It’s probably already too late if your kids go to a school that does a “Christmas Fair” fundraiser where your kids are expected to sell you gift wrapping paper and bows, and then spend their allowance money on worthless junk that will constitute their presents for parents, grandparents, and siblings.  If yours does, I strongly encourage you to join the PTA and turn them in another direction.

One of the advantages, if you can call it that, of moving all over with my husband’s Air Force career, was that I got to see a lot of different school districts and how they did things.  Because my son has learning difficulties, I always researched schools before we moved, and made sure we only looked for housing in districts with good test scores and good teacher ratios.  (If you’re interested in how you do this, drop me a line at the “Ask Abby” tab.)  I’ve sampled some pretty good schools, most of which had a lot of parent volunteer involvement.  As more and more schools face budget squeezes, they need and expect parents to step up for extras, but that doesn’t have to mean teaching the next generation that buying low-quality (or high-calorie) stuff you don’t want or need is somehow a virtue.

Support Our School by Getting Fat and Living With Clutter

Let me say right here that I totally exempt the Girl Scouts.  I spent many hours in my youth selling cookies, most often to people who really, really, wanted them.  There was a lady around the corner from me that I always hit on the day the order forms came out, because she was good for at minimum ten boxes of Thin Mints (they freeze well).  As long as the door-to-door sales are properly supervised (I never was, but I’m afraid those days are gone), the Scouts have a good system.  And most importantly, they have a product people want and look forward to receiving.

I also don’t count Scholastic Book Fairs, because there can never be enough books.  No, I’m talking about the endless sales of gift wrap, cookie dough, popcorn, magazine subscriptions, and whatever else sales reps can talk schools into handling.  Then at Christmas, there’s the keychains, eyeglasses cases, plastic jewelry and other junk that your kids are supposed to present to loved ones as gifts.  And if your kid is in band, or cheer, or sports, they have their own separate fundraisers.  Ugh.  You have to buy it, and you guiltily pressure friends and relatives to do the same.  No one gets anything they want (except the minuscule portion of funds that actually goes to the school), and everybody’s miserable.  And we’ve taught our kids a bad lesson.

When we moved into the last school district of my son’s career, something wonderful happened.  At the beginning of the school year, with the PTA and orientation packet came a letter.  It said, roughly, “Parents have told us that they are tired of being nickeled-and-dimed with fundraisers throughout the year, and the school is tired of watching most of the money going to the companies who organize the sales.  If you agree, please write us a check for whatever you think you would have spent on fundraiser sales during the school year, and we won’t bother you again.”  It worked like a charm.  Parents got peace, they didn’t fill their homes with garbage, and the school got more money than it would have after the organizers took their cut.  It might not work in every school, but it sure worked in ours.

I can remember as a child asking my mother what she wanted from me for Christmas, and the answer was either “Nothing” or something task-oriented, like, “Clean your room.”  It wasn’t until I was the Mom that I knew how honest she was being. 

All I Want For Christmas is For You to Clean Your Room

And what about teaching our kids about giving?  There will still be the inevitable ashtrays with hand prints and pipe-cleaner angels for the Christmas tree, but whether you can get your child’s teacher on board with it or not, you can start at home.  I can remember as a child asking my mother what she wanted from me for Christmas, and the answer was either “Nothing” or something task-oriented, like, “Clean your room.”  It wasn’t until I was the Mom that I knew how honest she was being.  Encourage your child to give you a book of coupons redeemable for time or personal services.  (If you know your kid is a procrastinator, be sure the coupons are marked “services must be performed within 48 hours of presentation of coupon.”) 

There is something age-appropriate for any child old enough to want to give a gift.  Younger kids might present coupons like “Pick up all your toys” and “Sing me a song” or “Read me a story.”  If you normally read to your kids, and you’ve never asked them to read to you, believe me, you’re missing out on a good time.  Older kids can offer to vacuum, mow lawns, rake leaves, or anything else they can do safely with minimal supervision.  Give strong hints that you’d like a “clean your room” coupon, or whatever job you normally have to nag to get done.  And coupons don’t even have to be specific jobs: “This coupon entitles Mom to two hours of my time to do whatever she asks, without complaints.”  What Mom wouldn’t love to get that?  It beats the heck out of an “I <heart> Mom” keychain.

For grandparents who don’t live near enough to have their lawns mowed, encourage kids to draw pictures, and write stories about fun times they remember having at Grandma’s house.  Better yet, have them make recordings of themselves that Grandma can play over and over again.  Free software is available to make digital recordings at home, and they can be emailed to Grandma with no physical player required.

As grown-ups, we understand the connection between working at a job we probably don’t love to get money to buy a present for someone that we hope will make them happy.  Kids don’t yet.  Unless your kid is like my local budding mogul who has a lemonade stand out rain or shine on every available non-school day, your kids won’t really get it until they get their first paycheck (and they see how fast it goes away).  I never had either an allowance or a list of weekly chores growing up, because my Mom believed that you do what you’re asked as a member of the family, and the family provides for you (within reason).  But she loved getting a coupon for a foot massage.  If you have a teen at that sulky stage, use a “two hours of my time” coupon to go to lunch and talk.  Teach your kids that you value their time and company above anything; it just might help them realize how much they value yours.

 

Do you weigh or measure your food?  I don’t.  I have a kitchen scale, and I use it a lot, but usually to do things like divide a batch of ground meat into even-sized patties or meatballs so they take the same amount of cooking time.  Unless I were truly in a life-threatening state, I don’t think I could be obsessive enough about my portions to meter my food.  Happily, the only measuring devices most of us need are conveniently located just past our wrists.

