My own diet tools. I wouldn't presume to wax nutritionist—there are many qualified people for that. Rather, since a whole lifetime of cooking and eating has somehow kept me and all mine healthy and trim, G‑d bless, I decided I must be doing something right, and I would like to share some of my practices with you.
Do the math. My first reaction each time I get a bank statement and am faced with the dismal numbers is, march straight to the bank and alert them that their mean giant calculator must simply be off its rocker. But no, it's not. It turns out that those withdrawals did take place and did add up, they always do, and the results are, alas, always accurate.
Eating right becomes second nature, and the occasional splurge is totally allowedHere's one simple example from my favorite diet book: Would you like two scoops of ice cream instead of two scoops of frozen yogurt? Go right ahead and enjoy it, as long as you keep in mind that two scoops of ice cream are the caloric equivalent of almost a quart of frozen yogurt. After many graphic instances of low caloric dishes facing off against their high-calorie counterparts, you can't help acquiring the good habit of counting. The good news is, after a while, you don't even need to count any more; eating the right thing becomes second nature, and the occasional splurge is totally allowed and is not considered a terrible setback.
Don't say the "Snack" word. After so many years living in the States, I have become convinced that snacking is an American disease. I have calculated that you need about six lifetimes, eating nothing whatsoever but snacks and never eating the same snack twice, in order to sample all of them. The problem is that the child in each of us has no idea where to start or when to stop. The very people who purport to have our nutrition foremost in mind keep coming up with all these snacks, fast and furious, promising heavenly tastes, a great energy boost, or worse, snacks that will replace meals. Seeing ads of beautiful girls ecstatically sipping their lunch from a can couldn't possibly help make it appeal to our senses any more than all the added strawberry or chocolate flavor in the world could help make it more palatable. Because snacking has such an unthreatening name and we think of it somewhat affectionately, we do it mindlessly and hardly ever realize it will calorically (but of course not nutritionally) add up to a meal and then some.
My mother tells me of a neighbor who had the annoying habit of "accidentally" dropping in on us at dinnertime. Each time we would ask him if he would like to join us, and he would vehemently protest, "Oh no! I couldn't put you to so much trouble. I just had dinner at home, all I want is a little snack," and proceed to eat himself silly. One day he was finally told, gently but firmly, to please snack at home and then come and have dinner with us.
Why not forget about all the staggering variety of snacks available on the market, and stick to what you love best? Did you make sure you had your breakfast? Your lunch? Your dinner? Wonderful, you still have a couple hundred calories to spend on something fantastic of your choice. That means about one treat. Yet another treat tempting you? Look forward to enjoying it tomorrow. We can't visit everyplace in the world or meet every wonderful person in the world or sample every snack in the world, much as we would love to; life is much too short for that, so let's make our peace with it and narrow our choices to the very best.
List of goodies. Here is a list of foods I keep on hand to enjoy in small portions when I must have a treat between light meals: sunflower seeds, popcorn, yogurt, granola, dried fruit, sorbet, homemade cookies and muffins, black chocolate, nut butters and all-fruit jams, coffees and teas, fresh and frozen fruit, salad greens, whole-grain breads, and whole-grain fat-free high fiber crackers.
Every day I took out no more than fifty caloriesThe kitchen is closed. I was never overweight, but for about five years I lugged around a pesky ten pounds I couldn't shake off. Ten unwanted pounds was too much to look my best, but too little to do anything radical about it, so I decided to do the equivalent of dropping the daily penny in the piggy bank, painlessly and effortlessly: every day I took out no more than fifty calories (half a glass of juice or milk, a third of a glass of wine, two crackers, half a slice of bread, etc.). Along the same lines, I moved most of my eating to the middle of the day, eating early dinners and making sure to eat late meals only when I absolutely couldn't help it (weddings, business meetings, eating on the road, etc.) and if I suspected those late meals might be irresistible, I made room for them by eating extra light that day. Not eating late as a rule, and considering that the kitchen is closed after seven pm except for a cup of tea and a piece of fruit, was the single greatest change I made in my diet to this day.
