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"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.

Announcing a new category: "Lower on the food chain."

I hear that some readers are interested in my family's ongoing project to eat "lower on the food chain," consuming fewer meat meals and less meat overall.  I have written a number of posts about this topic, and I think it would be good to gather them together in this new category.

Most people know how to make a meat meal and how to make a meatless meal, but a very-low-meat meal -- the "meat as a flavoring agent" meal -- often seems trickier to put together.  I want to blog some more about those recipes, but even more, about the whole menu -- because it's really the menu, the way a small amount of meat can fit into a whole meal, that is the tricky part.

Last night's dinner was an excellent example of a summer low-meat meal.  I split one twelve-ounce steak among five people (our genders and ages are, by the way, M-37, F-35, M-10, M-6, F-4).  The baby is only just beginning solids so he doesn't count.

Here was the dinner menu:

Marinated White Bean Salad

Roast Sweet Potatoes

Sauteed Broccoli with Lemon and Garlic

Skewers of Bell Peppers, Red Onions and Sirloin Steak

Fresh Peaches

One thing you have to get over, if you're going to eat low-meat meals, is the idea that it's not worth firing up the grill to cook one steak.  

Skewers help.  Midday, I partially thawed the 0.75-lb steak and cut it into about twelve one-inch cubes -- so I guess each cube was about an ounce -- which I threaded onto two skewers and then salted.  I placed the skewers over a plate so the beef could drip if necessary, covered it up so I wouldn't contaminate anything, and left it in the fridge until about an hour before grilling.

Three bell peppers and part of a red onion, I cut up and put on different skewers.  I find it's better to skewer veggies separately from meat, because they may cook for different times.

Roast sweet potatoes are pretty easy, of course, you just pierce them and put them in a parchment-lined roasting pan in the oven for a couple of hours.   Or, if you forget until the last minute, you can always microwave them, or peel them, cut them up, and boil them for ten minutes.

The marinated white bean salad I made the day before.  This is one of those recipes that doesn't need a recipe.  Cut into small dice:  some celery, some carrots, some red onion.  Mince a couple of cloves of garlic.  Toss in a bowl with olive oil, red wine vinegar, basil, and dill.  Stir in a couple of cans of well drained white beans.  Refrigerate at least a few hours, overnight is even better.

The broccoli was cooked briefly in boiling water ahead of time, and then as soon as the other stuff went on the grill, I finished it by sauteeing in olive oil with minced garlic and lemon zest, the juice of the lemon being added at the end.

Mark and I each got three cubes of meat, and the three eating kids each got two cubes of meat, plus as much of the veggies as we wanted.  I put my steak on top of the white bean salad, but everybody else dredged theirs in ketchup or barbecue sauce.

Building muscle with light weights.

I've always been sort of dismissive of the idea of "light weight, many reps," but maybe it's not so useless after all:

Current gym dogma holds that to build muscle size you need to lift heavy weights. However, a new study conducted at McMaster University has shown that a similar degree of muscle building can be achieved by using lighter weights. The secret is to pump iron until you reach muscle fatigue.

..."Rather than grunting and straining to lift heavy weights, you can grab something much lighter but you have to lift it until you can't lift it anymore," says Stuart Phillips, associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University. 

...it's really not the weight that you lift but the fact that you get muscular fatigue that's the critical point in building muscle. The study used light weights that represented a percentage of what the subjects could lift. The heavier weights were set to 90% of a person's best lift and the light weights at a mere 30% of what people could lift. "It's a very light weight," says Phillips noting that the 90-80% range is usually something people can lift from 5-10 times before fatigue sets in. At 30%, Burd reported that subjects could lift that weight at least 24 times before they felt fatigue.

(Bold emphasis is mine.)  

This is pretty exciting news for anyone who can't afford a fancy home gym.  If you're looking to add resistance exercise, you can do it without any weights at all:  start with your own bodyweight.  An excellent start is a bodyweight squat. Here's a "Less Thinking, More Doing" resistance program for beginners that includes a bodyweight squat at stumptuous.com (which is a triple-F-fantastic site about weightlifting, for anyone but especially for women and girls).  Here's how to squat.  Here's an introduction to another good bodyweight exercise:  pushups.

Travel lightly.