Though the use of utensils in the Western world isn’t more than a few hundred years old, we’ve become entirely socialized to believe that it’s not polite to touch even our own food, let alone someone else’s.  Yet for most of human history, we have procured and prepared our food with our hands, and then used those hands to bring the food to our mouths.  We developed bowls and cups, and much later, spoons, for liquids, and since the Chinese made noodles first, they came up with the chopstick because spoons just did not work for noodles.  The fork was uncommon for the common man until the 17th or 18th century, depending on where you lived.  We have until relatively recently relied on our hands to feed us, so it’s small wonder they are so perfect for the job.

Hand Me a Serving

You’ve probably heard the rule that a serving of protein should be about the size (and width) of the palm of your hand.  But that’s only the beginning of your hand’s usefulness in portion control.  The optimal serving of most carbohydrates, including starchy carbs like bread, rice, cereal and pasta, and more complex carbs like fruits and vegetables, is a hand’s worth.  In the case of the starch, it’s about the size of your hand, a slice of bread the size of your hand, or a serving of rice or pasta the size of your closed fist.  A serving of fruit or vegetable is about what you can comfortably grab.  It turns out most cereals, because they are made of little bits that you have to grab carefully, are also a grab-measure carb.  I did an experiment.  I checked most of the cereals in my pantry, and the recommended serving size was 3/4 cup.  (Sheesh,  who’s going to measure 3/4 cup?)  I grabbed and weighed, several times, with several different cereals, and it turned out I was within a gram of the recommended amount every time.  If you’re concerned that your serving size is more than it should be (and you should be, because it probably is), reach into the box and grab.  You’ll likely be closer to correct.  When we don’t touch it, we have a tendency to serve food visually; if 3/4 cup doesn’t fill your cereal bowl, you’re going to pour more.

Be careful on high-starch or high-sugar fruits like apples, grapes, or bananas.  Your hand should comfortably enclose the apple (the one in the drawing above is too big!).  A “medium” apple is about 6 1/2 ounces, a large apple is about 8 ounces.  I bought some yummy Jonagold apples the other day, and they tip the scale at almost 12 ounces, so half is much closer to a serving.  If I put my wrists together with the apple between my hands, my fingers don’t touch.  A two-hand, and therefore a two-serving, apple.  An ideal banana should be no longer than your hand from wrist to fingertip, so most bananas are more than one serving.  Shop for the small ones!  It’s hard to cheat on grapes unless you grab by the stem– your serving is only what you can close your hand around.

Give Yourself a Hand

I’ve seen a couple of websites offering to sell you a “portion control plate”– idiot-proof plates where the portions are measured for you in removable microwave-safe bowls.  Hmm.  I can see the benefit of using a small bowl instead of your hand for say, diced mango or something similarly slippery, plus anything sticky, gooey, wet, hot, etc.  But for a lot less money, you can just pick up a set of small Pyrex bowls that are microwave and stovetop safe.  You can also measure in them if you need to, because they are 4 0z. to the “line” and 6 oz. to the top.  Or make Jell-O. (Never buy a kitchen item that is only good for one thing!)  Just beware of the “mounding” effect when you use a bowl.  I hand my husband a bowl that should guide him towards a recommended 1/2 cup serving of ice cream, and by careful use of the scoop and continuous sculpting of a rounded top, he can easily serve himself twice that amount in the same bowl.  That’s why he only gets ice cream on weekends.

My husband thinks this “hand’s worth” portion plan is wonderful, because he has enormous hands.  Huge.  He can palm a basketball without a second thought.  He has almost a full knuckle’s length on me when I put my hand up to his.  (No, sorry, I’m leaving that unspoken query right there, unanswered.  You’ll have to do your own research.)  And I know my friends with tiny hands aren’t very fond of the plan.  But unless you are part orangutan, your hand size is probably a good indicator of your size, so if you can’t grab a full 30 grams of Special K or Fruit Loops, 25 grams just might be a better serving size for you.

So get in there and get your hands dirty.  Most of us don’t wash our hands often enough, so it will be a good excuse.  If you are concerned about handling other people’s food, food handling gloves are available for practically nothing.  Get your hands on your food again, and it will give you a handle on the portions you should be putting in your mouth.

Shoes.  It’s a love-hate relationship for most women.  The pleasure of an adorable pair of pumps that makes the whole outfit, weighed against the pain of balancing your body on less real estate than your average tightrope walker is accustomed to.  Personally, I think it’s a vast misogynist conspiracy.  In our modern world, happily, men simply aren’t allowed to oppress women as a class.  Unless, of course, they can convince us to do it to ourselves.  Think I’m wrong?  Check out photos of Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, and Christian Louboutin, and see what they’ve got on their feet.  Not a strappy, stiletto,  or platform in sight.

I’m kidding, at least mostly.  But from whalebone corsets to needle-toe boots, it’s utterly appalling what women have been willing to do to their bodies in the name of fashion.  You probably know that you’re damaging your feet, and possibly your ankles, back, etc., and maybe you’re willing to take that hit in the name of looking fabulous.  But did you know you’re also sabotaging your diet?

Stumbling in the Working World

When I worked in an office, I was famous for striding, and sometimes running, through our long, carpeted office corridors in my stocking feet.  Anybody who came looking for me in my office knew that if my shoes weren’t sitting empty under my desk, I was either in a conference with a client, or in a partner’s office.  If I needed something from the data storage vault or the word processing department, I knew I could cover the several hundred yards in roughly one-third the time if I left my pumps behind, so I did.  Yet I secretly laughed at the fitness-buff secretary who kept a pair of running shoes in her desk and changed at lunchtime, because she looked like a complete doofus walking out the door in a tailored suit, silk blouse, and Converse All-Stars.  I now have the perspective of greater age and wisdom, and I say, Welcome to Doofushood.

