Joy’s Healthy Lifestyle Log

Presmaggie on the 40-somethings board at 3FC asked how I cooked my chard. So, here’s the recipe. If I don’t have chicken stock on hand, I use water. It’s based on a recipe in the booklet that came with our wok, but we’ve changed it enough that I can claim it as ours, now.

Greens with chicken in peanut sauce
Greens
6 cups greens (we use a mix of what’s available — chard, kale, and spinach are our favorites. Collards will work, but I put more honey in the sauce to counteract the bitterness), washed, spun dry, torn in pieces, and put in the refrigerator for awhile to dry further

Chicken & marinade
1 boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced into thin slices about 1 inch long
1 Tbl chicken stock
2 tsp hoisin sauce

Peanut Sauce
2 Tbl reduced-sodium soy sauce
2 Tbl chicken broth
2 Tbl peanut butter
1 Tbl hoisin sauce
2 tsp honey

Stir-fry
2 oz dried Asian noodles (broken angel hair pasta works, too)
1/4 large onion, chopped
peanut oil as needed for stir-frying (we don’t measure this)

Topping
1/4 cup roasted peanuts

Prepare the greens so that they have time to dry in the refrigerator for awhile before cooking (dry ingredients work much better in stir-fries).

Marinate the chicken for 10 minutes to an hour in the broth and hoisin sauce.

Blend the sauce ingredients together in a small food processor and set aside.

Cook the noodles in boiling water, uncovered, until just tender. Drain, then toss with a little of the sauce in the cooking pot. Put the lid on to keep them a little warm and set aside.

While the noodles are cooking, start the stir-fry. Stir-fry the onions for a minute. Add the chicken and continue stir-frying until the chicken is opaque. Add the greens and stir-fry until they wilt, about a minute or two more. Stir in the noodles and sauce. Stir until everything is combined and hot. Top with peanuts.

We’ve been getting two supper servings from this plus enough leftover for a lunch serving the next day. Don’t put the peanuts in with the leftovers — they get soggy.

Filed under: Recipes on August 16th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Some notes and thoughts from The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by David A. Kessler.

There’s always a moment of choice before eating an unhealthy food, but only a moment. Catch those thoughts early and do something else. This competing thought may help me: I don’t have to respond that way; I can respond this way.

Another helpful strategy is to play the tape until the end: how will I really feel after I have eaten this thing? How will I feel in an hour? How will I feel the next time I step on the scale? What is the likelihood that this will trigger more unhealthy eating — if the item is high fat, high sugar, and high salt, that likelihood is very high.

Overeating is a chronic problem to be managed, not cured.

A question to ask myself when I’m engaged in emotional eating: Will eating help me truly deal with this feeling?

What I want to do in managing my overeating is to break the cycle of cue-urge-reward that has become habitual, making it harder for me to resist the next opportunity to indulge.

Learn from lapses.

A lot of this about awareness. Paying attention to what triggers my overeating. Payting attention to my emotions as they are happening. Paying attention to what really satisfies me and what just provides a momentary pleasure. Paying attention when I lapse so that I learn from it and move back in the direction of healthy eating instead of away from it.

I can be my own food coach.

Filed under: Motivation on August 15th, 2009 | No Comments »

I woke up at 2 in the morning feeling bloated. I’m hoping it was caused by the Chinese Orange Chicken since that was something I’m planning to eliminate from my diet anyway. Anything that helps me sleep better has been a strong motivator for my healthy lifestyle in the past, so I’m hoping that works well now.

I’m reading The End of Overeating by David A. Kessler. The materials and ideas aren’t particularly new, but put all together, they are really helping me. I eat the way that I do because the food industry has carefully conditioned me to do so. In order to eat the way that I want, I will have to painstakingly recondition myself. Reconditioning is less about will power and more about personalized behavior modification techniques.

The technique that I’m drawn to at the moment is rule-making. If I make rules that keep me from even entering a decision-making process about eating certain things at certain times at certain places, then I can eliminate cravings before they start. I tell my brain it’s not an option which puts me in a mindset to be easily distracted from the problem food. I’m attracted to this technique because it has worked for me in the past, even though I wasn’t as strategic with it as I’m being now.

So, I’ve made two rules in two days effecting the worst problem that I encountered on each day.

Rule Number 1. No calories after supper except for one of these things: sorbet, a cocktail, a piece of fruit.

I seem to like rules with exceptions because it makes my Inner Child feel like she’s getting away with something. My sorbet is homemade and mostly fruit. It also feels like dessert which sometimes cues me in to stop eating. I drink one or two cocktails a week in the summer, using the fresh mint in my garden, and many fewer in the winter. Alcohol has never been a big force in my life and doesn’t seem to trigger either more drinking or more eating, so that’s a reasonable treat. The fruit exception is just in case I really do get hungry after supper and neither of the other options are available.

Rule Number 2. No food from the mall, the gas station, or the drug store. The only exception to this rule is a sit-down meal at a mall restaurant when I’m with someone else.

That should eliminate some of my worst location trigger eating, something that Dr. Kessler discusses frequently in the book.

Filed under: Motivation, Rules on August 15th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

I’m setting this blog up as a daily log of my journey.

So, here is where I am now:

• 220+ pounds. I’ll have to get on a scale someday soon to have an accurate number
• a lot of healthy eating habits — much cooking at home, lots of vegetables, an appreciation for natural, local, healthy eating styles even if I don’t always follow them
• a daily exercise habit
• a lot of times when I’m not eating the way I want — overeating at home, eating high fat / sugar / salt foods away from home

And here’s where I’ve been. I yo-yo dieted through my twenties. That seemed really stupid, so I gave up and maintained a weight between 240 and 250 for my thirties. In my forties, I started gradually changing some things and slowly lost some weight — 10 pounds a year, slowly, but I did that for three years, which made a difference. Then, I got impatient. In 2008, I lost about 15 pounds in the first half year and, then, things fell apart and I gained 20 during the last half of 2008 while being in almost complete denial. I’ve been out of denial since the start of January 2009 but have yet to reverse the trend. I’ve been gaining all year, much more slowly than I did in 2008, but gaining still.

So, I need something. Right now, I’m reading a ton of books (can you tell I’ve been trained as a librarian?) and thinking that a daily log and participation in a forum might be useful to me. Something’s shifting and this will be the log of where it moves.

Filed under: Uncategorized on August 14th, 2009 | No Comments »