Flexitarianism

I love my red meat just as much as the next omnivore. I also love my poultry and my fish. But sometimes, I also like things like tofu. (Which I think my Italian and Irish parents still don't understand. But that's okay.) In fact, it's actually pretty healthy for your body to have some days when you don't have meat. Even Women's Health (my favorite healthy mag) says so.

Ew, bean curd, you say. Once you get past that, and the strange consistency of raw tofu, you'll really like it. It has no discernible taste of its own, so you can do with what you like and it will sop up whatever flavoring you add to it. 

My old college roomie, Jen, made me some great tofu "parmigiana" a few weeks ago. I'll have to get the recipe from her (or she can post it in the comments!), but I think she used planko flakes for the "breading" and I'm assuming maybe eggs to make it stick. Jen and I lived together part of freshman year and all of sophomore year. All of the Chinese and pizza delivery people within a mile radius of American University knew our names. Now we're eating tofu together! We've come a long way, baby! 

I bought some tofu the other day that I want to cook tonight, and I'm looking for a recipe. Some of my loyal readers have asked for recipes, so be sure to watch for some great (EASY - I live alone and make dinner after 8pm when I get home from the gym, so nothing tough here!) healthy recipes.

My Day in Food: Dinner (Last night)

Update on temptation:

Attended Junior League meeting, was steadfast in declining pizza. I was walking home from the subway, and my stomach started GRUMBLING. I think other people were actually looking at me, it was growling so loudly. I walked past a few more pizza parlors (this is NYC, after all, and there are as many pizza parlors as people) and had an inner debate: "Would it REALLY be SO bad if I had a slice of pizza?" My trainer (who's now reading this, I think) would be glad to know that the angel in my head told the devil in my head "YES! It would be so bad to have it."

So, I stopped and picked up some sushi because, in retrospect, my "dinner" was too small. It was even too small to post a photo of. It was the leftovers of the balsamic chicken from the night before on some more lettuce. So, I had two sushi rolls. I wish they had brown rice, and I wish there hadn't been tempura flakes in the sweet potato one (have you noticed I love sweet potatoes?), but I think it was still a better choice than the pizza.

I got on the scale this am and weighed two pounds less than I did yesterday, so I guess it was an okay choice! That's still one pound more than I weighed when I woke up Friday. No more overindulging weekends for a while for me!

Temptation

NYC is an amazing city to live in and even diet in! When I first moved
here, I took advantage of the great restaurants, the 24-hour
neighborhood grocery stores and--my favorite--SeamlessWeb.

For those not in the know, seamlessweb.com is a Web site where you can
order food to be delivered without ever speaking to the kindly souls
answering the phone that don't have a damn clue what you're saying. It
shows you what restaurants are available at the time you're placing
your order, and it even stores your credit card.

Needless to say, the Thai and Italian places were excited to have me
move in. But even now that I'm eating healthy, SeamlessWeb is still my
friend. I can order from Energy Kitchen, a healthy place with lots of
lean protein and veggies, or from the sushi place if I go easy (or
brown) on the rice. There's also Pump, where I went yesterday, which
is also amazing

You're thinking, okay, I can handle myself at home, but what about
when I go out?

Tonight I have a Junior League meeting at someone's apartment, so I
plan on grabbing a bite first so that I'm not tempted to eat the pizza
that I know she'll order.

What if you're going out a restaurant? I guarantee almost anywhere has a
salad or some kind of protein you can get. If not, make a concious
effort to eat as small a portion as possible and have something
healthier when you get home. I'm sure you know this, but try to get
any and all sauces on the side.

How do you resist temptation? Drop me an e-mail at theodora dot blanchfield at gmail dot com or let me know in the comments!

My day in food: Lunch

Lunch today is a Boca tomato-and-basil burger on a bed of spinach with some tomatoes and sundried tomatoes. I microwaved the burger, so this lunch took about a minute to make. I'm eating at home because I work walking distance from my apartment and my little dog needs a walk, but this is something you could make at work, too, as long as your office has a microwave.

As far as keeping the spinach from going soggy from the dressing, The Container store has these awesome Salad Blaster Bowls, which my former (amazing!) boss turned me onto a few years ago. I wasn't really eating much salad then, so I bought one and promptly lost it in my next move. But I'm going to order another one, and you can do so too, here.

Some nutrition guidelines

So here's some guidelines my trainer gave me. I follow this probably about 90 percent. The no dairy is pretty tough.


