Mindful Eats

Guide to Mindful Holiday Planning

Celebrate we will, because life is short but sweet for certain. ~Dave Matthews Band 

Mindful Readers, the holidays are upon us! I wrote a post on holiday planning for LIving Harvest, and decided we need one too. It might seem too late to plan, but it's never too late. The holiday season is infamous for fun, food, weight gain and exhaustion. They have a funny way of stirring up emotions that cause us to lose control - so whether you are frantic, ecstatic, lonely, or all the above, know that you are not alone. Here's your guide to coasting through the holidays and enjoying them guilt-free (or as close as possible).

Restaurants and retailers have been planning on maximizing our caloric and wallet consumption for months. With a good game plan in place, you can take advantage of the festivities and coast into the New Year feeling fabulous. 

What to do - Plan Your Holidays Mindfully

1. Identify the triggers that make you binge. There's a lot of food and drink around, and people tend to stuff themselves with it. What is it that gets you going? Is it that there is a lot of tasty food and you just want to hoard it and eat it all? Do you not want to disappoint the people that made it? Are you feeling lonely when everyone else is having fun? Are you going through a rough time? Are you feeling a loss? Do you feel broke during this time of seeming abundance? All those things are ok. You are not alone - a lot of people feel that way, even depressed. Just figure out what makes you binge before you start eating. That way you have a fair shot at recognizing it so you can stop yourself when you're surrounded by excess.
2. Keep your calendar up to date. Slot in all the parties, dinners and events you have.
3. Look at all the events you have on your calendar, and figure out what you need. Hostess gifts, bottles of wine, potluck dishes, costumes? List what you need for each event and get it the weekend (or the day) before so you don't run around and stress out right before the party.
4. Plan your non-party meals. Look at your calendar, and when you see an event, make sure you plan healthy meals before and after. Big Thanksgiving dinner coming up? Have oatmeal or yogurt and ground flaxseed for breakfast. Keep all your meals healthy except for the blowouts. Get out your steamer and start steaming vegetables!
5. Plan your eating & drinking strategy. You'll be surrounded by food at the office and at parties. Remember your triggers? Think about them and have a taste of the goodies - no need to stuff your face. Big party coming up? Create your party strategy. Try an hor d'oeuvre every half hour and go back to three of your favorites. You do not need to eat more than one dice size of cheese. Really. The same thing with dinners. Try a bite of everything, then get seconds on your favorites. No thirds!
6. Keep a food log. Recording every bite is THE most effective way to avoid excess calories.
7. Plan your exercise. Look at your calendar and schedule in exercise. Yes, it's cold outside, and yes, you're tired from staying out late partying and wrapping presents. So what? You need to exercise to keep your energy up and to burn off all that food and drink you're consuming. Be nice to your body and just do it.

It may seem like a lot of work and time, but I promise that planning will save you time and stress. And it's not nearly as much work as it seems. It's the nicest thing you can do for yourself during the holiday season, and it will make the holidays even better!

Resources:

• Eating strategies for events
• Eating mindfully while traveling
• How to steam food
• Wait a second - I did this same post last year for Thanksgiving! It might be better.
• Post for Living Harvest on holiday planning

What I ate: 2 coffees with raw milk, 8 oz raw milk, 1 hardboiled eggs, vegetable juice, 1 persimmon, macadamia nuts, 1 guava, dimsum: 3 veggie dumplings, 3 shrimp dumplings, steamed tofu, tofu veggie wrap, sticky rice, fried noodles & lobster, Taiwanese zong zi (sticky rice in bamboo leaves), sauteed spinach, hot chocolate, 40 oz. water

Exercise: Ran 4 miles

 

Eataly NYC

Eataly NYC (photo from shoppingblog.com)

You may have the universe if I may have Italy. ~Giuseppe Verde

We don't do restaurant reviews at MindfulEats, but we are doing a quick briefing on the most innovative and inspiring food concept we've come across in a long time - Eataly. Eataly opened last week in New York City, and we forgive the cheesy name for the beautiful celebration of the joy and deliciousness of Italian food. Powered by Mario Batali, Lidia Bastianich and Joe Bastianich, Eataly is a stunning retail market and a glorious food hall (fish, pasta, pizza, vegetable, prosciutto, gelato, and a white-table steak restaurant are some of the food stations).  All the food is prepared from imported Italian ingredients and local farm-fresh offerings. If you like what you eat, you can buy the ingredients to take home. Yum. 

