bearing blog

The new ground rules.

For a couple of years, 2008 or so, I wrote frequently about exercise and eating strategies.   Sometimes I wrote about how those intersect with theology of the body, or Thomist morality.  I returned to the topic sporadically, but not steadily, since then.  It's been a while since I've written much.

I wrote all that because I was in the midst of two major life changes.

• First, that year when my third child was a toddler, I was prioritizing regular exercise for me for the first time.  Having taken lessons before that pregnancy, afterwards I started swimming twice a week, later adding running.   In order to keep it up, I thought, I had to be obsessive and inflexible; for better or worse, I was obsessive and inflexible, and I did keep it up.  Still am doing it today.

 

• Later, after the shock of having sustained this new habit for several months, I began restricting calories, and over the course of about six months I lost 27 percent of my initial body weight.    Having thought of myself as perpetually dumpy and sedentary since childhood, I found myself now active, and also, not fat.

Note the causality:  My writing about this didn't bring it about.  I wrote because I was having what I called success, and I was desperately trying to make sense of it.  I needed to understand why it was happening, was because I was afraid that if I didn't figure out why it was happening, I would not be able to keep from going back to "the way I was before."

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Ha.  As if I could slip back accidentally to "the way I was before."   Back to my early thirties?  I am older!  Human beings are not reversible.  For one thing, my windows of possibility have shifted.  For another, I understand more.

I've learned that the effort required to track calories closely enough to override the body's own cues is seriously intensive, tends to push out other satisfying activities, and requires a constant input of motivation.   And I've learned that I don't want to live in that kind of monomaniacal relationship with myself.

It may seem odd, but motivation itself is part of the problem.  I do lift myself up with messages that are true and encouraging, and celebrate with rewards that are both pleasant and good.    That's great when they work.  But if those don't do the job, I've often been tempted to use any mental means to the end of self-control:  shame, fear, dwelling on bad memories, threats of self-punishment; contempt for my body, contempt for other bodies.    Those thoughts still pop up, even though I understand better the damage they can do.

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Sometimes I betrayed those thoughts in my writing.

Writing has been a way to motivate myself, maybe spread a little motivation to others who might enjoy it.  I think this is, in principle, a worthy endeavor.   I've always used writing to to see if my ideas make sense and to improve them, and the promise (threat) of a small audience raises the stakes enough to make it meaningful.    I feel reward when a reader comments that something clicked, gave them an idea, helped.   

But when you write, in part, as a tool to root out error.... a corollary is that frequently, the error spends some time noodling around on the page.  And one might not catch them all.    It's not inherently wrong to try to work out ideas in public that way.  But there are limits. 

First of all, I have to be clear about what I'm doing (sometimes, literally, making it up as I go along).

Second:  when the topic is one that has been as historically fraught as exercise and diet and body image and fat loss, one about which many people carry a great deal of internalized harm... I need to be selective about setting down those first drafts of my thoughts. 

Because I also carry internalized messages that have power, and maybe not just over me.  Some of my thoughts are not great, especially some that in the intervening years I've learned to recognize as intrusive thoughts.  It might help me to exorcise them by giving voice to their content, but will it help anyone else?  If I'm going to straighten myself out by writing about those, best to write them longhand on one of the yellow pads I buy by the case, at least in first draft.  And maybe just keep them to myself, or share with a therapist instead.

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It's hard for me to precisely sort my previous writing about this stuff into "definitely okay, maybe even good" and "definitely problematic."  I've considered going back and editing, but the task is too overwhelming.  I've considered deleting stuff, but I think there are kernels of insight there worth rescuing.   For now it's still all there, waiting for me to decide what to do about it.

Meanwhile:  I'm changing up my lifestyle once again.  I'm committing myself to strengthen patterns of thinking that are much more compatible with good mental health and body care.   I would very much like to clarify them by setting them out on the blog. 

But:  when I blogged about fitness and nutrition before, expressing what I was going through 10-12 years ago, I wanted to write conversationally and frankly but that really amounted to being careless:  careless about language, careless about the words I used relative to the philosophy of the human person; careless about how pouring all my unfiltered thoughts out on the page might affect people who have a history of eating disorders, or of scrupulosity, or of difficulty caring for themselves.   I don't want to make the same mistakes again.

Would it be better just to... not write about this sort of thing at all?  I'm open to that possibility.  I'm not sure I can find out unless I give it a try.

What if I could write about it without making those mistakes?  What would it look like?  

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Ground rules.

 

1.  I will not conflate weight, fatness, or appearance with health.   

It's not just that these, as indicators of health, are poor and incomplete—though they are.   

It also means no more blithe writing about "desire for health" as a nobler-sounding euphemism for desires to look better, be less fat, or weigh less.  Pretended concern for "health" has justified many rude and abusive people.   Let me call things what they are.

