Three Weeks and counting...

It's been a little over three weeks now on this four week program. Time for another update. My boyfriend, the General, and I embarked on this together, but with slightly different plans and goals. I gave up Clif Bars, gluten, dairy, sweets, and alcohol. The General gave up diet Coke, chocolate, alcohol and planned to minimize consumption of bread, dairy and red meat. My goal was to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables over processed carbs and see if eliminating gluten and dairy made any noticeable differences. The General wanted to reboot better eating habits as well (he's a chocoholic to my Clif Bar Junkie) and to lose at least 10 pounds, so he could climb faster on his bike.

At the end of our second week, we got an invite to go skiing with friends at Vail. We said yes before thinking about what this implied for our eating program. Skiing with no apres-ski? The General was the first to declare a "graduation" from that part of our program. In the meantime, I got an email from my friend Paul, who reminded me that moderation is the key to long term success. I had written him because he and his wife live in Boulder, CO -- one of the epicenters of healthy living. Their approach is a Mediterranean lifestyle, emphasis on wholesome foods (lots of veg and fruit), moderate alcohol intake, and avoiding processed sugar and animal fats. And they make exceptions when they want to! That was all I needed to give myself permission to "graduate" as well from the no drinking part of the program. Although no beer, because I was determined to stick with the rest of the plan.

We packed up for Colorado. One half of a suitcase was filled with food supplies. We were staying at a friends' condo, and I wanted to be prepared. Almonds, cashews, almond butter, corn bread (a really good gluten and dairy free recipe that I've learned to bake), rice cakes, and chocolate almond milk (recovery drink component). This was in case we couldn't find any of those at a store in CO. I admit to being a little paranoid about that, but I'd rather be prepared when it comes to eating.

Challenge One: Eating on the ski slopes. The first day was okay, as we sat down and had a real lunch. I had a white bean soup and french fries. The other days were harder, as nobody else wanted to stop for a real lunch. Those are the times when you really need Clif Bars, which is what our friends were doing. I had a ziploc full of almonds, cashews, and pepitas I carried around, plus some Hammer Gel. For two days, I supplemented with potato chips. Not the healthiest, but they did the trick. And I never bonked.

Challenge Two: Super nice restaurant with five course meal. This was a special occasion place where we took a snow cat up the ski trails. Starving when we got there, I had to avoid the fragrant offering of fresh bread. This is an absolute first for me. Bonus was that I finished my whole meal without feeling stuffed. I think I managed to mostly avoid gluten that night, but failed on the dairy front. I'm sure my barbequed grits were stuffed with butter and that the sauce on my pork chop was full of cream -- there was just no escape. I had tried hard, but wasn't up for total asceticism. So I did the next best thing and went for moderation. I had a bite of my sorbet dessert and then a couple of bites of the General's chocolate chip cheesecake. I enjoyed all of it.

Footnote: All that rich food did not feel that great the next morning and led to a very cranky start.

Challenge Three: Nachos. The General is a very good cook, and he planned to make nachos for all of us after skiing one evening. We settled on him making a special corner of the pan for my portion, sans cheese. Our friends said they no longer qualified as nachos and were, therefore, "nas." I figured this would be a lost cause, but not at all. The General added leftover chicken, vegetarian refried black beans, fresh jalapenos, black olives, and cilantro. My little corner was delicious, and I didn't feel left out one bit.

Challenge Four: Saying no to the freshly baked chocolate chip cookie at the base of Beaver Creek post skiing. Enough said.

Results? Mixed. Socializing with friends wins out over complete adherence to eating program rules. Since this is a plan of my own devising, I am comfortable with that outcome. I want to remain inspired to eat better on a long term basis. (I think if I were on a strict elimination diet I would have to become a hermit.) Fact is, I like how I feel eating this way and that is the best inspiration of all.

p.s. the General has lost 10 lbs in 21 days!

The Breakfast Dilemma

I love breakfast, let me start out by saying that. My typical breakfast options involve opening some packaged cereal, or perhaps some really good granola, and adding yogurt or milk. Extra effort means making a scrambled egg sandwich on wheat toast. But by avoiding dairy and wheat products for the moment, I needed to come up with some new options. And I needed to figure out options that didn't involve spending hours preparing.

I was starting to realize that preparing good food takes time. And it takes even more time if you're not used to it. My learning curve was pretty steep. Most of my usual limited repertoire was verboten. I would have to go out of my comfort zone, and not just for breakfast. So I started experimenting.

On our way home from a visit with friends over New Year's in southern Spain, I ate an egg and potato dish at the airport that was very good (for airport food, that is.) It was pie shaped with layers of potato slices surrounded by egg. I decided that even I could probably replicate something that looked very simple.

First try involved boiling the potatoes. How hard could this be? However easy it is, it turns out I am not very good at it. I overcooked the potatoes on the first go and undercooked them on the second. I then sliced up a few potatoes (not very easy to make those thin, even slices), whisked my eggs and put it all into the fry pan. It looked reasonably appetizing, although nothing like what we'd eaten in Spain. Worse, the damn potatoes were rock hard. Now starving, I had to pull out all the potatoes, microwave them, and return them to the eggs. Not what one would consider a real success.

Luckily, one of my friends came to the rescue and showed me a recipe for a Spanish tortilla. Now I had some direction! My enthusiasm persuaded my boyfriend, the General (he comes by his moniker honestly), to try one out. He found a recipe for the Italian version, called a frittata, that involved 18 eggs, numerous potatoes and onions, and our biggest fry pan. The correct way to cook one of these is to saute the sliced (raw) potatoes, onions, and peppers in olive oil in the fry pan. When mostly done, they are taken out of the pan, mixed with the beaten eggs and poured back in the still hot fry pan. When the edges are set, the pan goes in a very hot oven. The egg mixture fluffs up as it bakes. Neither of us had made anything like this before and were impressed when we pulled it out of the oven. It looked great. More importantly, it was absolutely delicious. We stuffed ourselves and still had lots of leftovers. The frittata kept well in the refrigerator and reheated easily in the microwave. The General had figured out how to do it. Now it was up to me to attempt on my own.

Concerned about the vast quantities of eggs that I might end up consuming on this program, I followed the General's advice and used a ratio of 50% eggs with yolks to 50% egg whites only. And it turns out that raw potatoes are much easier to slice thinly than cooked ones. Feeling quite gourmet, I remembered to add some of our fresh rosemary that we had brought in from the cold. Et voila! Here's a picture of my final result. I had discovered a really great breakfast food for following a big workout or lazy weekend brunch with friends, one that tastes great and is full of fresh ingredients. No feelings of deprivation here!

My next conquest was oatmeal. I knew that steel cut oatmeal is better than instant or rolled oats. I also knew that it took about 30 minutes to cook. And what would I put on it to make it palatable? I'm normally one for lots of brown sugar. First experiment was on the topping front. I tried blue agave syrup as a sweetener which worked well. Then I added Udi's gluten free granola sweetened with honey which was delicious. This made a great combo. Now would the refrigerated oatmeal reheat acceptably in the microwave? I had a made a big batch to test out. Worked like a charm.

My experiments had been worthwhile. Compared to the first days of following this program, when it took me close to two hours from start to finish for breakfast, I had achieved two timely and healthy alternatives. Nothing like a little success to keep you going!