For the first few days I was on The Program I was hungrier than I thought I would be. Portion control is seriously the name of the game. I ate my normal rice and tomatoes for lunch on my first day but the amount of rice was cut. I never measured it before so I'm not sure how much I was eating but 1/3-1/2 more than what is considered a standard portion size of rice is a good guess. By the time dinner rolled around I was insanely hungry. This continued for the first few days. I started eating more of other stuff (fruit, veggies, the usual crap you're supposed to eat) in addition to smaller portions of rice, meat, etc. and I haven't been hungry much since. Occasionally in the morning my corn flakes seem to last not as long as I would like and I get a bit hungry at around 10:30 or 11:00 and I usually eat some raw carrots. I like to put lunch off until at least noon and 12:15 or 12:30 is even better because it helps break up my work day. If I don't get back from lunch until 1:30 there are only 3.5 hours left in the work day! I need psychological tricks and tools to help get through the boredom of my work.
So once the initial issues of figuring out how to eat enough good stuff (fruits, veggies) to counter eating a smaller quantity of less good stuff { (meat, cheese, white rice) I'm of the belief that there is no bad food over all but I could be starting to change this opinion*} were sorted out things have been going pretty well. The truth is I'm never hungry and I'm never full. In some ways it's a weird feeling. Like I guess that's how you're supposed to feel, like you stop eating when you're no longer hungry not when you're full or when the plate is empty. But man that is almost a foreign concept for me. I'd never really thought of it before. There have been a couple studies out lately that say we eat as much as we're given not as much as we want or need and that is blindingly obvious to me now. My criteria for stopping eating are 1) the plate is empty or 2) I'm full. Stopping when I'm simply no longer hungry is just....weird for me and it's something I don't know that I can do much off. That's where knowing what a portion size is supposed to be and how much I'm supposed to be eating in a given day is a huge change and benefit for me.
"Eat only 1 cup of rice with like 2 cups of vegetables instead of 3 cups of rice and .25 cups of vegetables." Oh, ok, I can do that.
I really am of the school of thinking that says there is no bad food. Like say chocolate cake isn't a bad food. It's just a food that you should eat in small amounts and not every day. But dude meat? Not really a good food. I'm carnivorous like a bear is carnivorous but 85% vegetarianism is looking mighty good to me these days. Example: yummy, tastely little vegan meatballs? Like 3 points a serving. Real meatballs? Like 12. Example: Morningstar Farms Chick Patties: 3 points. Regular breaded chicken patty for sandwichs: 10 points. Grillers Garden Burger: 3 points (5 with all the necessary additions like cheese and ketchup). Standard restuarant burgers: Range from 7 at McDonald's to 20 at "casually dining restaurants." So yeah I'm thinking vegetarian meals are going to become and even bigger part of our diet than they were before. We'll have regular dose of lean chicken and fish but only very occasionally splurge on meals arranged around huge hunks of meat (say like on my birthday exactly two weeks from today).
And in case you're interested get the vegan meatballs as Trader Joes (3 points), add a little bit of pasta sauce and simmer (1-2 points) until meatballs are heated through, serve on a Wonder Bread Hot Dog Bun (1 point!) and you've got a very, very tasty, very The Plan friendly lunch.
Something else we've learned in the past little bit is that it is super hard to eat healthy food if you aren't making it yourself. Example: Noodles and Co. Belinda's favorite dish from the is the Indonesian Peanut Saute with tofu. It consists of noodles, a light brown sauce, vegetables and tofu. Sounds no so horrible right? So very wrong, a small serving is 18 points. 7 points more than the Wisconsin Macaroni and Cheese I like to get. We may be having dinner at a chain Italian place this weekend for a friend's birthday and because we're being pro-active about this we scoped out all the nutritional info and figured out points etc. Jesus, Mary and Joseph if you eat what these people give you in many, many (I dare say most) cases you'll have exceeded what your caloric and fat intake is supposed to be the entire day. Granted Italian food has pasta, cheese etc but the amounts of fats and calories in these admittedly huge portions are crazy. Again it goes back to us eating whatever is put in front of us. It's really hard to combat that. I see now that it's all on you to be super vigilant about what you put in your body. You can have anything you want but you just have to plan for it and think about it instead of just blindly eating whatever day after day. Such a simple epiphany but such a huge one.
As crazy as it sounds sometimes my goals of being a smaller, healthier person and someone who eats a very natural, healthy, sustainable diet are at direct odds with each other. French Vanilla Splenda for Coffee is a prime example of this struggle. There's nothing natural about vanilla Splenda. Though it may be derived from sugar in some mysterious scientific way it's a chemical sweetener with chemical vanilla flavoring added. It doesn't seem like the kind of product that someone who just switched to organic ketchup because she's trying to cut the copious amounts of high fructose corn syrup we're being fed out of her diet would use does it? But use it and love it I do. I keep track of what's going into my body everyday and I know that every bit of food fuel counts both positively and negatively. Obviously using a natural sweetener for my coffee and tea would be desirable if my only goal was to eat a natural diet. But the extra calories that sugar and other natural sweeteners give me run counter to my goals of weighing less and becoming more fit. For the same calories a natural sweetener would give me in my coffee I can instead have a nice serving a fruit (a blood orange this morning in fact) or vegetables. Like the Splenda the natural sweetener would be giving me no nutritional value but it would be giving me calories. So in this case I choose the chemical alternative over the natural one.