A crucial reason to carefully acknowledge the difference:  Fat people frequently report that health care providers become fixated on fatness as the primary indicator of their health, the sole probable cause of pain or other symptoms, and the first problem that must be "fixed" before they are allowed to access other levels of care.  (See this recent commentary by Aubrey Gordon.)

 

2.  I will acknowledge other biomarkers of general health that are better-supported by evidence.  

Anyone can self-assess the time they spend physically active, the number of alcoholic drinks they have per week, the hours they sleep, the number of fruit/vegetable portions they are able to serve themselves each day.   These behavior-based markers are much more often under an individual's direct control (although the range of available choice varies).  Hydration can be assessed by checking if the urine is consistently a pale yellow color.  Blood pressure,  lipid panels, and blood glucose testing are accessible to those who can afford at least annual basic preventive care.   

As for body-size-related markers of general health, my understanding is that neither body-fat percentage, nor weight, nor BMI work well at all as a predictor of eventual development of cardiovascular or metabolic disease.  The one exception may be waist circumference.   If I find myself casting about for a NUMBER, perhaps that one will work; otherwise, maybe I need to write something else.

(Two examples of papers with this finding; two examples don't substitute for a careful literature review, of course.  Note that adjusting the results for BMI does appear to improve the correlation.  This is possibly because it brings in a dependence of height; naturally short stature is itself an attribute that raises the risk of developing these diseases.)    

 

3.  I am not a fitness professional.  I am not a health care provider.  I am not a registered dietician.

I have my own experience.  I have scientific training; it is not in this field, but I have good scientific literacy and am able to assess the general usefulness of papers and applicability of research.   I know where to go for more information, and I know how to identify the difference between a broad scientific consensus and a matter with competing viable theories.   I also know how to take a piece of popular science writing and pick it apart, if I want to, or use it for entertainment purposes, if I want to do that instead.  All these mean that I can form an educated and reasonable opinion (you will not catch me scoffing about "Dr. Google," any more than I would scoff at public access to medical libraries), and I can write commentary about it if I like.  These are not, however, substitutes for authority.  I'm an educated amateur, not an expert in any of these areas, and I have an academic responsibility to remain clear about that to anyone who stumbles across my blog.

(This isn't a ground rule about which I really needed a reminder.  I try hard to live by it anyway.  But I thought it worth mentioning for completeness.)

 

4.  No biomarker, and few health-related behaviors, imply a specific moral conclusion.

Yeah, I know myself (imperfectly).   I might be able to tell you when I've made a poor choice, or developed a poor habit, or experienced a consequence, for lack of some virtue.   I know where I have agency, and I have some ideas where my agency has been damaged by circumstances.  I don't know that about others.  I can't speak for everyone else.

Assumptions about real people are tricky at best, and at worst they are outright bad and harmful.

Moreover, the following ought to go without saying:  there are no bad foods, there are no bad bodies, there is no such thing as cheating.  There is room for rest, and room for feasting, and room for fun, and no one else gets to tell you how much; there is room for you.

 

5.  Nevertheless, I'll stand by this:  morality, theology, charity, the philosophy of the human person, the demands of justice, aren't off limits here.

Nothing that human beings do or decide is untouched by the disciplines and philosophy of my faith tradition, and there aren't many traditions that pretend otherwise for themselves.    I hope to explore them in a way that doesn't violate the very principles I'm seeking to understand.  I'm not certain that I can, but I hope to.  

It is good to use appropriate self-discipline to strengthen virtue.  It is good to consider how to use resources prudently.  It is good to exercise detachment from outcomes.  At the same time, discipline is personal, resources are personal, outcomes are definitely personal.  So I need to take care:  if I write about my discipline and my resources, I need to make clear that they are mine and no one else's.

 

6.  I will be explicit about the limits of hypothetical situations and imaginary characters.  

Ah, the hypothetical situation.  Much maligned for good reason, sometimes useful for illustration, always a bit tricky in their execution.

I love hypotheticals, but I must be more careful with them.  It is tempting to think that if I think up a hypothetical situation, decorate it with only those details that seem to me significant, and imagining human-like actors, I can treat it as my very own creature of pure reason.   Since it is mine, I can manipulate as I please and  judge with omniscience. 

In one sense it's true, I can do that.  But real human readers have a tendency to see in these hypothetical characters someone "like" themselves, or perhaps real people they know.  And I am not allowed to manipulate or to judge the real person based on my fan-fic. 

Even if I think up a hypothetical, and along comes a real person who embodies the imaginary one in every detail I created, I can't use my reason to reach deductive conclusions about the real person.   Why not?  After all, the hypothetical (in this hypothesis) is perfectly matched!  Well, the real human may possess every detail of my hypothetical, but the hypothetical on which I exercised my reason could not possibly possess every detail of the human.   Humans possess an infinite detail and and an infinite worth, far beyond the scope of any model problem.   So watch it.

Once again.  Watch out when you are tempted to make assumptions about real people.

 

7.  If I write about specific activities, I'll make room for modifications for different bodies, variations that make training plans more enjoyable, and goals unrelated to weight reduction.

