The Plant Challenge

So this past week I tried to eat 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I learned a few things. First is that salad is your friend and a great way to get your veggies in. I have an enormous capacity to eat and when you pair that with eating a salad the size of a mixing bowl, then it's a recipe for healthy eating. I can make a salad that equals four servings of vegetables and plow through it easily. The hard thing is eating servings of vegetables that aren't salads. The hard thing is that I can live on salads all day long. The other salad related revelation is to find a good salad dressing. J and I bought this AMAZING strawberry-chipotle balsamic and a kickass fig syrup that makes the most divine salad dressing. Seriously, a salad with that stuff is like candy. Finally, I am learning I really hate cooking greens like kale. I don't know why I can totally love eating salad but hate eating kale but there it is.

Anyway, in terms of results, I consistently ate more than 5 servings a day but dear god, ten was an act of god. I hit ten servings twice, both on weekends when I had the time to go to the farmer's market. The hard part is the fruit because there are only so many carbs I can eat and I am reluctant to eat fruit that have carbs. But that is solely dependent on what fruit is available because a perfectly ripe apple is like candy.

Here's how it shook out:

Day 1 - 8 servings
Day 2 - 9 servings
Day 3 - 10 servings
Day 4 - 10 servings
Day 5 - 6 servings
Day 6 - 7 servings
Day 7 - 6 servings

The Challenge

I work at an organization that promotes healthy living and I get to interview someone on their project to get members of their community to eat 5-10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. It's really fascinating because they are working with a low-literacy, limited English proficient, immigrant population. The learning is very experiential and visual. What I find to be a great success story was the person running the program felt like she had to actually eat 5-10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day so she wasn't spewing hypocriticial bs. And after six months on the program she lost 30 pounds. She didn't do anything else. In fact she was telling me about how she's also be eating nachos and steak. But she was eating a heck of a lot less nachoes and steak because she had to get her 10 servings in. So here's my challenge - eating 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

Here's a handy guide for those of you who are unfamiliar with serving sizes for fruits and vegetables.

In this challenge I have amended the rules:

1. Canned fruits and veggies don't count (although frozen does as long as it's not packed in syrup)

2. Beans and legumes don't count. They are the great superfood but they are like loaded with carbs. Great if you are a hunter who hunts and forages all day. Bad if you are diabetic.

3. Hell to the no with juice. It's not a fruit, it's sugar.

So here goes. I'll check in weekly about this but I am curious to see how realistic 10 servings is.

NOT ATKINS - Carbs

I was going to respond in the comments stef but this warrants a full post. I am right there will your nutritionist on watching the carbs. Once again, don't go all Atkins about it because that's just crazy-talk. But making sure you have enough carbs but not too much is a good thing.

For most people, they should have around 180 grams of carbs per day. 45 per meal for 3 meals and 15 per snack for two snacks. So what does 45 grams of carbs look like?

1 cup of white rice or pasta
3 cups of yogurt
3 apples
3 cups of berries
1/2 cup of flour
1/4 cup of white sugar
1 slices of whole wheat bread.
3 corn tortillas
2 flour tortillas (not burrito sized)
1 cup of beans

Looking at the list for me, I've come to love vegetables, yogurt, and corn tortillas. On top of that, whole wheat is awesome because you subtract the fiber content form the number of carbs. What has been surprising to me (and to J) is how easily 1 cup of pasta can fill you up. The thing is, vegetables (aside from root style vegetables like butternut squash) have negligible carb content. When you do a fried rice and even do 2/3 a cup of brown rice but with chopped carrots, tofu, shredded chicken or shrimp, onions, red peppers and bean sprouts, that's a meal that will make you loosen your belt. Last night, I made a great pasta dish from leftover turkey cutlets that I simmered in a tomato sauce. I did 2 cups of cavatappi (2 servings of the dish) and sauteed spinach, carrots and onions and added about four cutlets worth of lean turkey. That was a filling to the brim pasta bowl serving of pasta. With a salad, that was a filling meal.

Like stef's nutritionist said, do eliminate carbs. They are good. But It's useful to be conscious about how much. While I monitor my carb intake through grams of carbs, other diabetics I know do it through glycemic index numbers. If anyone has any advice on how that works, feel free to chime in.

Cinnamon Toast - It's all about moderation

Ok this is my new midnight snack - cinnamon toast. Tasty, tasty cinnamon toast. The point is not necessarily to eliminate things form your diet (i.e. carbs) but to make sure you're not going overboard. Case in point - cinnamon toast. I have two slices of Trader Joe's sprouted wheat bread (30 grams of carbs) and make a paste of 1/2 teaspoon of butter, 1/2 teaspoon of canola oil, 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of Splenda. The intensity of the cinnamon totally overwhelms any fake flavor you might get from the Splenda. Yes there's butter and you definitely want the flavor of butter but you can get that by using butter and also using canola oil. Eat it but don't go overboard.

The other key about moderation. Get the good stuff. You need a lot of cheap cheese. There's less flavor there. But if you get some awesome cheese (Mt. Tam, I LOOOOOVE you), you don't want to eat more than a couple of ounces. It satisfies you more. There's more flavor and more intensity. Same with chocolate. Artisinal Tome Acu (four bars left (IN THE WORLD!). You can't eat a whole bar yourself. It's hard to eat half a bar just because the flavor is so full. You feel satisfied with less.

