Skipping Dessert … and taking the stairs

A friend of the blog asked me the other day if I really thought a three-egg omelette was a good choice.  The simple answer is, “Yes.”

It did remind me that Skipping Dessert has a number of new readers and that I should go back and give a quick primer on the food choices I’m trying to make and why I’m trying to make them. In brief:

Most importantly, I’m trying to avoid fake food.  Short ingredient lists with simple words.  For example, instead of eating something sweetened with “high-fructose corn syrup,” I choose “sugar,” or even better, “cane sugar” or “organic sugar.”  I actually try to avoid sugar in general, but you get the point.

While not exactly “fake,” I also try to avoid white flour and white sugar.  You know how flour and sugar get so blindingly white?  By processing the bejeezus (and most of the actual food ) out of them.  In ways you don’t want to know about.  By the time all that bleached nastiness gets into your body, your body has no idea what to do with it.  That’s a bad thing.  So I try to avoid it.  White bread, bad.  Brown bread (whole-wheat, whole-grain, etc.), good.  The browner the better.  Darker colors are a good indication that you’re dealing with something that has not had all its nutrition removed before your body gets a shot at it.  Whole-wheat pasta, brown rice.  Those are good for you.

Eggs, meat, dairy.  Love ’em.  No, you don’t want to overdo it with any of them, but there’s nothing wrong with a steak – particularly if the cow it came from didn’t come from a Big Ag farm.  Nothing wrong with butter (not margarine – see “fake food” above).  Nothing wrong with cheese.  Etc.

I try to keep two pieces of advice from Michael Pollan in mind:  “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.”  “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”  I also believe having a good idea of the glycemic index is helpful when making food choices.

As you may surmise from the title of this blog, I don’t eat dessert.  I just don’t.  Doesn’t mean you can’t, but if I do I will eat more dessert.  And more. And more.  So I don’t.  And it’s not a problem.  I don’t even think about it unless I start eating it, and then I want a lot of it.  I also don’t eat fast food or drink soda – with our without calories.

And yet somehow I manage to lead a full, rich life.

So, that’s a good start.  It works for me, and I’ll bet it would work for you.  I do deviate from the path.  Just this evening I had a plate of white-flour spaghetti.  Stuff happens.  I don’t beat myself up about it, but I keep the plan in mind.  Hope that’s helpful.

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Thanks for reading!