That short wish list appears in this commentary piece by Rebecca Scritchfield.

 

8.  Athletic performance metrics are useful, far preferable to body-size metrics, but highly individual and unrelated to either value or virtue.

It's probably a step in the right direction to go from "my body's value comes from its appearance" to "my body's value comes from what it can do."   But it's still wrong.

Training is experiment, and experiment requires observation and measurement.  I can use performance metrics to evaluate whether my training is having the effect I desire.  I don't have to be clinical about everything, either:  I can celebrate when I meet the metric goals I've set, and I can express disappointment when I don't.   It's crucial not to connect the results to my value or my "good"-ness.   People do not, in fact, get what they deserve.

 

9.  "Quality of life" is a universal goal, but an individual measure:  how closely reality matches a person's hopes and expectations.

There are multiple ways of going about working for one's quality of life, too.  Much fitness writing is aimed at improving quality of life through hard work; but I also want to honor the effort to maintain quality of life in situations of increasing difficulty.  There is also the tough mirror process of re-adjusting those hopes and expectations to match an unlooked-for reality, maybe in the face of injury or illness, maybe other changes in circumstance, maybe after learning more about oneself.

 

10.  The big picture of what I'm getting at:  an authentically human understanding of self-care.  

Maybe that sounds like an overly grandiose aim.  Especially since, if history is any guide I'll probably be putting up posts like "here's what's in my gym bag these days!" and "I've discovered that it's a mistake for me to forget to eat breakfast before swimming a mile!"  I mean, some of that stuff is really just minutiae.  I might put it up because it's on my mind.

But all the little pieces add up to a bigger picture.  

The ground rules are here as a kind of checklist for the construction of those little pieces, so they're all align-able with the sort of big picture I want to have.  At the same time, there are questions that feel very open to me, so that I'm constructing that picture as I go along without really knowing what it will look like.  What boundaries are essential?  If vocation is about self-gift, what is the type and extent of self-investment that is appropriate for each vocation?  How do we write sensitively about practices that are health-promoting for many but not for some?   How about writing about practices that are accessible only to a few but might be interesting  to many?  How does a family distribute resources (time, effort, assets) among its members with different needs?   Can self-discipline be taught or only discovered?  What are the signs that health, wellness, even discipline has become an idol, or an obsession, and how can a person get their priorities back in order?

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Well, this post has been many days in the making, so don't be surprised if it takes me a while to get around to the actual writing.  But it was a necessary step to unclog the  pipes, so to speak.  I hope to follow up on it soon.

"One raw, one plain, one fancy."

From a comment I made on an earlier post. 

It's a rule of thumb I use when putting together meals -- for getting three vegetable side dishes on the table with a minimum of fuss.

I don't always have three vegetable (or fruit) side dishes on the table, especially if my main dishes have plenty of veg in them, but it is nice to shoot for.

"Raw" includes most salads, fresh cut fruit, and also simple things like a bowl of baby carrots.

"Plain" is anything steamed, boiled, or roasted, either truly plain or maybe with a little butter or oil.  Roast sweet potatoes, plain microwave-steamed fresh vegetables, or cooked frozen vegetables.  Also something like applesauce would count here.  The essence of "plain," though, for the purpose I mean (not doing too much work at dinner time) is "simply prepared."  I didn't have to stir it or cut it up much or measure anything.

"Fancy" would be anything cooked any other way, or anything that required a recipe.  Sauteed broccoli with olive oil and lemon; cream of tomato soup; stuffed squash; marinara sauce.  That kind of thing.

"One raw, one plain, one fancy" puts a variety of textures (and usually colors) on the table without my overdoing it in the last minutes before supper.

Don't get too creative.

Marybeth found an article about "super foods" and asked for suggestions to use them:

The foods they list are:Avocado, Blueberries, Oats, Salmon, Spinach, Sweet Potatoes and Yogurt.  The article discusses all the wonderful nutrients in those foods.  The one thing the article is lacking are some creative ways to get those foods in on a regular basis, but I suppose they cannot really do it ALL for us, right?  

Creativity is overrated when it comes to eating more of something.  The exception would be if it is a food you dislike and you are looking for a way to disguise it!  

Take oats, for example.  There are, indeed, many creative things you can do with oats.  Oats can go in your meatloaf instead of cracker crumbs.  Oats can be substituted for some of the flour in almost any baked good, from bread to birthday cake.  Oats can thicken soup.  But if you are determined to eat more oats, the easiest thing I can think of to do is to make oatmeal a regular part of your balanced breakfast.  Actually, the easiest thing would be to eat Cheerios, now that I think of it, but oatmeal is cheaper.  While you're at it, have a cup of yogurt.

