Quick Tricks for Healthier Eating

From the folks at Health magazine and CNN come “Sneaky Little Slim-Down Tricks.”

The Most Reliable:

Start smart
Begin lunch and dinner with a veggie-rich salad or broth-based soup, says Pennsylvania State University satiety expert Barbara Rolls, author of “The Volumetrics Eating Plan.” “That lets you fill up first on a big volume of low-calorie food and ends up displacing some of the foods you’ll eat next — the choices that are usually higher in calories.”

Here’s a good salad recipe: Mix 1½ cups of salad greens with ¾ cup of raw veggies like onions, bell peppers, carrots, broccoli, or cucumbers; drizzle with 2 tablespoons of low-cal bottled dressing.

I keep trying to follow this one, but it does conflict with my desire to pare down the grocery budget and with the small size of my fridge. Scott’s great when it comes to this strategy — he always eats his salad first to try to fill up before the main course, even if it makes me worry that his entrée will get unappealingly cold in the meantime.

It would be nice if I could let things stay warm in the oven perhaps while we enjoy a separate salad course upfront to blunt our appetites. Something to consider for when we get back.

The Most Intriguing (It’s New to Me):

Sneak a snack
“Ten minutes before each meal, eat some healthy fat (around 70 calories or fewer): a handful of nuts, a few slices of avocado, or a spoonful of peanut butter, for example. That helps activate ghrelin, a hormone that lets you know you’re full,” says Michael Roizin, MD, co-author with Mehmet Oz, MD, of “You on a Diet: The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management.”

I’ve heard about that fullness hormone before, but always in the context of eating your meals slowly so that you have time for body to tell you it’s satisfied before your belt busts open. This bit of advice sounds pretty good if you’re the sort of person who does most overeating at meals (hmm . . . see the next part for more on that). It’s not going to help you much if you sabotage yourself through unhealthy food choices or caving to those never-hunger-based junk-food cravings.

Maybe this advice could be combined with the Volumetrics idea through getting that healthy fat via some oil, olives, or nuts on the salad?

The Most Disturbing:

Choose your pals
Studies show that most of us base how much we eat on what others around us eat, says University of Toronto psychologist Peter Herman, PhD. So steer clear of the big eaters in your social circle, at least when food is around. Sashay over and make small talk at parties with the folks who aren’t hovering near the food table.

“Marching to your own caloric drummer requires some independent thought and calculation,” Herman says.

Hand in hand with this goes a chronic obstacle to almost any wife’s diet plan. Unless you are significantly taller and far more athletic, your caloric needs are way less than your husband’s! Women pack on the pounds after marriage not only because they ditch the pre-wedding diet but also because they start portioning out the same amount of dinner to themselves that their husbands do.

It’s tough to sit at the same table and watch Scott put away more food (especially when it’s something tasty), but if I ate the same number of calories per meal that he does to lose weight, I would balloon. He’s eight inches taller than me and more muscular, and thus he can consume more calories without gaining weight than I can. It’s just the way it is.

You may not have noticed a change in the amount you consume, but that’s likely because you were brought up comparing portions with someone closer to you in size, such as a sibling. Even my brothers ate small portions at meals in my house growing up because they spread their eating out over the whole day. You ate the same size portion at others at the table then, so it doesn’t seem different to eat the same size portion as your husband, but odds are the portion size has grown in absolute terms.

I have to remind myself at every meal to eat only half or two-thirds as much as Scott, depending on the entrée. I also take time while preparing a meal to think out correct portions for each of us, such as setting out two slices of graham-flour bread for him and one for me. It’s all about planning, right?

Smokin’ Willie’s . . . Mmm . . .

At some point in the past couple of years, I visited a food trade show with Scott and his mom on a trip to California. We’d never been to such a thing before and did not know what to expect, but oh, we found great things.

The show was jam-packed with vendors hawking all sorts of high-end sauces, juices, and other delectable goodies, as well as a few hucksters trying to convince us we wanted their crummy pots or whatever. But mostly, we were having a grand old time sampling some of the freshest and most delicious tasting packaged products available on the market.