I looked into a “walk to fitness” plan awhile back, so I dutifully bought a pedometer and I discovered something amazing– I was already at their goal of 5,000 to 10,000 steps per day, between running up and down stairs putting laundry away, walking to our mailbox, grocery shopping, running errands, etc.  It seems like no matter how carefully I make out my list, I make a complete traverse of my grocery store at least four or five times per trip.  And Walmart?  Forget about it.  If I went to Walmart every day, I could do a 10K by the end of the month.  So if I’m going to take those steps anyway, why not do it at a clip that will get my heart rate up and burn some fat?  But you can’t do it in heels.  So I make sure that if I have the opportunity for a few thousand steps, I’ll wear at worst a comfy pair of loafers, and ideally good-supporting athletic walking shoes.  (At home, of course, I’m barefoot or in socks, but even if they’d let me in Walmart without shoes, the thought of contacting that floor with my bare skin fills me with unbridled terror.) 

You wouldn’t step on the treadmill at the gym in heels (I hope), so why would you waste valuable time out of your day tottering around a grocery store in heels, when you could get some exercise AND get your shopping done in half the time if you were wearing different shoes?  I would never say sensible shoes, because isn’t THAT the kiss of fashion death.  I can probably be fined by the San Antonio Cultural Commission, but I truly believe that SAS Shoes (San Antonio Shoes…Shoes…) should just change their name to BUS (butt-ugly shoes) and be done with it.  Still, there are plenty of walkable shoes that won’t make you look like you mugged an old lady for her kicks.  Put “penny loafers women” into your favorite search engine and behold the number of companies making a cute leather loafer that will look great with jeans and not unreasonable with business wear.  Take loafers AND pumps to work, look fabulous when you want to, but be mobile when you can be.  Turn heads in the meeting, then put it in high gear for the walk to lunch or the parking garage.  And if you do routinely walk through a darkened parking garage, I don’t have to tell you that being able to safely break into a dead run is a good idea.

Hobbled by Fashion Sense

I admit that I didn’t really get the shoe gene.  My mother had the most adorable tiny feet (size 6 1/2 AAAA, I am not kidding), and every shoe looked great on her.  Better yet, she wore such an extreme size that stores frequently couldn’t sell them, so they marked them down to the point where she got designer shoes for a song.  Not me.  My feet are pretty enough– no bunions, hammertoes, or corns– but they aren’t tiny.  I wore size 8 1/2 AA before I had my son and size 9 M afterwards.  (Yes, those of you who drop $1000 on Manolos and plan to have children in the future had better start preparing now to give those shoes away to a really good friend, because there’s more than a good chance that pregnancy will change your shoe size.  Permanently.)  It’s the rare shoe that can make my feet look delicate.  But occasionally, when I know I don’t have to walk far or stand for long periods, I, too, will wear the cruel shoes in the name of style (Yes, those are my actual shoes in the picture.  Cute, huh?).

There’s a saying that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in heels.  True enough, but she was getting paid rather well for twisted ankles and bleeding toes.  What’s your excuse?  Walking is one of the best, most natural exercises we can do.  We walk every day.  We have to.  So start thinking about the steps you’re already taking in a day, and look at them as opportunities.  Step lively, and don’t let your shoes set your pace.

My sister used to love shopping at a store near her called “Comfy Clothes.”  I guess it was a better marketing strategy than calling the store “Muumuus ‘R Us.”  Their entire inventory was loose-fitting, stretchy, elastic-waistbanded creations in which you could lounge, relax, and most importantly, hide at least 25 extra pounds before anyone, yourself included, noticed.

I yield to no one in my appreciation of comfortable lingerie and sweats.  In our house, we have a saying that if it’s dinnertime and Mom is still in her jammies, it has been a good day.  But I guess I’m old-fashioned, because to me, sweats are not something you wear out into the world, even to the grocery store, unless it’s an emergency (like you’re in the middle of putting together a fabulous recipe and realize you’re missing an ingredient).  I expect the clothes I wear out in public to actually fit me.

Make Your Clothes Your Size

If, like me, you don’t have an off-the-rack body, consider finding yourself a good tailor.  Your dry cleaners should be able to recommend one; if not, go to your nearest men’s store and ask the tailor they have on staff.  I actually know how to sew rather well, but I don’t enjoy it.  So rather than say bad words and throw things, I found a nice lady who charged ridiculously low prices for basic alterations.  I’m tall enough to rarely need a hem altered (and that I do for myself), but I have a small waist in expected proportion to my large caboose, so it’s incredibly rare for something to fit me nicely in both the waist and the hips.  If I buy a large enough size for my hips, the waist swims on me, and if I don’t tailor it to fit, I can easily pack on several pounds of belly fat before it becomes uncomfortable.  If you’re on a long-term weight loss plan, your tailor can be a huge help in limiting how much you have to spend on new clothes as the weight comes off.  You’ll be able to invest in nice things knowing that your tailor can keep making them smaller as you get smaller.

If the garment is washable, be sure to wash it a few times and dry it well to make sure that any shrinking it’s going to do is done.   Then, make it fit like it was made for you.  Be sure you take into account what type of fabric it’s made from– anyone who has ever owned a pair of jeans can tell you that cotton denim twill is evil.  You’ll put on a freshly-washed pair of jeans and think you’ve gained ten pounds, but after you’ve worn them for an hour or so, they will fit fine.  Have a garment tailored straight out of the dryer; if you have it taken in after the fibers have had stretched, you’ll never get it back on when it contracts in the heat.

