Skipping Dessert … and taking the stairs

First, the picture:

What’s this, you ask?  Why, it’s how you get a better idea of what you’re buying if you have to buy at the supermarket instead of the co-op or the farmer’s market. Now, I don’t want to get into a discussion right here about whether or not genetic modification is the devil incarnate (there are actually good arguments either way, although I lean toward the “yes, it’s the devil” side).  What I want to do is arm you with a little information to make you and me better consumers.

As you see, a four-digit plu starting with 3 or 4, well, that’s “conventionally grown.”  That means it was grown with pesticides and commercial fertilizers.  It also means it looks and feels pretty standard and is pretty cheap. May not have a lot of flavor, but hey, it still grows out of the ground.

The five-digit code starting with 9?  That’s the expensive one.  It’s also the one with the most flavor and nutrients.  Your call.  I report, you decide.

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The link:  This CNN story about dieting.  A few simple, and one would hope, obvious, points that may help keep you on track.  Things like, even foods that are really, really, really good for you still contain calories, so if you find the most awesome wild salmon that ever swam upstream, and you eat the whole thing, you’ve eaten too much.  Read, learn. Just puh-leeze, don’t think of it as “dieting.”

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And the video:

There’s a good chance you’ve seen this (very) short film featuring an older vocal track from Alan Watts.  You might have even seen it a few days ago when I posted it on Facebook.  Regardless, I highly recommend you watch it.  The gist is that if we all did the thing(s) we love instead of the thing(s) we think we’re supposed to do, we’d all be better off and so would the world.  I got some interesting feedback on it, but the truth is, I think it was misunderstood.  It sounds simple.  And it is simple.  It’s also really hard.  As Malcolm Gladwell tells us in Outliers, mastery (which Watts talks about in the video) requires at least 10,000 hours of practice.

Trust me, just watch, then think.

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Thanks for stopping in, dear reader.  You know the drill – pass it along as you see fit.

“Defy the crowd. The crowd isn’t always wise. It can also lead you down a path of silliness, sub-optimal choices, and downright destruction.” – Guy Kawasaki

I took this picture yesterday at my local Big-Box Bookstore.

Twenty-Five Feet of Disagreement

 It’s the diet book section.  I counted-off twenty-five steps (and I step big) from one end of this section to the other.  This is not the cookbook section, or the health and fitness section, it’s just the diet books.

I took this picture at the same store, at a display up-front.

Four books, four contradictions.

I was thinking,”Hey, this will illustrate how confusing dieting is – four brand-new books, all contradicting each other.”  And then I decided to go look for the diet book section, assuming it would be four or five feet wide.  Shows how much I know.

The question I have now is how in the world is it possible for any human being to look at all those books and come up with any kind of reasonable expectation that they can find helpful information?

Remember too that most of the people looking to those books for help are scared and sad already.  Throwing hundreds (thousands?) of books of advice at them just makes the problem worse.

The crowd says, clearly, and with a loud voice, buy diet books.  Buy all of them. Drive yourself crazy trying to rationalize how they can all be right.

The crowd is wrong.  You know that in your bones.  It’s silly, sub-optimal and destructive, at least in this case.  What’s right?  I hate to be a broken record, but what’s right is eating real food.  Enough of it – just enough – and at the right time.  What’s right is paying attention to how your body reacts when you eat something.  What’s right is thinking for yourself.

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For those of you scoring at home, not a banner week for me on the scales, but I’m sticking’ with it.  Stuck at 262.  I blame the gnocchi. Next week I’m determined to get below 260.

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Thanks for reading, and thanks to all those readers who forwarded the blog to friends this week.  I appreciate your support!

Some actual questions people ask me about this stuff:

Do you really skip dessert?  Yes.

How come?  Glad you asked.  I’ve never been a big dessert craver.  Don’t get me wrong, I like sweets, but they’re not something I crave most of the time. When I decided it was time to live healthier a couple of years ago I went looking for the easy calories to ditch and that ended up being dessert.

