Archive for June, 2009|Monthly archive page
Comfort food
After my weekend of debauchery, it’s been difficult to get back on the wagon. I’m pretty sure it’s the after effects of the alcohol and the sugar. However, the weather hasn’t helped either — it’s a balmy 54 degrees and cloudy. Happy June. Nor has a ridiculous number of social food-oriented obligations for that matter: dinner out last night, lunch out today, dinner out tomorrow. You get the idea.
Even though I really want chocolate cake (yes, I realize it’s only 8:14 in the morning!), I think I’ll make some soup instead. I’ll stick with my old standby, Lentil Barley. Not only is this super healthy, it’s one of those stick to your ribs, scent the house, and season perfectly for dinner sort of soups. It’s also super, super easy — always a plus!
Recipe – Lentil Barley Soup
8 servings
1 cup brown lentils, rinsed
1/2 cup barley, hulled or pearled
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, sliced
2 stalks celery, sliced
6 gloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp of oregano
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/8 – 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
6 cups of water or vegetable broth
Put all ingredients into a pot and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until lentils are tender, about 1 hour. Salt to taste.
It’s really that easy!
Nutrition per serving: 78 calories, 4 grams protein, 16 grams carbohydrates, 0 grams fat, 150 mg sodium, 0 mg cholesterol; 3 grams fiber. (1 WW point per serving)
Best fast food nutrition guide EVER!
I tend to be pretty down on fast food chains — even those that are only semi-fast food — in terms of providing customers with good nutrition information.
The other day, however, I was heading to Boloco’s and I just happened to check on-line to see whether they had nutritional information available. Unlike other comparable restaurants that have a static pdf (which, granted, is 3,000 times better than those that have nothing) Boloco offers an interactive nutrition guide. The nutrient values change as you decide what kind of wrap you want, the size, whether its on whole wheat, spinach or white, or if you’d like chicken (dark or white meat), beef, or tofu! Whether you want broccoli, carrots, or even cilantro.
It’s great!
If you have a Boloco near you, I recommend you check it out before heading off to lunch! And if you don’t have a Boloco near you, you should check it out anyway, just because it’s so friggin’ cool! If nothing else, you’ll see how quickly calories multiply when moving something from a regular to a large!
Good job, Boloco! You guys are definitely on the lunch list!
One of those days!
I woke up in a great mood today. The sun was shining. I had a good work plan. I had packed a nice, healthy lunch. I decided not to go the gym first thing, because I was going to work out at home with k-bells and maybe even do a little bit of yoga.
Time for some back story: Last week I took my five year old car in for a 60,000 mile tune up. The shop recommended that I have a small seal replaced (as it was still under warranty). It was a bad seal to have leaking, because they had to take the transmission out to get to it. All together, even with the warranty (and $400 worth of rebates from my credit card company) it was still close to $500. Ouch.
As soon as I drove the car off of the lot, I noticed that there was this high pitched airy whine that hadn’t been there before. It wasn’t consistent, though I noticed it more whenever I would shift into third gear. It kept it up all week and then I didn’t drive the car all weekend.
This morning, on my way in, I decided to swing by the auto shop. 1) The whine was much more pronounced. 2) I was also beginning to hear something that sounded broken. 3) When I shifted from third to fourth, the car gave a deep shudder — like a horse on its last legs. I decided to go through town instead of taking the back roads.
Right as I was heading around the town square, in one of the biggest commuter spots in the region — which, granted, really isn’t that big — the car seizes up, shudders, and drops to a dead halt. Whoa, Nelly! I think she’s dead, Jim.
I ran across the street to the local Curves (where I used to workout) called MJ, called the car store, who promptly called a tow truck. When I got back to the car, two minutes later, the police were already there.
I rode with the tow guy to the car place and they dropped me off at work.
What does this have to do with food, you ask?
Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve sat it my desk and munched my way through my daily allotted calories — and the clock hasn’t even struck three! More to the point, I realized somewhere between the two Balance bars that I plowed through (within a hour period) that I am on a low grade binge. It’s been a while, but here I am. I thought I’d gotten a better handle on stress-related eating. Apparently I was wrong. Though, not to beat myself up too badly, there were days in the not so distant past that I would have eaten 1,303 calories in an hour, let alone 8 1/2! But still. Sigh.