Blueberries, spinach, and sweet potatoes can all go into many creative recipes.  But if you want to make an effort to make more of each, just buying them and eating them is probably the most effective strategy.  Spinach is just salad, after all, except that when it wilts you can cook it.  Nobody needs to be pushed to eat more blueberries.  Either can be bought fresh or frozen.  I don't tend to make plain baked sweet potatoes much in the summer, but we eat them all winter.  And you can get pretty good frozen sweet potato "fries" at the grocery store now.

Fresh salmon is beautiful, of course, but not always practical for everyone to eat weekly.  The easiest way to eat more salmon is to buy it canned and swap it for tuna, or else find a really good recipe for salmon loaf or salmon patties.    If you're going for oily fish in general, though, sardines are even easier as long as you can train yourself to like them.  Open can, eat with fork.

I guess I could see some creativity helping with avocadoes if you're not a fan.   Avocadoes are ephemeral:  you don't know which day they will ripen.    Buy a lime every time you buy an avocado and you will always be ready for guacamole.  Or put chunks in any salad.  Or slice onto a sandwich.

Simplicity is the way to go whenever you are looking to add new things to your regular menu, I think; the more you get used to an ingredient, the more new and "creative" things you will think of to do with it.

UPDATE.  Check out the Alton Brown Sardine-Avocado Sandwich Diet.

COMMENTS NOTE.  I accidentally deleted the wrong double-post and lost the first two comments, but rescued them from e-mail.  Here they are:

Bethany:  "Very true. Plus the simpler it is, the more likely you are to repeat it. How about blueberries and yogurt on your oatmeal? Yum."

MrsDarwin:  "My favorite application of oatmeal is in oatmeal cookies, but I guess that washes out a lot of the healthy benefits. :)"

Frozen flexibility.

A reader emailed me a couple of days ago to ask about frozen vegetables -- whether I thought she could rely on frozen vegetables during the winter when she had reduced access to fresh ones.  When I answered that I thought frozen vegetables were great and that I eat a lot of them all year long, she replied: "I was really glad to hear that you used some frozen too... Just by reading your blog entries I never guessed any of what you were eating was frozen."

Well!  Obviously I need to clear that up.

Yeah, I eat a lot of frozen vegetables.  If you add up all the tomatoes, beans, salsa, and occasional sauerkraut, corn, and beets, I eat a fair amount of canned vegetables too.  But I probably buy 5-8 bags of frozen vegetables every week and eat most of them myself.  Even in the summer.

I'm not sure I could have embarked on my "obscenely large portions of vegetables" kick without the help of my freezer.  There was a time when I rarely used frozen vegetables... but it was back when I just wasn't cooking and eating as many.  The easiest way I know of to go from one vegetable side dish on the table every night, to two vegetable side dishes, is to add a bag of frozen vegetables to every dinner.  The easiest way I know of to have a big serving of vegetables for lunch is to microwave one of those new steam-in-the-bag vegetables -- you know, the ones that supposedly serve four -- and eat the whole thing yourself.  Goes great with a half sandwich.

The frozen vegetables I use most are pot greens (mustard, turnip, collards, and spinach); brussels sprouts; green beans; and stir-fry mix.   But I buy all kinds.  Most of them I just microwave.  Brussels sprouts and okra seem to do best if they're boiled (briefly) on the stove top.  If I have time, I like to saute the greens:  I know it says to cook them in water (and the directions on the collard greens say to cook them for a ridiculously long time), but it's very nice to heat up some olive oil in a skillet, maybe add a little chopped onion or garlic, and then dump the frozen greens right into the pan.  Stir them a few  times, maybe add a little liquid and cover the pan; in ten minutes or so they're usually pretty good, and you can liven them up with vinegar or lemon juice or  salsa or chopped tomatoes. 

Even though I use frozen vegetables heavily all year long, I always use fresh onions and bell peppers (unless I have home-grown bell peppers in the freezer).  I strongly prefer fresh broccoli to frozen broccoli, even though I do use frozen broccoli. I like the texture of fresh greens better too, but except for spinach I don't  think the difference matters that much.  IF you need spinach for calzones or spanakopita or a quiche or something, you may as well use frozen as fresh; when it's chopped up and well-cooked inside a recipe, only the most sensitively attuned foodies will even notice.  You can save some money while still getting good results by mixing fresh and frozen pot greens -- say, 1 bunch fresh kale with 2 bags frozen collards, cooked on low 4 hours in the crockpot with a cup of broth and some garlic or a piece of ham.

A common tip is to use fresh vegetables during the first few days of the week before they spoil, and move to the frozen stuff towards the end.   I do that, except that I add frozen vegetables to my dinners all week long.  The main thing that frozen vegetables give you is flexibility.  Since they won't go bad, you can always keep extras on hand and never be without plenty of choices.