I remember we loved some fancy (and pricey) pasta sauce that was mostly chunks of cheese in good oil, and Scott’s mom was crazy over a line of pesto-like fresh herb sauces, including one made with Scott’s dad’s favorite herb, cilantro.

However, the most prevalent product at the show was barbecue sauce. We sampled dozens of varieties, and when we left the show that day, we were laden down with several bottles from a company called Smokin’ Willie’s.

This sauce is fabulous. It beats the pants off any other barbecue sauce I’ve ever tried. It’s light-years beyond any of those Kraft or KC Masterpiece bottles crowding the supermarket shelves in terms of flavor.

I admit to having had a certain fondness for Sweet Baby Ray’s sauce for dipping chicken nuggets in over the years, but Smokin’ Willie’s is way more flavorful than the typical sweet and tangy barbecue slop.

It’s spicy without an overwhelming heat, it has sweetness without being overly thick and gloppy, and it has a good hint of barbecue smokiness without knocking you out when using it for dipping.

Even better, Smokin’ Willie’s sauce manages to keep its flavor fresh and punchy without resorting to a ton of weird ingredients. It’s the real deal, the kind of sauce you might make yourself if, you know, you actually made barbecue sauce from scratch.

I love the original, but I also enjoy the two other varieties of sauce the company makes. The Fiesta with Chipotle sauce has some real kick to it if you like your barbecue spicy, and the Shanghai-Style sauce has that sort of lip-smacking Korean-barbecue flavor I am always trying to capture on my own.

Another great thing about Smokin’ Willie’s original sauce is that it’s less sugary than typical supermarket sauces (and there’s no high-fructose corn syrup!), so it’s not ruinous to your diet.

I’ve found Smokin’ Willie’s sauce at Whole Foods, and if you check the web site the company lists additional stores where you can find it. I (and Scott) highly recommend giving it a try. And if you’re coming to Slovakia in the next four months . . .

Foods to Keep You Full

Assuming you can resist those cravings — though I suppose the point of many of these foods is to keep those cravings from cropping up in the first place.

15 Foods to Help You Lose – Goodhousekeeping.com:

Thirty billion a year — that’s about how much Americans spend on slim-down products, many of which don’t even work. A better way to get real weight-loss results? Go grocery shopping. New research points to more than a dozen foods, from beans to beef, that can help you fight hunger, kick your candy addiction, boost your metabolism — and ultimately shed pounds. And some of these superfoods deliver health bonuses too.

Basically, all of the foods on the list are the sort of nutritious foods you should be eating anyway as part of a healthy diet, with a few appetite-suppressing seasonings thrown in for good measure. Nutritional science can be hit or miss, but a lot of the foods listed on Good Housekeeping’s list (including beans and fruit) have definite nutritional benefits beyond any weight-loss claims.

Given that, it’s possible that the studies are right about how foods affect your blood sugar and digestion. Those foods might make you crave simple carbs less and keep you feeling full longer, so that you don’t binge and you thus don’t take in excess calories. And like I said, plenty of protein and fiber is just plain healthy!
Still, I don’t give much credence to any claims about foods that “boost the metabolism” or whatever, though, as I haven’t seen much non-anecdotal evidence that metabolism is really a factor in how much weight we carry. Plenty of people manage to stay fit as they age because they exercise (far more than I do, that’s for sure).

As we get older, we just get better at staying still and thus not burning calories. It’s easier for jumping-bean kids and constantly walking students to stay thin than for sedentary office workers. Add in the sleeplessness that makes so many adults drag themselves through the day and you get “fading metabolism.”

I certainly felt that last one as a teacher. Even though I should have gotten a good deal of exercise walking the classroom all day, I took every opportunity I could to sit very still and have kids do any grunt work as I was so exhausted. Another contributor to my 25 extra pounds!

So maybe it’s the jitters from the caffeine in tea that gets people losing weight rather than any special chemicals. Of course, we can’t all jump on the Starbucks Diet to take advantage — certainly all the cream and sugar in their drinks would counteract any benefit!

Bound to Shake One’s Resolution

If it’s anything like eating frozen dinners all day, every day, that is.