So, what’s my plan? Well, first things first, I just drank a second slug of Perfect Food to (hopefully) break the cycle.
I also gave in and called the car store and it turns out that I was right. The seal they put in hadn’t set. All of the transmission fluid leaked out. The transmission locked up. And the heat melted/destroyed several of the ball bearings in the transmission (and who knows what else, but if they do know, they’re certainly not saying)!
Good news: their fault, not mine. Towing, repair, and rental are on them. Thank god for small mercies.
After that, I managed to get some work going, but then I hit another wall.
So, as soon as MJ comes to take me to the shop to pick up the rental, I’ll go to the grocery store, head home and exercise. And when I’m done there (depending on the time), I’ll sit down with a huge platter of steamed vegetables, read a couple chapters of a good book, have some herbal tea, and go to bed.
As a famous heroine once said, “Tomorrow is another day.”
Eating out
No matter where I go out for a “nice” dinner, I tend to end up eating about a 1,000 calories. You’re probably thinking, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of calories.’ But you’d be surprised.
When eating out, the question is never, are you really going to sit down and eat 1,000 calories at one setting, because — again — if you’re going out for a nice meal, the answer is always yes.
So a better question to ask yourself is, how are you going to spend those 1,000 calories?
Your three potential culprits can be broken down into three groups: food (real food, that is, such as appetizers and entrees), dessert (which one could not so wrongly class as poison) or alcohol (which, no doubt about it, is poison, at least as far as weight release is concerned).
Ironically, I’ll almost always go for the poison — either in terms of alcohol or dessert. Probably because I tend not to have these things at home.
Some people will go for the meal itself and leave off the alcohol or dessert. I wish I was more like them, but I obviously don’t wish it enough to change my behavior!
The key is figuring out which part of the meal is least important to you (or is least congruent with the occasion, place or the people) and let it go. In other words, splurge on the parts of the meal that matter to you most and cut back in the places where it doesn’t.
“But what if it’s all important?” you ask.
Then prioritize, but try to keep it within 1,000 calories.
Yesterday, for example, I went out for a long leisurely lunch with friends. I hadn’t seen them for a while. In fact, the woman was someone with whom I’ve been friends for 9 years, who recently got married. However, because we live in different states and I was unable to attend her wedding, this was the first time that I’d met her husband. In other words, it was a fairly big deal.
MJ and I were hosting, so we took them to a fabulous French Country Restaurant about an hour south of our house. They like wine, so I knew that there would be alcohol involved, probably more rather than less. And the restaurant itself is known for it’s chocolate, so I knew that dessert was all but inevitable.
We started with a bottle of Jelu Malbec, an Argentinan red, and french bread. Delicious. (280 calories, more or less)
Appetizer: Beet Salad with Chevre (150 calories, more or less)
So far so good — as I’d had a light breakfast and burned 475 calories on the NordicTrac, while my friend and her husband had gone for a run.
Just to be clear, everything on the menu looked/sounded amazing — you know you’re in trouble when they’ve managed to even make the calf liver sound good! Sidestepping the scallops, the roasted chicken, the skirt steak, the Irish stew, the homemade pork/veal sausage, the trout, and the salmon, I ordered the Chef’s Selection of Local Vegetables. I even lied when the waitress asked if I liked risotto and just told her to hit me with some extra veggies!
The plate, when it arrived, was gorgeous. In fact, in some ways, it was the most aesthetically beautiful plate on the table. Fresh peas, broccoli rabe, fingerling potatoes, lightly steamed bok choy, asparagus, and a wedge of deep fried tofu topped with a light citrus/ginger/honey sauce. Yum! (200 calories; again, I’m guessing, but it all tasted very clean and the tofu was quite small).
Dessert: A single chocolate madeline (70 calories), another glass of wine (120) and bites others’ desserts: 100 (for a total of 290 calories)
Then there were the chocolate samples in the shop next door: 100 calories, easy.