 

We were skeptical of the concept when we first heard about it, but the reality far surpasses the description. Somehow the Italian good life and elegance is infused into this massive Ikea-like food emporium. This is the ninth and largest Eataly, and we are grateful that it has landed in NYC.

Prices are far more reasonable than we expected. And even the retail food is beautifully presented - it's Whole Foods amped up to a new level. Eataly is truly committed to small local farmers - dairy, produce, meat and fish - and we love them for that. We also love them for providing us la dolce vita, no plane ticket required.

 

What I ate: latte + skim nymilk, peach, Mindful Mix, Whole Foods buffet: steamed collards, kale salad, macrobiotic rice, quinoa + spinach salad, braised tempeh; grapes, hummus + pita chips, 1 bite chicken, 3 cheese cubes, 2 chocolate chip cookies, 45 oz. water

 

Exercise: jogged 5 miles + 30 min lifting

 

Sustainable Sushi

School of fish off Bonaire 

History, despire its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again. ~Maya Angelou

For a long time I ate seafood and avoided meat, but last year I reversed the situation since seafood has become overfished, and there are more and more responsible meat producers. This leaves me feeling conflicted over sushi, a former meal staple, especially during the summer when the last thing I want is hot food. I've been avoiding sushi, but there are times when I end up at a Japanese restaurant. Happily I found some great resources to help me order sustainable sushi, with simple principles like the 4 S's.

What to do - Order Sustainable Sushi

1. Download this pocket-sized sushi guide from Monterey Bay Aquarium that you can keep in your wallet, or download the iPhone application. 
2. Order vegetable sushi. I am partial to avocado and mushroom rolls.
3. Talk to your server/sushi chef and ask where the fish is from, how it was raised, and how it was caught. Order the sushi that is a "Best Choice" from the sushi guide in step 1.
4. Order with the 4-S rules in mind. I found 4-S from fish guru Casson Trenor, and they are awesome and simple.  
5. • SMALL - order small fish since they are more resilient to overfishing. These include sardines (iwashi), skipjack tuna (katsuo), horse mackeral (aji).
   • SEASONAL - fish are seasonal, and it's best to order off the specials list.
   • SILVER - you know the sushi that still has silver skin on it? Order that. It's high in omega-3s and tasty. This includes mackeral (saba and sawara) and Pacific saury (sanma).
   • SHELLFISH - foods like oysters, mussels and clams are easy and environmental to farm.
6. Avoid tuna. Especially blue-fin tuna, which is endangered. 

Want to learn more? 

• Issues around seafood and overfishing
• Sustainable sushi - website and book from Casson Trenor
• Monterey Bay Aquarium sushi guide

What I ate: 16 oz. chocolate milk, brown rice + tofu salad, 12 oz. hemp milk, 1 handful Mindful Mix, 1 pint blueberries, 2 handfuls cherries, 1 mango, 1 large latte, 1 hardboiled egg, Pirate's Booty, dried sliced mangos, cheddar cheese Del Posto dinner: 4 risotto balls, 2 prosciutto balls, 2 parmesan + balsamic vinegar, veal meatball in pastry, lobster salad, 3 steak tartare on crackers, bread + butter + lardo, shrimp salad, garganelli + bolognese, lamb chops, chocolate tartuffo, 60 oz water

Exercise: ran 8 miles

New List of Mindful Restaurants and Farmers

Offered at Mindful Eats and the Union Square Greenmarket

Our lives are a sum total of the total choices we have made ~Wayne Dyer

We are delighted to announce our brand new Mindful Restaurants and Farmers page! We've been searching for a list like it all our lives, and here it is (it's a permanent link on the left hand side of the page, so check it out, please).

