Category Archives: Food

A Healthy Approach to Easter

I hope you’ll indulge me as I “recycle” this post in honor of Earth Day! I wrote it last year and since many of you are new to the Nourish Blog since then, perhaps it will be new to you. Isn’t that what’s so great about recycling, after all? Besides, I’m hopelessly behind this week and recycling this post is one way I can be gentle with myself – I hope you find your own way to do the same so you can find a little breathing room for yourself to enjoy the weekend ahead!

Easter Treats – Make ‘Em Worth It (originally posted 4-3-10)

It’s Easter weekend and for many would-be healthy eaters it’s a test of endurance to survive the seemingly endless parade of Easter treats that arrive in stores at this time of year. Frankly, whether you celebrate Easter or not, I think the retailers make it hard to resist the onslaught of sugar-laden treats with which they fill the aisles. And that’s all BEFORE the family feast scheduled for Easter Sunday!

My philosophy around Easter Treats is pretty simple. Pick the ones that are unequivocally worth it to you and enjoy them without guilt this weekend.

Personally, I treasure the tradition of an Easter dinner eaten among family and friends, and ours includes a host of Eastern European traditional foods: a rich egg bread called “paska”, baked ham, kielbasa (aka Polish sausage), pickled eggs and beets, freshly grated horseradish, and many other family treasures. I look forward to the annual meal and to the tradition its preparation upholds, so I eat it without a trace of guilt!

As for those sweet treats? My personal “worth it” list includes:

1) Cadbury Mini Eggs…not the kind with the yolk centers but those little pastel-candy-coated-solid-chocolate gems…

2) Starburst Jelly Beans…original flavors please – none of the tropical stuff

3) My newest obsession…Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Babka (oh my word)

I can’t wait until Easter morning when I “discover” my basket that holds those chocolate eggs and jelly beans. And, truth be told, we’ve already cut the first loaf of babka since this was the first time I’ve ever made it and I wanted to make sure it was worthy of an Easter Day appearance…believe me…it is. That’s it, pictured at the top of this post. See recipe via the link above.

My advice to those of you trying to get through Easter without derailing your healthy intentions is to figure out which treats are worth it to you …then have them…and skip the rest. Peeps don’t do it for you? Then by all means, leave the Peeps in the store! But hey, if Peeps are your thing, then enjoy their once-a-year appearance and be done with it till next year!

It’s a bit late to offer up this last idea, but I’d also suggest not opening any Easter treats until it’s actually…well…Easter! While retailers would have us believe we should be filling our carts with candy as soon as Valentine’s Day has passed, in truth, it’s probably best to just wait to buy or make Easter treats unitl it’s time for Easter. This makes it much easier to resist the temptation to open and eat entire bags of the stuff before the holiday has even arrived. (And yes, the same advice goes for Halloween!)

Well, I’m off to go color eggs with my little guys…Happy Easter one and all!

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Why eat artichokes?

When I’m taking someone through a Whole Foods or grocery store to teach them how to shop in a more healthful way, we almost always begin in the produce section. It seems we often kick off with a discussion of how bored the client is with broccoli and cauliflower and baby carrots! With that as context, we make our way from display to display, and talk about how to select a perfectly ripe specimen of a pear or a melon or a tomato. I explain how to make zucchini or rapini or portobello mushrooms as delicious as can be. We demystify crazy-looking vegetables like swiss chard or ginger root or daikon radish. And eventually, we come to the artichokes. That’s one pictured here, in case you’ve never seen one outside of its usual cheesy, creamy home, the beloved Spinach Artichoke Dip.

At this point I usually say, “Artichokes are sort of an advanced vegetable. They’re a lot of work for not a lot of payoff. And since you can readily find them canned or frozen, I don’t know many people who are willing to deal with them in their fresh state.” But after a one-two punch from articles in both Eating Well and Cooking Light magazines that featured artichokes this month,  I’m changing my tune just a bit.