Grand total: 1020. And that’s with the vegetable plate, the salad appetizer, and the smallest, least fattening dessert available.
Granted, I could have skipped the second glass of wine and the chocolate samples, but it wouldn’t have fit the mood — of the occasion, of the day, of the place, nor certainly of the people. It was a great meal. It was a great day.
I’m not saying that you should never eat out. But I am saying that you shouldn’t feel compelled to go all out on every part of the meal just because it’s there. Make choices. And if you really want the quarter chicken, roasted and two cups of mashed potatoes — and you’re not running a half marathon the next day, as I wasn’t but my friend was — then maybe you should reconsider the wine.
Saggy, not suelte (this is probably one of those “and then some” categories I warned you about)!
A dear friend of mine wrote in an email to me recently: I hope that losing weight doesn’t mean wrinkles!
Well, uhm, in the case of women close to 40 or above, that’s exactly what it means. I wouldn’t say wrinkly, exactly. Maybe crepe-y is a somewhat more accurate description. Though, now that I read this out loud, I’m not sure which sounds worse!
Regardless, for as long as I could remember, my mother would encourage me to moisturize.
And out of my desire to be a good daughter, I’d buy moisturizer — good moisturizer. But somehow, despite my best intentions, I could never get motivated enough to get it out its container and into my skin. And now, at 39 years and 4 months, and 40 pounds less than I was three years ago, I wish that I had listened to my mother! Let’s just say that I finally found my motivation.
I think the trick for me was not just finding a moisturizer, but finding the moisturizer. In times past, I had done all kinds of research and talked to friends, collected recommendations, tried it on in the store — only to find out when I tried using it at home that the smell was too much after all or it wasn’t just my imagination, it did feel too oily, etc. You name it, I could find a problem with it!
A couple of weeks ago, however, I did the unprecedented. On a whim, I purchased $50+ of skin care products on my way out of a restaurant! A restaurant. Not a boutique, not a beauty salon, and certainly not a dermatologist’s office. A restaurant. Granted, it was a good restaurant, but still. Moreover, I hadn’t sampled it, I hadn’t even smelled it. My friend had simply said, “If you ever have an occasion to treat yourself, this stuff smells great.”
I bought the moisturizer, the hand cream, the facial tissues, the soap, and the body cream. It was nuts. No recommendations. No research. No trials. But I had an occasion and I wanted a treat. And, luckily for me and my thirsty, wrinkly, crepe-like skin, my impromptu purchase is paying off. Not only do I love it (and, therefore, use it every day), it appears to be working. I’m beginning to see some improvement in places on my body that actually look worse now than they did before I released the weight.
And, even better since the restaurant is about 2 hours from my house, you can buy it on line. And even better than that, they sell it in bulk with free shipping on orders of $100 or more!
Now, the purpose of the post is not to discourage anyone from exercising or releasing weight. But it is to encourage you to take care of your skin and, at the risk of sounding too much like my mother, moisturize, moisturize, moisturize!
Mixing it up and toning it (down)
Filed under: accountability, exercise, Jillian Michaels, k-bells, P90X, strategies, yoga |
Comments (2) Like most people, I am a creature of habit.
Over the last 30+ weeks, I realize that I have moved through 3 different phases of working out. In other words, whereas most people cross train I tend to do things in 10 week chunks.
Last summer, I was heavily ensconced in P90X. For those of you who haven’t seen the infomercials, it’s a total body program with a focus on upper body strength. I definitely lost inches, but not a lot of weight. In fact, I gained some, which was undoubtedly muscle.
In the fall, I continued on with parts of P90X (especially Yoga X) and added in really high intensity cardio — typically an hour on the tread climber or spinning, holding nothing back. I still didn’t lose weight — well, not much — but I kept the form.