Don't eat what's bad for you. I used to think life wouldn't be worth living without pizza, pasta, bagels and the like. But this love has always remained unrequited, and these foods wreak havoc on my system each time I succumb to them. I have the whole week of Passover to provide me with the ultimate litmus test: I feel great and light, even with the feasts I prepare, serve, and eat, and I don't miss the culprits for a moment. Of course, staying on this kind of diet year-round would be simply unrealistic, so I replace almost all white starches with whole grain bread, brown rice, whole grain cereal, and all the wonderful grains that are so easy to find in health food stores nowadays. Likewise, I give my whole system a rest after a splurge that disagrees with me. Simple example: there is an infuriating ad on television about some antacid where the main character seems ready to keel over from heartburn, but about two seconds after popping an antacid tablet he is back in "cannolli heaven," eating and grinning. Why not have mercy on your tired stomach, forgo the rest of the treat(!), have a nice cup of tea, and call it a day?
For, not with. This has everything to do with doing the math. Are you simply dying to have that delicious bread? Great, only please don't have two rolls of it smeared with butter while you are waiting for your order to arrive. Rather, have your treat for lunch or dinner the next day, with a good spread and a good salad. Likewise, if you love popcorn, as I do, don't eat them after dinner while you are watching a movie or reading a book. Eat them for dinner with soup and a salad. In other words, pace yourself! You can have all your favorites, only not all at once!
Eat at home. What do all people who look good and feel good have in common? They eat most of their meals at home. Their pantry is well stocked with healthy staples, fruit, and wholesome snacks, and when away at their office or on a trip they work on replicating the home feel by finding the perfect salad bar, the perfect frozen yogurt place, and are not afraid to look like granolas just because they have some seeds, yogurt, or dried fruit stored away in a tiny space of the office refrigerator.
Eat things that take time to eat!Learn to order in a restaurant. As a restaurant owner, I can tell you with great authority that being a frequent restaurant-goer is no excuse for bad eating habits. Whatever dish I choose, I always order it with no starch and double the veggies, no gravy, mustard on the side, big pot of decaf tea, and bread to go.
Eat what takes time. One of my children, who used to look robust in his teenage years, to put it fondly, spent a year abroad in school, came back almost eighty pounds lighter, and never looked back. A dismal school dorm diet had jolted him into rethinking all his meals. Not only has he maintained his feather-like weight ever since, but he assures me he is never on a diet. So, what gives? Besides becoming more conscious of what he ingests, he shared a ridiculously simple trick with me, and with whoever asks him: Eat things that take time to eat! And what might that be? Well, to name a few valuable items, watermelon, an apple, popcorn, sandwiches prepared with dense whole grain bread, soup, salad, and so on.
Then comes my (and my husband's) great favorite: sunflower seeds, in their shells of course. We simply couldn't live without them. It's the perfect eat-like-a-mentch-or-you-might-choke kind of food. Plus, they are delicious. They come in 2 1/2-ounce vacuum-packed bags to preserve their freshness. We have done all the math: with all the painstaking shelling, it takes about an hour to finish a bag, a two hundred thirty-calorie treat. And so good for you, with the perfect oils and vitamins. My husband and I hunker down to a bag (each, of course, there is a limit to sharing, even between husband and wife. Don't touch my seeds, you hear?) when reading a book, or making our calls (if the other party mentions anything about a funny gnawing sound in the background, just answer innocently you don't notice anything), or even on short plane rides with meager offerings (yes, we dispose of our shells considerately!). You would think there was a famine, seeing how doggedly we comb areas where we think a stray seed may have gone into hiding, no doubt trying to escape the onslaught: under a bed, a table, a blanket. Sometimes I have trouble finding them in stores, and my first fear is that we might have depleted, or maybe even drained, the national supply, but no, they always reappear on the shelves. Thank G‑d for small blessings!
The right food combinations. In a nutshell, the amounts you eat don’t matter nearly as much as the following rules: 1. Eat fruit all by itself, morning being the best time, between meals being great too, but never for dessert. 2. Never mix protein with starch. The proverbial meat-and-potatoes diet is thrown right out the window, totally unlamented. You need not give up on the starches, only to use the right ones and not eat them with meat, fish, cheese, or eggs at any one seating. So in one given day, you will have plenty of fruit for breakfast, followed by some yogurt or cereal, then a whole grain (brown rice, whole grain pasta, whole grain bread, quinoa, etc.) with lots of veggies and salad for lunch, and for dinner all the protein you want with as many veggies and as much salad and dessert as you would like, all prepared any way you like. Sounds good to me! You believe it when you try it and it works, and you enjoy it because you feel full yet light.
