My Plan For Health

I've updated my data page.

It’s the start of a new quarter, so I wanted to post an update on how my health is evolving. You’ll see a review of summer quarter on my data page.

The good news is, I’ve lost 17 pounds so far this year.

The (bad? neutral? other?) news is that I lied about how much I weighed when I started this venture.

Well, maybe not lied in the strictest sense. If I may reveal my Catholic upbringing for a moment, I would tell you that it wasn’t a lie of commission so much as a lie of omission.

The truth is, I didn’t know exactly how much I weighed when I started, because I didn’t want to know. I guessed 240 lbs. as a ballpark figure.

So when I weighed in at 231 lbs. at a checkup last month, I thought I’d lost 9 lbs. in total. Not bad, but not as much as I wanted for 9 months work. Then my doctor congratulated me on losing 17 lbs. and asked me how I did it. I didn’t believe her at first, so she turned her computer monitor to me and showed me my chart. I weighed 248 lbs. in January (a weigh-in in which I distinctly remember looking away from the scale and sort of humming to myself, while asking the nurse not to tell me the number) and 231 lbs. in September.

So then I had the conundrum of wanting to brag about losing 17 lbs., but having to admit that I was 248 lbs. at the start.

Here it is, out on the table. I lied. Lied lied lied. There you have it.

Other changes are afoot… Though my weight has stayed the same since last month, my clothes are still getting looser, so I think (hope) that maybe my body composition is changing. People keep telling me that I look slimmer, but I’m not certain whether they are just saying that. This morning my husband told me I look “more hourglass-y,” which is a good thing.

I know that I would probably get healthier faster if I changed my eating habits, which I have not done at all this year. I’ve just been working out a lot and hoping for the best. Steven Devor, associate professor of exercise science, offered to give me a little nutritional counseling some time ago — and I’m aware of formal nutritional counseling programs at Ohio State — but I’m having trouble getting past the “I don’t want to” hurdle.

C’est la vie.

I ate organic food before “organic” was cool.

When I was growing up, many people in my small Ohio River town grew vegetables. My mother grew corn, zucchini, and tomatoes — so many tomatoes! Neighbors shared what they grew, so we ate home-grown potatoes, peppers, and cabbage, too, among many other choices.

Maybe that’s why the idea of farm sharing appeals to me. It’s a return to my youth.

Last year, an Ohio State study found that grocery shoppers are willing to pay more money for locally grown produce. The author of the news release, my Research Communications colleague Emily Caldwell, showed me a way to eat healthier foods while patronizing local growers and possibly saving some money.

This summer, her family purchased a farm share: they invested in a local farm, and received baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables every week. The investment required a good bit of money upfront, but over the course of the summer they received so much food that Emily feels she saved money on her grocery bills.

Some friends and I are looking into doing the same thing next year, using this Web site to pick a local farm. Until then, I’ve been enjoying some produce that Emily and other co-workers have shared around the office, and I’ve been shopping farmers’ markets.

Chow Line: a service of OSU Extension and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center

That being said, I have to confess that in my adult life I’ve sort of lost the ability to deal with home-grown foods. I mean… if it doesn’t come out of a package, pre-washed and pre-processed (stems removed, etc.), I find myself at a bit of a loss as to what to do with it. For example, there might actually be dirt on it. (”Dirt? On food? Grown in the ground? How could that be?”)

So, how exactly should fresh food be washed? Should I just rinse things in water, or scrub them? Do I need to buy a vegetable brush? Or a bottle of fancy produce wash?

OSU Extension answered my questions today, in the latest edition of Chow Line.

Here’s an excerpt, from editor Martha Filipic:

Clean produce properly. Thin-skinned produce can be rinsed with cool water. Firm-skinned produce can be rubbed with a soft-bristled brush while rinsing. Food safety specialists at Ohio State University recommend washing produce just before consumption. If you clean it beforehand, drying it after washing will decrease the risk of any bacteria left on the produce from multiplying. Also: You don’t need special products for cleaning produce. While they may be effective, the evidence is not yet conclusive and so the CAST [Council of Agricultural Science and Technology] report authors do not recommend them.

Thanks, Martha and Emily!

How about you? Are you thinking about buying locally grown food? Or are you already living this trend, and have tips to share? Leave them in the comments below.

Reader and FSFP water aerobics compatriot Susan just posted a comment on my review of the Healthy Grocery Lunch & Learn asking for recipes. You can scroll down here to read my reply to her for some suggested resources, but below is a list of recipes that I happened to put together for a friend recently. These are favorites around the Gorder household. If you try them, let me know how they turn out.

1. Tex-Mex Lasagna (could be vegan if you use soy cheese). Really easy to make. I like to put it together the night before we have guests, and then cook it right before they arrive. It stores very well.

