Archive for the ‘Dieting’ Category

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And Back Down Again

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

We got home from our East Coast trip last Friday. We made it to three of our four planned stops (the oncoming snowstorm heading toward the DC area truncated the trip). I ate far more than I have been for the past eight months and gained 4.8 pounds.

But I had pre-dieted and left at 149.4, well under my current goal weight. And when I got home I went back on the stricter version of my diet and the weight melted off. I also snowshoed for an hour on Sunday and worked hard at the gym yesterday

We even went to a party last night, a fund-raiser for the Symphony Guild. It was titled "My Curry Valentine," and featured four curries: beef, lamb, chicken and shrimp, three kinds of rice, pappadums (Indian flat bread), a variety of topping for the curries, salad, a variety of wines (or Fat Tire beer, a local favorite) and cookies plus three choices of sorbet for dessert.

I drank a lot of water, took small helpings of each curry, didn't have seconds (that's not quite true; I did have several pappadums), some salad, a few of the toppings, ate one cookie, had one small helping of one of the three sorbets, and one half-glass of Reisling.

Today I weigh 149.6 pounds, only two tenths up from my pre-trip weight and well under what I've been terming my final goal weight. I'm thinking of re-setting that to 149 as I've recently gotten lots of compliments on how I've slimmed down; nobody has said, "You're too thin).

So overall I had a short and temporary hiatus from my diet, but had prepared well for our trip and went back to dieting as soon as we returned. I didn't let the short-term weight gain throw me off my overall plan. Concentration on my long-term goal helped a lot as did the exercise and the past eight months experience with a successful approach to eating sensibly.

Posted in Dieting, Exercise possibilities, Healthly lifestyle, Healthy eating, Holiday/travel eating | No Comments »

After-travel thoughts

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

We're back from our East Coast swing. The dieting issue was at least as problematic as I anticipated. I already wrote one post about visiting our former Chinese grad student and her family. First they took us out to dinner, then we got ready for their twin's second birthday party the next day. There were thirty guests for that mid-day gustatory marathon. After they ate and left, another couple with a seven-year-old and an eleven-year-old came over and dinner was served.

Our next stop was with our Indian kids whose twins are six and a half months old. They cooked less than usual, as their lives have gotten considerably busier, but ordered out more than usual. Since they are vegetarians, we had some respite, but they certainly made sure we were well fed.

Our Baltimore friends (their twins are four and their older son is seven) follow fairly healthy eating patterns at home, and we got up early and served ourselves cereal and fruit for breakfast. But we were taken to a very nice restaurant before we even got to their home and had crab soup and crab cakes. Overall I ate considerably more on this week-long trip than I usually do.

What I didn't get was any real exercise. We're used to a six or seven times/week fairly strenuous gym workout or snowshoeing; here we got to walk a bit, largely in airports, but we sat a lot. I didn't even have much opportunity to walk up and down stairs. I did actively play with the older kids in Baltimore.

I then realized, as our trip was truncated by approaching the DC-area blizzard, that we were going to have overnight company, our niece-to-be, her eleven-year-old daughter and the daughter's best friend,when we got home.

I stepped on the scale this morning and watched to see if I was over my 155 upper limit (I left at 149.6). I found myself moderately pleased that I was under by 0.8 pounds

So today we went back to our diets. Our guests went shopping and I ate half of my lunch. Tonight I'll have cereal and a piece of fruit before the Symphony's concert. I've arranged for a snowshoeing trip tomorrow.

Could I have avoided this 4.6 pound travel bounce? I've done so while I was still trying to lose weight; this time, well below goal weight, I gave myself  leeway, more than  I should have.

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Pre-eat and pre-diet

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Okay, we're finally about to go see the kids out east. We'll make four stops in eight days. The first friend has a husband who's a great cook; the second couple both cook, she better than he; the third couple will take us out to dinner and the fourth (a daughter, son-in-law,grandson) also will want to eat out. Before we leave, we have one dinner out planned (It's music night at our favorite Thai restaurant) and a  catered event for our symphony.