Never give up what you love. How in the world are we expected to enjoy a diet, let alone stick to it, if we are fed canned meal replacements, or meals that arrive at our door in a sealed bag, as if we were maximum-security inmates? We want food that is vibrant, colorful, and fragrant, and I simply cannot imagine any of these ersatz "meals" being endowed in any measure with these attributes. Why not eat what you love, and learn to love some other wonderful foods you have been neglecting or ignoring? Whenever possible (which in my view is always), eat the lightest version of your favorites. Examples: thinly sliced medium-rare London broil for steak lovers; grilled chicken for barbecue lovers; bison (tomorrow's meat, I predict and hope) burgers for hamburger lovers; tomato or vegetable pasta sauce for pasta lovers; poached or grilled fish with lots of herbs and lemon for fish lovers; mountains of salads and veggies with homemade dressing; whole grain bread with good spreads and nut butters, all-fruit jams and cheeses for sandwich lovers; frozen yogurt for frozen dessert lovers; perfect black chocolate for chocolate lovers, and so on, down the line.
Why not eat what you love, and learn to love some other wonderful foods?What about the impossibly rich monstrosities we see so many people losing their figures on? That, in my view, is not a weakness, but an absurdity: Give it up! P.S. Dear coffee shops, how nice, how hip, how progressive of you to start off with a wonderful zero calorie treat - coffee! - and disfigure it - and us! - by building it up to a 700-calorie drink, almost half of our daily caloric allowance in a tall glass. Is this the best contribution your marketing wizards could come up with? No wonder the public is so confused and frustrated, and so often overweight! Yes, it is our responsibility to control our eating, but it is the responsibility, indeed mission, it should even be his pride and joy, his raison d'être, to offer safe treats!
Use some restraint! I often come across recipes (from fancy well-informed cookbooks and food magazines, believe it or not) that read roughly as follows: "For 4 servings: 2 sticks butter, 1 cup heavy cream, 1 cup wine, etc." Stop right there, don't read on! It will be an orgy, not a dish! Come on, chef, get real! We all know contractors who promise a beautiful kitchen, which I have no doubt they can deliver… for the modest sum of a quarter of a million dollars. But isn't it better to hire the less expensive creative worker who makes the best use of the tools at his disposal and ends up with wonderful and affordable results? In the same way, why consume all those calories when you can have an equally delicious meal for half the caloric "cost" by using the right ingredients in the right amounts?
Get "stuck" with only the best. We all have at least one how-could-you-go-wrong-for-that-price? friend (a close relative of the indefatigable I-can-get-it-for-you-wholesale friend); the friend who, with great glee, displays all his or her bargains of the day, while you try to keep your eyes kindly averted. Granted, the shirt or skirt or whatever was not exactly the color, or the size, or the style, or the fit they would have liked, but they just couldn't resist such an incredible steal. So, they ask, how could they go wrong? And it screams for only one answer: You can go very wrong, condemning yourself voluntarily to a wardrobe full of "shlock" items, and its attendant frumpy look, all because of the prurient and short-lived thrill that comes from grabbing as many gimmicky cheap bargains as possible.
We all admire and seek to emulate the friend who has an uncluttered, well-chosen and to-the-point wardrobe and who always looks wonderful while not spending a penny more than your bargain-hunter friend (maybe even less: now wouldn't that be terribly vexing?). We feel the same about the speaker who carefully chooses his or her words to make a short-and-sweet presentation that hits the nail on the head each time. Likewise, your pantry, your table; just as the cheap plastic belt or the excess crude language obscures, indeed eclipses, all the good look and all the good message, so too, the garlic powder, the bouillon cube, the canned potato, the chicken nugget, the just-add-water soup. Even if you have no knowledge whatsoever of cooking, just by not using anything wrong you will get great results.
The deletions are every bit as crucial as the additions (I once heard a visitor at a shiva house tell her bereft friend: "Michelle, I know how close you were to your father; I hope you will be reunited very soon." That's right, when in doubt, don't say or do anything for G‑d's sake!). Banish all those ingredients that might compromise or ruin your creation, and surround yourself with only what counts and will do you proud!
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