A Weight Lifted

Tomato and Sweet Corn Salad – Healthy Cooking Thursday

Chef Lisa — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:30:54 +0000

After slicing off the top half of the kernels, use the dull side of a chef's knife to harvest the remaining meat and juices

Last weekend, I returned to my home state of New Jersey to visit family and friends I hadn’t seen in a while. It’s always a bit of a culture shock to go back; gigantic buildings spring up like weeds in a garden, the roads are always faster and more congested than I remember, and everywhere I go people are in a hurrrrrrry. (I certainly take for granted how easy it is to be mindful in the peaceful mountains of Vermont!) Crack a joke if you must about Snookie or over-crowded industrialization, but I love New Jersey for a great many reasons, not the least of which being the food.

New Jersey is, after all, the Garden State. (I am ignoring the snickering I hear through the broadband.) In fact, the last stop my husband and I planned before heading north again was the farm stand near the house where I grew up. Oh my word, the tomatoes. Beefsteaks, Romas, heirloom varieties in a rainbow of colors…sigh.

The short, cooler summers of Vermont do have one definite drawback, and it is a lack of these amazingly flavorful gifts from the gods. Just one sniff of the air in a Jersey farmer’s market in August and I began to drool. A tomato, after all, should smell like sweet heavenly dirt and sunshine, not the plastic and wax indicitive of a grocery store ‘mater. You Jersey girls out there know what I’m talking about!

So I scooped up oodles of tomatoes and peaches and sweet corn and Italian plums, and loaded up our truck for the trek home to the mountains. Our balanced dinner that night included this quick dish and a chorizo and cheddar omelet (also quick and delicious), all of which took less than 10 minutes to throw together. This easy and healthy recipe highlights the flavor of a really fine tomato without overwhelming it with too many other ingredients. And you can save the resulting dressing to top your next salad or marinate some chicken, too.

Tomato and Sweet Corn Salad - serves 4

3-4 beautiful Beefsteak tomatoes, preferably from Jersey

4 ears of fresh sweet corn

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

2 tablespoons of fresh basil, minced or 1/2 tsp of dry basil

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

salt and pepper to taste

Cut the tomatoes into bite size pieces. Shuck the sweet corn and place the stem end (the flatter one) on your cutting board, so that the other end is pointing straight up. Using a chef’s knife, slice down the ear of corn, removing the top 1/2 of the corn kernels. Do this on all sides of the ear, then turn your knife around and use the dull side to rub down on the cob, squeezing out the remaining corn meat and milk, as shown in the picture above. (You do not need to cook the corn.) Combine with the tomatoes and the remaining ingredients. Add a side of protein (how about 3 cups of black beans and 2 ounces of fresh mozzarella tossed directly in with the tomatoes?) for a great healthy meal idea.

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Making Peace with Food

Robyn — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:43:28 +0000

Last week I posted on food addiction. My suggestion was to attempt to find ways to eat certain foods in moderation before writing them off completely. As I wrote last week:

“I encourage people to play around with combinations first before throwing in the towel and assuming you can’t eat something because they are addicted to it. Why bother to figure out a way to eat cookies versus just giving them up? I think I’ll blog about that next week…”

So as promised, I wanted to talk about why you might try to make peace with a food before deciding to swear it off for the rest of your life. Over the years that I’ve worked at Green Mountain, I’ve heard this question many time, “Wouldn’t is just be better for me to never eat ________(ice cream, donuts, potato chips, etc …) again instead of trying to figure out ways to eat it in moderation?” My answer is always the same, “It depends on how important that food is to you and it depends on the outcome you’ve encountered in the past when you’ve tried to give that food up completely.”

My concern is that complete abstinence from a food we really like is not practical. It’s likely to set the stage for what I call “substitute eating” or trigger overeating or bingeing if we cannot adhere to abstinence and then feelings of failure or guilt set in. To me, “substitute eating” is when you eat a bunch of other stuff you don’t really want because you are avoiding a specific food because you think it’s unhealthy. This is not a desirable outcome nor is triggering binge eating.

If you’ve tried to swear off a food in the past and the end result is either obsessing about it, overeating/bingeing on other foods, or bingeing on that food once you finally cave and eat it, then giving it up completely is probably not the best plan. This to me would make the case for experimenting with different ways of eating that food that feel safer, versus swearing it off forever.

If you have a negative physical response to a food, such as increased cravings, increased appetite, etc and it’s NOT an important food to you, then it probably would make no difference to let it go. As an example, I may notice that if I eat a processed food like a Twinkie, I just want more and more of the same. Avoiding Twinkies because they make me feel this way does not trigger feelings of deprivation or create any negative outcome. Well, then there is no point in learning how to eat Twinkies in moderation because they’re just not that important to me.