In the winter, I dropped the weights and just went for the serious cardio — again, the tread climber and a spinning bike were my tools of choice. I was definitely in the more calories burned the better mindset. It was nothing for me to go work out an hour before teaching a spinning class! And more often than not, I kept my heart rate at the top of my aerobic zone or above. Indeed, around 3 days a week — at least — I was burning over a 1,000 a day in exercise. Eventually, however, I was also eating close to 2,000 calories a day in order to fuel my exercise habit. It was also easier to fool myself into believing that it was okay if I ate the chocolate croissant, because I had “worked it off”! In fact, what I was doing was starving my body of oxygen at the very times that it needed it the most!
Notably, I actually liked the hard exercise. I liked spending that much time in the gym. I liked the sweat and the stench of hard work. It made me feel like I’d actually accomplished something. What I didn’t like about it was that even with all that work, even with the consistent and often times steep calorie deficits, I still wasn’t losing weight. In fact, if felt like every time I had a glass of wine or anything at all, I’d glob on three pounds before it even got past my taste buds!
During the spring (since mid March), I switched modes. I stopped working out at a break neck speed. I started spending the bulk of my time at the low end of my aerobic training zone and I started implementing real warm ups and cool downs. Essentially, I started doing what people had been telling me for years. 10 minute warm up, 40 minutes in your training zone, and 10 minute cool down. Guess what? I started releasing weight. Not only did I start releasing weight, I did it in about half the time and with less wear and tear on the joints.
At first, when I started working out at 130-150 beats per minute (my real target zone) I thought: What a waste of time. This isn’t doing anything! But I was wrong. It did do something. I released the weight and it’s been easy to keep it from coming back. Granted, there have been minor bumps in the trend line, but nothing major. If you look at the trend line, it’s been slow and steady. In fact, I’m still releasing weight — though not nearly to the degree that I was in March and April. And that’s fine, because I don’t need to release it that fast. Indeed, I am actually at the point where I’m not sure if I need to release any more at all. Never thought I’d be in the position to say that before! (Which is probably why it never happened!)
Which brings me to my next 10 week cycle.
Despite my deep passion for cardio, my plan is to minimize its role in the next phase of my exercise career. I hope that by writing it down, I will commit to an even lower keeled routine for a while. One that includes some cardio (maybe every other day instead of five to six days a week and for maybe 30 minutes instead of an hour) and centers, instead, on a maintenance-oriented routine that includes toning, k-bells, and yoga. I’m thinking that yoga (60 to 90 minutes) and toning every other day would be a good thing.
My inner cardio-queen cries out in agony: Don’t do it!
The shift from weight loss to maintenance and overall fitness is challenging. Psychologically, it just feels wrong to exercise for an hour and a half to only burn 220 calories — my typical results after 90 minutes of flow yoga poses and balance postures. But I’m going to do it. As soon as spinning ends (June 11), it’s me, Michelle, Tony, and Jillian. Talk about changing your peer group!
Consider this my public declaration of commitment.
Men’s Health
Filed under: accountability, cultural, goals, maintenance, motivation, relationships, strategies |
Comments (6) Every year, MJ comes home with a “popular magazine” as his way of tuning into what’s going on in the world. Last year it was Cosmo (which we read together on the couch and laughed so hard we couldn’t take it anymore)! Thank God mother never let us have that in the house. Harlequin Romances, yes. Cosmo, no.
This year, it was Men’s Health, which, as it turns out, is the male version of Cosmo. Seriously, it was all about sex, nutrition, and exercise. And, more to the point, the headlines were almost identical: 125 Best Foods for Men, No-Diet Weight Loss Plan, 30 Red-Hot Sex Secrets, Strip Away Stress, 7 New Rules of Money & Women, Great Abs Made Easy, Melt Away Pounds! 15-Minute Fat Burners, Look Your Best Now! Interestingly, they also have a number of “Short Order Cook Recipes.” They’re obviously designed to impress a date, but they look pretty good. There are also a couple of other random tips in there that I may pass on later.
But the most interesting thing in there by far was an article — that looks like it be part of a series — called, It Works for Me: Master Your Domain.
This segment, or this month’s feature, was on actor Tyrese Gibson.
“Tyrese Gibson, star of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, gained weight and lost motivation. To right himself, he first had to change everything around him.”