We just had a week's vacation in the mountains.  When we were out doing fun stuff I wasn't thinking about blogging.  I still haven't forgotten how to unplug when necessary.  But I had to stop and eat from time to time, and the habit of analyzing my appetites dies pretty hard.

Vacation food presents a sort of paradox. 

On the one hand, you cannot -- cannot -- eat precisely the same way you eat normally.  Too much is out of your control:  if you are a guest in a home or a restaurant, someone else may be doing the cooking; if you have access to a kitchen, the pantry is probably limited; picnicking food must be chosen to avoid spoilage; food on the road is, well, road food.  If you try too hard to exercise strict control over your food, you're sure to be frustrated and unhappy and resentful, and your companions will tire quickly of your pickiness.   Much better to be able to go with the flow and accept the limitations before you.

The opposite problem is a sort of giddy reveling in the differentness of the fare.  Ooh goody, we're on the road:  cheeseburgers and Mexican and hash browns and all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets, and it's not our fault because we're on the road!  Don't be a wet blanket; I'm on vacation and the rules don't apply.  Dessert every night!  I'm on vacation!

The problem is, of course, that the rules do apply.  There is nothing magic about vacation time that changes how your body uses a calorie.   Balanced eating and activity is a longish-term balance, of course, and the body can absorb an indulgence here or there; but a whole week or even just a weekend can seriously throw you off, and it's much better to face reality with the knowledge that a string of indulgences will have a consequence.  This is a good time to practice emotional detachment from the idea of eating "as much as you want" because it's your vacation, your "me time," whatever.    Every day can be "me time" if you use your time to take care of the "me" you have.  Learn to take pleasure in eating well and in making the trade-offs that are necessary to balance the extras that come along with travel.  Have less indigestion and less guilt, and enjoy your food more.

Some thoughts and strategies for traveling.

Keep the total quantity of food close to your normal level.  This is the most important one to remember, because you can use it under almost any circumstances.  The kinds of food available will probably be quite different, and there may be special things you would like to enjoy that you don't normally get.  You can still ingest close to the same energy by consciously limiting quantities, either across the board or only certain strategically chosen categories of food.    Keep your breakfasts no larger than normal, your lunches no larger than normal; if you are going to have desserts, SAVE ROOM by eating smaller dinners or forgoing a snack somewhere.  Chances are that everything you see will have more calories than it would at home, so for goodness sake, don't eat any MORE of it than you would at home.

Choose whole grains and legumes whenever you can. Out in the wide world, most hamburger buns and dinner rolls are white as the driven snow.  So when you get the chance to have whole grain instead of white flour or white rice, take it.  Prefer oatmeal to toast;  prefer shredded wheat to corn flakes; prefer beans to rice; prefer nuts to pretzels; prefer Triscuits to Ritz.  If the best you can do is "wheat" bread instead of "white," choose it; even though it's mostly white flour, you'll at least reinforce the habit of eating something with brown flecks in it.  The idea is to balance these opportunities against the many, many times when refined white stuff is the only choice.

Stick with very simple breakfasts in restaurants.  If you can't resist restaurant pancakes, learn how to make better ones at home, and make them often enough to develop a distaste for the ones at Perkins.  I know, it's fun to tuck into the Lumberjack Special, but it doesn't feel good afterwards (although if you're too stuffed to eat lunch it may balance out).  Believe me, I love a good hearty restaurant breakfast, but not as part of a string of on-the-road food.  Instead, I generally order oatmeal.  Yes, even at the all-you-can-eat buffet.  It is a satisfying, high-protein whole grain.   If there are berries or raisins or nuts or nut butters, cream, and brown sugar to stir in, so much the better. 

Don't eat while you're driving.  It's terribly unsafe to begin with, and it's messy, and you can't really enjoy your food while doing it, and it makes many healthful choices impossible because of the fork factor.  "I don't need to pay attention to this food while I eat it" is a poor reason to choose a snack.

Pack snacks for the road -- or don't.  Lots of people will tell you that you ought to pack snacks for the car instead of stopping to buy them along the way, but I don't think it's necessary.  In our family, the ritual of Stopping For A Granola Bar From a Gas Station is a major attraction along any route.  And truth is, there are good choices in convenience stores:  cereal, nuts, whole grain crackers, cheese sticks, vegetable juices, milk.  We usually mix it up a bit, bringing a mini-cooler with string cheese and fruit, and picking up a few things as we go for their entertainment value.   Favor small items.  Don't bring trigger foods.  And snack no more than you would at home.