Wow! that's a lot of eating coming up in the next few days.

So how do I handle this situation? I start by acknowledging that I'll be eating more than usual in the relatively brief period. I'll go back on my strict diet now and leave here under my goal weight of 151-152. While I'm on the road I'll  be as careful as possible to avoid binges; I'll focus on vegetables and fruit and minimize meats and sweet dishes.

I know I'm likely to come home over my upper limit (three pounds over goal) as I won't get my usual exercise on this trip either.  I can live with that as long as I don't go too far overboard with my eating pattern. When I get home and settled back into place, I'll have return to my more stringent diet until I'm back to goal again, not just until I'm within the three-pound-over-goal range I usually can relax within.

I'll let you know on the far side.

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Review: The Spectrum by Dean Ornish, M.D.

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

I briefly reviewed three books a while back, then said I want to go through them in more detail. I've done so for two of the three and now I'd like to discuss Dean Ornish's fascinating book, The Spectrum. Dr. Ornish is Clinical Professor of Medicine at UC, San Francisco and heads the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute. His five previous books have espoused a comprehensive diet and lifestyle approach toward preventing and, in some cases, reversing some of the major diseases especially afflicting those of us who eat the Western diet. He's been doing research since he was a medical student in the 1970s, conducted multiple demonstration projects in the United States since the early 1990s and finally garnering enough data for Medicare to agree to cover his program for reversing heart disease.

I basically knew this, had read some of his earlier books and had used some of the recipes from two of his publications, Eat More, Weigh Less and Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish. One of our all time favorites, as I've previously mentioned, is a recipe called Fruited Grain. We've made this in a variety of ways and, especially when fresh plums are in season, make it frequently.

The Spectrum extends his approach. As the name implies it gives a thorugh spectrum of dietary and lifestyle choices for people who have significant disease and also for those who are healthy. Its DVD of guided meditations was written by Anne Ornish, a yoga and meditation teacher who is Dean Ornish's wife. It also has a hundred recipes, most with optional variants, developed by chef Art Smith, who was the 2007 recipient of the James Beard Humanitarian Award.

Much of this I've said, in briefer form, before. What's most interesting about this book is its blend of plain common sense and ground-breaking collaborative medical research.  I was aware of Dr. Ornish's research on coronary artery disease; I knew nothing of his work, done with UCSF and Sloan-Kettering on prostate cancer. I'll follow his studies and publications with considerable interest and think you should also.

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Worth reading: The New York Times Magazine 10-11-09

Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

A DC-area friend joined us recently for snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park. We had a cabin at the nearby YMCA camp and everyone brought reading material for the evenings. Lee brought me the October 11th edition of The New York Times Magazine, titled "The Food Issue: Putting America's Diet on a Diet."

Mark Bittman, A NYT regular columnist wrote on "Faster Slow Food," advocating the concept of focused, individualized, online grocery announcements, allowing consumers to buy the kind of food they wanted, when and where they were ready to shop.  Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food will be publishing Food Rules; An Eater's Manual soon and contributed some of 2,500 answers NYT readers gave him in response to a request for their guidelines for eating.

Douglas McGray contributed an article, "A Fresh-Food Bank," about California's leading the charge to hand out fresh foods, rather than canned foods, to food-bank recipients. Their efforts have been ongoing since a 2005 agreement was established between CA food banks and growers + packers statewide.

There are a variety of viewpoints and issues discussed in this fascinating collection of short, pithy articles about diet, dietary quirks and preferences and nutrition problems, mostly but not exclusively, in the United States. I found this edition to be well worth reading, not the least for a provocative article on long-term calorie-restriction research and its beneficial effects on health and, potentially, on longevity.