Prepared Diet Food: The Good, the Bad, and the Unhealthy at Epicurious.com

Losing weight is hard enough, but then factor in counting calories, watching portions, and making the food, and it’s no wonder that more than half of us in the U.S. are overweight. That’s why millions turn to diet-delivery services, which promise tasty, hopefully healthy food in slimming portions, delivered right to your door. The Epicurious editorial team evaluated five of the biggest plans to discover which is the best, both in taste and nutrition. The winner?

I won’t spoil the surprise for you. Visit the site to read about Epicurious’ evaluations of meal services, including big shots such as NutriSystem, Jenny Craig, and ZoneChefs. True, the meals were tested back in March of aught-seven, but I doubt they’ve changed much in the subsequent months if you’re considering signing up for one as part of that New Year’s resolution.

If you’re interested in these plans more for the convenience than the additional services or financially imposed food-choice discipline, Good Housekeeping magazine has several alternative diet plans that revolve around prepared foods. Check out the Fast-Food Diet and other plans.

Another option is to hit up that frozen meal aisle. Stick with the Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, Lean Gourmet, Weight Watchers Smart Ones, South Beach, and almost anything from the healthy/organic/vegetarian section (where they keep the Amy’s foods and the veggie burgers), and you’ll be getting a generally balanced meal that is already calorie controlled. That Epicurious article linked above reviews some. Most of the meals do tend to be on the small side, so be prepared to fill out your dinner entreé platter with either a salad (minus the cheese, croutons, and full-fat dressings) or a generous scoop from a bag of frozen veggies.

Keep in mind that any prepared foods-based diet is going to pack in whopping amounts of sodium. In fact, most of the sodium in our diets comes from processed foods, not from our salt shakers. If your resolution is less about dropping pounds and more about eating healthfully in order to reduce cardiovascular risks, you should pass on all these plans and invest some time in stocking your freezer with homemade batch cooking instead.

Watch Out, Texas . . .

. . . because Oklahoma’s dropping pounds.

Mayor to town: Lose 1 million pounds – CNN.com:

As part of the initiative, residents can sign up and track their weight loss on a new Web site, www.thiscityisgoingonadiet.com. More than 2,600 people had registered by Thursday. They’ve lost more than 300 pounds. . . .
The mayor timed the start of the weight-loss program to the beginning of the new year, when many people begin exercise programs after holiday feasts.

Oklahoma City ranked 15th in a 2007 survey of America’s fattest cities conducted by Men’s Fitness magazine. The survey examined lifestyle factors in each city, including fast-food restaurants per capita and availability of city parks, gyms and bike paths.

It sounds cheesy, yet I also am intrigued by this whole idea. It could become the next major feel-good feature story if by the end of the year Oklahoma City has met its goal. The mayor or his staff have come up with some innovative ideas here for motivating a community and building support for city improvements.

I think it’s great for leaders to actually try to bring communities together to achieve a positive common goal. People can meet huge goals together with sufficient motivation and leadership. It’d be nice if more projects like this were undertaken to address the nation’s obesity crisis.

Of course, we’d have to see that this experiment actually works first. Still, I’m so charmed by the idea that I can’t help but be hopeful.

Pizza and Burgers For Everyone!

Bad foods that are actually great for your waist – CNN.com:

If you’ve been avoiding burgers, ice cream, and pizza thinking you’re doing your waistline a favor, don’t. They can actually help you lose weight — and keep it off, too. Here are the hidden slim-down perks of five foods that get a bad rap and the best way to add each one back into your diet.

While the good people of Health magazine haven’t quite convinced me of the nutritional and weight-loss merits of eating ice cream, they have provided us with some guidance as to what to choose when faced with that overwhelming desire for some bacon.

Of course, there are few out-and-out “bad” foods (I don’t believe we can say they are none because I’ve never heard a good thing about the artificial trans-fatty acids found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oil). Just about everything can be consumed in moderation. It’s just hard to remember that a serving the size of a pack of cards is “moderation” when faced with a delicious, juicy rib-eye steak.