In short, artichokes are packed with health benefits – one whole one delivers 25% of your daily folate needs and 10 grams of fiber! Ten grams! That’s 1/3 of your daily need. It also has more antioxidants than almost any other vegetable. That’s a lot of good reasons to do find a way to fit them into your diet. Here are two suggestions.

If you’d like to try a healthy makeover to Spinach Artichoke Dip, and want to avoid wrestling with whole artichokes (which, for the record, I still think is a fair amount of work) here’s one from Cooking Light that uses white beans instead of cream cheese. It’s called, aptly enough, Artichoke, Spinach, and White Bean Dip and has just 87 calories in a delicious 1/4 cup serving.

If, however,  you’re up for a little artichoke-wrestling, try this recipe for Steamed Artichokes with a Balsamic Dipping Sauce from Eating Well. You may want to double the sauce if you’re making all four artichokes as directed.

Either way, you’ll be getting a great dose of nutrients and fantastic flavor. Maybe a break from broccoli, cauliflower and baby carrots is just what you need to fall in love with vegetables again.

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How’s that working for you?

Last week, I enjoyed a visit from a dear friend I haven’t seen in a long while. I love this woman, for (among other things) her sharp wit, her abundant love for my children and our shared obsession with fabulous food…and champagne! Let’s call her “Beth.” As often happens these days when anyone spends more than ten minutes with me, we got into a discussion about food and health. Beth was lamenting her need to lose several pounds and noting that she had very little energy, especially early in the day.  I empathized with her….after all, these are things I hear fairly regularly from clients.

In the very next breath, perhaps to demonstrate that she’s not just passively accepting her fate, but rather is actively committed to achieving her goals, she began to rattle off a number of her eating habits, including always skipping breakfast “because she’s just not hungry in the morning” and often skipping lunch as well. It’s as if she were saying, “All this discipline and still no weight loss? The injustice of it all!”  Hmmm.

I’m sure on some level she wanted me to say, “Well good for you, my friend! Just keep doing what you’re doing and I’m sure the weight will  fall off any day now.” But, thinking back to how the conversation began, I simply asked, “Well, how is that working for you?”

And I was met with a surprised silence. Followed by a burst of laughter and the words “Well, I guess it’s NOT really, is it?!”

Remember? The whole conversation began with her talking about her discontent with the current state of affairs. With how desperately she wished she could look or feel better!

This disconnect between our perception of our behaviors and results those behaviors are actually giving us is really important. It’s where my work with clients often begins. Someone decides that a certain behavior (e.g. skipping breakfast) MUST be the way to lose weight. And she continues to repeat the behavior, even though it’s NOT delivering the results she wants, thinking that one day it will work!  But when what you’re doing isn’t getting you the results you want, one of two things is happening. Either:

1) Your perception of your behaviors is distorted, or

2) Your behaviors aren’t actually serving your goals.

Let’s use Beth as an example. If she skips breakfast every day to save the calories, but then succumbs to the donuts in the break room or the pastry at Panera at 10AM  because her body is literally starving, did she really skip breakfast? Or did she just delay it until she makes a convenient but unhealthy choice mid-morning?

Or, if she thinks that skipping breakfast is a good way to save calories, but doesn’t realize that this habit is putting her metabolism into a conservation mode and actually preventing her from burning calories (while robbing her of energy),  is the practice really serving her weight loss goals?

Here’s the bottom line. If you’re not getting the results you want, maybe it’s time to take a harder look at your behaviors.  Think about what you tell yourself you’re doing to be healthy. Then, look in the mirror and ask yourself, “How’s that working for you?”

 

PS – I’m happy to say that “Beth” reports she’s been eating breakfast every day since our visit, and she can’t believe how good it feels. She’s  beginning to reconnect to the feelings of both hunger and satisfaction – and is now actually looking forward to that morning meal! Bravo! One simple change at a time…

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