Have you ever had trouble when you attempted to swear off a favorite food “forever?”

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Healthy Weight Loss Lessons Learned at Green Mountain

Marsha — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:30:06 +0000

Today’s post is by Rebecca Scritchfield, RD, a dynamic young RD who we had the pleasure of meeting and working with last week at Green Mountain. This is just one of her posts she wrote on her blog Balanced Health and Nutrition about her experience here. Be sure to scroll down to watch one of the videos she put together, too. And learn what she learned about her night-time emotional eating.

My week at Green Mountain at Fox Run came and went super fast. In my last few moments at this wonderful women-only healthy lifestyle retreat, I took some time to reflect on my take-aways from my short stay.

1. You are not alone. I think so many times people feel isolated when their trying to lose weight. They’re living inside their head and bodies — wanting things like less pain, to feel better, less judgment from themselves and others. I think that when you arrive here you realize there are other anxious, lonely, and frustrated women here too. You can start the process of changing your mindset and behaviors together. Knowing there is support and community is very comforting. I met a group of women who were strangers, became friends over 4 weeks, and are already planning their support network — and a fun reunion in a few months.

2. It’s not really about _______ (weight, food, or insert the obvious “problem” here). Everyone shows up asking “how much weight will I lose?” or “Will you cure my food addiction?” Usually the desired goal when you arrive is completely different than when you leave. Even within a week, you realize that it’s not about the weight (a number that is actually really bad at determining health status). It’s about the way you see things. It’s about your mindset. What do you believe about yourself? What behaviors have you built in to your life? Are these things that will keep you healthy? What do you need to “unlearn”? The bottom line is that if it were a simple “problem” and simple “solution” then it would not feel like a struggle. But when you come here and things start to click, you get this sense of relief because you finally understand and your motivation is finally where it needs to be to change your life.

3. You will accomplish things you don’t believe you can do yet. Many of the women there went from no exercise to several hours a day. They got sore. Many others went from chaotic eating of 1-2 meals a day out of a styrofoam container to eating three delicious and nutritionally balanced meals and 1-2 snacks. They couldn’t believe the amount of food — and some got nervous they were gaining weight! (she ended up losing 3# her first week) Others went hiking, ascending challenging trails when just a few weeks ago, they had a bad back.

Watch this video to see the view on one of our “Vermonting” hikes.

My big accomplishment was in dealing with my night time eating. I’m an emotional eater. It runs in the family. There are times when it is more prevalent, usually when I’m anxious like in the evenings and sometimes social events. (I was so nervous at the fact that I would not have a fridge to raid in the evenings when I first got there.) But in all honesty, it was so much easier than I ever would have imagined. By the second night I wasn’t worried about it and by the third, I could care less. I only got hungry for an evening snack once and I was able to get something from their evening snack bar. Textbooks have taught me “eat every 3-4 hours, balanced meals, for normal hormone cycle patterns” — I knew it was true. I had knowledge. But let me tell you something EXPERIENCE KICKS THE A$$ OF KNOWLEDGE… I think deep down I did not believe 100% that it would work for me because it is just something that has been part of my life since I was 12. There’s nothing like someone else saying “You can do this. I believe it even if you don’t.” (which is actually something I say to clients quite often) I’m a firm believer in my own experience and the reality is, we do need to eat regularly. It only took a few days and boy, I was hungry every few hours but it was much more gentle, not “ravenous” I was able to enjoy eating, some days less some days more. But when there’s too much eating at dinner and after dinner, you will likely wake up uncomfortable, still full, and on the “let’s skip breakfast” train.

4. It’s about how you feel, not how you look! So, if there was one collective a-ha that could summarize everyone’s experience, it’s this concept. Nobody feels good on a diet. Many people don’t feel good when they’re overweight either (emotional and physical pain, mobility issues, joint pain). I certainly learned how “good” I feel when I eat regular, balanced meals consistently… and I remember how “bad” I feel when I over-indulge (and for me, it is not about weight, it is literally about how stuffed/tight my stomach will feel and how it is harder to digest the food, gas paid – heheh, seriously! It’s literally my body saying WTF did you do to me? That contrast is burned in my head now. I would not overfeed a friend, a child, so why do it to myself. It makes NO sense.)

