Entries tagged with 'diets'
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Photograph from cobalt123 on Flickr Going almost vegetarian, while allowing a few specks of meat here and there into the diet, is good for Mother Nature. That makes our Meat Lite contributors Joy Manning and Tara Mataraza Desmond, who focus on delicious almost meatless recipes, model environmentalists. A piece in Audubon Magazine explains that daily meat consumption per capita should drop from about 12 ounces in America to 3.1 ounces to protect the climate. That's about the size of a deck of cards, explains U.S. News and World Report. Where do your loyalties lie—meat, the earth, or both?...
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"What might have saved me is the box of Harry & David pears." The holidays are tough enough for any serious eater on a diet, but this year I am particularly challenged by the fact that Thanksgiving (per usual), Christmas Day, and New Year's Day (not usual), all fall on Thursday, right before my weekly date with Thinner, my scale. It's enough to make any dieting serious eater feel persecuted. The combination of Thursdays and the array of foods sent to my wife this year from her gracious and grateful clients are not making me feel very sanguine about my moment of reckoning on the scale. In fact, there were moments this week that I almost just gave in and...
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"As Albert King sang in one of my favorite blues lyrics, 'Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die'." The holiday party food gauntlet is a rough one. How many mini-sliders can one serious eater resist? How many slices of good, really good pizza go uneaten? How many pieces of slow-cooked beef cooked in lard can a man turn down? The answer after the jump, complete with a bite by bite breakdown of the past week....
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I could have moved the scale to China, but I still would have weighed 238. Though I have occasionally engaged in the not-so-fine art of scale moving during my serious diet before Thanksgiving, it was my post-Turkey Day weigh-in (the Friday after) that sent me into a veritable scale-moving frenzy. All to no avail of course. First, for those of you unfamiliar with the scale-moving weight loss technique, let me explain. Scale-moving starts when you weigh yourself with your scale in its usual place and you are desperately unhappy with the results. The Friday after Thanksgiving was a prime example. I hated the fact that I had gained two pounds last week. I didn't think I deserved such bad news....
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Photograph from Tim Psych on Flickr When pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene in Danville, California, started eating exclusively organic, he didn't do it for health reasons. Instead, it was a social experiment. He wanted to know the practicality of sticking to an organic diet in modern America. Could a person eat exclusively organic? Apparently, yes. Three years later, Greene is still going strong, eating 100-percent organic. His trials and tribulations—learning what's available where and when, weighing the price (and effort) disparities—were chronicled in a New York Times health column. Of course, his dramatic diet shift isn't for everyone, and I don't think Greene is trying to be preachy. He did this for himself, and anyone interested. One thing he noted:...
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"Butter, cream, sugar, pie, stuffing, gravy, biscuits. These are the tools of the Thanksgiving eater's trade." I was all set to write a short post telling you of my decision to avoid the scale the day after Thanksgiving, that I was going to delay getting on the scale until Monday. Surely serious eaters would understand, was my instant rationalization. My daily interim weigh-ins leading up to Thanksgiving were not cause for alarm. As of Thursday morning I was even (236) for the week. I knew you all would understand if I took a pass today. Then I decided that it's easy to rationalize too many decisions to go off the dieting reservation, as it were. In fact, I remember all...
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I admit it. My life is not exactly made to order for conventional dieting programs. In any given week I end up going to a couple potential diet-busting events that could make my Friday morning Serious Eats weigh-in problematic. So I've adopted some strategies and tactics that may sound nutty but have been surprisingly effective. For example, I weigh myself every day, which Weight Watchers frowns on as regular practice. I know my weight can fluctuate two and even three pounds depending on how much water I am retaining, even without going to one of these food events. But by getting on the scale every day, I get some sense of how I have fared each day and can adjust...
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Candy Blog takes issue with the Belgian part of Trader Joe's new Belgian 100-calorie chocolate bars (0.63 ounce per bar): "Just because the country has a great history and a good reputation for producing good chocolate doesn’t mean that just because it’s Belgian that it’s better, or even good."...
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I was hoping that two barriers would be broken though this week—the more important one of course was Barack Obama becoming the first African-American president we've ever had. Watching the election returns with friends Tuesday night, I have to admit I had tears streaming down my face at 11 p.m. Eastern time when CNN and others announced Obama had the requisite 270 electoral votes necessary to become our next president. My son, Will, called from college right then, and though he is just about as cool a customer as president-elect Obama, I thought I even heard a quiver in his voice. The second barrier I hoped to break this week was seemingly much more mundane: my own personal 240...
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I've been eating really, really, carefully this week, yet as of yesterday morning I hadn't lost any weight since last Friday. I went to eat ramen with Erin and even though we tried six kinds, she agrees I didn't consume close to a full bowl in total. Even at fat-and-pork-centric Irving Mill, I limited myself to half a burger, a single rib, and a few bites of the charcroute plate. From my extensive dieting experience (and I do mean extensive), it appears as if I have hit a plateau. That is, my body's thermostat has readjusted to my reduced caloric intake (doesn't that sound like I know what I'm talking about?). The good news is that I have lost enough...
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