Sure, eating out makes you fat, but we all have to do it on occasion. On those instances, you should choose delicious and responsible restaurants that source local and organic food when possible. Your dollar counts! We can never find a good list, so we've started our own. They are NY biased for now, but we'll add other areas too. Feel free to leave your recommendations!

We've also started a list of mindful farmers. These small batch, family farm products are grown locally and responsibly. Every dollar you spend is an investment in small, responsible farms and living wages for those that produce the most important thing you can buy. Again, leave a comment with your suggestions.

We'll be continuously adding to the page with your ideas, and it will be even more awesome, so keep coming back.

What I ate: Fage yogurt + flaxseeds, latte, pineapple, 5 pieces dark chocolate, chicken pot pie soup, big slice white bread, banana, dried mangos, quinoa, steamed bok choy + tofu + shiitake mushrooms, Good Earth tea, 12 oz low fat milk, 20 oz coconut water, 50 oz water

Exercise: 4 mile jog, 7x600s @ 7:30 with 200m recovery (first track workout of 2010 so slow)

Food Portions and Serving Sizes

 Peppers at a Green Bay Farmer's Market ©Michelle Correa Photography

Your body is the baggage you must carry through life. The more excess the baggage, the shorter the trip. ~Arnold H. Glasgow

I have a colleague that's frustrated with her diet. She started eating healthier, but she still wants to lose 10 pounds. Sometimes that happens. Getting rid of processed foods is a fabulous start for losing weight, but you still need to be mindful of how much food you're eating. Learning serving sizes will also help you keep a better food log, which is key to weight loss.

American portions keep getting supersized. You can blow a whole day's worth of calories on a restaurant meal. If you want to lose weight, you need to know what a proper serving looks like, so check out the MindfulEats Food Portion Chart below (based on this SparkPeople article). It's shocking how much smaller a portion should be than what we're used to.

Just so you know - a serving is the amount that food experts recommend you eat, and a portion is what you actually eat. For example, experts recommend that you eat 6-11 servings of grains per day. So if you don't snack on grains, you may want to eat two servings per meal.

MindfulEats Food Portion Chart

 
 

American PLATES are also getting bigger, which sneaks in more calories. Use a smaller luncheon size plate (9"-10") for your dinner, and fill it with 1/2 veggies, 1/4 whole grains and 1/4 protein. If you need a visual reminder, you can buy a portion-control plate here, or one of the more stylish plates featured on the Today Show.

What to do - Lose Weight through Proper Portions

1. Memorize serving sizes. Or print out the above chart, cut it out, and put it in your wallet for easy referral.
2. Pack away your dinner plates and only use luncheon plates (9"-10"). Make sure your plate is filled with 50% veggie/fruit, 25% whole grains, and 25% protein.
3. Stick to recommended serving sizes. It's great you're eating healthier, but that doesn't mean you can eat massive amounts!
4. Throw away extra food, or wrap it up for later. We're giving you permission not to clean your plates. You didn't ask for that huge portion, did you? Eat a healthy portion and leave the rest, or have it wrapped. You're also probably getting a lot of cookies, chocolates and sweets for the holidays. We give you permission to eat one and throw the rest away (don't worry, they'll never know).
5. Look at what 300-450 calorie meals look like.
6. Check out the Cool Resources page for more ideas.

Want to learn more?

• SparkPeople article on Portion Sizes and Serving Sizes
• Web MD's Portion Tool and Simple Secrets to Portion Control and Healthy Eating
• How to Lose Weight

What I ate: (horrible day of holiday parties) 1/2 c. couscous, 1 small potato pancake, lox, smoked trout, food, mixed nuts, 1 slice ham, shrimp cocktail, lots of cheese and crackers, 1 small crab cake, carrots + hummus, whole wheat spaghetti + egg + spinach, 1 hot chocolate, water

Exercise: 15 min stationary bike, weights

Holiday Eating

Strength is the ability to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands- and then eat just one of those pieces. ~Judith Viorst

The holidays are upon us! It's the time of thankfulness, good times, family and friends. It may be the best time of the year, but it's also the fattest time of the year. Food and drink entice you at every gathering, and even at work. Resist! Shedding the pounds gets harder and harder. It's possible to eat, drink and be merry without turning into a butterball.