Want some cake?  No, thanks.  Here’s the thing about dessert/sweets:  I don’t crave them until I have some.  And then I can’t think about anything but more dessert until I eat myself sick.  At first I thought that must be all in my head (and some of it is) but after reading up on it, I’ve learned that modern over-processed sweets develop a chemical need in some of us for more of the same.  So, no thanks, I’m good without the cake.

Just a small slice?  Look, I know you’re trying to be polite, but go read the last answer again.  Unless you want me to eat your whole cake.

Which diet are you on?  I’m not on a diet. Being “on a diet” implies that sooner or later you’ll be off that diet.   And then you’ll gain your weight back.  I’ve been there too many times “on” too many diets and I’ve watched too many other people do the same thing.  I’ve learned things from lots of diets (the glycemic index is a great tool I picked up from the South Beach Diet), but my greatest inspiration for what I’m doing here is Michael Pollan‘s work.  His tagline, “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants,” is, frankly, the perfect “diet plan.”

“Eat food?”  Duh.   Sounds like you may not be understanding.  By “food” I mean stuff actually grown out of the ground or stuff that ate stuff that came out of the ground.  The stuff on outer ring of the supermarket or, better yet, the stuff at the farmer’s market or the co-op.  Again, I’ll defer to Pollan:  “Don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.”  So, no Doritos.

What’s this “taking the stairs” business?  I’m a big believer in exercise that is part of your day.  The stuff we used to do as part of life, but have allowed modern convenience to take over for us.  Unless you have some sort of injury or disability, if your destination is on the second or third floor you ought to be taking the stairs.  Don’t take the “good” parking spot next to the store that everyone’s fighting over.  Park in the shade and walk a few extra feet.

What do you have against going to the gym?  Nothing at all.  You should go to the gym.  Unless you hate going to the gym.  In which case you should not.  Don’t make yourself hate exercise, because then it becomes like being “on a diet.”  You’ll eventually resent it and stop.  So find exercise you enjoy, or at least build passive exercises (like taking the stairs) into your day.  Change your life for the better and for the long run, not just for a couple of months.

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Thanks for reading.  Don’t forget, you can share this via Facebook Twitter or you could just tell a buddy 🙂

Those of you who have been with Skipping Dessert for the long-haul might remember that last Spring Sprightly Daughter Number Two and I planted a peach tree in the backyard (“The Orchard”).  Over the course of the long, hot summer, no matter how assiduously we followed the backyard-ag advice, the orchard, it failed us.

Our poor peach tree, by Autumn, was to all outward appearances, a stick.

And then, one fine, unseasonably warm Saturday morning in January there were peach blossoms.  All over the orchard.  Covering the peach tree.

Sprightly 2 and I have since pinched off all the buds left behind by the blossoms – tree’s too small to support good fruit this year – but it was a perfect reminder that when you give nature a good start and the proper boost, good things happen.  Peaches happen when you least expect them.

While Skipping Dessert was on hiatus this past Fall, I also experienced my greatest agricultural achievement:  The tangerine tree in our front yard (yes, “The Grove”) gave us more than 60 perfectly sweet, perfectly orange tangerines.

And last summer?  Those tomatoes Sprightly 2 and I planted (as referenced above) produced some of the juiciest, tastiest tomatoes I’ve ever sliced for a sandwich.

My point?  I can now say, conclusively, that actual food comes out of the ground. Seriously.  Yes, on the scale my suburban grove, orchard and garden produce, it’s cheaper to just go to the Co-op, but the act of growing and harvesting your own food for your own table, I gotta tell you, it does not suck.

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Thanks, as always, for reading. Tell a friend!

Yes, back on schedule – a pound a week.  Which is not as good as it sounds, because, if you’ll recall, last week I was ahead of schedule.  Still, no worries.  262.

Here’s something interesting you already know if you’ve ever lost significant weight.  When you lose weight over a consistent period, every now and then you look in the mirror and notice you look a little different. A pair of pants fits better, you find a new hole in your belt, you notice a little less jowl while brushing your teeth.

