Eat Out Eat Well

weight management strategies

Some Vegetables (some green) Have Protein, Too!

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Are you thinking about eating more vegetables and less meat but worry about getting enough protein?

Of course you can always get protein from excellent non-meat sources like eggs, fish, nuts and seeds, certain grains, and low or non fat dairy products.  But what about vegetables?

Beans and Legumes

Many people are aware that beans can be good protein sources.

For example, here’s the number of grams of protein in one cup of:

  • Cooked soybeans, 29 grams
  • Cooked lentils, 18 grams
  • Cooked black beans, 15 grams
  • Cooked kidney beans, 13, grams
  • Cooked chickpeas, 12 grams
  • Cooked pinto beans, 12 grams
  • Cooked black-eyed peas, 11 grams

What About Other Veggies?

Here’s the number of grams of protein for one cup of each of these vegetables:

  • Cooked lima beans, 10 grams
  • Cooked peas, 9 grams
  • Cooked spinach, 5 grams
  • Cooked broccoli, 4 grams
  • One medium potato, 4 grams

This Is Not A Complete List

There are other vegetable sources of protein, too.  These are just examples of some of the more common veggies that can serve as protein sources.  For a more complete list you can always check the USDA’s data base.

Spinach On Your Sandwich

For upping your protein – especially in a meatless meal – try adding some raw spinach instead of lettuce on your sandwich.  How about broccoli slaw instead of cole slaw, or peas mixed with your pasta?  Sounds good to me!

 

 

 

 

Does Clean Eating Mean Making Sure You Wash Your Veggies?

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What Is Clean Eating?

Clean eating is about wholesome and natural food – food that isn’t full of chemicals, preservatives, additives and isn’t processed and/or refined.

Clean eating is healthy eating. All of the whole, natural, unprocessed foods in a clean diet are chock full of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other nutrition that will help you control your weight, blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol, and other markers important for good health.

What To Do

To eat clean, the April 2011 edition of Environmental Nutrition lists seven basic behaviors:

  • Eat fresh, uncomplicated, whole food – and choose it in its natural state.
  • Eat smaller meals – perhaps three small meals and two snacks each day instead of behemoth portions.
  • Eat good carbs  — keep the healthy carbs like veggies, legumes, whole grains, and fruit in your life – and ditch the processed and refined ones like the “whites”  (sugar, flour, rice).
  • Incorporate healthy fats like the monounsaturated fat in olive oil and nuts and cut down on the saturated fats found in dairy and animal products and the trans fats in processed baked and fried foods.
  • Eat high quality lean protein like fish, chicken, turkey, lean meat, and low or non-fat dairy.
  • Make water your beverage of choice.
  • Move your body.

By the way, you do need to wash your vegetables – and fruit.  Wash them really well in plenty of plain water.  No need for detergents or fancy vegetable washes.

Have You Noticed That Some Well-Known Chefs Are Shrinking?

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In girth that is.  The chef’s weight loss is frequently motivated by a health scare – although sometimes just by vanity or wanting to be more mobile and agile in the kitchen — many star chefs have devised their own plans for losing weight.

Fortunately, for them, they have knowledge and their skill in the kitchen at their disposal to make food more flavorful, perhaps downright delicious, while cutting back on the use of sugar, fat, and salt.

What The Slimmed Down Chefs Do

According to an article in The Daily News, what they do is:

  • Reengineer their palates:  Richard Blais of Top Chef fame followed a vegan diet for 30 days to jump start his 60 pound weight loss.  He says it was a palate cleanser that made him aware of how sweet, fatty, and salty his food was.  Art Smith, Oprah’s former chef, lost 95 pounds by changing the way he ate – incorporating more whole foods, eating six meals a day, and making uncomplicated food, often following the same menu most days of the week.
  • Eat smaller portions:  Aside from eating smaller meals more frequently, some chefs like Houston’s Ronnie Killen, who lost 215 pounds, eats four ounces of a 16 ounce steak and saves the rest for another meal.
  • Find new ways to add flavor and devise new ways to add taste but not tons of calories:  New York City’s Michael Psilakis poaches garlic in olive oil and then adds the garlic to various foods to really punch up the flavor of lower calorie items like mussels and gigante beans.  Many of the chefs use onion, garlic, and many herbs and spices for flavor.
  • Indulge occasionally (or have a planned cheat day):  Many of the chefs, like Art Smith, build in a cheat day or leave room in their calorie budget for the occasional indulgence by eating lighter meals and fewer calories in anticipation of the indulgence.
  • Exercise:  almost all of the chefs move around more than they did.  New York’s Rocco Dispirito became a triathlete, but Art Smith, who has a rigorous workout routine, says he sometimes just blasts music and dances.

 

The Bottom Line

Whatever routine a chef follows, they all seem to have become aware of  portion sizes.  They’ve learned about calories and the overabundance of sugar, fat, and salt in many recipes.  And, they move more.  They do not deprive themselves.  They may restrict the amount of food that they eat – but they are eating whole food with good flavor and they’re making room for the occasional, not daily, indulgence.

Art Smith cautions that dessert is a treat. As he says, “If you have dessert every day, then it’s no longer a treat.”