Losing Weight in 2008

And really, it doesn’t matter whether you choose a diet based on your genotype or the phases of the moon, or whether you cut down on sugars and starches or fats. If you consume fewer calories than you need to maintain your current weight, you will lose.

Quoted from: Diet and Exercise – Losing Weight – Jane Brody – Medicine and Health – New York Times

I also think that statement is an important reminder at this time of year. Yes, there’s a million different diet plans out there, but the only way of reduced eating that will work is the one you can stick with for a lifetime.

And nobody wants to eat NutriSystem or Jenny Craig meals for a lifetime.  Ick.

Check out the article for more on losing weight and making some good nutritional choices for the new year. Right now, though, I want to go back to thinking about weight loss.

I know that diet plans have worked for many people out there. Food Network used to run a couple of shows every afternoon featuring people from said group, one who lost weight by switching to lower-calorie foods and one who reduced by going the Atkins route. Kalyn’s Kitchen is featuring a post about getting started on the South Beach diet, which continues to keep the author slim.

But a specified plan doesn’t have to be the way if it’s not your thing. I tried eDiets and felt starved on the tiny portions of the plan I was following there. I looked into reducing carbs but I had to draw the line at potatoes. A low-fat plan is, frankly, a nightmare.

I’m going to have to get back into the swing of things diet-wise now that the holidays are at an end. It’ll be rough considering how much candy is still around the apartment, but even more tempting than sweets is the practice of just eating what I want when I want, without being hungry.

Now, I need to remind myself of what tricks have helped me maintain a loss of about 10 pounds since I started reforming my eating habits, so that I can pass this holiday plateau.

1. Count calories. As in, I must keep tracking my calories consumed in a food diary. I’ve let it slide during the holiday season, but I need to start it again. It keeps me accountable, and I don’t like to let myself down.

2. Track pounds. It’s important to weigh myself every day. It helps me focus on my goal by reminding myself of why I need to be doing item one, above. Plus, I’ve read that people who have successfully achieved and maintained weight loss are usually people who have bucked the old saw about only weighing in once a week.

3. Eat more vegetables and fruits. If there’s one diet plan I do turn to occasionally, it’s Volumetrics. I don’t exactly follow some sort of prescribed eating plan by using that book, but I do take to heart its advice about getting the best bang for your calorie buck. Basically, not only will eating more whole and plant foods provide you with greater nutrition, but they’ll also fill you up with all their water content and fiber before you consume too many calories. No one wants to go to bed hungry because all they could eat for their dinner calorie allotment was two ounces of beef and one ounce of cheese.

4. Plan meals. The most tempting moments of the day are when I’m hungry and there’s nothing prepared or planned out for the coming meal. I’m pretty good about methodically planning healthy dinners so I can jump into cooking early before I feel too starved to move, but lunches have been a problem. I need to stock the fridge with some sandwich fillings and soups to stave off the temptation to grab cookies or pretzels.

5. Exercise. Umm, I think I’d be losing a lot more weight if I did this. It’s rough in winter when I try to avoid the cold, cold outdoors whenever possible, and it’s even more of a challenge being abroad this year and thus without a gym to visit. I need to start pulling out the exercise DVDs and the Dance Dance Revolution mat more.

That’s my plan for 2008. It’s mostly continuing what I began in 2007 but with some refinements. The biggest challenge is making it a permanent change in myself. I try to stay flexible with my personal diet requirements so that I can eventually find what works best for me so that I can stick to eating and moving healthier. My goal is to not end up falling apart once I reach my ideal weight and binging on foods I’ve kept at arm’s length, as I’ve often tended to do before.

Weight-loss success, ultimately, is all about changing one’s mindset.

To Breakfast or Not to Breakfast?

The Risks and Rewards of Skipping Meals – Well – Tara Parker-Pope – Health – New York Times Blog

The researchers found that skipping meals during the day and eating one large meal in the evening resulted in potentially risky metabolic changes. The meal skippers had elevated fasting glucose levels and a delayed insulin response — conditions that, if they persisted long term, could lead to diabetes.

With diet season coming up, it’s time to be reminded not to skip meals if we intend to lose weight. The Well blog linked here addresses the issue from the scientific perspective, with the noted caveat that study conclusions have been mixed on the issue.

