Lean and Hard

Restaurants are trying to outdo each other. Who can pack the most calories onto a single plate of food? Yes, it's true that many of them have a little something for those who are trying to be lean and hard, but easy they make it to sweep these aside in our frenzy to grab the heavy stuff!

Check out this article from USA Today Money:

If you plan to chow down tonight at a big chain restaurant, there's a better than nine-in-10 chance that your entree will fail to meet federal nutrition recommendations for both adults and kids, according to a provocative new study.

A whopping 96% of main entrees sold at top U.S. chain eateries exceed daily limits for calories, sodium, fat and saturated fat recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, reports the 18-month study conducted by the Rand Corp. and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

That's right. A single entree has more calories than the number you should be eating in an entire day. So what can you do? Never eat out? Well, many of us can eat out a lot less if we want to, saving money and our health at the same time. But meeting friends and eating out together is a special thing to do and no one wants to give that up entirely.

My suggestion is this: Limit the damage. If you resist the temporary desire for the biggest thing on the menu, you can even eliminate the damage altogether! Your opening move might be to avoid going out to eat while you feel you could eat a horse. Have a light, healthy something right before you go out. Then, when you get to the restaurant, you're not ready to slaughter a poor equine to feed your face.

A second move would be to order from the starter menu, but even then you need to be wary. Restaurants have wised up to this move, and I think many starters today are bigger than whole 4-course meals used to be. Choose wisely. Salads or soups can also be a great choice.

It's sad that eating healthy has to be such a battle in our modern, restaurant-chain swamp of a battlefield, but it is what it is. The lean and hard warrior, though, can fight and win this war.

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This is my own invention and may not be to everyone's liking, but I adore hot spices, so this one is tasty and healthy, a winning combo!

Boneless/skinless chicken thighs seasoned with chili mix powder, then browned and cooked down in chicken broth until tender. Brown rice, cooked and mixed with chopped spinach and a habanero pepper.

Enjoy!

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Photo Credit: timesunion.com


Do I want to live a long life and be miserably hungry, or would I rather eat whatever I want and be fat and happy and enjoy whatever few years I have left? I say that this is NOT the choice we face.

Life, they rightly tell us, is about tradeoffs. We give up one thing to get another thing, and hopefully increase our overall wellbeing in the exchange. Is there pleasure in filling my belly with junk? You betcha. We evolved during a time when calories were scarce, so our bodies are very good at finding, consuming and storing as many as we can. This used to be a good thing, but in our modern day world, it makes us obese. Because of our evolution, when we smell and taste and consume massive amounts of calories we don't need, we get a big dose of chemicals released into our bloodstream that make us feel rewarded. It feels great!

But that good feeling is short-lived and, as we have all experienced, ends up departing the scene and being replaced by bad feelings. Fatigue, dullness, heaviness, guilt, are all going to come, and later still, physical discomfort from carrying far too much fat on our bodies, emotional discomfort about our deteriorating physical attractiveness, and inexorably, the enormous costs arising from bad health, are the longer-term consequences. Fat and happy? Maybe for some, but not for me.

What about lean and hungry? First, let's define "hungry." Let's understand, there's hungry (the physical sensation of running a caloric deficit) and there's HUNGRY (intense feelings of need for food, physical weakness and even pain due to the need to eat). The first one is unavoidable if you want to lose weight because you have to run a deficit, i.e. burn more than you take in, to make your body raid its fat storehouses for the energy it needs. I can tell when this is my situation, although it's difficult to describe the sensation. The key here is, it really doesn't feel bad! I'll obviously get to a point where I don't need to run a deficit anymore, when I'm lean and hard, but my point is, I can live like this for a looooong time. For me, it's a good feeling because I'm reminded that I'm losing fat and getting closer to my goal, I have more energy, and every day I'm feeling the benefits of better health and fitness.

On the other hand, there's HUNGRY, and the fact is, you can't keep feeling this kind of hunger for very long before you will eat. No amount of willpower, except the kind that Gandhi had perhaps, will keep your body away from food for any appreciable length of time. And when you surrender to the urge, you will surrender in a big way by eating the things that are the very worst for you. This is why almost every person who goes on a diet ends up regaining everything they lost and more.

So what's the solution? Find a way of eating and exercising that you can enjoy, not that you have to endure. If you can't stand the method you're trying, you likely won't succeed at it. But if you can enjoy it, it will last and you'll be able to achieve and maintain your goal.

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