Since there is such a focus on the "perfect holiday", this time can also be the loneliest, or most stressful time of year. All that stress can cause the most mindful eater to self-medicate with food or alcohol. For those of you that are putting pressure on yourselves to have picture-perfect holidays, relax. The most perfect holidays are the ones where you connect with people and have fun. Running around being a stressball will only dampen your enjoyment and those around you. For those of you that have recently gotten bad news, lost a loved one, or feel bereft of family or friends, you're not alone. Many people feel alone, and remember, these times will change. MindfulEats loves you.

If you usually gain a little weight during the holidays, try these tips:

What to do - Holiday Plan

1. Plan your party strategy. Don't get caught off guard! Know where the food and drink will be, starting with Thanksgiving. Pick the 3-4 events of the season that you want to indulge the most in (you probably don't want to pick the popcorn tin at the office). Be aware of the food that you don't want to indulge in, and partake in it very modestly.
2. Visualize the food and drink at the celebrations you want to indulge in. Use this celebration eating strategy. Eat just a little of what you like, and moderate amounts of what you love. Thoroughly enjoy all of it. Does the second piece of cake really taste that much better than the first?
3. Keep a food log. Recording every bite is THE most effective way to avoid excess calories.
4. Exercise. Get moving with family and friends. Play basketball, go for a hike, or participate in a Turkey Trot. Or, shamelessly take some time for yourself and exercise before the eating starts.
5. Take care of yourself. If you feel sad or stressed, do something you like. Have a cup of tea in your favorite place or watch a movie. Connect with someone. Volunteering during the holidays is often needed - try the food bank or community center.
6. Get rid of your expectations. You don't need to have a Thanksgiving dinner that looks like a magazine meal or tantrum-free kids that behave perfectly. Just take the moments as they come and enjoy. Here's a NYT article on what not to do.

Have a great Thanksgiving!  

What I ate: Brown Cow Cream top yogurt + 1 tbsp Sarabeth's jam + ground flaxseeds + cereal, 12 oz. skim cafe au lait, macadamia nuts, dried mango slices, saag paneer + quinoa, 3 squares dark chocolate, dried apricots, Gala apple, Barbara's Bakery shredded oats cereal + milk, hot chocolate, 45 oz. water

Exercise: 17 minutes stationary bike, 30 minutes lifting

Sustainable Seafood - the Controversy

Panama City Beach, FL

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop. ~Mother Teresa

My family hails from an island of fisherman, so I grew up eating seafood. I didn't really think about it, it was just a staple. I ate anything as a kid (except for cilantro and onions, yuck), but at some point, stymied by animal farming practices, I stopped eating meat and relied on seafood and plant sources for protein. At that time, the oceans were teeming, and it was the sustainable choice.

Now that it's become fairly easy to find small production, humanely grown animals, I started eating meat again and cut way back on my seafood consumption. Things have flipped, and its now seafood that has become a thorny, complicated issue. 

Demand for seafood has soared as more people choose it for health benefits and the global population increases. But all this seafood love is unsustainable - our oceans are being killed through overfishing and environmental damage. Mark Bittman wrote a great article on the issues confronting seafood.

Why is seafood so controversial? Catching and eating seafood causes several issues:

1. Catching seafood damages the environment. Most seafood is trawled for or dragged. This means huge nets are weighted down (often to the sea floor), and dragged. This is bad for two reasons: 
   • It hurts the seabed and crushes a living habitat that takes years to regenerate
   • Lots of animals are captured and killed as bycatch - according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 25% of the sea animals accidentally caught are discarded. This includes sea turtles, dolphins, seals and whales. 
2. We are overfishing several popular species of fish, causing fisheries to collapse. This means that we are catching fish faster than they can reproduce. Not good. Populations are getting smaller, and we start catching the fish even younger, which doesn't give them a chance to recover. Once the populations are gone, it's forever. Cod, bluefin tuna, Chilean seabass are examples of overfished populations. Check out our resources page for lists of sustainable seafood.
3. Farmed seafood can be unhealthy and unenvironmental. Just as industrial animal farming produces chemically produced meat, aquaculture often produces weaker, chemical-ridden seafood. Many fish (like salmon) eat other fish, and when they're farmed, thousands are penned into small spaces so they don't get the chance to grow strong as they would in the wild. Antibiotics are used to keep disease down (large numbers breed disease), and tons of fecal matter harms the environment. Sometimes these substandard fish escape and breed with wild fish, lowering the quality of wildlife. When you buy these fish, their meat is usually paler in color so they are injected with dye to make them look more appetizing. Yuck. Shrimp farming is also an ecological disaster. Mangrove forests are cut down to make way for shrimp, and when the area stops being productive, the farm moves to cut down another forest. HOWEVER, some seafood that can be environmentally farmed like mussels, clams, oysters and vegetarian fish like tilapia. 