Another tip for flexibility without waste, this one for fresh food:  Never be without a head of cabbage and some carrots.  Cheap even in the winter, these fresh vegetables keep for at least a couple of weeks--so, just like frozen vegetables, if you don't get to them this week, you can eat them next week.  Either goes with almost any meal: you can put carrots or cabbage or both in an Asian stir-fry, or saute them
with onion and olive oil, or just steam them and serve plain or with butter.  And of course they can be
shredded together for coleslaw -- isn't it odd that this "summer picnic" salad is made mostly of two vegetables that are available all winter long?  Raw  carrot sticks are a favorite of many kids, and one of my favorite salads is shredded raw carrot with lemon juice and salt.  There's a sweeter carrot salad with raisins that I have seen on many a picnic table.  If you always have carrots and always have cabbage, you can add a yellow or green vegetable to any meal at a moment's notice.  And for not much money.

Why did the chicken cross the Pyrenées? (I'm not sure, but it has something to do with a reasonably-sized vegetable omelette.)

Marybeth at Confessions of a Fat Loser mentioned that her breakfasts had been getting pretty standardized, so I thought I'd drop a suggestion in her combox:  a technique for making very-veggie omelettes.  And then I thought, why not share?

Most American restaurant omelettes are "French-style" omelettes.  They are made by beating eggs with a bit of water and then cooking them in an omelette pan, gently lifting the cooked egg to allow uncooked mixture to flow underneath until it is all nearly set; then the filling is placed on top and the egg is folded over the filling to enclose it.  The result is a neat yellow package that's very attractive on a plate and pleasant to eat.

The only problem with this style of omelette is that you need a fairly high ratio of egg to filling.  It takes two or three eggs to produce an omelette large and sturdy enough to wrap around a hearty serving of vegetables (half a cup or more). How can we, with only one egg, (remember:  "One egg is enough eggs for breakfast") make a classic omelette that is still able to hold all those veggies together?

The answer is to hop from France to Spain for your omelette inspiration.  The classic Spanish omelette is called the tortilla.  It almost always contains finely diced potatoes and onions, but I like to adapt it using almost any sort of vegetables I have in the house.  This is the perfect omelette to make if you have lots of leftover cooked vegetables from last night's dinner.  What's more, you can bind a cup or more of chopped vegetables with a single egg.  I like this with onions, peppers, and spinach, but you can use just about any vegetable as long as it's cut or grated in small enough pieces to become tender in a sauté pan:  carrots, broccoli, potatoes, you name it.  Peas and feta are shockingly good.  Thawed frozen vegetables work too.  Whatever you do, be sure to include some onion and cook it in olive oil. 

Here's a basic recipe.  Substitute other vegetables or use less or more as you like; I personally like this with about double the vegetables.  Almost any combination will work, as long as the vegetables are in quite small pieces and are tender by the time the egg is added.

• 1/4 cup finely diced onion
• 1/4 cup finely diced red bell pepper
• 1/4 cup finely chopped fresh spinach
• 2 Tbsp finely diced raw potato (optional)
• At least 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbsp any cheese, shredded or crumbled (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat a nonstick pan over medium heat with half the olive oil.  Add onion (and potato, if using) and saute, stirring, until the onion is soft and the potato is tender.  Add the peppers and spinach and saute until everything is soft.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, beat the egg well in a medium bowl with a fork.

Stir the hot vegetable mixture directly into the bowl of beaten egg and mix well with a fork.  Add more salt and pepper.  Return the pan to medium-high heat and add the rest of the olive oil, then pour the egg mixture in.  You may need to press it down a little bit with a spatula in the first few seconds of cooking to spread it out in the pan.  Allow it to cook undisturbed until the bottom is well set and a bit browned; then slide it out onto a plate, cooked side down, and invert the plate over the pan to turn the omelette raw side down into the pan.  Top with cheese, if using.  Cook until set through, and then slide the omelette onto a clean plate.  If you like, cool to room temperature, cut into wedges, and eat with your fingers... or eat it hot and crispy, right away.

Try it with whatever vegetables are in your fridge for breakfast tomorrow morning.

UPDATE:  Christina in the comments reminds me of frittatas, which are of course similar, but larger, and finished under a broiler instead of being flipped.   The Persian culture has produced something similar called a "kuku,"  which rather than frittatae is my go-to omelette-for-a-crowd.  I usually bake mine in a well-oiled glass dish, but this recipe with beautiful pictures shows a stovetop skillet method.  Cutting the omelette before flipping -- of course, why didn't I think of that?

Grab it and go.

An unexpected side effect of not being a glutton anymore is that it is easier to
eat simply and appropriately for special circumstances.

Let me give you an example.  Our family went on a day hike yesterday at Afton State Park.  We planned to eat lunch on the trail.

Once upon a time, such a day would have been all about the picnic lunch.  I would have planned it on my grocery list several days earlier.  I would have made fancy sandwiches -- pressed Italian hoagies; or brie and ham on baguette; or roast beef, red pepper, and smokey cheddar on onion kaiser rolls.  I would have brought baby carrots and celery.  Fresh fruit, possibly cherries or strawberries.  Maybe pasta salad.  A cooler would probably be involved.  Fresh-squeezed lemonade.