Try following their strategies when you’re cooking at home – or even when ordering in a restaurant.

If we could just get more chefs to offer smaller portions of delicious and healthy whole foods in their restaurants and food companies to do the same with their prepared products it would be a whole lot easier to lose and/or maintain weight and to be mindful of portion size.

A Healthy Eating Lesson On The Subway

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New York city, uptown #2 train, Saturday night.  Not too crowded, most people are wearing their subway stares – avoiding eye contact, eyes glazed over, ipod earbuds in place, bodies rocking with the motion of the train.  My trip isn’t long enough to pull out something to read, so I start to scan the ads that run above the seats– something I’ve entertained myself with since I was a little kid.

One whole side of the subway car I was in was filled with posters for New York City’s “Are You Pouring On The Pounds” campaign — aimed at teaching people to reduce their sugar intake (and lose or keep off weight) by cutting down on sugary drinks. It also encourages New Yorkers to drink water, seltzer or low-fat milk instead of the sweet stuff.

The posters are filled with liquid pouring out of bottles of soda, “sports” drinks or sweetened iced tea and turning into blobs of fat as it reaches the glass. Large graphics leave you with no doubt about the number of teaspoons or packets of sugar in each drink — or the total amount of liquid sugar that you could drink daily – as shown in the photo above.

For example: a 20 ounce bottle of soda is equivalent to 16 packets of sugar and a 32 ounce gigantic size cup – the kind so popular in movie theaters, gas stations, and arenas — contains the equivalent of 26 packets of sugar.

Do You Forget To Count The Calories You Drink?

It’s hard to overeat without noticing it. But, many people who gain weight — and can’t figure out why — forget to include the calories in what they drink.  Sugary drinks can add hundreds of calories and they don’t even make you feel full.

On average, Americans now consume 200 to 300 more calories each day than 30 years ago, with nearly half of those calories coming from sugar-sweetened drinks. A survey of adult New Yorkers shows that more than 2 million drink at least one sugar sweetened soda or other sweetened beverage each day – often at 250 calories a pop. Teenagers who drink sugary beverages get an average of 360 calories from them each day.  (They’d have to walk 70 city blocks to use up that many calories.)

Some Facts

A teaspoon of sugar weighs about four grams and each gram of sugar has four calories – or about 16 calories per teaspoon of sugar. On average, Americans consume about 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day – the equivalent of around 350 calories.  (Added sugar refers to the extra, empty calorie, added sweeteners, not the sugar that naturally occurs in foods like fruit and milk.)

The quickest way to decrease some of that sugar is to cut down on soda and sweetened drinks.   Sugary drinks, including sweetened tea or sweetened water that claims to be healthy, account for about one-third of added sugars.

Eating large quantities of sugar can lead to obesity and health problems like diabetes and heart disease. The American Heart Association recommends a daily max of six teaspoons of added sugar for women and nine teaspoons for men.  That’s quite a bit less than 22 teaspoons Americans generally average.  Too many spoonfuls of sugar may create the need for medicine rather than making it easily go down!

Are You Waiting For The Perfect Time To Start Your Diet?

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Do the stars, moon, sun, and all the planets need to be in alignment for you to start your diet?

Diet, not a word I usually use, implies deprivation and a way of life that is not easy, comforting, and fun.  So no wonder there are tons of excuses and reasons not to start.

 

Does This Sound Familiar?

You’ve decided that you want to lose weight.  Do any of these thoughts and actions seem familiar:

  • “I’ll wait until Monday to start” – and then you eat enough over the weekend to gain more weight.
  • “Wow, it’s Monday, but so and so’s birthday is Wednesday and we’re going out to dinner and then there will be cake – so I might as well wait until after Wednesday to start.”  And then it’s Thursday and you go back to “I’ll wait until Monday.”
  • “I don’t have the right kind of food in the house and it’s raining outside and I can’t get to the gym – so I might as well chow down today and wait until I can stock up on the right stuff” (and when is that?).
  • “I was so ‘good’ all week and then on Friday I went out and had drinks and dessert and a ton of bread.  So I figured I ‘blew it’ and might as well eat what I want all weekend.  I can start again on Monday.”  Of course Monday comes along and another verse is added to this tune.

 

There’s Always A Reason — Or An Excuse

You get the idea.  You can always find a reason not to start your new healthy eating plan or activity program.  How about listing the compelling reasons to want to start.

 

Try A Different Way Of Thinking

Diets don’t work.  Maybe they do for the short-term for some of you, but it’s rare to have long lasting weight loss from a restrictive diet mentality.

Try a different approach.  Healthy eating habits are the key to success.  Finding what works for the long term may require some out of the box thinking and creative solutions.  Go for it and give it time.  Just start.

Have you ever watched an athlete look for an opening through a crowded field of players all trying to obstruct his or her way?  The athlete just keeps looking for an opening – an opportunity.  The choice might be unconventional and require lateral movement or some pulling back before surging forward, but without some kind of move nothing’s going to happen  — no momentum will be gained.

Look for your opening and take it – stop waiting for that elusive perfect moment or the perfect time to lose weight.  You can keep telling yourself that you’ll start tomorrow — but will tomorrow ever come?