Our oceans are under direct threat, but you can have a positive impact on our oceans by being mindful about seafood.

What to do: Choose Seafood Mindfully

1. Cut down on your seafood consumption. There are lots of artisan farmers now, so if you have a hankering for flesh, you can choose humanely and happily grown meat.
2. Be mindful and choose sustainable seafood. Our resources page has lists of sustainable seafood. When you find a seafood that is sustainable, ask how it was caught. Trawling or dragging are bad, longlining, hook and line fishing, and trap fishing are better. Buy the fish that is certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (Whole Foods now has some MSC-certified fish).
3. Ask questions at your seafood restaurant. Check that the seafood is sustainable and ask about it. Is it wild or farmed?  How was it caught?
4. Replace seafood with easily farmed fish like tilapia or mussels.
5. Are you looking for Omega-3's? Eat walnuts, flaxseeds, eggs, etc.
6. Enjoy the ocean and learn more about it. Go to the beach and catch some waves. Learn to sail or scuba dive. Snorkel. There's a whole world in there, and your kids will love it!

Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

• Mark Bittman, Loving Fish, this Time with the Fish in Mind 
• The Slow Cook on seafood
• Monterey Bay Aquarium on Ocean Issues

What I ate: 14 oz. coconut water, 14 oz. vegetable juice, 1 handful Mindful Mix, Whole Foods plain yogurt + flaxseeds + strawberries + blueberries, 2 handfuls blueberries, 2 handfuls cherries, 1 large latte, cantalope, 2 hardboiled eggs, Thai dinner: Pad See-Ew, fried tilapia, sticky rice

Exercise: ran 6 miles

Recovering from a Celebration

Summer bounty - load up on strawberries, blueberries, cherries, pluots and nectarines

Our greatest glory consist not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. ~Oliver Goldsmith

This weekend I fell off the path of mindful eating into a frenzy of gluttony. I blame July 4th since it's a happy summer celebration of sun, barbecues, and fireworks. I was fortunate to celebrate it at a mini-family reunion, but I consumed far, far more calories than I expended. It happens. (ok, it was my fault). Beat yourself up a little bit, learn some lessons, then swiftly move on to celebration recovery.

But first, let's answer the question that some of you are asking: is it possible to truly celebrate without overdoing it? YES -it is possible to have fun and enjoy yourself without gorging yourself and feeling terrible later. Now that we got that out of the way -

People like to celebrate with an abundance of the richest food and drink they can find. Historically, this made sense - food used to be limited in both variety and quantity so most meals consisted of the same old thing - like cabbage soup. A celebration was a chance to eat different foods (like meat) that provided a caloric and nutritional boost. However, we now live in a time where we get more than enough calories, so celebrating the traditional way just makes us fat.

