Entering year 10 of maintenance (III): The latest maintenance story.

If there is a pattern in my years of maintaining most of the 2008 weight loss, it is a succession of stories:  In Which I Try Something New For A While To See How It Works.

"Works" is pretty mild here.   I haven't done the slow creep of weight gain (I'm heavier now than before my last pregnancy because I didn't drop back down quite as far, but am stable).  So none of these things seem to have mattered in terms of keeping the weight off.  It's staying off, it seems. 

What I'm looking for is, I guess:   Does this new thing (intermittent fasting, rule-based eating, No-S, whatever) make it feel easy?   Does it make prudent-yet-pleasurable dining second nature and reinforce good habits?  Does it get me out of an unhealthy headspace of obsession?  Does it keep me from being terrified of re-gaining weight?  

Here's the story of my Something New for right now.

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One of my goals, going into the couple of weeks my family spent in France this past September, was to spend several hours in bookstores.  Because there's no substitute to being able to browse through stacks of physical books, and I don't get to do that very often in my second language(s).

I had literary items on my to-do list, both fiction and nonfiction.  But I also had a couple of, shall we say, lifestyle-related items to tick off.  What I really hoped to find would be a practical book about feeding families, by French and for French families:  about keeping the traditions of the family meal, the leisurely, conversational, multi-course family meal, while under the pressures of dual-income families (or single-parent families), busy school and sports schedules, and all the distractions that tug at individuals and pull them apart. 

I especially hoped to find realistic and practical meal plans:  daily menus that reflected the courses that French families put before their children on the dinner table.  

I know that there is a tradition of entrée, plat, dessert--where "dessert" is often fruit, cheese, or both---and where the entrée is likely to be a vegetable first-course.  

I know that you can take an American square meal and, theoretically, untangle it so that (for example) the vegetable side dish comes out first, the fruit or a dairy product is pushed back to last, and what's left (meat and complex carbohydrates) becomes the plat, or main course.  

But I wondered how this looks in real life.  And I wondered if any enterprising French author had taken it on herself to explain to bewildered French millennials exactly how to perform this fundamental familial magic, à la Adulting.  I wanted to see meal plans for a whole week that would tell me, for example:

    WEDNESDAY DINNER

• Entrée:  Grated carrots in lemon and olive oil dressing
• Plat:  Grilled chicken with herbed rice and sautéed mushrooms
• Dessert:  Wedge of Camembert
• White Burgundy, or Belgian bière blanche

.... and so forth, all set up to make it easy to use up leftovers.  All set up to give many examples to show how to feed both children and adults with a balanced and pleasant meal, made of excellent ingredients, simply prepared and served in tidy little courses.

Sadly, I could not find such a thing in the shelves of childrearing, education, or cookbooks.  It seems that the French, even millennials, are not yet so disconnected from their roots that they need people to tell them how to eat dinner.

But I did find something very like it, somewhere else, by accident.

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I was browsing through a spinning rack of French self-help mini-books, because I am fascinated by the existence and format of self-help books and was curious about whether French ones were different from American ones. 

Stop being a workaholic!

Learn to meditate!

Get organized! 

As you might expect, a number of these were faddish exercise or diet books:  yoga, juicing, etc.   When I came upon a generic, non-faddish-looking one (Mon cahier minceur, or "My slimness workbook"--the French don't mince words and call their goal "health" or "weight loss"), I picked it up and opened it to a page.

And!  It was full of meal plans, very like the ones I was wishing for (only, for the benefit of those pursuing the elusive minceur of the title, the plans suggested quantities in grams).

So I bought it, of course. 

• It was a cheap little paperback, and the meal plans looked like normal, non-faddish, non-fat-free, whole-foods stuff, on the principle of Reasonable Or Reduced Quantities of Good Things.
• Furthermore, they were simple and modular---very unlike your average "Drop 7 pounds in our 7 days of meal plans" American magazine article, which pretends that you will put together a vegetable frittata for Tuesday morning breakfast and whole-grain waffles on Wednesday.  (Fun for a few days, but hard to sustain in the long term.) 
• The suggested gram-quantities are different for different people (I took the little quiz and wound up in the second-lowest-quantity bracket).   This is a weigh-some-of-your-food plan but not a count-your-calories plan.
• There are three weeks of "regime" menus, to be repeated as long as necessary, followed by two weeks of "stabilization" menus, to be repeated for as many weeks as one was on the "regime."  The "stabilization" menus have larger quantities, meant to ease the person into maintenance.
• Finally, they have a slight but unmistakable French accent.  Breakfast is present but unimportant, almost a careless throwaway half-meal; there's cheese and yogurt and crème fraîche everywhere, and also bread with butter (though a scantier smear of butter than I would like); dinner comes apart nicely into courses; and there are strict warnings against the dangers of eating between meals.  