2. Orange rice (recipe calls for cooking the rice in chicken stock, but you can use vegetable stock with no problem). I’ve played around with this recipe a bit by using pineapple instead of mandarin oranges, and it turned out tasty! I just cook it in the rice machine (without the pork chops, of course).

3. Pasta with Szechwan Peanut Dressing. Highly addictive! If you are interested in vegetarian cooking in general, I highly recommend the book this comes from: The 15-Minute Vegetarian Gourmet by Paulette Mitchell. It’s the first cookbook I ever owned, and the most loved. It describes all the different grains, and different kinds of tofu, and how to make sure you get enough protein, etc. Technically, it’s a lacto-ovo vegetarian book, meaning that some of the recipes use real milk and eggs. I substitute “fake” peanut butter made from yogurt to reduce the fat in this one.

4. Quinoa Pie with Butternut Squash. Insanely complicated recipe, ’cause it’s from Martha Stewart. But tasty.

5. Smoky White Bean Soup

6. Creamy Porcini Barley Soup

7. Ginger sauce

A few comments:

• One of the things that the dietitian stressed during the Lunch & Learn is that spicing food is a good way to add flavor without adding fat and calories. The orange rice recipe above is from Penzeys Spices, and I can’t tell you how lucky I feel to live in a city with an actual Penzeys store. You should go there. It’s like an amusement park for your nose.
• Cooking healthy does not necessarily mean cooking vegetarian. This is just the route that I have elected to follow, and I don’t even follow it religiously. I still eat meat once in a while, usually at restaurants. I just can’t remember the last time I cooked meat at home.
• I describe the quinoa recipe above as “insanely complicated,” and it is by my standards, since I tend to cook dishes where you just throw everything in a pot, and this recipe has multiple steps. But even if you don’t want to make it, it does give you one example of foods/flavors that work well with quinoa.

Have any recipes to share with me? Send them along, or leave them in the comments below.

Shopping healthy requires knowledge and organization.

That was the lesson of the Lunch & Learn seminar on healthy grocery store shopping.  Jenny Anderson, a registered dietitian and newest member of the OSU Wellness team, offered tips on how to shop smart.

Surveys show that 70 percent of people bring lists with them to the grocery store, but only 10 percent actually adhere to them, Anderson said. And for every item on our shopping list that we put into our carts, most of us add two impulse items. Where do those impulse items come from?

“From the moment we pull into the parking lot, we are marketed to,” Anderson said. In the aisles and in the check-out line, products are placed to get our attention. These are not necessarily healthy products; they are the products that bring grocery stores the most profit.

Healthy foods on display at the Lunch & Learn

Not surprisingly, Anderson said that a healthy diet contains low-fat, high-protein foods and whole grains, and lots of fruits and vegetables. The easiest way to get all these foods into your diet is to cook healthy food at home.

This is usually where I stall out of the healthy eating process… I don’t do all that much cooking from scratch. I buy a lot of convenience foods.

But, to my surprise, Anderson mentioned some healthy convenience foods, and I was pleased to find that I already had most of them at home: frozen edamame, whole wheat couscous, low-fat yogurt, and frozen veggie burgers. She also mentioned grains such as quinoa, which I can happily cook in my rice maker with little effort.

Quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wah) is a South American grain, and it’s unusual in that it contains a complete protein. We can get complete proteins from meat, but getting them from vegetables requires a little ingenuity (just ask a vegetarian) and combinations of foods, such as rice and beans. Quinoa has the protein goin’ on all by itself.

Red quinoa -- has kind of a red pepper flavor

Anderson handed out sample grocery lists and menus for cooking at home. Click here for a PDF. She advocates planning a week’s worth of meals ahead of time, and buying only the fresh food you need for that week. Pantry staples like grains and canned goods make up the rest.

All this healthy shopping and cooking is easier if you’re organized, and Anderson recommended cleaning and prepping your food as soon as you get home. Her coolest tip: store lettuce in your salad spinner (note to self: buy a salad spinner). When you bring a fresh head of lettuce home, pull it apart and wash it in the salad spinner, then leave it there in the fridge. The sald will have just a little moisture with air freely flowing around it — the ideal conditions for keeping it fresh longer.

She also recommended buying pre-chopped vegetables (from salad bars and such) to save time. I was way ahead of her on that one. I joke that I like my food pre-washed, pre-chopped, and hermetically sealed… Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not joking. Pre-prepared foods are incredibly convenient. One lesson from Anderson’s Lunch & Learn was that prepared foods don’t have to be unhealthy if you know what you’re buying.

Bonus: Today on one of my favorite blogs, I’m an Organizing Junkie, a guest blogger shares some tips on kitchen organization for healthy eating.

Yes, I read a blog called I’m an Organizing Junkie. I like to optimize, thankyouverymuch!