Hamburgers!

Last night I ate too much. No big deal, I don't usually do that but the story of how and why is kind of instructive.

I decided to make burgers. I do this often, and usually I eat a turkey breast burger. I know, some of you think it's dry and bland but I like it. Really I do. For me the burger is more about the whole burger experience - bun, toppings, condiments. And I've gotten to the point where I find plain ground beef too rich and overwhelming.

At any rate - I have an exception. Trader Joe's makes these frozen buffalo patties, complete with mushrooms and cheese all mushed in. They are bad for so many reasons - not local, frozen, shipped across country, stuffed with cheese and God knows what else, 270 calories and 18 grams fat per patty, processed. I mean the list goes on. But they are DIVINE! My whole family loves them.

So I haven't made them for a while, due to lack of grilling in general, seeing as my grill is still covered in snow. I was craving them and decided to make them in the oven on broil. I cut them in half because they're huge and I had little whole wheat potato buns and little kids. I caramelized some onions and made some curried mayonnaise. I reheated some broccoli. I assembled a burger and took a bite - while waiting for others to arrive home, ostensibly to see if the curry mayo went well with the already highly flavored burger. "Oh my God. Sometimes I'm such a good cook, I just kill myself," I thought. I mean that's not really cooking, more assembling, but whatever, I was impressed with my last-minute dinner preparation.

Within a few seconds the mini-burger was gone. Half a patty 135 cals, bun 100 cals, mayo/onion another 40? (it was low-fat mayo - I know, see next post). I was not even close to satisfied. When I made these during my losing period I would eat that amount and then add lots of veggies and maybe eat another bite or two of a leftover kid burger and force myself to stop - and then eventually I would be full. Or more likely, I would grill both the buffalo burgers and the turkey burgers and eat a whole turkey burger and a few bits of buffalo. They are very rich. I always wanted more but would control myself. This time, I was not close to full, nor close to satisfied. One mini-burger wasn't enough eating for me. I decided to eat a second concoction, but this time substituting the patty for broccoli. Really, it was all the flavors and textures together that were so good. I didn't need that high-calorie patty! So I compiled my broccoli,onions and may onto my mini bun and started eating. This was just not working. I grabbed another greasy patty half and started eating that with my fingers. Soon enough, I had eaten both the healthy broccoli burger AND the patty. This is something like 10 points and I usually eat 7 (when losing I ate 5-6!!!).

OK so what happened? Why was I not full? Why couldn't I control myself? In theory the full-fat burger should have been more filling than the low-fat turkey burger. Even later in the evening I wasn't super full.

Here is what I think happened. First of all, I was just hungry. I had had a pretty light day. So the 300 calorie dinner really wasn't enough. I needed at least 400. But why wasn't the fatty/caloric burger more satisfying than the drier turkey one? Here I think is the essence of why most doctors recommend low-fat protein for dieters, (aside from cholesterol). After eating what was basically a slider, I just hadn't enjoyed the visceral pleasure of eating for long enough. Not only was it not enough food, but it was not enough relaxing, chewing, enjoying. It was also certainly not enough time for my stomach to tell my brain I was full. Or whatever that saying is. Back when I was losing I had a crazy amount of control - and even then I would usually use a floater point or two on buffalo burger night...but now, I'm not used to eating such tiny portions nor to eating dinner with such strictness. The biggest difference between maintenance and losing for me is my dinner consumption.

OK - to extrapolate up a level, away from my experience...most people don't want to change their habits. They want a diet to fit into their current lifestyle. They want to eat a burger, not half a burger. So by far the path of least resistance is to use low-fat mayo and cheese (yuck) and use turkey instead of beef and put a big hamburger on your plate.