I think that's why diet food sucks so hard. One of the few good things that came out of my diabetes management class was the warning to stay far, far away from anything labeled diabetic food. It's chemicals. It's fake food. You will WANT more food because it's not as satisfying.

'Tis the Season of Old Habits

As my co-blogger shared below, the holidays are a great time to revisit -- and learn how to improve upon -- some of those old family habits that helped shape the lifestyles that we live today. Since I'm with the fam now and just salivating smelling the Christmas Eve dinner that's in the works (a ham, sweet potato casserole, homemade mac 'n cheese, followed by sugar cookies and mulled cider), it seems like this is a good time to share a few thoughts on how those family food ties that bind, only if you let them:

I come from a small family, with no real relationships with extended family, so it's always been kinda the 4 of us against the world. Yet, at our mealtimes, you might just guess that we had a family of 10. Portion size was never our strong suit, and I am reminded of this every time I come visit because Mom and Dad still serve our meals on platters instead of plates. PLATTERS. I kinda get that in the psychology of our family, nurturing = nourishment, and abundance = affection, or something like that.

My parents seem to really value being able to provide for us kids, which they've always done very well, and that sometimes manifests itself in the food they make for us. Large, hearty portions, high-quality ingredients, homemade. This is not a microwaving family, and Dad's always been an excellent cook and Mom's a darn good baker. So my whole life, I do believe that a lot of our emotional attachments to each other have been communicated through food. To this day, Dad will start calling (now he even emails!) weeks before I come to visit asking what I want to eat, so he can plan out a lavish menu of my favorite meals every day I'm here.

A few years ago, when Christmas fell at a time when I was being really good about WW, I realized that I just could not handle eating in Dad's usual way while I was here. Literally, after 3-4 days of huge meals of mostly proteins and starches (meat, really good meat, at every meal), I felt sick. My body just wasn't used to those quantities or that kind of rich food, and I finally just had to put my foot down. So, ever since, I talk more clearly with my parents before visiting about what kinds of foods I'd like them to have on hand for me to eat while I'm here, things that I'm a little more used to -- Egg Beaters, soups, veggie sides. And that's worked pretty well for a while.

Then, last summer, my parents' lifestyle changed radically. Mom has been a health food advocate for decades, so she didn't often eat the same big, rich meals -- but a lifetime of doing so led my Dad to the point of a surprise triple bypass, on top of his high cholesterol, diabetes and high blood pressure. Face to face with this crisis, Dad came through with flying colors and radically changed his diet. Heck - he lost somethingl ike 50 pounds and climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro! He's doing great!

They now have very different kinds of foods in the house, which means my experience visiting is almost reversed -- in that I'm looking for snacks or some of my usual indulgences and they're no longer here! I'm not quite ready to be just a fruits-and-nuts snacker, sorry. I actually now learn a few new healthy-eating tidbits each time I come visit.

But, it is Christmas, so again my parents are really putting on a full spread for me and my brother, with steaks and lamb and tonight's ham. So it's up to me to enjoy these meals and the love they represent, while still keeping an eye on portion size and making sure I'm getting enough fruits and veggies mixed in there with all the meats and potatoes. Doesn't seem too hard!

So, with that, I'm off to dinner -- happy holidays, everyone!

Stef's Story

So.... here's my scenario.

I'm 33 and overweight, and I have been pretty much my whole life. I love food - I'm one of those people that can feel rapture from a good meal, and food is my comfort when I'm stressed, sad, happy, bored, or otherwise feeling *anything* - and I don't like exercising. I prefer napping. You can see wherein the problem lies.

Up until the last year or so, though, all my usual health stats were pretty good. But, in the summer of 2007, my Dad had a surprise health emergency as routine tests revealed that he'd had a silent heart attack and had almost complete blockage of his arteries. So he very quickly went in for a triple bypass - at age 59 - and came through with flying colors. He's now lost a lot of weight, is incredibly active, and just a few weeks ago climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro. Go Dad! So, he's become both an inspiration and a bit of a cautionary tale in my life.

Following his health scare last year, I went in for a complete physical and found out that I had officially reached the level of hypertension (aka high blood pressure) and my cholesterol was too high. My doctor put me on medication to control the hypertension, and it's been doing a good job. But -- I'm not all that comfortable mentally knowing that I'm relying on a drug to keep my health in check. I was able to lower my cholesterol significantly last year through diet, so I know that I *can* make positive changes when I really focus.

I know the things I need to do:

- Lose weight.

- Exercise more.

- Eat more nutritiously - with fruits, veggies, and lean proteins.

- Reduce sodium overall - which is hard, cuz my favorite snacks are salty, and I don't cook much so most of my meals are either purchased or come from a box.

- Cook more. (See the previous two.)

- Cut back on portion size. (I grew up in a house where dinner came on a platter, not a plate.)

- Reduce stress. (Any ideas????)

I have found that I'm much better at accomplishing a goal when I intellectualize it, so for me it's been helpful to learn more about the science behind health and nutrition. Understanding causes helps me produce the desired effect, or something like that. And that makes it easier to take a lot of the sometimes overwhelming emotion out of all of this.

I'm looking forward to having a buddy as I start this new adventure, so I'm really grateful to T for coming up with this idea!

My next goal: I have my annual physical and blood work ONE MONTH from today. I hope to lose a little weight and have my cholesterol at a healthy level by then.