But we still show our love for each other with fat food and sugar, and my family is no exception. I usually try to celebrate mindfully, but this time I only partially succeeded. Three days of gluttony left me lying on the floor Sunday morning lamenting how much I'd eaten. It's best to avoid excessive indulgence, but if you overdo it, it's not the end of the world. You can recover! Here's how:

What to do - Celebration Recovery

1. Have a game plan going into the celebration of what you're going to eat and drink. The best defense is a good offense. But if you didn't do that, read the next few steps carefully.
2. Plan exercise time. You'll never do it otherwise. Round people up for activities before the celebration even starts - schedule flag football games, runs, bike rides, hikes, etc. I found a July 4th race, and for those of us that participated, it was a great bonding experience and a funny future memory.
3. Hydrate. Drink a lot of water. It will keep you feeling fuller so you won't be able to eat as much as you normally could.
4. Indulge in fruit and salad first. Go nuts. It'll do the same thing as hydrating. 
5. Chew sugarless gum. You can't eat and chew at the same time.
6. Slow your roll. After the first couple days of gluttony, take a good look at yourself in the mirror in your swim suit. It might prompt you to slow down the caloric intake.
7. Dive back into your routine after the celebration. It's tempting to ease back into being mindful tomorrow, but jump right back in as soon as the party's over. Make sure you exercise, and lighten up on the food more than usual to compensate for the overindulgence. 
8. Figure out what you would do differently next time. Go ahead and feel guilty, but then move on.   

You're human - you'll overindulge at times. Just be mindful and aim to make the time between overindulgences longer, and the actual celebrations increasingly less indulgent. You'll find you can have just as much fun, and you won't have to feel quite as slovenly and remorseful.

And don't forget what you're celebrating! Independence Day is earmarked to remember those that gave birth to the U.S., and those that keep it free. You can celebrate every day though! Click and remember our www.iraqwarheroes.com today.

What I ate (Fourth of July - two gross days in a row, yuk!): 1/2 Krispy Kreme, 1 banana, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, scrambled eggs, 1 smallish bag Cheetos, 1 chocolate chip granola bar, small Baskin-Robbins Cookies & Cream ice cream, coffee, fruit salad (picture up top), mango + avocado salad, grilled salmon, rice noodles, broccoli salad, 2 ears corn, 1/4 strawberry cake, 1 smore, 1 Sweettart, 1 Tootsie Roll

Exercise: Ran 8K

Key to Losing Weight: Portion Control or Exercise?

Want to lose weight? Watch your portions (they don't need to be this little)

If you wish to grow thinner, diminish your dinner.~Henry Sambrooke Leigh

I recently had two similar conversations with friends about losing weight. One is a doctor and the other is a portfolio manager, so they're both pretty bright, but they have the same misconception about weight loss. You're smarter than that! The conversations went something like this: 

Smart Friend: "I don't get it. I've been exercising 4-5 times a week for a couple months now, for an hour at a time, and I've only lost a few pounds. I'm going to give up."

MindfulEats: "Are you watching what you eat and cutting back on your calories?"

Smart Friend: "No, I'm hungry since I'm exercising. I can't practice portion control."

You, Mindful Eater, know what's wrong with this story. There's only one rule to successful weight loss - reduce your calories. Here are four keys to be mindful of for success.

1. Eat only whole foods, not processed food! You're cutting back on your calories, so get your calories worth and make sure they are as nutritious as possible. Processed foods have been stripped of nutrients, so your body will make you eat more calories in its hunt for nutrients.
2. Get your portions under control. If you want to lose weight, you need to make a change and this is the only way to reduce your calories. If you are having meat with your meal, it should be the size of a deck of cards. Lots of people (including me) don't know what a portion looks like - WebMD has a great tool that shows you food portion sizes, and these Spark People pictures show you what 300-400 calorie meals look like.
3. Cut down on eating out. When you do eat out, make sure that it's high-quality and you're mindful about it. Restaurants are in the business of making you come back, not making you healthy. I had the good fortune of eating at Blue Hill and Waverly Inn this week. Both restaurants are incredible and very mindful about serving high-quality, locally grown food, but it's still a ton more calories than what I'd eat at home. I ordered an appetizer and an entree at one meal, and the svelte gentleman next to me ordered two appetizers. Doh. Given how huge restaurant portions are, that's the way to go! I had to scale back on my calories for a few days to make up for consuming thousands out.
4. Exercise. It's important for fitness and will complement your weight loss. But unless you are a sub-elite athlete or better, you are probably not exercising enough to lose weight so you need to eat less. Running phenom Kevin Starkes watches what he eats until he's in high-mileage training (60+ miles per week). Are you doing that?

