Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual

I just finished reading this book written by Michael Pollan. I started the book today. It is a short, clean read about eating that I struggled to put down. He takes a practical approach to eating that I think should be required reading not only for folks looking to lose weight, but everyone who eats in this country.

Pollan earlier work on food, ‘”In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto”, was written about the Western Diet and the danger it poses to all of us. I will likely add this to the to-read section of my book shelf. He summarizes the book in Food Rules, with the following statement:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

This serves as the basis for the book. He presents his advice on eating in three sections echoing the statement above. What makes this book fun, is that he gives his advice in chapter form using simple rules, in the form of statement and “old world” advice, that allow you to implement right now. No nutrition degree required. There are a few things I want to capture here that I hope will encourage you to read this book.

Part I – What should I eat?

  • Chapter 1 – Eat food.
  • Chapter 11 – Avoid foods you see advertised on television.
  • Chapter 13 – Eat foods that will eventually rot.
  • Chapter 20 – It’s not food if it arrived through the window of your car.

Part II – What kind of food should I eat?

  • Chapter 25 – Eat your colors.
  • Chapter 31 – Eat wild foods when you can.
  • Chapter 36 – Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of your milk.
  • Chapter 43 – Have a glass of wine with dinner.

Part III – How should I eat?

  • Chapter 46 – Stop eating before you are full.
    Ask yourself not, Am I full? but, Is my hunger gone?
  • Chapter 50 – “The banquet is this first bite.”
    I have often heard people say they want to leave the table with the best flavor in their last bite of food. However, this chapter make the argument that the first bite is the best and no other will come close (law of diminishing returns). So enjoy the first bites and stop earlier than you would normally is great advice!
  • Chapter 52 – Buy smaller plates and glasses.
  • Chapter 64 – Break the rules once in a while.

 

Food Rules

Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
Michael Pollan, December 2009

 

ISBN: 9780143116387
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Week 17: Progress Report

Been out of town for another week and did pretty well. I did not visit the gym, but chose to walk to many of the venues for dinner and fun. One way ended up being just over a mile which was nice. I’ve noticed that I tend to drink a little more coffee (decaf) than I would when at home. Next time I will need to bring my water bottle that makes it too convenient to want to drink anything else.

Cranial Activity

On this trip, I had a chance to hear a talk about change from Chip Heath. Chip and his brother Dan wrote a book, “Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard”, that I highly recommend you read. It is written in a style that provides content along with great examples. Chip is also an outstanding speaker (check out this snippet about his last book, Made to Stick), who among other things talked about how hard it is to eat right these days. With the complexities of nutrition combined with the lack of clarity from things like the food pyramid, it just makes it tough. He mentioned a book to cut through the confusion titled “Food Rules”, written by Michael Pollan. This is quite possibly the best way to start rethinking about what and how to eat. I read this on my Nook and was very satisfied with the experience. Some books on food and nutrition have lots of pictures and charts which don’t translate well, but this book was ideal for my Nook.

Physical Activity

Before I left on my trip, I joined LA | Fitness. In addition to the membership, I will be working with a trainer to continue my work on really getting healthy. I am very proud of the progress I have made which includes changing my eating habits as well getting moving. However, I think the next step is to add a bit of strength training to build a some muscle. This will need to be a combination of continuing to lose weight, working towards my health goal and getting stronger to increase my metabolism. I have my initial session tomorrow morning – looking forward to it!

Obligatory Chart

Week 17 Weight

I am still on a bit of a flat point on losing weight, but am ok with it. It is a challenge to do the right things when travelling,but I made good choices and still managed to drop a pound when it was all said and done.

That said, I need to pay a little closer attention to what and how much I am eating now that I am back home. Getting into a rhythm on walking, mini-tramp and gym workouts again will bring back the balance.

 

Next Milestone – Weight=180, target date = 05-DEC-2010

Reminder: This will take me out of the obese classification and simply into overweight.