Expect a spike on the scale in the day or so after the road trip.  I suspect excess sodium.  I find that a couple of days of "clean eating" after the driving day -- lots of water and fresh food, as little processed stuff as possible -- makes it go away.

Match your physical activity.  Is the vacation busy and active, or lazy and restful?   Some of each?  Consider eating lightly on lounging days or driving days, and eating more heartily (or in response to hunger, if you can) on days with lots of moving around.  A lot of that cruddy feeling that comes from a day behind the wheel, I'm convinced, is alleviated by eating lightly.  On the other hand, a day hiking in the mountains gives me an enormous appetite and makes food taste wonderful, so that a heartier-than-usual breakfast is really satisfying and pleasurable.  I love to indulge on vacation, and I love it even more when I've really earned it (and my growling stomach confirms I've earned it).

Consider a two-meal-a-day schedule.  On our mountain hiking days, despite being strenuously active and about 7500 feet higher, Mark and I don't eat lunch.   We just have a little bit of high-calorie stuff we munch on the trail:  at minimum, some peanut M&Ms and pretzels. A longer day may call for cheese, whole grain crackers, a Snickers bar or two, and an apple.  (Protein/energy bars are emergency food at the bottom of the pack -- and I don't mean "in case I get hungry," I mean "in case I fall down a ravine and have to spend the night outside waiting for the search party.")  The same no-lunch principle could work for a busy day visiting museums or zoos, or vigorous urban shopping.  And wouldn't your kids, too, rather nibble trail mix than stop for lunch?  If you're worried about mindlessly eating too much, carry only a small amount -- but if you don't stop moving (much), you're unlikely to overdo it.

Plan for something homemade when you return.  We can't always control the timing, but if we can swing it on a road trip, I like to stop for milk and fruit before we get back to our house, then throw together something homemade for us to have for dinner.  Here is where having some bacon in the fridge, or some ground beef previously cooked with onion in the freezer, really helps -- add  some pantry and freezer staples, and we can be eating whole grain pasta with sauce all'amatriciana or our favorite beef and bean chili, thirty minutes after we walk in the door. 

Bonus:  if you're busy cooking, someone else will have to clean out the minivan.

Garbage yardage?

After Leo turned six weeks old and I got into the pool for my first postnatal swim, I floundered.  It felt so good to be back in the water again after close to four months off.  It felt so awful to have lost so much ground, to know I'd have to work hard to "get back to where I was."  Those first few times I couldn't bear to think about any sort of a workout plan.  I got into the water, I crossed and re-crossed the pool, and when my time was up I climbed out. 

There's a term I have encountered in reading about swim training:  "garbage yardage."   The derision is aimed at, well, aimlessness.  It is pleasant to get in the pool and swim at a comfortable pace for forty minutes or an hour, not trying to go particularly fast, not working hard, just racking up the yards.  Undoubtedly it is better than not swimming at all, good for my heart and for my muscles and for my mentality.  It's not a waste of time. 

But it won't make me faster.

And it's kind of boring, too.

I felt more grounded as soon as I had a goal.  My longish-term goal is now to swim a mile in fifty minutes.  My shortish-term goal, since I'm stuck with shorter workouts for the time being, is to swim a half-mile in twenty-five minutes.  So I'm working on speed, not sprint speed but steady pace.  I have a stopwatch.  I have a plan:  so many intervals, so many seconds per interval, this much of a warmup, this much of a cool-down.  Each time I cross the pool I have some mini-goal in mind, mostly a part of the form:  This lap I will concentrate on controlling the roll of my body.  Next lap I will slice my hands into the water at the right angle every time.  The lap after that, I will be sure to kick forcefully all the way across the pool. 

This is not garbage yardage.  This yardage has a point.

Every physical activity has its form of garbage yardage.  I don't mean that aimless yardage is truly "garbage," as if it doesn't help at all.  It's relaxing, and it's better than sitting on the couch.  Relatively speaking, though, improvement requires a challenge.  How much it takes to challenge you depends on what you're used to.  Strolling around the neighborhood is fun and good for you, but is not a challenge... unless you are so unused to walking that it leaves you breathless.  For me, now, running 30 minutes at four miles an hour would be garbage yardage.  Fine for a day when I feel sore or headachy.   Much better than nothing.  But if my workouts were all like that I wouldn't improve.