And of course, since we have to keep our strength up, there would be trail mix and jerky and granola bars.

You should have seen what I brought for a weekend camping. 

Nowadays my thought process is a little different.  Rather than the hike being an excuse for a fantastic picnic lunch, the hike is... the point.  And instead of "Ooh goody, a picnic!  What kind of fun picnic food do I want to eat?"  I am thinking, "What's convenient to carry in a pack on a hot day, won't spoil, provides enough calories for the hike, and can be eaten with minimal fuss and not much to pack out, so we can get back to hiking?"

Obviously it has to appeal to the kids, but other than that, those are the main requirements.

So what is hiking food now?

• Little red-waxed cheese wheels.
• Triscuits.
• Possibly apples.  (If there's room.)
• Water.

All you need is a knife.

Instead of trail mix, we now pack peanut M&Ms.  (No more eating the chocolate and leaving the nuts!)

If we want to give the kids another choice besides cheese and crackers, we might make a few peanut butter sandwiches.  Unlike the fancy sandwiches I used to make, there's no concern about them going bad in the heat.  And I don't know about you, but a PB&J (or PB&H) that's slightly squashed at the bottom of a pack tastes pretty good when you've been hiking all morning. 

This isn't to disparage the families who came to the park ready to have a traditional Memorial Day barbecue.  On our way out we passed a man and a woman each gripping one handle of a heavy picnic cooler.  A man with a bulging paper grocery bag in one hand and a big sack of charcoal briquets up on his shoulder.  A woman carrying the baby while her older teens pushed a stroller laden with food and soda and lawn chairs.  True, an appetizing aroma of cooking meat drifted through the park.  Condensation formed on cans of ice-cold soda as they were pulled out of coolers and passed around.  Even the bags of baby carrots and cauliflower chunks looked pretty good after a day of hiking (the tubs of stagnant ranch dressing, not so much). 

The picnics I used to make were, objectively speaking, "healthier" than the trail food I pack now.  They were balanced.  They contained fresh fruit and vegetables.  Usually it was all homemade, with few processed-food items.

They were also enormous, a lot more trouble, and the biggest problem?  They were the center of my attention.

Sometimes, an objectively "less healthy" food experience is mentally healthier.  For all the tsk-tsking about our grab-it-and-go culture, occasionally grabbing and going makes a lot of sense.  There's more time to sit down and enjoy the simple food we've brought, out under the sky, if we spend less time fussing about it back in the kitchen.

A few new cookbooks.

Since I'm in losing-the-baby-weight mode, I decided to add a few new cookbooks to the kitchen, all with healthful overtones.  Having some new books around, and new recipes, always helps motivate me.  I thought I'd post a brief review of the books I checked out from the library and decided to buy.  Two are nutrition/diet books with a recipe section, one is a cookbook through and through.

The Flexitarian Diet, by Dawn Jackson Blatner. 

 I've been eating "flexitarian" for a couple of years now, without knowing it.  The term "flexitarian" is variously defined.  Some say it means "flexible vegetarian," i.e., you're basically a vegetarian but you're flexible enough to graciously accept a meat dish when it's offered to you.  Others say it simply means a reduced-meat lifestyle:  vegetarian most of the time, meat some of the time.  At our house, we love meat and eat it frequently; but we have learned to use it in smaller quantities.  I generally serve it either as a flavoring, or as a dish served in modest portions as part of a meal.  

Blatner's cookbook/diet book offers five full weeks of controlled-calorie menus, plus recipes.  The recipes are all given for single-serving portions, use a lot of convenience food, and come together quickly.  Canned beans feature prominently.  This book is especially good for those who are looking for some new ideas for quick and simple, healthful meals; those who'd like a lot of one-person recipes; and those who would like a pre-written meal plan.   Like most diet books  these days, it stresses low-fat eating more than I like, but that's easily fixed.

One that doesn't stress low-fat eating at all, and so suits me very well, is Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less by Mollie Katzen and Walter Willett, M.D.  Yes, that Mollie Katzen, of Moosewood Cookbook fame.  I  have had Walter Willett's book Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy on my shelf for a long time -- his nutrition work comes from the comprehensive Nurses' Health Study.  The writing is very compelling and common-sense, and earned my respect because he was not afraid to write "We don't know" where necessary.  Anyway, when I discovered recently that he had collaborated with uber-food-writer Mollie Katzen on a diet book with recipes and meal plans, I snagged it.  And I'm very glad I did.

Mollie fesses up:  she is not a vegetarian after all!  Here we have recipes by Mollie with meat in them.  (not very many -- most are vegetarian...)  And not just recipes, but meal plans.  There are three weeks of controlled-calorie meal plans, plus one week's worth of a "portable plan" that can be eaten on the go or prepared with minimal kitchen equipment.  