Check out the site to read more about a second study that found some benefit in skipping meals (in a sense).

I don’t think skipping meals has ever worked for me. I just end up ravenous by the end of the day, more than making up the missed calories. In fact, I often need to include small snacks midafternoon to keep the hungry beast in check so that I can make sensible dinner decisions (such as cooking for myself rather than swinging by McDonald’s).

Epicurious Makes its Resolution

The Smart Way to Lose Weight: The Best Low-Calorie Recipes, Diet Tips, & Treats at Epicurious.com: “Here are a dozen ways to cut calories without completely sacrificing the joy of eating real food.”

The recipes linked to in the attached article are your typical high-class Gourmet and Bon Appétit recipes, so if you want to diet like a king, this is the site for you. The staff also does a taste test of various packaged snacks, and as you might expect there’s a definite lean toward the products you’d find in a health- or nature-oriented grocery store.

An exception is the granola/cereal bar category, which is taken by Special K bars. Just goes to show what a dearth of strong competitors there is in that field, in my opinion. Yuck.

Watching Those Calories

We’ve been using CalorieKing’s software for months now to track our food and calorie intake. In case you missed those review entries, we’re talking about a food diary program that uses a nutritional database to quantify what your eat and that helps you track progress toward your diet goals. Also, as it happens, it’s useful for drawing conclusions about what actions help you to stick to the weight-loss plan.

For us, it really seems to all be about the quality of our breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. Keeping those meals healthy and low-cal gives us a lot more freedom for our main meal of the day, dinner.

For example, on a typical day, we eat a breakfast of cold cereal or oatmeal. Since we stick to low-sugar varieties and use skim milk, these are also low-calorie meals. We start the day with a meal that clocks in under 200 calories, but the fiber in the cereal keeps us feeling full until lunch.

The takeaway? Invest in high-fiber breakfast foods such as oatmeal, Cheerios, bran-based cereals, Fiber One (Hungry Girl always recommends that one), etc., to start the day full.

Alternatively, if you prefer protein-based breakfasts, stretch a 74-calorie large egg by scrambling in low-cal veggies and egg whites (a large one is only 17 calories!).

Lunch for us usually means sandwiches or soups (for Scott, sometimes both). We naturally tend to eat a smaller portion of soup at lunch than at dinner, usually just one or two one-cup bowlfuls. For sandwiches, we keep the calorie counts low by sticking to low-fat lunchmeats (chicken, turkey, and lean ham rather than salami or loads of bacon) and low-calorie spreads such as spicy brown mustard, light mayo, and light tartar sauce.

We skip the accompaniment of chips that I at least grew up with and is often seen at delis. If we have a side, it’s fruit or leftover veggies from dinner.

It is a long wait from lunch until dinner having only eaten two light meals, true. That’s why we try to stock healthy snacks to eat mid-afternoon. Right now, we have apples, almonds, low-fat cottage cheese, light cheese wedges, and pretzel twists. Bananas are especially filling, too.

On the other hand, those pretzel twists really don’t satisfy your hunger for a 100-calorie handful — I buy them to satisfy salt cravings. I find that it’s important to satisfy a craving as soon as possible because if I wait too long, my willpower crashes and I overindulge. Makes sense in a way, as it appears that using willpower saps your body of energy.

We don’t miss scads of extras at breakfast or lunch because in American culture, the main meal is dinner. Thus, we expect a big meal at suppertime, and it’s then that we feel deprived if we have to cut back. Of course, in countries like Slovakia where lunch is the main meal, you could follow the same basic plan, just changing around which meals are the extra-light ones.

At dinner, I tend to cook just about anything that I can make into a relatively healthy dish (moderation, moderation), and we feel free to eat larger portions knowing that we’ve been good so far. We are able to indulge in some homemade hamburgers, thus keeping us from going deprivation-crazy, without derailing our diet.

Of course, I do accompany the hamburgers or whatever the main dish may be with lots of seasoned vegetables and salads rather than French fries to keep things healthy, but still — it’s a triumph to know that we can feel OK eating the macaroni and cheese in the first place.