I decided to follow it as much as I could, for as long as it was enjoyable, as my post-vacation Austerity Measures.

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Today's Tuesday, so here's a sample Tuesday menu.  The gram-quantities for you might be different than those for me, by the way. 

Breakfast:

• Tea or coffee
• 50 g of seven-grain bread (pain aux céréales)
• 20 g of cheese

Lunch (imagine this as a large salad with the yogurt for dessert):

• Crudités (example:  carrots, celery, grated cabbage).  Unlimited.
• 1 teaspoon of oil to make the vinaigrette [understood:  mix with as much vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard, etc., as you like]
• 2 slices of cooked ham 
• 150 g of cooked green peas, flageolets, or lentils
• 1 plain yogurt [this means 125 g, and it's not nonfat, but French "demi-écremé," which is executed better than our low-fat yogurt.  I just eat whole-milk yogurt and enjoy it.]

Dinner:

• Green salad seasoned without oil; e.g., make a vinaigrette with 1/2 tsp mustard + pepper + 2 tsp. vinegar + 2 tsp milk + lemon juice
• 100 g of roast beef
• Gratin dauphinois made with 175 g potatoes sliced and layered with 15 g grated emmenthal and 30 g crème fraîche mixed with 50 ml milk, baked 1 hour at 350° F
• 1 fruit

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This is pretty representative.   

• Plain vegetables are always unlimited. 
• Fruits aren't weighed, but the number is set: half a grapefruit, one apple, two kiwis.   
• Added fats, such as butter, oil, mayonnaise, and cream, are present at most meals in restrained amounts. 
• Breakfasts are always complex carb (bread, sometimes buttered, or cereal) plus dairy (cheese, milk, or yogurt).   
• Lunches and dinners are quite square:  a serving of meat or fish, a serving of complex carbs, usually both vegetables and fruit, and nearly always a serving of dairy.
• There is one very simple recipe given as part of one meal each day, such as the gratin dauphinois that accompanies Tuesday's dinner.   

And let's take a look at that dinner, shall we?  Here's how I would render it into a family meal:

• First course:  Big green salad (full of things the children like, including red bell peppers and cucumber, with cold roast beef strips on top, and croutons for the rest of the family, and their favorite bottled dressing for the children; but for me, an oil-free dressing with lots of strong dijon mustard)
• Second course: That lovely potato gratin, which finished baking while you had your salad.  And if your family would prefer it with cheddar cheese, do it that way.  You could add extra cheese to people's servings, too.  
• Cut fruit --- I would put it on the table at the same time as the second course, and people could decide whether to have it together or separately.

Obviously, you could serve a plainer salad first and then put a beef roast next to the gratin; but I don't really like roasting beef, so I'd put deli meat in the salad.  YMMV.

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I've been surprised how much I don't miss my Egg For Breakfast (eggs have been moved to lunch, where they are just as pleasant).    It helps that I have replaced it, often, with buttered toast, which is one of my very favorite things.

One of the best parts of all this:  lunches that end with 20 g of good cheese.  I had forgotten how good a creamy blue cheese can be as a course to end a meal.  I would absolutely eat Stilton for dessert, any day of the week.

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To my surprise, the whole plan seems to work very well for me.  At least by the measures of suppressing panic and obsession, enjoying my food, and supporting good habits. I'm a little sheepish that I'm having such a good experience with what is basically an unusually-well-put-together "magazine plan."

That's not to say that everything I've eaten in the past few weeks is by the book.  I've demolished a few piles of chips and guacamole here and there while getting together with friends---but one of the things I want out of daily moderation and simplicity is that it leaves room for feasting.

Next post:  escaping from the Only One Number trap.

Comments

[Tabitha Spitzer]

You need to translate that book! I'd love to read it. ☺

[Jenny]

"It seems that the French, even millennials, are not yet so disconnected from their roots that they need people to tell them how to eat dinner."

Ha! Needing someone to explain dinner to me pretty much defines my life. I'm afraid the rhythm of producing a nightly meal will never feel natural to me.

[bearing]

Tabitha: it's not terribly exciting French to translate! (Except for the recipes, those are always good)

I have thought about finding an American version of the same sort of thing and doing a point by point comparison. American "seven days of meal plans" usually include two snacks a day and fat free everything. :P

But if there's interest I could do a little more blogging from it.

[Christy P.]

I was thinking yesterday about the logistics of separate courses and quickly became overwhelmed by the number of dishes and potentially serving pieces to wash. You certainly have more helpers, but are you actually running the dishwasher after the first course so that it can be emptied and refilled with the rest of the dishes from dinner? Or do people keep the same plates and have other items served upon them (possibly with wiping up any extra salad dressing with a paper towel between courses)?

[bearing]

ChristyP: Answer in the next post!

http://arlinghaus.typepad.com/blog/2017/11/on-the-logistics-of-serving-family-meals-in-courses.html