Replace Your Scale With Your Waistband

Once your clothes fit, even if you never go near a scale, you’ll know quickly if you’ve been bad in the calorie department, and you can address it before it becomes a long-term problem.  We like to joke about having “fat clothes” and “skinny clothes,” but the fact is that your size and shape shouldn’t change all that much, week in and week out.  If you are truly getting so bloated at the end of the month that you need larger-sized clothing, it’s time to see your doctor, because that’s not normal (though it is by no means uncommon).  Hormones are tricky at the best of times, and stress, seasonal changes, birth control, and many other factors can throw your endocrine system out of whack.  What’s affecting your outsides is also affecting your insides, and bigger clothes won’t help there.

So stop avoiding darts, pin tucks, and waistbands, and embrace what they can do to keep you on the straight and narrow, diet-wise.  A good relationship with a tailor can be as important to your weight loss as your relationship with the trainer at your gym.  And if you keep up your progress on your weight-loss journey, you’ll experience the joy of taking something into your tailor and telling them that it needs to be taken in.  Again.

Back in the late 70s, a diet made the rounds of offices, college campuses, and other gathering spots of the weight-obsessed female, called “The Four-Day Diet” or “Lose Ten Pounds in Four Days.”  It was presented as a “fit into that dress by Friday” solution for women who couldn’t afford to hit the spa for a chemical or seaweed wrap to suck the water (temporarily!) out of your fat cells.  Unlike the spa treatment, though, the diet has an impact on your insides, and if you are healthy enough (no glycemic or kidney problems, for sure) to tolerate a VERY restrictive diet for four days, it can teach you some important lessons.

Be prepared, because it will not be the most pleasant four days of your life, but it’s nowhere near as horrific as some of those hot-sauce-and-worcestershire “juice fasts,” and much more balanced nutritionally.  But it is dairy-free, gluten-free, and high-acid, so be sure none of those are no-nos according to your doctor.  There is also grapefruit, which interacts badly with a number of prescriptions meds, so check on potential interactions before you start.  You can drink as much water as you like on this diet, and more is certainly healthier as the high-acid tends to have diuretic effects, but if you want to see if you can lose the whole ten pounds, remember part (though not all) of that total is water.  You are allowed to season with black pepper and a reasonable amount of salt, but the more salt you use, the more your body will want to hold onto water.

Day One:

Breakfast is half a grapefruit and coffee or tea.  Your beverage can be caffeinated or not as you choose, but NO whitener (dairy or non-dairy) and NO sweetener (sugar or artificial).  I’m one of those odd people who actually likes grapefruit, but I like it a lot better with a tablespoon of brown sugar on top.  Not allowed.

Lunch is roughly four ounces of broiled or grilled (with no added fat) lean beef (that can be anything from lean steak to extra-lean ground beef) and a salad of one cup lettuce (romaine is good) and one small tomato.  No dressing.  Okay, if you can’t stand it with no dressing you may have a squeeze of lemon or lime juice or a spritz of a zero-carb, zero-calorie vinegar, but no carbs and no oil.

Dinner is two eggs, one cup of green beans, and half a grapefruit.  The original diet called for hard-boiled eggs, but I find hard boiled eggs revolting.  There should be no reason why you can’t cook them any way you want as long as you add no fat, so scrambled in a good non-stick pan works for me.

Day Two:

Same breakfast (all four days!), half a grapefruit and coffee or tea.  Lunch is one lamb chop, a cup of lettuce with no dressing (see dressing cheats above), and 6 ounces of tomato juice.  If you don’t like lamb, I don’t see why you couldn’t have another four-ounce lean beef serving, or even pork, but avoid chicken or turkey– there are compounds in poultry that will mess with the chemical balance.  You get chicken tomorrow.

Dinner is veg, veg, veg.  One cup of raw or steamed squash, one cup of raw or steamed cauliflower, and one cup of raw or steamed green beans.  This was, for me, the low point, both culinarily and psychologically.  But it’s also the halfway point in the diet, so you can think of yourself waking up in the home stretch.

Day Three:

Your mileage may vary, but I woke up on Day Three feeling like someone had plugged my recharger in overnight.  Anyone who knows me will tell you that I hate mornings and consider getting up in single digits a form of torture, but I jumped out of bed on Day Three bright (for once) and early, and attacked my day feeling like the Energizer bunny.

After your now-typical breakfast, lunch is one cup of lettuce and one cup of celery (no dressing) with 4-5 ounces of broiled skinless chicken breast.  It is not your imagination if you think your chicken tastes sweet.

Dinner is your broiled 4-ounce lean beef serving, one cup of stewed tomatoes, and 6 ounces of prune juice.  I’m not a prune juice fan, but as little sugar as you’ve had in the past few days, it will taste like dessert.

Day Four:

Last day!  Same breakfast; lunch is two eggs, one cup of green beans, and 6 ounces of tomato juice.

Dinner is a repeat of Day One’s lunch (4 ounces of broiled lean beef, one cup of lettuce, and one small tomato), plus 6 ounces of unsweetened pineapple juice, which you will be convinced is the single best thing you have ever tasted in your life.  And you will go to bed dreaming of all the fabulous things you can eat… tomorrow.