Week 15: Progress Report

Thinking about how crazy my schedule has been lately, I can’t help but think how lucky I was to get started when I did. There was a nice lull from work, school and life in general that really let me think about what I wanted to accomplish. I had time to play around with several things to get the groundwork laid which has made the crazy time a bit easier.

Things are going pretty well from an eating well standpoint, but I need to get going on move vigorous exercise. I am still planning on nailing down my gym and trainer. Should be able to check out what I think will be the place today (LA Fitness).

Week 15 Weight

Next Milestone – Weight=180, target date = 05-DEC-2010

Reminder: This will take me out of the obese classification and simply into overweight.

Post Rate

Recently I have been asked two questions by folks because my weight loss has become more noticeable.

1. Are you losing weight. Yes, I am working at it.

2. What is your secret?

I’ve thought a lot about the last question and how to describe what I am doing to get healthy and in hiking shape. Clearly there is no secret, but describing what I am doing in a short small-talk conversation is not easy. Here is what I have been using:

I eat right and control my portions. And I move.

Short and to the point. It may generate probing questions or clarification, but serves as a good summary. However, there are two other components that I really believe help keep me on the right track.

The first is maintaining a diary of my eating habits. With the exception of the travelling week (week 14) I have done a good job of maintaining an accurate account of what I eat. Over time it has become easier to estimate how much I am eating and yes, tracking restaurant food is always a pain, but I try to keep it as accurate and timely as possible. One quick note, this is a lot easier when mostly eating unprocessed or over flavored foods when dining out.

The second key item is my FitBit. I have described it as a super fancy pedometer, but in reality, it is like a personal trainer whispering in your ear that you need to move more. You need to get your steps in – otherwise it will be a yellow or even worse, a green day. This has a subtle influence to help ensure I take the steps when faced with stair-elevator option. It reminds me to take a little walk around the park when waiting for a sporting event to start rather than sit in the stands for 15 minutes. I know there are other products out there that do similar things, but this is what I have and it works wonderfully. I charge it about once a week and keep it on the rest of the time (sans shower and pool). It’s wireless sync is awesome and I have the home page in my IE startup favorites so I check every few hours to see how I am doing.

So if I update my spiel, it should look more like this:

I eat right, control my portions and journal my meals. And I move, tracking my efforts with my FitBit.

Not too bad and it may generate even more discussion. But there is one more component that is helping and that is this blog. By taking a few minutes to capture my thoughts, ideas, moods and progress, I am providing an outlet for all the work I have been doing. What prompted this post was a quick look at the post count per month. I started strong in July with a bunch of thoughts and energy but as other things kicked up, my post count dropped to just a progress report weekly, then every other week and with the last one every third week. I have found that I enjoy this and need to get back into a rhythm of writing.

Week 14: Progress Report

It has been a busy few weeks. Both work (travelling for a week) and school have complicated my efforts. But that’s what life is all about. The weight loss has slowed down considerably for the last few weeks. This is mainly due to less activity. I have done a pretty good job of eating, even when out of town. There has been a bit more alcohol in the mix, but eating right and in portion is becoming more and more of a habit.

One area that I need to focus on a bit more is fruit consumption. I am seeing higher sugar per day that I would like and it is mostly due to fruit. I will look to push more vegetables and beans into my diet and cut back a bit on the fruit.

Week 14 Weight

You can see in the chart below, the tapering of the loss. This is my first plateau, and even so it is not disheartening. I have stayed flat for a week and dropped 1 and 1.5 pounds for the next two. Eating right in the right way is a major leg of the stool to getting healthy.

I am at the point where I really need to ramp up the physical activity. As it gets cooler, the pool becomes less of an option and cardio will not yield the long-term changes I am seeking.

Fitnes Plan 11-JUL to 02-OCT Summary

The above chart shows my activity over the last 12 weeks. The pink bars indicate I am on track, the yellow that I am close and the green that I need to kick it into gear. Finding the balance of work, school and life are the tricky part and where it turns yellow is where they all converge. The right side of the chart is interesting – it shows how many days are in each type of activity level. I am proud to report that the right side of the chart is where I spent the majority of my time – with the largest number of days in the exceeding category. However, if it showed those over time, it would clearly be front-loaded which is not ideal.