I have tried not to take that approach, as it results in a lot of bad guar gum-filled substitutes, and can lead to bland, not-filling eating. But no rule should be hard and fast, and I see the merits of trying different things different ways. It is also especially important to recognize that high-fat foods are extremely high in calories. and if you're going to eat them you need a fair bit of control. That does come over time, thank God. Now I eat 4-5 walnut halves instead of 15 and it's actually a very healthy snack. I even can have a tub of them in my desk drawer. But when starting out, the control is difficult. It's easier to substitute out ingredients.

ok...next post is about low-fat mayo. Can you even stand waiting??

Premium jeans conversion chart

To anyone who buys premium jeans....supposedly you can use this to order online and get a good fit. Hmmm.
I'd be afraid to do that but I thought some of you might like this anyway. What the hell is a -4???




Original context...

Yay! Finally a useful book...

I've been waiting for this book for a while.  An interesting concept that should have been written long ago. Perhaps it was but probably not by such a good writer.  From the examples it seems too high-level and like I already know the stuff but hopefully there is more useful stuff in the final version.

I like how Pollan worked with doctors on this book. I especially love the notion of the health insurance companies putting pressure on the food industry. Awesome!  Editorial on Huffington Post here.

This looks fun too...gotta love Stewart...although something seems weird with the video...

No sweets

A bit of a caveat - this will be repetitive for long-time blog readers, but I know I have some new readers out there recently....900 hits in the past few weeks!

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There are lots of serious, well-researched, scientifically sound books on sugar.  These books explain sugar-addiction (slightly frightening)  and insulin-levels and all sorts of biological reasons why sugar is bad for the body and how the body metabolizes food. It leaves the body quickly and you end up hungry and craving more of it. I won't add to the blather as another un-trained voice but rather just note that sugar consumption leading to weight gain is a pretty well-known phenomenon. Here is a quick quote from Dr. Oz's website:

When you eat sugar, it stimulates the release of dopamine into the nucleus accumbens, which makes you feel pleasure. The brain recognizes and likes this feeling and begins to crave more. It may startle you to learn that heroine, morphine and sugar all stimulate the same receptors in your brain.

It takes 28 days to detox from most addictive substances, and sugar – hidden in fast food, low-fat options and condiments – is certainly an addictive substance.

 ...or you can read David Kessler's book, "The End of Overeating" for lots of detail.

I have read different suggestions as to how much sugar should be acceptable in a "serving". Dr. Oz says 5 grams of sugar, Jackie Warner says 9 grams. Either of those knocks out a ton of foods, especially sweetened yogurts and granola bars.  I found a petition on the FDA website from 1999 urging the FDA to set the recommended daily allowance at 40 grams of added sugar (there is none now).  I think that means in addition to the sugar found in dairy and fruit, but I'm not sure. Artificial sweeteners are just gross to me and do nothing to diminish the cravings, although certainly in my life I've had a fair share of Diet Coke. We all have our foibles. I'm a bit confused about the whole idea of honey, maple syrup and especially agave nectar. Those natural products seem better than high-fructose corn syrup for some reasons. But at the end of the day, too much sweet stuff is too much sweet stuff. Honey doesn't keep you full even if it has some natural enzymes that are healthy in another way. A drizzle is fine, but 3 tablespoons is probably too much for someone trying to break those sweet cravings, stay full and limit calories.

I'm not usually a fan of baby-steps. They don't result in large amounts of weight being lost, but rather 5 lbs or less usually. But it can be hard to take on everything at once, and reducing sweets is a great starting place, especially at this time of year when it's easy to have re-calibrated your sweets intake to be higher than normal.

Furthermore, the truth is, most sweets aren't that good anyway. So after holidays are over a starting place can be to put the cookie down and get the sweets out of the house so you're not torturing yourself. You don't need 7-layer dream bars and gingerbread cookies covered in M&M buttons calling you from the cabinets. A "once a week" sweets rule to help deal with the temptations (or twice a week if you need it) works well.

It's not as bad as it sounds, I promise. In fact, getting that sugar monkey off your back can feel quite liberating.