What This Diet Will Teach You

The first lesson is one you’ll learn on the first day, because you’ll probably be hungry.  This diet is a not unreasonable amount of food, and more than many people get on a regular basis, but it’s likely nowhere near the volume of food you’re putting in your body every day.  So lesson one is “Rethink portions and snacks.”  Your stomach is much smaller than you think it is.

Lesson two you’ll learn around Day Three, “Your diet is slowing you down.”  The total lack of refined sugars and starches forces your body to readjust its energy processes, and most people find they suddenly have a lot more get-up-and-go.  It’s honestly an amazing feeling.  If you also find that your tummy is happier than usual, you may want to talk to your doctor about your gluten tolerance; tell him you went gluten-free for four days and felt great.

Lesson three will hit you on Day Five, when you try to go back to your normal diet.  Just about everything will taste like sugar.  You’ll taste the lactose in milk.  You may find your old salad dressing will taste so sweet that it’s downright unpalatable.  Ketchup will taste like you’re putting pancake syrup on your food.  “You have totally undermined your sense of taste regarding sweetness.”  For better or worse, this lesson won’t stick for long.  A few meals and snacks with very sweet things will have your tongue back to craving pure sugar again in no time.  But it helps to remember how that prune juice and pineapple juice tasted after being off refined sugar for a couple days.  A friend of mine was on a macrobiotic regimen to help with her Crohn’s disease, and she was forbidden refined sugar; she used unsweetened apple juice concentrate as a sweetener.  I think of her every time I see sweetened apple sauce or juice, because I can hear her saying, “It amazes me that people think they have to add sugar to something I use AS sugar.”

This is a good diet to try with a friend.  For one thing, misery loves company.  For another, you can share groceries, because if you don’t normally buy prune juice, you can’t just buy 6 ounces.  But mostly it helps to compare notes.  You may not notice something about your changed body or palate until your friend mentions it. 

I learned something very sad.  I’m weak.  I’m a slave to my taste buds.  I felt SO GOOD off dairy and with no refined sugar or starch in my system.  Better than I can remember feeling in my life.  And I gave it all up for a croissant.  Cheesecake.  A warm chocolate chip cookie and a glass of cold milk.  Maybe you’ll be stronger than me, and the knowledge you gain will change your life.  If you’re morbidly obese, and dairy, sugar, and starch are your trigger foods, it just might save your life if you let it.  Or you’ll learn that you’re weak like me.  Hopefully that’s a lesson in humility, at least.  And maybe having proved to yourself how much better you feel without eating certain foods will make you a little more circumspect about eating them at all, let alone to excess.

Depending on whether you believe the flattering biography of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich, or the unflattering one, the first meat-between-two-bread-slices handy meal was served to the Earl either at his desk (because he was so devoted to his many public offices) or at the card table (because he was a compulsive gambler).  Whichever one it was, it’s a good bet that he was paying little or no attention to what he was eating, merely that he was eating.  No wonder he achieved such an impressive girth later in life.

Sandwiches have become a way of life for most of us, because they are convenient and reasonably tasty, but the whole idea of having a meal in one hand while your other hand is typing, or on the wheel of your car, or holding a telephone, is disastrous to your diet.  In the first place, you’re probably not paying enough attention to it to be enjoying it, even if it is a good sandwich (so why are you eating it?).  In the second place, the guts of the sandwich, which is presumably the feature flavor and chief nutritive element, is likely being smothered under all that bread.

Lower Calories, Lower Carbs

Consider the open-face sandwich.  It’s really just a meal-sized canapé, a cracker-with-cheese supersized.  But you don’t normally feel the need to slap another cracker on top of your cheese or other canapé topping (and it wouldn’t be nearly as pretty), yet we compulsively put a second slice of bread on top of our carefully prepared sandwich filling, usually for no other reason than that we can eat it faster without getting our hands ooky.  With one swift movement, we have increased the calories and glycemic index of our meal while making it possible to consume it so quickly that we don’t realize what we’re doing.  Bad idea.

One of my favorite guilty food pleasures is the Jack-in-the-Box Supreme Croissant.  It’s a fat pill.  I know it.  That’s why I don’t have one often, but sometimes I just need that fried breakfast goodness.  I got one the other day, and for a wonder, I actually took my own advice– I took the first bite, and really considered what I found so delicious.  And suddenly, I realized that there was too much bread.  I was getting a tantalizing hint of the filling flavors, then they were mercilessly swallowed up by the starch.  So I took off the bottom of the croissant (the cheese is melted onto the top, but the egg is placed on the bottom with nothing in between, so it’s fairly mess-free to remove), and took another bite.  Heaven.  There was the smooth egg, the crispy bacon, smoky ham, and just enough cheesy croissant to be a complement without overpowering.  So there was 80 or so calories that I didn’t need to eat, and I actually enjoyed what was left more.

Unrolling the Wrap

In recent years, the “wrap” has become a popular alternative to the bread sandwich.  Unfortunately, the calorie count of the average tortilla equals or exceeds the average bun (there’s a lot less air, but the same amount of flour).  You’re better off with one slice of bread or half a bun than you are with a tortilla.  And honestly, it’s no tougher to eat an open-faced sandwich than a slice of pizza, and most people manage that just fine (I do not come from a part of the country where they fold their pizza).  Of course, it does mean that you can’t pile your sandwich innards sky-high like Dagwood Bumstead, but that’s also a benefit to your waistline.  If you wouldn’t put an inch-thick stack of cold cuts into your mouth by itself, why does it become okay to do it between two slices of bread?  Go back to canapé thinking, and don’t put so much stuff on your bread that it’s in danger of collapse.