I am looking to join a gym. And actually go to the gym. My employer offers reimbursement for this and I will be taking advantage of a membership and likely some personal training time. I am looking at some strength/resistance training as well as Pilates and\or yoga to work on flexibility. I am hoping to nail down the gym and join in the next week. I’ve got a bit more travelling coming up and want to be ready to hit it when I get back.

 

Next Milestone – Weight=180, target date = 05-DEC-2010

After re-calibrating my weight loss over the last several weeks, my target date is a bit more conservative. That said, I am looking to ramp up the activity and get back to a higher level of performance, accelerating this plan.

Week 11: Progress Report

What a challenging week. Lots of commitments and so little time. In the past, this would have resulted in many, many poor meal choices. This week, not so much. It is becoming so much more second nature to choose decent food and get rid of the junk without really missing anything.

On to the good news. I completed my mini-milestone. Weighted in this morning and the weight started with a “1”! Still lots of work to do, but it felt nice.

Week 11 Weight

Next Milestone – Weight=180, target date = 17-OCT-2010

This will take me out of the obese classification and into overweight.

Week 9: Progress Report

Now this was a busy week, and as I’ve said before, these present the biggest challenge. Living live and doing the right things to get healthy. Well, there were some days that had my first meal starting with lunch, Some days with a weak step count, but overall, I am still making progress! My weight loss is becoming more and more apparent and I am getting comments from people followed by the question, how are you doing it? My answer is generally eating like a human and getting more active. I’m going to think about a better answer, that can be delivered quickly (not preachy), but with a very positive spin.

Activity Plan - Week 6 (Overall Week 9)

You can see, based on the last three weeks, I have more work to do. I like the little frowny face letting me know that this week was not great. Things should be settling down a bit with the house, school and work so I hope to get back to the “pink” levels.

I managed to lose a few pounds this week and continue to move the BMI dot in the right direction. Still working on getting the right mix of food, nutrients and C-F-P ratio.

Week 9 WeightBMI Map - Week 9

The nice little bonus I noticed this week is that I was a bit to coarse in setting my latest goal. I was looking to move into obesity class I and thought a BMI score of 34 is what I needed. However, the class starts at 34.9 – so I have achieved this mini-goal! Actually did it last week. I am very happy with that milestone. Very much looking forward to getting out of the obese classification in the coming weeks!

My week 9 Carb-Fat-Protein ratio is: 64% – 14% – 22%. So still a little high on the carbs; I did have a few sandwiches this week. Still looking for a way to get more whole gain goodness without going overboard on “bread carbs”.

In tracking a few nutrition specifics, I’ve been doing pretty well.

Fiber
Recommended: 25mg / day
I’ve been above that for the last 6 weeks (range 27mg – 32mg)

Sodium
Recommended: < 2300mg /. day
Been working to reduce this as much as possible. I’ve had less than 23000mg per day for 7 or the last 8 weeks. Most below the 2000mg level. This is a tough one, especially if you eat out once in a while as not all restaurants provide nutrition information. With that in mind, the lower everywhere else, the better.

Water
Recommended: ~64fl oz / day
This is a huge change for me. I drink water almost exclusively anymore. I will have a decaf coffee every few weeks or a green tea (will try to get more of this when it cools down) and a beer once in a while. But that’s about it. I’ve exceeded the 64fl oz for the last 8 weeks, usually having 100fl oz or more daily.

Sugar
Recommended: < 32g / day (natural sugar outside this value)
This is a tough one, because the recommendation is for sugar that is added to foods and beverages. However, naturally occurring sugar (fruits) is different and not counted the same. I eat a lot of fruit and try to find the best kinds (high fiber, lower sugar), but it still adds up. I consume about 60g per day, but the majority all comes from fruit. I need to look into this a bit more to get a better idea of a reasonable target.