On Maintenance:
“He lost his sense of consequence, he says. It’s easy to do: Accomplish something and your attitude can go from I’m working hard for this to This is mine. Do that and you’ve already failed. A boss doesn’t promote you because you did work hard. A woman doesn’t love you because you were devoted to her. They want you in the present and future tense. They expect you from here on in to work hard, to be devoted. Start coasting and you roll backward.”
On Modeling:
“We men have to put our pride and egos and just say, ‘You know what? I need help,’” Gibson says. “Bring something to the table. To somebody who has the keys to whatever door you’re trying to go through, say, ‘Look, man, I have five keys of my own, but I’m trying to figure out how to get these other keys.’
Think of of it this way: Every man is surrounded by better men. A man who’s more financially secure than you are can teach you something, and chances are he can learn something from you. So approach him. Collaborate. Successful men aren’t symbols of your inferiority; they’re examples worth engaging.”
On Upgrading Your Peer Group:
“The five people you spend most of your time with will dictate how far your life and career will go. Slobs will make you a slob. Gibson loved fried calamari, and he had friends who bought it for him all the time. But if you’re friends work hard and eat right, you’ll be embarrassed to eat fried anything around them.
It isn’t easy to switch friends. Gibson knows that. It took him months: less time with this person, more time with that one. Scoops of fried calamari gave way to scoops of tuna on lettuce, now his regular lunch. Guys at the gym taught him new exercises. He runs five miles a day on a treadmill. He lifts regularly.”
I liked this for a number of reasons. One, it reinforces things I already know, which is always good. But, two, this series also gives us a chance to model someone who has been there. As embarrassing at it may sound, something tells me that I may have to start spending more time at Borders lurking in the magazine section!
What’s for dinner?
I came home early from work and Michael and I decided to take advantage of the warm weather and went for a walk before dinner.
After reacquainting ourselves with the neighbors — I’m the one on the right — we headed home and I pulled out my trusty Moosewood Cooks at Home; and the winner was: – Red, Gold, Black, and Green Chili!
It’s extremely forgiving; I messed this simple dish up two or three different ways in the 35 minutes it took to prepare and it still turned out delicious!
I served it with a bowl of fresh baby carrots, a handful of organic blue tortilla chips, and a couple of dashes of mild Tabasco pepper sauce! Yum.
Recipe: Red, Gold, Black, and Green Chili
Adapted from Moosewood Cooks at Home
“Serve with warm tortillas or tortilla chips and crudites…. Leftovers can be either used for a burrito or pita bread filling or thinned with stock or water for a soup.”
Time: 35 minutes
Serves 4 to 6
1/2 cup bulghur
1/2 cup hot water
3 cups undrained canned tomatoes (28 ounce can)
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cups chopped onions
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 generous teaspoon ground cumin
1 generous teaspoon chili powder
1 1/2 tablespoons of Tabasco green pepper sauce (milder than the real stuff)
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
2 cups fresh or frozen cut corn
1/2 cups drained cooked black beans (14 ounce can)
1/2 cups drained cooked kidney beans (14 ounce can)
salt to taste
chopped fresh cilantro (1/2 cup or to taste)
Place the blughur, hot water, and about a cup of the juice from the canned tomatoes in a small saucepan. Cover and bring to a boil on high heat, then lower the heat and simmer gently.
While the bulghur cooks, heat the olive oil in a large suacepan.
Saute the onions, garlic, cumin, chili powder, and Tabasco.
When the onions are soft, stir in the bell peppers and saute for 2 to 3 minutes.
Chop the tomatoes right in the can and add them to the pan.
Stir in the corn and the beans, and heat thoroughly on low heat.
Taste the bulghur. When it is cooked but still chewy, add it to the pan with its liquid. Cover and simmer for a few minutes for the flavors to meld.
Add salt to taste.
Serve topped with fresh cilantro (or mix it in at the end).
Per 8 oz serving: 190 calories, 6.8 grams protein, 5.8 grams fat, 30.4 grams carbohydrate, 291 mg sodium, 0 mg cholesterol
