Wanna lose weight? Eat!

As the title notes, if you want to shed pounds, you must eat.

Huh?! Everyone is telling us not to eat; deprivation; pain; growling stomach.

But if you eat, a few things will happen that are of critical importance to your well-being and your figure:

• You will feel happy and satisfied.
• The food you eat will stoke your metabolism to continue to chug along like a finely-tuned machine.

The trick, of course, is to eat well, to eat so that your body and soul are satisfied.  That means wholesome foods.  Now, don't get excited - I said "wholesome" - not rabbit food.  Wholesome food includes meat and potatoes, pasta, cake.  But judicious planning is called for when consuming denser-calorie foods.  You want to join your friends for a buffet breakfast with all the trimmings? Peach cobbler, waffles, grits.  Go ahead.  Knock yourself out.  Relish the biscuits with honey and butter.  But do so with a resolve to mitigate some of these festivities - take a long walk, skip dinner that evening (not recommended under normal circumstances), prepare an incredibly gorgeous salad with everything in it as a way to balance whatever damage you may have done with your carb fest.  I call it my Therapy Salad.

Therapy Salad

Ingredients

Arugula, baby spinach or lettuce
Cherry tomatoes, whole
Seedless cucumber, sliced
Carrot, thinly sliced or grated
One pear, sliced
Red onion, sliced
Green or black olives
Raisins
Cashews or almonds
Goat cheese (optional)

Toss all ingredients together, and drizzle with dressing.

Dressing

1/4 c. wine vinegar
1/2 c. roasted sesame oil
1 large clove garlic, minced
Pinch of chili flakes
Salt and pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in a sealable jar and shake well, then drizzle over the salad.

This salad is not only incredibly delicious, full of flavor from the roasted sesame oil to the almonds, olives and vegetables, but also filling, crunchy and sustaining.

Renewed and Energized

A colleague recently gave a speech called Diets Don't Work.  He spoke about his own struggle with food, eating junk foods indiscriminately while in college without regard to consequences, and later, as he realized that he had gained an inordinate amount of weight, endeavored to try whatever diet was popular or interesting to shed those excess pounds.  He related staying on the Atkins diet about a day and a half, and we all laughed knowingly.  He continued to tell us of his efforts, and his discovery not too much later that the secret, if there is one, is not to diet, but enjoy whatever foods you like, but in moderation.  He mentioned that he loves soda, and would drink three or four cans of it in one day, to the tune of about 800 empty calories.  He realized that such empty calories did nothing for his weight, not to mention his health, and so began a journey of acknowledgment and recognition.  With a bit of tweaking, he started diminishing his intake of sodas, or substituting water or tea.  He learned that eating whole fruit was much more satisfying than merely drinking the soda.  And thus began his journey of acquainting himself with favorite foods that he had eschewed and reintroducing sanity into his lifestyle. 

My colleague is a young man, trim and handsome.  It's hard to believe that he once carried 25 extra pounds.  But that's so easy to do in our society, with the huge portions of fried simple carbohydrates and our sedentary lifestyles.  And so, as I realized I had a like-minded friend in our midst, I introduced him to my writings on the subject.  Moreover, such affinity also reignited whatever cooling embers I may have had lately about my own diet.  Reenergized, renewed in my commitment, I have been busy chopping and cooking all kinds of salads, from a Moroccan carrot salad with raisins (one of my childhood favorites) to a simple salad of cherry tomatoes, radishes and olives.  Bliss!

Don't Tell The Kids!

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I am continually amazed by the efforts to which food manufacturers -- and this country's educational system in general -- go to delude, deceive, disguise, and otherwise pretend that things aren't what they are.

Take nutrition, for example.  The current First Lady, Michelle Obama, is setting a fine example in starting her own vegetable garden at the White House, and tackling childhood obesity.  A wonderful ambition aimed at improving health across the country, and with it, perhaps cut the spiraling costs of medical delivery.  Yet, in today's paper, there is an article on Kraft having joined the ranks of companies such as ConAgra and Chef Boyardee in adding veggies to their packaged products, such as the latest addition of cauliflower to their Mac & Cheese.  But "Don't tell the kids!" was the line after that.

Indeed, efforts abound to hide vegetables from children, the argument being that they will not eat the favored Mac & Cheese if they knew veggies were lurking inside.  What abomination!  How is it possible that we are raising a crop of people who are taught and encouraged to dislike vegetables?  Why are people claiming - in all sincerity -- that French fries are their vegetables?  Why are spinach and okra, corn and tomatoes, despised in their natural form, and are made to take on such weird forms before they are consumed, e.g., spaghetti sauce in a jar, corn as tortillas, spinach as a dip with more cheese than spinach, eaten with corn chips.

I do have one answer: vegetables have gotten a bad rap because for decades, they have been presented as steamed, presumably in an effort to cut fat and thus calories.  But steamed vegetables have no taste, no flavor, and are a big reason for people's distaste for them, like the child on the TV commercial who secretly passes off his broccoli to the dog under the table, or the V8 commercial for people who think vegetables taste "too vegetably."  Hmm.

I have written before about the Mediterranean Diet, a diet rich in all forms of vegetables, olive oil, fish and grains.  This diet is not only exalted as one of the healthiest in the world, but also as one of the tastiest.  Children in the Mediterranean region are taught from early age to love vegetables in all their varieties, but those vegetables are also prepared in creative ways, are tasty grilled, roasted, pureed, and are always well seasoned and palatable.

It might be challenging at first to reeducate one's palate, but it would also be eminently worthwhile to learn how to prepare a gumbo with okra, fresh sweet corn and farm tomatoes, adding some sausage and chicken for additional flavor.  Why not take this on as a challenge?  Vegetables tasting "too vegetably"?  Gimme more!