I decided I wanted to repost the following entry from my recently-completed eGullet foodblog because I feel it turned into an excellent snapshot of my current regimen. So, for those who did check out my eGullet foodblog, thank you! and sorry for the repeat. For the rest of you: enjoy!
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1. The most fundamental thing for me is having my mental game in order. Motivation motivation motivation. I can't just think of it as a "diet" for a short period of time, that I'll then stop when I've reached goal. I have to think of it as a way of life I can comfortably and happily maintain for the duration--i.e. theoretically, for the rest of my life. In my case, the final kick in the pants was watching my dad die a few years ago, of kidney failure resulting from type 2 diabetes, after a lifetime of eating outrageously despite all his doctors' warnings. It was a miserable and totally preventable death, and for a long-lived family like ours it was way too soon, and it made me look really really hard at ways I had also been ignoring doctors' warnings, and my own body's distress signals, for years. It took me a year after Dad's death to get myself totally committed to doing something about that, but once I made up my mind, I bid fond farewell to the old way of eating and have (mostly) never looked back.
2. Second most fundamental thing: do not underestimate the degree of difficulty of this life change you'll be making. I was essentially attempting to reprogram myself after a lifetime of dysfunctional learned behaviors around food, including some major angst about overweight and food behavior (almost literally) beaten into my head from way early in childhood. This is major, and so I have given it the attention and resources appropriate to the humongous effort it requires.
3. Another part of my mental game: you may have noticed me occasionally joking here and there about The Lizard Brain. It's no joke, really: many brain scientists observe that we humans have a triune brain, consisting of three evolutionary layers: the neocortex, seat of rational thought and consciousness, is evolutionarily the newest; the limbic system, a.k.a. the "Dog Brain", is older, and tends to be involved in processing such emotional bonding behaviors as love and loyalty; and the oldest layer, the so-called Lizard Brain, is the seat of basic survival instincts such as lust, hunger, and territorial aggression. I love the way this article explains this, especially this quote:
"Have you ever wondered why you reach for that pile of hot greasy fries while you tell yourself you are on a diet? The answer is that you have three brains, and the older brains were wired to put on weight long ago when food was scarce. Your old brains are not easily controlled by your fancy new brain hardware that reads diet books."
So--do NOT underestimate the Lizard Brain! 'Cause it'll gitcha when you're not paying attention! The best ways I've found to cope with it, is a combination of keeping close track of my food intake with all those lists and charts I mentioned previously, the better to prevent it convincing me to cheat; not letting myself get too hungry, tired, or emotionally upset--all conditions in which the rational brain is at a disadvantage and the Lizard Brain can rush in and say "ARRRRR! EATTTTT!!!"; and simply staying aware of my inner lizard, understanding its moods and its functions, so it can't sneak up on me.
4. Having said all that, there is indeed an important place for little tips and tricks, so that you'll be cheerful about eating this way for the rest of your life. My favorite tips:
a. "You can have it all--you just can't have it all right now." As far as I'm concerned, there are NO foods that are absolutely verboten, no foods that are "bad". There are, however, foods that are so nutritionally dense or high in calories that it's best to have them only for very occasional splurges. So--treat them like the splurges they are, and make choices wisely. Yes, I can still enjoy my beloved red-cooked pork belly--but to keep from blowing my daily food allotment out of the water, I only have it occasionally and in small servings. Yes, if I really wanted to, I could have a fast-food burger and fries--but I'd have to make proper room for it in my food plan, and I early on resolved that if I was going to have a splurge, I damn well wasn't going to blow it on a crappy fast-food burger! Somehow, knowing that I could choose those foods if I really wanted them, but that I was choosing not to because I wanted to spend my splurges on worthier things, has successfully mollified my inner lizard's lust for fast food crap. Like I said, the majority of this game for me is mental.
b. Party on the vegetables! Vegetables offer such huge variety in taste, texture, versatility ... it's a shame, really, how often even good restaurants, even in this day and age, still treat them as also-rans, or act as if the only way to make them interesting is to dump a lot of fat on them. (No, I'm not anti-fat--we need fat for health, after all--but even healthy fats are a big caloric hit and need to be used with care). I have really made an effort to improve my vegetable cookery and move beyond the "just add fat" solution. Roasting, broth braising, steaming, stir-frying; flavoring with high-flavor/low-calorie condiments such as soy sauces, mustards, hot sauces, vinegars, etc etc etc ... the possibilities are really endless.
c. For those of us who, like me, were meat/fat addicts, maximizing the meatiness of non-meat foodstuffs is a great boon to happy healthy eating. That's another reason why I like roasting vegetables and flavoring them with soy sauces, both of which add lots of umami; roasting also contracts and evaporates moisture from vegetables, making their texture a little more meatlike. And cooking with meat-based broths obviously is adding meaty flavor with low caloric impact. Plus some vegetables are just naturally more meatlike--mushrooms, for instance, are great meat-simulators both in texture and in naturally-occuring glutamates.
d. The Asian cuisines, in my opinion, are some of the friendliest to those who wish to lose weight. They tend to have some of the healthiest ratios of meat to carb to veg, plus they really have a way with those vegetables. eGulleteers who have lived in Vietnam for any length of time have commented that they lost weight almost effortlessly on a steady diet of pho and other such dishes; the first few months of my regimen, I ate pho for lunch almost every single day. Now obviously, if I ate big hunks of pork belly every day I wouldn't be faring so well! But I already covered that earlier, right?
e. Spread your day's food across several small meals rather than two or three big ones; don't go more than five hours between meals. The human metabolism works more efficiently if its continually processing modest amounts of fuel rather than cycling up and down as it wades through one big chunk of fuel followed by several hours of nuthin'. And the blood sugar level stays more even, too--nothing wakes the Lizard Brain up in full effect like a low blood sugar hunger attack.
f. Fluids, fluids, fluids. When you lose weight, that weight has to go somewhere, and that somewhere inevitably involves the kidneys and GI tract. Help your body do that processing efficiently by giving it plenty of fluids to help wash the weight loss byproducts away.
g. Eating right is only part of the equation. Exercise is the other part. Not only does it burn calories outright, but it also revs up the basal metabolism so that it processes more efficiently; more efficient processing means easier weight loss. I confess I still have a long way to go with the exercise part of my program, but as my physical condition has improved, physical movement has become a whole lot more enjoyable.
h. Wise use of selected diet-industry products. The vast majority of diet foods I find, frankly, disgusting. But there are a few I find benign to indispensible. The artificially-sweetened beverage powders, to make sure I get in my daily fluids. The non-stick cooking sprays--I saute with them, and then use small quanitities of high-quality fats for flavor. And we've already discussed the quest for lower-fat everyday cheese that actually taste good -- high quality high-fat cheeses are not banned, but they do fall in the "occasional splurge" category.
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