I’ll make an exception for subs if you eat them like I do, namely, like it’s a salad that happens to be lying on some cold cuts and a roll.  But for all other sandwiches, give them a try open-face.  You may find that you can eliminate some non-value-added calories from your plate, and enjoy what’s left more.  Yes, it will probably take a little longer, and yes, you’ll probably have to wash your hands.  But this is supposed to be a meal we’re talking about, and any time you consume a meal’s worth of calories, it deserves a little more ceremony than being crammed in your face at a stoplight.

The so-called science behind “negative calorie” foods has, sadly, been thoroughly debunked.  There is no food, be it celery, grapefruit, lemons, etc. that requires more calories to metabolize than it returns in food value.  Having half a grapefruit for breakfast instead of pancakes will certainly have a net negative calorie effect, but even eating 20 pounds of grapefruit will not cause you to lose an ounce.  In fact, for the same calories as 20 pounds of grapefruit, you can eat an entire Sara Lee cheesecake (not that I am advocating that you do either).

There are an incredible number of flavor-laden foods that have very few calories, so you can use them to perk up the flavor of your food without loading up on calories.  And if you can substitute them for higher-calorie products you’re using now, you can win-win with more flavor and fewer calories.

The Flavorful World of Herbs and Spices

Fresh herbs:  Think of fresh herbs as lettuce with actual flavor.  If you’ve never worked with fresh herbs and you aren’t familiar with their taste, pick up a few at your market and try them.  If you feel silly eating a leaf, cut some slices of tomato (preferably Roma or Beefsteak that has more meat) and try them together.  The acid in the tomato activates many of the essential compounds in the herb, and you’ll actually taste the herb more than you will if you eat the herb alone.  Invite the girls over, and assign everybody a different herb to bring.  Toss some fresh mint in a salad.  Replace the lettuce in your BLT with fresh basil leaves and you might find you can cut back on the mayo.

Spices:  Almost all spices are calorie freebies.  Use the same method as with the herbs to sample some spices you may not have used before.  Try spice blends.  I cook a lot, and I have some truly odd spices on my spice shelf (really– do you know what a cubeb is?), but I find that spice blends give me a lot of bang for my shelf-space buck.  I use some exotic blends like Garam Masala and Chinese Five Spice, but for every day I find McCormick Montreal Steak and Lemon & Pepper are my go-to flavors.  My family can now consume steamed vegetables without butter as long as there’s Lemon Pepper.

Tang, Zip, and Zing

Hot sauces:  I mean hot sauces, not salsas (though we’ll get to them).  When I was in college, the dining commons had three things on every table: salt, pepper, and Tabasco.  I ate a LOT of Tabasco.  I find now I prefer the Mexican Cholula, but whichever you like, they both have zero calories and tons of flavor.

Vinegars:  Many vinegars have zero calories, and most have fewer than 5 calories per tablespoon.  Beware some aged and sweetened vinegars, which can have up to 25 calories per tablespoon, though compared to the roughly 120 calories per tablespoon of most oils, you can see where the calories in your salad dressings come from.  Try mixing up your own salad dressings and see if you can be happy with less oil and more vinegar than the bottled kind uses.

Citrus:  Lemon and Lime juice and zest, like vinegars, have that acid zing that wakes up tired food.  Like salt, a little acid can make everything taste better.  If you plan on putting sugar on fruit, try using half as much sugar and some lemon juice.  It really works wonders for peaches, especially if they aren’t perfectly ripe.  Try a lime juice marinade with little or no oil, and your protein (chicken and fish are best) will melt in your mouth.

Mustards:  Most mustards have zero calories.  Grey Poupon Dijon has 5 calories per teaspoon (so, 15 per tablespoon) because of the added wine.  If you can increase the mustard and cut the mayo (90 calories per tablespoon!) on your sandwich, you’ll save big on calories.

Veggie-Based Flavor

Salsas:  It’s not the salsa that gets you in the waistline, it’s the chips.  Most salsas come in around 10 calories per tablespoon, even with some high-sugar items like corn and starchy protein like beans.  Add some to your scrambled eggs, or brown (and drain well!) some ground turkey or lean beef (chili powder and garlic are good, too) and add the browned meat and your favorite salsa to a big bowl of greens for a taco salad.  Pretend you have the giant fried tortilla bowl– you don’t usually eat it anyway, do you?

Chutneys:  Chutneys are basically fruit salsas.  They are often loaded with sugar or salt or both, but they are generally fat free and aren’t more than 20 calories or so per tablespoon.

Prepared root spices:  I LOVE garlic.  Many of the meals that come out of my kitchen have enough garlic to drop a vampire in his tracks at 20 paces.  If I were really virtuous, I would always use garlic fresh from the bulb, but since the nice people at Gilroy Farms have made it so easy to slip their Minced Garlic into everything, I can be a little lazy.  (If you can ever make it to the Gilroy Garlic Festival, it’s a hoot.  The garlic ice cream is a little odd.)  Gilroy Farms also makes a minced Ginger, and for the truly lazy, a Garlic-Ginger blend they call “Stir-Fry Seasoning.”  If you like horseradish, do NOT buy the nasty stuff on the spice aisle that is half soybean oil and starch; go to the fresh fish counter and ask for prepared grated horseradish.  (The good stuff will require refrigeration.)  Every one of these items is zero calories and all flavor.