1. I don't listen to anything the news or anything I see advertised has to say about food/nutrition. You hear/see catch phrases like fat-free, sugar-free, antioxidants, low carbs, blah, etc. Oprah does this or eats that......All designed to make you buy something, NOT designed to make you healthy.

2. Variety, variety, VaRiEtY. Eat nuts, but not just Almonds every day, eat fruit, but not just oranges. I once listed everything I ate in a day and it had 30 something ingredients. So try EVERYTHING that is natural often. And this will also help you eat everything in moderation.

3. Fats are good for you and will not make you fat. Our body needs dietary fat to metabolize food properly and make hormones(which control all cell function). Upon further research, I have also learned that even saturated fats are needed by the body for very complex metabolic system pathways. Once thought to be evil, cholesterol is needed to make testosterone. This helps to explain why increased exercise lowers cholesterol and raises testosterone. So eat the whole egg!! Use olive oil and use nuts as a great snack. Vitamin d is also made by our body with sunlight and cholesterol as a precursor.

4. When you eat matters. I choose to have 6-8 meals a day. Why give your "Engine" it's largest meal at night?...So the energy can be stored for later..as fat?? The body uses energy only when it needs it. Lets say you eat an egg, some mixed greens w/olive oil, an orange, and mixed fruit blended in a shake for breakfast. The total energy from this meal is probably around 400 calories. Most of these ingredients are "slow burning" (low glycemic index)and will be used by your body as they are being digested which will take maybe 3-4 hours. Chances are you will need the 400 calories over that period of time. Now lets say you drank a coffee w/sugar and milk, and had a bagel with cream cheese. Ok, roughly 400 calories as well. The sugar enters the body immediately and the white-bread bagel is turned into sugar almost as quickly and placed into the blood stream. But, your body doesn't need 400 calories that fast. So, what does the body do with excess calories? The answer is NOT leave the sugar in the blood stream. The answer is store it for later...as glycogen or in most cases..as fat.

5. I only use natural, whole, organic food. Period. Natural to me means unprocessed. I don't need my food to be put in a can and heated or to be dried and cooked in some factory. Our bodies were not meant to digest chemicals and preservatives. Cherries are good, canned cherries are useless. Green beans are great, canned ones are not. Whole means the entire thing (within reason). Some exceptions apply..an example is olive oil. An orange is good, just it's juice is not. Wheat is not that bad, just it's flour, is. Organic is the only catch phrase I hear a lot that I do agree with. If it is truly organic that means the farmers didn't use pesticides or fertilizers.

6. I don't consume milk/dairy. This would take a colloquium for me to explain fully, just go to www.notmilk.com

7. I eat as many vegetables as possible. Again, too many reasons why.. Consult an oncologist or someone who studies centenarian diets for all the reasons. Frozen, fresh, steamed, un-steamed, sauteed in olive oil..whatever.

8. I try to stay away from most grains. They just have an abundance of energy with little nutrition...something I don't need.

9. I like lentils, beans, and legumes.

10. Soy is not that great. It has become an adulterated unnatural replacement protein that is found in everything. Google it.

11. Red meat makes me tired and I find I am hungry shortly after eating it. I love how it tastes, but gave it up and never felt better.

12. I have found that eating too little makes me store fat easier. Yes, when I was trying to lose the last 5 pounds of body fat on my stomach I noticed it wasn't until I ate more that it started to go away. The answer is survival. When you don't eat enough calories the body slows metabolic function to as low as possible, and will do everything in it's power to conserve energy, especially the energy stored as fat and glycogen. Then, when you try to jog 5 miles to burn it off, the body just responds by slowing the BMR (basil metabolic rate). Causing further frustration and causing one to "crash" or become hungry. This is why you can see overweight people who spend hours on a treadmill tell you, "but I hardly eat anything!" Why would your body use up energy it has stored when it knows it can just make you tired, lower the heat, or make you eat something?? It wasn't until I ate more and more often with the right amount of exercise that my body realized the energy was going to be replaced and my six-pack started showing.

13. Finally, if one were to insist on drinking coffee or soda, just use real sugar. Aspartame and the like are poisons and will increase insulin resistance and make you hungrier, sicker, and tired. Google it, go to www.mercola.com and read through his site, or go strait to, www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/hidden_dangers.htm I agree with most of what Dr. Mercola says with the exception(s) of his take on whey and he always seems to be selling something he is talking about....how convenient. If I was selling Tulsey tea, I could list 1,000 great things about it as well.