100 Days of Vitamins
One more milestone this week, I have had 100 days of taking a vitamin. I’ve tried to take multi-vitamins in the past and normally had a stomach reaction and have thrown it right back up. I have no idea why this was the case (not a good breakfast, brand?). Before I had my awakening, I picked up a bottle from Target and started taking them with no issue. I have since added an additional vitamin D3 and fish oil supplement to my daily regimen. Clearly this is super important when we consider the type of food that is available today and I’m glad I am back on the vitamin path.

Next Milestone – Weight=200, target date = 12-SEP-2010

This is a mini-milestone, I can’t remember that last time I weighed less than 200lbs.

Week 7: Progress Report

I skipped a week of progress reports, but this seems to be the way it will go as everything ramps up (school, work). Progress continues – which is great because the week was not stellar in terms of activity.

Fitness Plan Week 5

Lots going on this week, including a week long business planning session that included a night at a Brazilian steak house. If you have not been to one of these, think all you can eat salad bar and all you can eat meat. The meat consists of 10-12 types including beef, chicken, lamb, sausage, pork – cooked to perfection. There are a few restaurants of this style, we went to Boi Na Braza. I am pretty happy with how I did, First of all, never go to a buffet style restaurant. – the human mind struggles to make sense of all the sights and smells. Combined with the need to “get your money’s worth” this rarely results in a positive experience. However, if you do go, be sure to eat a good salad upfront and then go lightly on the rest. This is what I did, took advantage of the awesome salad bar before diving into the meat. Since there is plenty to like, I tried 4 different type of meat – which was too much. This was better than 10 helpings, but to be better, I could have eaten less of each type rather than polish it all off. Good lesson from experience.

The rest of the week consisted of a baseball game (a hotdog, Coke Zero and a few peanuts), but not much walking. Things picked back up later in the week, but the chart above serves as a great reminder that I need to Keep Moving!

Nutrition Update

Food Report - Week 7

This week looks a little better on the ratio’s. One other item to track is when I consume the calories. The chart below shows when they were eaten. A general guideline is to eat less than 30% of your calories at and after dinner.

Calories by Meal - Week 7

One other item that I am looking into relates to pesticides used on fruits and vegetables. Many of my top food items are those that will absorb pesticides – awesome news. Must go organic.

 

Weight Update

I am still on track with regards to losing weight. I lost about 5 this week, a little higher than I would have expected. It looks like my range is somewhere between 3 and 5 pounds per week.

Week 7 Weight

Next Milestone – Weight=204, BMI=34 (class-1 obesity): target date = 05-SEP-2010

I moved up the projection date a bit, may be aggressive, but based on the last few weeks seems like a reasonably aggressive date.

Okra, yum!

I have a neighbor with a giant garden who recently gave me some okra. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten it before. I’ve heard of fried okra, which seems to be the experience that most have with the vegetable. Well, I tried one last Okranight and really enjoyed it. I just washed it, sliced it and ate it. The outer pod tastes a lot like a pea pod where as the inside didn’t seem to have a lot of flavor. The oil/juice inside is a bit interesting as well.

This goes on the yes list. Eating them plain or in a salad is likely the way to go.

Inspired to go grow some? Click on the photo and go check out Park Seed Company.

Stretch Break

We have software at work available to us that reminds you to stretch every 30 minutes. I’ve known about it for a long time, but never really gave it much thought. With everything else I am doing, I thought why not, let’s give this thing a whirl.

The software is called Stretch Break and pops up every 30 minutes to remind you to stretch. You can configure it to different intervals, but I left it in default mode. When it pops up, it give you three stretches to do then goes back to sleep. The stretches themselves vary in what they work and include both sitting and standing stretches. There are some for your hands, shoulders, neck and eyes. It does a pretty good job.

The thing that really got my attention was how quickly the 30 minutes seemed to fly by and the next session begins. As I sit in my office, I imagine there are times when hours go by and I am just glued to my computer – not really moving more than my hands. It definitely feels good to get up and stretch. I will keep this going and play with the duration to strike the balance between stretching enough and not breaking concentration too often.

Just another in a series of eye opening events.