Salty Goodness

Salt:  We love salt.  Try not salting your popcorn or your chips and see if you still want them (I sure don’t).  Salt not only makes almost everything taste better, it reminds our bodies that we need to drink more water.  Have a salty snack and you’ll probably suck down 24 ounces of water or more over the following hour.  If your doctor has told you that you are sodium-sensitive, you might try a potassium salt like NuSalt.  I don’t think it tastes quite the same, but if you can’t have the real stuff, it’s better than NoSalt.  If you want to feel really exotic, try some specialty salts like Fleur de Sel; it’s a lot to pay for salt but you’ll be amazed what a tiny bit, right on top where it hits your tongue first, can do for a savory dish.  I’ve never been a fan of salt “replacements” like Mrs. Dash (it’s a textural thing– dried herbs don’t dissolve like salt), but popcorn-friendly toppers like “butter salt” or Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Topping (the same stuff that comes in the mac & cheese dinner, about 40 calories per tablespoon) are worth a try.

Soy sauce:  Yes, this has all the drawbacks of salt, but along with the salt you get the meaty taste the Japanese refer to as “umami” (it ranks as a fifth “basic taste” along with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty).  Add some soy sauce and a tiny bit of fresh minced ginger to one of those instant noodle products and for about 30 cents you’ll have a bowl of yumminess that tastes like you paid $7 for it at the local Japanese place.

I am second to none in my appreciation of butter, sour cream, mayo, and every other high-calorie, high-fat flavor enhancer you can think of.  But there are a world of great tastes out there, many of which have virtually no calories.  Broaden your culinary horizons and it might help make your backside a little less broad.

If you’re a double-whip, half-caff, mocha slappuccino kind of person, you cannot be saved.  You have replaced a reasonably virtuous medicinal beverage with a dessert, and not even a very good one.  If you need to add a Krispy Kreme donut’s worth of fat and calories to your coffee to make it palatable, please leave the brew to the grown-ups who will use it as directed.

Are they gone?  Good.  Honestly, if I’m going to have chocolate and caramel syrup and whipped cream, there had better be a couple scoops of ice cream under it.  At least then I’ll know I’m having dessert, and I will dial those calories into my plan for the week.  Seriously, before your next stop at Starbuck’s, check their nutrition facts and see what you’re getting.  Be sure to correct for the size and other variables (2%, soy, etc.), because they helpfully suggest a smaller size than the one you’re probably having for their default calorie count.

If, like me, you lack higher brain function in the morning without coffee, you probably spend most of the day with a half-drunk cup somewhere.  You probably get refills before you’ve emptied the cup, such that you don’t actually know how many full servings you’ve had in a day.  Unless you drink it black, you could be taking in hundreds of calories per day that you haven’t even thought about, let alone considered in your diet plan.  Time for some research.

Know What You’re Adding

If you drink cream in your coffee, you probably add your creamer more by look and taste than by measure.  If so, and if you’re trying to save calories by using milk or non-dairy creamer instead of cream, you could be derailing your efforts without knowing it.  The whiteness and smoothness of creamed coffee is mostly imparted by fat; take out the fat, and you need a lot more of whatever else replaces it, be it milk solids and lactose or the starch that most non-dairy creamers use.  By the time you’ve added enough non-cream to get cream’s result, you may have ended up with more calories than you would have if you’d just used the cream.

Try this experiment sometime: add 50 calories’ worth of heavy cream, half-and-half, milk, and non-dairy creamer to four cups of coffee, and see which you like best.  Then try 25.  You may find that milk suits you perfectly.  You may find that you’d rather have a teaspoon of cream than a tablespoon of creamer.  But you’ll know, and you’ll know how many calories you’re taking in.

About sweetener.  If you read It’s Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature, you’ll know I’m not a big fan of artificial sweetener.  I don’t think you should teach your taste buds that sweet things have no caloric consequences.  But unlike cream, you probably are adding a measured amount of sugar or sweetener (though if you’re using a flavored creamer, you may be forgetting the whopping load of sugar most of those have).  When was the last time you reconsidered the “one lump or two” decision?  Our tastes change, if we let them.  When I was a child, I put enough sugar in my iced tea to stand the spoon up, and now I can’t stand to have any sugar at all in my tea.  Try cutting your sweetener amount down, and see if you really want that much, or if it’s just a habit.

If you’ve jumped onto the “french press” bandwagon, or you drink a lot of unfiltered espresso, you should be aware that you are not only taking in fat that a filter would have removed (that oily-looking stuff on the top of the coffee is, in fact, oil) but also other compounds in coffee oils  that can increase your blood cholesterol levels.  It’s not a huge calorie issue, but it might be a huge health issue if you have a cholesterol problem.

The best plan is to start your relationship with coffee from scratch.  Many of us started adding stuff to our coffee because we were drinking the cheap, overcooked junk in the pot at the office.  Try some fresh-ground, good quality beans, and really experience what coffee tastes like.  You may find you can “go black” after all, and you’ll save some significant calories every week.

If you’ve tried keeping a Food Journal, you may have noticed that the most heinous offenses against sensible eating seem to happen in the late afternoon.  That’s when you reach for the potato chips, the cookies, the granola bars (or the Snickers), plus something to wash it down with.  With very little effort, you may find that you have consumed an entire meal’s worth of calories in that “snack” meant to tide you over until dinner.

Why should this be?  Part scheduling, part boredom, part actual hunger.  Most people in the financial district have a strict policy to leave for lunch at 11:30 to “beat the lunch rush.”  Of course, since everybody does it, we ARE the lunch rush.  If we were honest, we’d admit that it helps the morning end more quickly, and since most of us are on our third cup of coffee by then, we need to get up and move (at least to the bathroom) anyway.  This is incredibly short-sighted when you think about it, because since few of us will actually be out the door at 5:00 we have made a long afternoon even longer by starting it at 12:30 instead of 1:00 or after.