As a note of disclosure, I still eat sugar - probably more than I should. I usually limit my sweets to sweetened whole grain cereal, "diet" cookies and gummy vitamins. I eat those daily, but only after I did my own little "detox" experiment to get rid of the constant sugar cravings.

DVD preview

For some reason it never before occurred to me to look on Netflix for exercise DVDs. Not only do they have a huge selection, but many of them are even available instantaneously. Of course I need better equipment for that to happen. But while exercise DVDs are cheap to begin with, I have bought a couple that I didn't like. I should have thought of previewing them a long time ago.

Finally, a BMI alternative that is simple and makes sense

I have long advocated a pair of jeans as a BMI alternative, but that's not really scientific enough for most of us, me included. I read a second article by Dr. Oz last night, having ignored it for days assuming it was the same article as the first, but on a different web site. I think he generally focuses on older, more obese people, but he is probably the best person out there at putting difficult medical information into layman's terminology.

So in this second article on New Year's resolutions, he suggests that a simple comparison of your height, in inches to your waist (waist being the spot that creases when you bend to the side according to shopping web sites) is a better health predictor than bmi. Your height should be more than twice your waist. I'm happy to report I'm 67.5 inches tall and have a 29-30 in waist (how tight should that tape be??). So I'm healthy! Maybe I'm measuring at the wrong place though as he says my waist should be at least 32.

At any rate - it's a really good article - positive and makes sense. His show on Jan. 4 promises to be about exactly what we should be eating. I'd like to see that. I have no DVR so someone watch it for me!

My body would never look like hers even if I starved myself.....

young female athlete

I used to think that thin people were more willing to pay attention to what they ate and how they exercised, because they had bodies that easily responded to eating well and allowed them to be thin. That is, I felt that I was hungrier than most people and would always have a big butt and thunder thighs so what was the point of really trying? In order to be thin I'd have to starve myself and run 5 miles a day. Or so I thought. Well I think in reality I was eating way more than I realized and agonizing about when to go on that run for much longer than the actual run took - and I did no weight training. I knew all these girls who could eat french fries every day and end up thin as a wisp and of course they didn't seem to try at all.

Well this may have been true in high school and college but it's rarely true anymore. And I think those girls probably snacked less and exercised more than I realized. Reshaping one's body seems impossible to face from the outset. It takes a the better part of a year, or at a minimum six months for a body to really change. I think my body continued changing through September, which would have been 9 months, and perhaps my skin even got a little tighter after that, although I'm not smaller in clothing size or pounds than I was in September.

I was never thin and muscular before. I think if I had been, I would have felt more inclined to try and get back to that place. Now if I were to gain weight, I would know what it takes to get it off and get my body back. It wouldn't be some abstract idea that seemed an impossible feat and not realistic for my particular body.

I don't know if I have a bigger appetite than most people or a slow metabolism. Some days I feel like I do and other days I'm satisfied eating 1400 calories pretty handily. I see how much more my daughter is focused food than are some of her friends-and always has been-it's not something she learned recently. Maybe I was born interested in food also. Now that I eat and snack less I think about and am distracted by thoughts about food much less than when I ate all the time. It does get easier.

I think people look at me now and assume I exercise 90 minutes a day or starve myself. I don't do either of those things. I exercise about 30-40 minutes a day - but every day. And I think I eat about 1400 calories a day but I don't totally count anymore. No foods are totally off limits but I don't over-indulge very often.

What I'm saying is, after watching 2 hours of the Biggest Loser and thinking about my own body, I think I was wrong back then. I didn't just have a slow metabolism or a big impossible-to-shrink butt. I may have been right that living the thin life didn't come naturally to me, but it wasn't out of my reach either. It just seemed so hard to achieve and to come at such sacrifice that I didn't really even try. But those girls I grew up with who had the naturally athletic figures always tried because they always knew what was on the other side of that effort. It was never an abstract notion to them. Now though we all need to do the work more or less.

But if you think you don't have a body-type that could ever be 'svelte' you're probably wrong.