The size of the challenge does not matter.  It can be quite tiny.  Just a little bit longer.   Just a little bit faster.  Just a little bit harder.  It can be the tiniest measurable increment:  I'm going to run at five-point-nine instead of five-point-eight.  I'm going to add that teeny little free weight, the one that looks like a CD, on to the stack of weights I lifted last week.  I'm going to finish one more lap.

So if the tiniest self-challenge counts, then even your very first day of deliberate body motion, no matter what it is, is worth something.  Get out and move.  Challenge yourself (1) to begin and (2)  to make a challenge for next time. So there will be a next time.

That is how it starts.

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.

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.

Means-centered affirmations.

I have been maintaining that the secret to eating moderately for weight loss is to desire the new behavior of eating moderately for its own sake, instead of trying to desire weight loss strongly enough to overcome daily temptations.  Often I've wondered if it's possible for people to make themselves want that:  to teach them to desire the means instead of the end.

Because it's obvious that "wanting to lose weight" often isn't strong enough.  Commonly, weight loss pundits advise the dieter to write down all the advantages of losing weight that she can think of, either in a long list or individually on cards.  Then, she is supposed to renew them regularly, every morning or however often as necessary to keep them front and center in their priority list.

So, you'll see suggested advantages like this:

• I will be able to shop in regular stores.
• I'll be able to sit comfortably in an airplane seat.
• I'll be less likely to suffer from diabetes...

All of these reasons are extremely attractive and I think it is interesting that
even though they are so attractive, many people have to deliberately place them
before their minds on a daily basis so that they can overcome the temptation to
make better food choices.

And that got me thinking... if people with really attractive reasons to lose weight still have trouble keeping themselves motivated... but if reviewing those reeasons daily really helps them remember why they want to lose weight...

...could people use a similar method to teach themselves to want to eat moderately for its own sake?  To desire the means, and not just the end?

Here's my idea for a set of means-based affirmation cards.

• If I eat less food, there will be more food available for other members of my family.
• If I eat less food, I'm acting locally to reduce global grain prices and help reduce hunger worldwide.
• If I eat less food, I can cook less food; if I cook less food, I can buy less food; if I buy less food, my grocery bills will go down.
• If I stop wasting extra food in my body, then my family wastes less energy, less agricultural land, and less clean water.
• If I eat less food, I can choose better-quality food. I can enjoy expensive imported cheeses in small amounts, instead of abundant cheap grocery store cheese; I can enjoy local butter from grass-pastured local cows; I might be able to afford organic fruit and humanely raised meats; instead of bags of cheap milk chocolates I can enjoy a square of the good stuff that's eight dollars a bar.
• If I order small meals at restaurants, I will be using my money to encourage restaurants to offer options with smaller portion sizes.
• I will never worry that people are judging me because I am eating so much.
• If I regularly eat lightly, then I will not feel panicky on religious fast days; I'll be able to concentrate on God instead of on my fear and my hunger.
• When I go to a party, I will be able to talk with people and enjoy the company instead of worrying about what I will eat.
• If I take small bites, slowly and graciously, I can keep up with the conversation without being caught talking with my mouth full.
• It will be easy to model gracious dining behavior to my children.
• Because I won't be worried about not getting enough for myself, I will easily be generous with what I have.
• When I order a tasty sandwich, often I'll get to have the other half that I've saved for the next day.
• Eating slowly reduces my risk of choking.
• Eating lightly will help keep heartburn at bay.
• Eating less meat means I'll get less meat stuck in my teeth.
• If I regularly get hungry between meals, I will not FEAR getting hungry between meals.
• If I spend less time eating, I'll have enough time to cut up my children's food
• If I eat small meals, I will never feel uncomfortably stuffed.
• If I take time before picking up my fork, I will never again burn my mouth on hot food.
• If I eat carefully and always use knife and fork, I won't spill food on my clothes.
• If I let myself get hungry between meals, my food will taste wonderful when I sit down to the table.
• When I go to a buffet, I won't have trouble juggling an overflowing plate because my food will fit beautifully on it.
• If it's true that transportation represents 12 percent of the energy costs of food production, then by eating just 12 percent less I can cut my "carbon food print" equivalently to growing all my own food in my back yard. (I'm a low-ca-vore!)
• Because I don't eat EVERYTHING EVERY DAY, I can enjoy ANYTHING on ANY DAY.