If the French Vanilla Splenda didn't taste so good in my coffee this might be a harder decision for me but it's really, really good. If you've no qualms about chemical sweeteners and like a hint of vanilla in your coffee then I can't recommend the French Vanilla Splenda highly enough.
As of this morning's trip to the scales I've lost 101.6 pounds. That's a pretty staggering number. Of course I've got another 80 to lose to reach my goal weight (though really my goals are more in terms of clothing sizes and being able to accomplish certain physical feats) and probably another 100 or even more to lose should I suddenly want to reach society's/bmi chart's definition of not being overweight. I don't measure my waist or my hips or any of that but I do like to wear men's pants frequently so given that they're sized by waist number I know that as of a few weeks ago, when I bought a new pair of shorts, I've lost about 12-14 inches around my waist.
So 101.6 pounds and at least 12 inches around the waist.
As I said a few weeks ago when I hit the 90 pounds lost mark I don't hate my body anymore. I don't love it, I look forward to it getting smaller, stronger, faster, having more endurance than it does now but I don't hate it. I'm comfortable in my skin. That's really an amazing feeling. I started to say that unless you've been really fat you don't know what it means to hate your body that much and know what a relief it is to not feel that way anymore. However I think that would be an unfair statement because lots and lots of people hate their bodies. It's my natural inclination to say things like "what on earth does she have to be unhappy about? She's 5'10 and weighs 195 pounds. She looks amazing." But you can't discount what someone feels just because you think it's irrational. That doesn't mean that I don't get really irritated when people comment on my weight loss and follow it up with "Oh. My. God. I have to lose these 10 pounds. Jesus I look awful." But I'm trying to be a more considerate, understanding person when it comes to the very individual, very internal, very emotional feelings we all have about our bodies.
I still don't know what to say to people who comment on my weight lost. The other day a neighbor asked me how much I'd lost and I had absolutely no intention of telling her a number. I don't know why but I just wasn't comfortable with that at all. So I said "a little." She laughed and said "A whole lot more than a little." Yes I guess a hundred pounds is a whole lot more than a little.
Even though I'm unemployed (notice how I just slipped that in and neglected to give any details about why I left the job I took a few weeks ago? Smooth I say) I'm going to buy myself the new-ish Gomez CD today. Not so much as a "reward" but just as "I feel really good today and good new music makes even really good days even better." And I really dig Gomez.
I'm also going to Starbucks in a few minutes. I'm going to enjoy my vanilla cappuccino, eat my yogurt, write in my journal and read my book. That's really my favorite way to spend a morning. That reminds me of something. I know I've written before about people who make comments like "oh you must not eat food x or y" and how silly that is right? Well some people are surprised, nay shocked to find out that I don't order non-fat drinks at Starbucks. I do from time to time enjoy a Frappuccino Light but when I have a hot beverage it is full fat, whole milk all the way. Why? Because I really don't enjoy drinks made with skim milk. Why else? I really, really love the taste of a cup of coffee with a couple of tablespoons of half & half and I really, really love the taste of cappuccinos made with whole milk. So when I have coffee I make it work with my food plan for the day. It's really that simple. People have a hard time understanding that. My family, people on the street, people I know are trying to lose weight so often seem to think that becoming healthier is one long exercise in deprivation. It's so not and I wish I could get that point across to people. When you throw out most of the junk you eat then you start eating better, healthier, tastier foods. And because you're eating so much more healthily it's ok to have whole milk cappuccinos or full fat yogurt instead of having everything fat free all the time. You can find ways to make it work and still keep foods and beverages you love. Honest. 101.6 pounds says I'm right on this.
At 4 Weight Watchers points per 6oz container Stonyfield Farm Whole Milk Yogurt with Cream on Top (French Vanilla flavor) is totally decadent and indulgent and totally worth it. Like the name says it's whole milk yogurt with a nice layer of cream on top. This makes it super sweet and creamy. It makes a really nice evening snack, it's thick and creamy and a nice change from say light ice cream. My favorite way to eat it though is for breakfast with a nice, ripe banana. I like to dip the banana in the yogurt. It's a fantastic 6 point breakfast that covers a serving of dairy and a serving of fruit. Very recommended.
If you aren't a Cooking Light subscriber I can't recommend enough that you run out to pick up the December 2006 issue. There are some super fantastic recipes in it that are just fantastic for the holiday season. The biggest hit in my house so far? Chocolate Cupcakes with Peppermint Frosting. I'm not a huge peppermint fan so I only had one cupcake when it first came out of the oven but these were a huge hit with my partner B and with all the colleagues she shared them with. And at 5 points per cupcake these are barely a splurge. These have definitely become part of my holiday baking rotation.
Recipezaar is a community recipe site that has a massive database of recipes spanning countless cuisines and diets. That's not really all that unique on the internet these days. What is unique and very impressive is that nutritional information is shown for all (at least all that I've looked at) the recipes. This is a huge help to anyone paying more attention to what exactly they are eating. It's a god-send for those doing Weight Watchers since you can simply plug the relevant nutritional information into your points counter and know how many points per serving each recipe is. Really brilliant and helpful.