The same thing happens at home.  You get the kids on the bus, the kitchen tidied and the laundry started, and since you didn’t eat when you fed the kids, you figure you might as well eat now before you get involved in some big project.  Then soccer practice runs late, or Dad gets delayed at the office, and dinner gets pushed further and further back.  You look at the clock and realize that dinner is at least another couple hours away, and you’re hungry.

Our English Allies to the Rescue

Our friends across the pond came up with an elegant solution to the problem– tea time.  At 4:00, everybody takes a break for a cuppa, and maybe a biscuit (a cookie) or a sausage roll (kind of like a pig-in-a-blanket but way better).  It’s a mini-meal that leaves you satisfied and ready to face the rest of your afternoon.  Among the upper class, of course, it is elevated to an enormous meal with courses of sandwiches, scones, and sweets.  Since the elegant may not dine until 9:00, they actually think they need a larger meal at 4:00.  (Here’s a travel tip:  If you’re ever stuck in Britain without a dinner reservation on an occasion like Valentine’s Day when everyone is all booked up, ask if they will seat you at 5:00.  Since their reservations don’t normally start until 7:00, they’ll know they can serve you and clear the table before the booking after you, and they’ll probably agree.  Just don’t be surprised if they ask you where in the States you come from, because only Americans will eat at 5:00.)

It’s not important that it be tea if you don’t like tea, but part of the ritual of taking the break is in the steeping and serving (ask the Japanese– drinking the tea is the least important part of the classical tea ceremony).  It’s not only important to put something in your mouth, but to take pleasure in it and focus on it for just a few minutes.  If you can put it in a pretty cup, even better.  I love making a full cream tea in place of a weekend meal; I make a mean scone, and I love cucumber sandwiches (though smoked salmon is even better).  Pepperidge Farm Very Thin breads work really well for tea sandwiches (only 45 calories per slice).  Finish with a tiny but amazing cookie like Bahlsen Afrika (22 calories per cookie), and for the calories in a handful of potato chips you can have an elegant little meal break that will keep you going happily until whenever dinner finally happens.

So take a tip from the English and take a few minutes for yourself when the clock strikes four.  You’ll never dread the afternoon again, and you won’t miss the potato chips.

 

* with apologies to Saint John of the Cross, who described “the long, dark night of the soul,” and Douglas Adams, who borrowed the phrase for his book, The Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.

So you’re probably already getting together with the girls for purposes of Bunco, Tupperware, book club or the like, and the conversation probably turns, as it so often does in groups of women, to your diets.  Why not double-down on your get-togethers and do some low-cal market research at the same time?

There are tons of lower calorie food products out there just waiting for you to discover them; unfortunately, it’s more of an investment than most people want to undertake to buy several types of, say, light salad dressing on the chance that you’ll really like one.  On the other hand, if you’re getting together with eight other women and you all bring one, you can all try nine.  It will take a little organization to make sure you don’t all bring the same one, but soon you’ll be in-the-know on more supermarket shelf items than the store employees.  Why is this worthwhile?  If you can replace your favorite Ranch dressing (140 calories for 2 T) for a dressing you’ll eat every night that only has 25 calories per 2 T, you’ll save enough calories in a month to lose a pound.  Or to offset more than a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts.

Products Begging to be Tried

Light salad dressings: Everybody brings a bottle, no more than 80 calories per 2 T.  Hostess provides lettuce for dipping (romaine works best), sliced tomatoes, cucumber, etc.

Snack crackers: Everybody brings a box, no more than 10 calories per cracker.  This is harder than you think; Ritz have 16 calories per cracker and Triscuits (which I love) have 20.  That’s more per cracker than some cookies, and since crackers are typically the vehicle for something else, loading on still more calories, it adds up scary-fast.  Hostess provides low-fat, low-cal dips.  (Here’s a tip– process low-fat cottage cheese in your food processor until it’s smooth, and use it with dip mixes in place of sour cream.  It’s far fewer calories than even fat free sour cream [ick, why bother?], and loaded with protein and calcium.)

Yogurt/gelatin desserts:  Everybody brings 2 packages (of the same item).  Hostess provides spoons and sparkling water for cleansing the palate between tastes (it’s dairy, you’ll need it).  Yoplait, La Crème, Jell-O and several other brands have gone into the market with pre-portioned refrigerated dessert items for around 70-150 calories per serving.  Most of these contain artificial sweetener, though some do not; La Crème Mousse and Jell-O Temptations Cheesecake flavors are sugar-sweetened.  La Crème initially released a chocolate mousse in this line that tasted exactly like real chocolate mousse (but for only 120 calories!), without the sour tang all chocolate yogurt products seem to have.  It was amazing.  And they discontinued it.  I met some lovely people on the yogurt aisle at my supermarket while we all stared mournfully together at the empty space where the chocolate mousse should have been, until the official announcement that it was being discontinued.  (Call them and complain; tell them I sent you.)

Chocolate:  Any way to get chocolate to the mouth without blowing a meal’s worth of calories.  My current favorite is Betty Crocker Warm Delights Minis, warm, gooey goodness for 150 calories.

Anything Goes:  Everybody brings enough to share of their favorite food item that they think packs the most bang for around a 100-calorie-per-serving buck.  Hostess provides a prize for the nosh voted tastiest.

Use your imagination, and keep your eyes peeled in the grocery aisles.  If you’ve seen a low-cal product and been interested in trying it, chances are your girlfriends have, too.