Posted in Dieting, Healthly lifestyle, Healthy eating, Healthy food shopping, Life Expectancy | 4 Comments »

Here's more on another book I liked

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

David Kessler's new (2009) book is ttitled The end of overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. Kessler knows his territory, both professionally (he's a former medical school dean and former FDA commissioner) and, from my read, personally. His premise is we've been, absolutely deliberately, conditioned to overeat. he's talking about Americans and the US food industry, but I think his comments are applicable widely, especially as the "American Diet" has made its way to many other countries. He discusses animal research which showed that sugar and fat, in combination, could override heredity. He also talks of how an executive of the food industry said they know and use the fact that combinations of  sugar, fat and salt make foods more pleasurable. They've spent large amounts on making prepared foods, especially quick foods more appealing to our senses.

The result, of course, has been expanding waistlines and increased average weight, significant contributors to a host of health problems. Kessler, in the latter part of his book, outlines a comprehensive approach to what he calls "Food Rehab." I think this is a book well worth reading and will give you a link to Dr. Kessler's website http://theendofovereating.com/

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More on Pollan's book: "In Defense of Food"

Friday, December 11th, 2009

I wrote a brief blurb on three excellent books in the diet/lifestyle arena recently, cogitated a bit and decided I needed to spend some more time on each of the triad. Let's start with Pollan's books. I really enjoyed The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006). There he discusses (and he and his family try) four American food chains: food from standard supermarkets, from large-chain supposedly organic stores, from farmers markets and, finally from his attempts to be  a hunter-gatherer. After my wife read the book, we started haunting the farmers markets, bought a bison and a lamb and bought three EarthBoxes.

Our diet changed, although it wasn’t ever “bad.” We cook at home  a lot, use fresh produce whenever possible, eat lots of vegetables and fruits and consume red meat sparingly. After reading Pollan’s latest book, 2008 paperback, In Defense of Food: An Eater 's Manifesto (IDOF),we've gone a lot further. For instance, early in IDOF he comments we should avoid foods that make health claims, because those “food products” aren’t really food.

Pollan’s advice on food products is exceedingly sound: he recommends we avoid those that contain ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number or contain high-fructose corn syrup. I’ve actually been doing this much of the time for years; I now do it much more frequently.

We live in an age where nutritionists and a huge food industry shape the shopping choices of most Americans. Yet our health statistics don’t reflect the claims made in favor of this or that food product or supplement. It’s time to get back to basics, eat food that isn’t shipped 6,000 miles, ignore the latest diet fads and widen our food choices, including trying plants we’ve ignored previously.

Read IDOF; it’s well worth your time.

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Three great books

Tuesday, December 8th, 2009

I've been reading a lot in the general field of dieting/lifestyle and, among twenty or so other books, came across three I'd highly recommend. I'll tell you about them in no particular order.

I had read and enjoyed "The Omnivore's Dilemma," Michael Pollan's  previous book in the field. Now I found his newer book, "In Defense of Food", published in 2008 by Penguin. Pollan has three simple rules for what we should eat to aim for health and they make a lot of sense. I'll let you find out how he words the rules, but basically he advocates staying away from processed foods, eating primarily fresh veggies (plus fruits and whole grains) and limiting your overall caloric intake. It's a wonderful read!

Next up is David Kessler, a former med school dean at UCSF and Yale and an ex-FDA commissioner. Dr. Kessler's 2009 book is titled, "The End of Overeating," and is published by Rodale.  This one is more scientific in its verbiage, but its main theme, I thought, was spot on. He believes the food industry has used a variety of combinations of sugar plus fat in their creations and in doing so has hooked us, nearly addicted some of us. They've also thrown in salt and lots of chemicals, but their approach to the complicated preparation of processed food seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to sell more "food," whatever the consequences to the customer. I've read that some of that is finally changing, but we just don't eat "fast food:"

The third author is Dr. Dean Ornish. We own several of his books, cook from them and actually contacted his Preventive Medicine Research Institute recently about one of our long-time favorites, fruited grain.  Dr. Ornish's 2008 book, "The Spectrum," published by Ballantine, is superb. It has a detailed discussion on Ornish's approach to lifestyle and diet, a DVD of guided meditations, and lots of recipes by Oprah's personal chef, Art Smith.

These three books provided, for me, a cross section of current thoughts in the diet/lifetsyle field. They're all different; they're all worth reading

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