People always argue that they can just exercise to lose weight. Just as an example of why this doesn't work, I'll use someone whose diet and exercise patterns I know well (me). My goal is to lose a few pounds to get to my optimal running weight. So:

• I figure out the number of calories I need to maintain my weight: ~1,760.
• My goal is to lose 3 lbs in a healthy way, so I reset the calculator goal to lose 1 lb a week, and it tells me to cut back 500 calories a day to ~1,260. Can I exercise this off? Well:

• If I run a fast race for 4 miles where my legs are churning, my arms are pumping, and my heart is pounding, I run around a 7:30 miles. This means I burn 328 calories (2 chocolate chip cookies). No dice - and I don't race every day either. If I run a little slower (8:30 minute miles) for the same amount of time, I only burn 280 calories. (less than cookies!)
• If I run long and slow (10 minute miles), it will take me 1+ hours to burn 500 calories. Funny thing is that people who run long and slow tend to eat more.
• I can run it off, but it'll take me 1+ hour/day, EVERY day.  

To lose weight efficiently - cut calories and exercise. And don't eat those calories back because you're exercising! Those people on the Biggest Loser do it, so can you! 

What I ate: vegetable juice, Whole Foods low-fat plain yogurt + strawberries + ground flaxseeds, large latte, Dale & Thomas cheese popcorn, Mindful Mix, 2 cups cherries, 1 square dark chocolate, lettuce + sugar snap peas + grape tomatoes + goat cheese + 1 fried egg + Schoolhouse Kitchen Balsamico vinaigrette, 1 hot chocolate, 12 oz. kombucha, 60 oz. water

Exercise: Ran 4 miles, 75 min. vinyasa yoga

Greenmarket Tour and Taste with Michael Anthony

Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern in the Union Square Greenmarket, NYC, 6/5/09

"Be the change you want to see in the world." ~Mahatma Gandhi

Inspired. Delighted. Grateful. That's how I felt after spending a Saturday afternoon with Chef Michael Anthony, courtesy of the Council on the Environment of NYC (CENYC)'s Taste and Tours Program. I ended up on the tour randomly, and it ended up being one of my top 10 experiences. Ever. 

Michael is the Executive Chef of Gramercy Tavern, one of the best U.S. restaurants (awarded James Beard 2008 Outstanding Restaurant and consistently ranked by Zagats as NYC's most popular restaurant, among other honors). He is undisputedly a star chef. Yet, yet, YET, he spent an afternoon providing a tour of Union Square Greenmarket followed by an amazing lunch of locally sourced food to a motley group of 20 (including me). Accompanying him were Marcel Van Ooyen, Executive Director of CENYC and Arun Gupta, a line chef at Gramercy.

I was hooked the moment Michael started talking. This low-key chef has a clear vision of how food should fit in our lives. From the start, he had us all seeing his vision, but the surprise was that we were living it by the end. He started the tour by telling us he was going to highlight some of his favorite farmers, talk about how we could maximize the bounty we bought at market, and then finish at Gramercy Tavern to look at the kitchen and dine in the private dining room on a 4-course lunch prepared from market foods (and paired with local wines). I congratulated myself on hitting the jackpot.

The Greenmarket

Michael's passion and knowledge of responsibly farmed, local food is contagious. I learned so much that market specifics are in this post. Michael talks the talk AND he walks the walk. He walked us through the market, feeding us tidbits on the rich soil west of the Hudson River ("black gold") and the length of strawberry season, finding us garlic scapes to try, and pointing out the pasture-fed Angus farmer's son, who had recently come back from his tours in Iraq. He introduced us to farmers and had them teach us about the food they were growing.

Locally grown food is more than nourishment to him. It provides a sense of context and connection. As we looked at strawberries, he observed that out-of-season produce bought in grocery stores and imported from other areas "doesn't taste the same and doesn't feel the same." Michael spent his early time as a chef in Japan, and was deeply moved by the connection the Japanese had to their locally grown foods and the anticipation people had for the seasonal offerings. We learned that Gramercy Tavern takes meticulous daily notes on the market's offerings, and that strawberries came in 3 weeks later this year as opposed to last year when they arrived on May 2nd.