The nutrition advice is sound.  There are nine "turning points" (things like "eat lots of vegetables" and "stay hydrated"); a new-and-improved food pyramid with veggies on the bottom where they belong and a special slot partway up that's just for dark chocolate; and a score card for ranking how your habits are improving with time.  I wholeheartedly recommend this one.  It's one of the best diet books I've read.   Oh, I should add that many of the recipes are of the sort that are easily adapted for allergies and food intolerances -- swap one grain for another, that sort of thing.

Finally, a pure cookbook:  How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman.  I hesitated before buying this because I already have How to Cook Everything.    I thought there'd be so much overlap that it would be a waste of money.  

It's  true that there is some overlap:  the pizza sections in the two books, for example, are very similar, and both books contain lengthy discourses on cooking basics (which makes sense, given the title).  But there is enough new material in here to make it worth buying the new book, I think.   There are several techniques that are new to me in this book -- have you ever heard of "stuck-pot rice?"  I hadn't -- think a sort of stovetop paella with a crispy crust -- and lots of new recipes, even in sections that you might think would just overlap, like desserts.  And there is plenty of new material of the sort that Bittman does best:  lists of variations on a theme, menu suggestions, charts that show you how to put together combinations of ingredients.  Plus there's lots of good technique instruction, and introduction to some more exotic things like making your own seitan (that's mock duck) or cooking with sea vegetables.

What all three books have in common is this:  they will help you cook and eat with less meat, while refraining from moralizing about it.  And that is something I really appreciate.

In praise of this morning's breakfast: Fried egg and pot greens.

It's nothing terribly special, and I think I have mentioned similar things before, but I thought it was a particularly elegant solution to my dual problems of "get more green leafies into me since they aren't appealing to me very much" and "what to put under my egg in the morning so I don't overload on carby things."

• 1/2 to 1 cup cooked leafy greens (with about a tablespoon of pot liquor if you have it)
• 1  tsp balsamic vinegar, or to taste 
• Up to 2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil -- at minimum, just a bit more than you need to fry the egg comfortably
• 1 egg  
• Salt and pepper to taste 

Toss the hot greens in a bowl with balsamic vinegar and pot liquor.

Fry egg in the generous pour of olive oil.  When the egg is done to your liking (me:  crispy on the edges, over very easy) slide the egg, oil and all, on top of the hot cooked greens.  Hear the sizzle as the hot oil comes into contact with the greens?  Top with salt and pepper to taste, pierce the yolk, and dig in.

Let's talk about the greens.  The easiest way to make this dish a quick weekday morning breakfast for one is to keep some precooked pot greens in their pot liquor in the fridge.   It's a great use for leftovers.  But you could also begin with fresh tender greens, like spinach or chard or young kale, and quickly steam-saute them in a little water in the egg pan before transferring them to the bowl.  Wipe out  the pan, then fry the egg.   

The culinarily gifted will immediately see ways to make this dish more interesting and/or fancy.  The two most obvious to me are (1) saute some sliced garlic in the oil and remove it before adding the egg and (2) same thing with chopped bacon, use less oil. If you are desperate to eat less fat, you could toss just a drizzle of olive oil with the greens and use a poached egg; it is quite nice that way.  If you like Asian flavors for breakfast, you could do coconut oil and a bit of fish or soy sauce instead of olive oil.  But I think my version is simple, rich, and healthful.  It is good down to the last drop of vinegary, egg-yolky pot liquor at the bottom of the bowl.  

I have not tried this with frozen greens.  We eat a lot of frozen greens in this house because they're so conveniently added to almost any meal, but I much prefer fresh.  In almost any season, pot greens are among the best bargains in the produce department, especially if you measure nutritional bang for the buck, so there's no excuse not to buy some fresh every week.

P.S.  I would think that if fate has dealt you an egg allergy, that some fried Canadian Bacon would be a very tasty thing to put on top of your greens for breakfast, and would be just about as quick and easy. Sausage is another possibility -- I would choose a leaner sausage here so that the olive oil provided a higher proportion of the fat.  Maybe a turkey kielbasa.

Lunch lo mein.

We made Cathie B's Crockpot "Bul Go Gi" yesterday for dinner.  Perfect since I was spending the day at Hannah's with the children helping clean house, and T. O. M. was spending the day at our house helping Mark touch up the paint on our first floor.  Put it together with some rice and greens and some more meat and vegetables from our friends, it made a nice potluck offering with very little work.

Although I must say, after I had the sirloin tip roast sliced thinly and mixed up with the marinade, I had second thoughts about not putting that stuff on the grill, the end result was tasty.  See her recipe here -- I altered it slightly, doubling the marinade, using 2 lb 14 oz meat, and marinating it overnight in the crockpot insert in the fridge before dropping it into the appliance in the morning.  I think we cooked it a little overlong, 9 h on low, but it was still good.