All these are affirmations of the advantages of moderate eating -- not of the advantages of being thinner.  I wonder if writing them on cards and reviewing them daily could help train people to want to eat less for its own sake -- which is so much more powerful than wanting to be thin and having to eat less to get there.

Can you think of some more? Add them in the comments.

Pickiness.

One problem with being "on a diet" in America:  It tends to make you an aggravated, and possibly aggravating, dinner guest.

This is where the habit of gluttony really shows its true colors, and in so many different ways.  Our cultural expectation of overeating as part of a celebration -- and I don't mean ordinary, natural festive feasting food, I mean really overstuffing -- tempts those who would like to remain temperate; and it causes people to take offense when a dish is declined, however politely.  

One of the more insidious ways, though, is that the dinner guest or houseguest  "on a diet" often can see no way to limit her eating, except to fall into another kind of gluttony:  eating "too daintily."   That is:   "being a picky eater."  

Allergies excepted, it's indeed gluttonous to ask that your host conform the dinner to your imagined dietary requirement.  What's that?  Did I just say "imagined?"  Yes, indeed.  There are no dietary requirements over the time scale of a single meal that are not imagined.  There may be dietary exclusions -- allergies and true food intolerances, as well as religious and philosophical taboos -- but no requirements.  Many exclusions are imaginary, too.  It will not kill a low-carb eater to have a polite quantity of rice or pasta or potatoes.  White flour may not be good for you, but it is not poison in small quantities to most people.   An entire dinner of deep-fried food, with nary a fresh vegetable to be seen, will not destroy a low-fat dieter.  But it is so tempting to sit unhappily at the table and think "Don't they know I can't eat all this stuff?"  Or to conspicuously peel the skin and breading off your chicken and leave it in a sodden pile on your plate.  Or else to become the Guest from Hell -- "Do you have any plain vegetables?  What's in this salad dressing?"  Even following the best advice -- bring a "safe" dish of your own to share -- often carries a subtext of "You make the WRONG food and I am trying to show you what is the RIGHT food." 

Look, I've been there.  I've done this. I spent several years trying to eat low-carb, which is one of the worst offenders in terms of diets for turning its proponents into picky eaters, certain that one bite of dessert will send them out of ketosis and derail them for the next 3 weeks.   I am keeping my fingers crossed that my in-laws and friends don't invade the comboxes and say "Come on Erin, you should talk."  I'm trying to be better!  I swear!

I'm bringing this up trying to make a plug for simple moderation of quantity as a dietary tactic.  Since I stopped following strict dietary regimens and started "not eating so damn much," I find it's a lot easier to be a dinner guest.  There's nothing I can't accept on my plate graciously:  potatoes, bread, meat, dessert.   If there are plenty of vegetables around, it's not hard to fill my plate up with half veg as I try to do on a daily basis.  But even if there aren't,  so that I must subsist (for just this one meal!) on high-calorie, low-nutrition stuff, no one can stop me from taking servings that are small enough to get the right amount of calories at least. 

You know the phrase "I'm saving room for dessert"?  Use it.  Really do save room for dessert, by eating a right-size portion of everything you're served.   You do not have to clean your plate.  Use "No, thank you" as many times as necessary.  And then when dessert comes, rave over it.  And then, if you like, stop before you're done and proclaim yourself too stuffed to eat any more. 

It's as simple as that.  And you can do it without explaining to anyone that you're on a diet, or have special needs, or are... "special."  You can just concentrate on being a gracious guest and having a good time with the company.

Reality:  You may not be able to consume a perfect meal, or even a "good for you" meal, when you are a dinner guest.  But you can always reinforce anti-gluttonous habits.  That includes pickiness.  Cheerfully accepting what's served to you and eating a moderate portion of it -- meaning that the only control you choose to exercise over the menu is self-control, i.e., STOPPING when you have had enough calories -- is part of being a gracious guest, and also an important skill that I think many of us have not developed and that transfers to lots of other eating situations.  And when you leave, you can reflect with pleasure on the habits you have reinforced -- making good choices (not just biochemically healthy choices, but charitable ones) in a situation where choices are, as always, limited.