That’s all very nice, but yesterday I was walking down the hall and my arms didn’t feel right.  Well, not so much my arms, but what they weren’t touching.  My arms were not rubbing the sides of my belly while I walked.  Yes, I’ll wait right here while you go walk across the room to see if your arms rub your belly while you walk …

Now, those of you who are perpetually skinny have no idea what I’m talking about.  Those of you who get it are giving me a virtual fist-bump right now.

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Thank you for reading.  Remember, if you’re not already a subscriber, you can get this blog delivered directly to your email inbox every time I post something new.  See where it says, “Don’t Miss a Post”  over there on the right?  Investigate that.

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!

This week, I’m making every effort to not get hung-up and post about the same things over and over the way I did last week.  You should be aware, however, that my “making every effort” does not always get us to the preferred destination.  Just sayin’.

With that in mind, however, let us talk about something entirely different.

This past Sunday I discovered that an old occasional haunt of our family, 43rd St. Deli, offers a number of brunch-y offerings that fit my plan to a tee.  I’m pretty sure they didn’t plan it this way – in fact, I’m fairly certain they were just shooting for quick and greasy – but they have a whole page of stuff that worked just fine.  I ordered a three-egg spinach, tomato and provolone omelette. As a side – this is the good part – tucked in a corner of the menu was a note that they offer brown rice with grilled onions and mushrooms.  Score!

Yeah, it was greasy, but it was tasty in a greasy-spoon-y kinda way.  Which I heartily recommend.

Now, Sunday evening was not as wise a choice on my part.  Stubbies and Steins offers an enormous selection of beer, some of which would probably not have been a bad choice.  I had a Guinness.  At least it’s dark.  Really, really dark.  It’s a little like whole-wheat bread, now that I think about it.  I ordered a bratwurst with sauerkraut – both of which are reasonable choices for the most part (in moderation).  The pretzel roll that came with dinner, all of which I ate, was not a good choice.

The point is that there are good choices all around us.  Very few restaurants don’t offer anything that doesn’t work for what I’m doing.  The challenge is making the good choice.

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In other semi-related news, Sprightly Daughters One and Two, always early risers, are old enough now that often on Saturdays they let my Lovely Wife and me actually sleep until 7-ish (yeah, I know, that doesn’t sound late at all – trust me) while they watch a little TV and annoy each other.

This past Saturday when it finally got loud enough for me to get up and find out what was going on … they were at the dining table eating breakfast.  Again, that might not sound like a big deal to you, but that’s a huge deal for us.  A milestone.  They made good food choices, didn’t spill a darn thing, and I couldn’t find anything to yell at them about.

Looking forward to a little more of that.  At least until the day the gallon of milk gets dumped on the kitchen floor.

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Thanks for reading!  Come back soon.

Happy Friday, friendly reader.  Good day at the scales – down two pounds from last week, to 262.  Which puts me a little ahead of the current schedule.

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On to more pressing news.  Yesterday’s post was not happy-making, to say the least.  In that post, I said we needed more education about how to make good choices with regard to food.  It’s frankly embarrassing to me as an American patriot that we are so poorly educated about “food” (and it’s easy to make the argument that we’ve been led to such overall ignorance to line the pockets of Big Ag, but I won’t do that here right now).

We have a serious problem with food in America, and it’s one I submit threatens our long-term national security.  We have children right here in the richest nation the world has ever known who don’t get enough food to thrive.  We have even more children here whose parents manage to fill their bellies but who don’t get much actual nutrition from those belly-fillings because the parents don’t know what real food is.  That’s how we built an obesity epidemic, in my opinion. It’s shameful that we have allowed supermarkets to become so very confusing – all that stuff on the shelves claims to be “food,” whether it is or not.

Thankfully, the availability of good food education is increasing.  There are several movies out there that are helpful, and regular readers know I swear by Michael Pollan‘s work.  Today I want to plug this movie, which will be available March 1.  I’ve only seen the trailer, but based on that and what I’ve read about it, you can bet I’ll be watching it.  If you’re concerned about the American food system, I suggest you do the same.

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Thanks for reading, as always.  Hey, if you’re on the Twitter, you could share this blog with your followers there.  Just sayin’.