We had about 3 cups of leftover meat and sauce, which I turned into lo mein this morning, my favorite use for leftover Asian-flavored meat.  I boiled a 13.25-oz box of whole wheat spaghetti, drained it, and then in the pot stir-fried some odds and ends of vegetables:  half an onion slivered, three carrots and a quarter cabbage put through my Cuisinart shredding blade, a chopped stalk of celery, and some cold cooked green beans.  Added the noodles to the mix, and then the cold meat and sauce plus a little water; covered the pot to heat it up, and then topped it with a drizzle of sesame oil and sesame seeds.

I always make extra vegetables -- the three big carrots and the cabbage was more than necessary for most of my family.  But not for me!  I pulled about a cup and a half of the stir-fried vegetables out before I added the noodles, and added them to mine to make my lunch a little heavier on the vegetables and a little lighter on the noodles.

Either or: a small victory. Plus, Easy Morning Bran Muffins.

A common thought pattern that helped keep me stuck in gluttony was always:  You don't just want to eat this food, you need to eat this food.  You haven't had enough [some nutrient] today, or at this meal.  You need more of [that nutrient].  This food will give it to you.

I have learned to challenge that thought.

Today I baked bran muffins with dried cherries for breakfast.  (Muffins are easier than I ever realized as a breakfast food, by the way; recipe at the end of the post.)  I am still working on dropping a pound that I gained, so I thought I'd have my signal breakfast of 1 boiled egg and 4 oz. tomato juice, and perhaps save a muffin for my midmorning snack right before my swim.

And then while the muffins were baking and the egg was boiling, I thought:  Muffins are best when they are warm out of the oven.  I don't want to eat the muffin cold in the car on the way to the gym.  I am also working on sitting down and truly enjoying my food.  I will enjoy a muffin for breakfast and have the boiled egg for my snack instead.

Tomato juice and muffin sounded gross, so I poured four ounces of milk instead.  I sat down and slowly enjoyed a hot buttered muffin and sipped my milk.  I used a fork and concentrated on the crumbly texture of the muffin, the flavor of cherries plump from the moist heat, the silkiness of the melting butter.  The milk was rich, cool, and creamy.  It was good.  I felt satisfied.

Then the voice in my head started:  No way is that enough protein.  You should eat the boiled egg too.  And you didn't get any vegetables!  You should have a glass of tomato juice.  You know you are working on getting lots of vegetables.  There weren't any vegetables in that muffin, now, were there?

So basically, the voice in my head was telling me to eat both breakfasts.  The one I had just eaten, and the one I should have had.

This is ridiculous.  I really try to concentrate on how ridiculous it is.   

(You see why I have had so much trouble keeping fast days?  That voice in my head is convincing me all day that I am special, I shouldn't fast because I am hypoglycemic or whatever, if I don't eat I will be mean to people and that will be uncharitable and that is worse than not fasting, yadda yadda.  Ridiculous, I'm telling you.)

Anyway, I said to myself, Self:  

(a) There is, in fact, protein here.  (I counted later:  Four grams in the muffin and four in the milk.  There are only six in the boiled egg.)

(b) True, no vegetables, but there was some dried fruit, and a nice hit of fiber.  I don't have to get every single nutrient at every single meal.  

(c) I HAVE ALREADY EATEN BREAKFAST.  And, what with the whole milk and all, a higher-calorie-than-usual breakfast.  I do not need a second one.

So I set the egg aside to eat it for my midmorning snack instead of the usual handful of nuts, and got a cup of coffee.  

I have encountered this sort of internal dialogue before.  Another way I have solved it in the past, when the breakfast I planned is warring in my head with the breakfast I suddenly decided I really wanted to enjoy, is to split the difference and have half of each breakfast. That can be a little dangerous, though, if there is no one around to eat up the other halves.

Easy morning bran muffins

THE NIGHT BEFORE....

mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup oat bran 
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 

In a jar with a tight-fitting lid, place the wet ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 3 tablespoons (or less) maple syrup or honey plus milk to make 1 cup*
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil**  

Poke the eggs with a fork and scramble it all together a bit, then cap it and put it in the fridge,

Measure 1/2 cup of raisins or dried fruit pieces and leave them on the counter next to the bowl of dry ingredients.  Put out a rubber spatula.  Grease a 12-cup muffin tin and leave that on the counter too.

IN THE MORNING

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and start your coffee or unload the dishwasher or whatever while you're waiting.  When the oven comes nearly to temperature, take the jar out of the fridge and shake it to blend, then stir it quickly into the dry ingredients in a few swift strokes.  Fold the fruit in.  Divide among the 12 muffin cups and bake 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out nearly clean.  Let cool 5 minutes in the tin before removing.  Eat 'em hot.  125 calories, 18 g carb, 5 g fat, 4 g protein, 2 g fiber per muffin.  (calculated with whole milk, coconut oil, 3 T maple syrup, and dried cherries.)

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* You can use sugar instead, up to 4 Tbsp.  Add it to the dry ingredients and use a whole cup of milk.

** If you use a solid fat like butter or (my choice) coconut oil, you will have to melt it in the morning and add it to the jar of wet ingredients right before shaking.