More on feelings… The body wants to be energetic. It wants to move, but if we don’t work out, swim, walk, do strength training, yoga, dance… something, our bodies don’t get those endorphins that make us feel happy. And let me tell you — if a 400 pound participant can swim and dance every day, so can you! Stop focusing on what you weigh and focus on how you feel. Are you eating in a way that makes your body feel good? Could you be malnourished because your “food” is so processed and devoid of nutrition that you aren’t getting energy-producing vitamins and minerals? Open up your mind to a different approach to wellness.

I cannot say enough about my experience at Green Mountain and I wholeheartedly recommend it. I hope to be back early next year leading a week-long retreat and I’d love to have you join me! Post a comment or shoot me an email and let me know if you’d like more information. If you can’t go when I’m there, anytime is great time!

More posts Rebecca wrote about her Green Mountain stay:

http://rebeccascritchfield.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/checking-in-at-green-mountain-at-fox-run-part-1/

http://rebeccascritchfield.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/checking-in-at-green-mountain-at-fox-run-part-deux/

http://rebeccascritchfield.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/a-typical-day-at-green-mountain-at-fox-run/

http://rebeccascritchfield.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/food-fitness-and-fun-at-green-mountain-at-fox-run/

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Taking It Outside: Moving Because We Want To

Marsha — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:26:01 +0000

Yep, this is what it's going to look like around here in just a few short weeks.

In many places throughout the US, school is already back in full swing or just getting started today. And while that means different things for different folks, it does mark a change in seasons right before the change in seasons really happens.

That change is a spectacular one in Vermont. One of the prettiest times of the year in a state that is renowned for its pretty times throughout the year, Fall in Vermont is not to be missed if at all possible. Crisp air reinvigorates as the green of our forested landscape transforms into a panoply of vivid reds, oranges and yellows.

It’s the perfect setting for ramping up the motivation to move.

When we spend time outdoors, we can reconnect with the joy and relaxation of physical activity. It also helps us reconnect to the intrinsic motivation for physical activity that we experienced as a child. We were moving, because we could and wanted to, not because we “had” to.

That from one of our FitBriefings, monthly articles we put together on topics of interest to fitness-minded women. This one, titled “Healthy Living: Taking It Outside,” talks about the joys of the natural gymnasium right outside our doorsteps, recognizing that some of us live in places like Vermont while others get to enjoy the wonders of cities that also have a lot to offer outdoors.

So regardless where you spend most of your days, take time to spend some of those days outside. It can add a whole new feel to your fitness.

Don’t miss our September special: Enroll by September 17 and save up to $2700 (25% off your stay)! If you think we’re just another adult weight loss camp, take this opportunity to learn why we’re not.

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It Happened this Week: Felled by a Cold

Marsha — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:16:11 +0000

This is the town green here in Ludlow. Doesn't look like this yet but will in a few weeks!

The week started out great. Rebecca Scritchfield, dynamic RD from the DC area, joined us at Green Mountain to observe our mindful eating/mindful living or intuitive eating/intuitive living program. She’s been a delight to have around, if for nothing else to feel her energy and hear her great ideas. Her blog this week features several posts of her experience here.

Then things started sliding downhill. Tuesday was my birthday — that was good! — but it also marked the beginning of a cold that had me out Wednesday and most of Thursday. I’m still dragging today.

And that’s the reason for this poor link love post today. Just don’t have the energy to put it together. So besides the link to Rebecca’s blog, I’ll leave you with a link to a great article that crossed my computer yesterday afternoon. It’s titled “Healthy vs. Normal Eating,” and gets at the dance many of us have to do when we’re trying to take care of ourselves at the same time we’re trying to re-learn normal eating.

So with that, I’m out. Have a great weekend, everyone! I’ll be here nursing the remnants of this cold. But don’t feel too bad for me. It’s gorgeous today and promises to be so for the whole weekend here in the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont.

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Healthy Cooking Thursday: Roasted Garlic Dressing

Chef Lisa — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:28:27 +0000

Few dishes are as divinely fragrant to prepare (and devilishly simple) as roasted garlic. Whenever I make this healthy recipe at our women’s weight loss program, I invariably am asked, ”What were you making that smells so amazing?” from the ladies who were working out in the room above our kitchen.

The resulting dressing is a great addition to many dishes. I like to heat it up briefly in a small pan and then pour it over baby spinach or arugala. The greens wilt as they are coated in the garlicky goodness, becoming a beautiful foundation for a lovely piece of fish or poultry. Stir this dressing into some quinoa or rice just as it is finishing cooking for a sultry side dish. Or use it as a marinade for tofu, lamb, poultry, salmon, or a lean cut of beef. I don’t know about you, but my mouth is watering just thinking about the possibilities!

Roasted Garlic Dressing – yields about 1 1/4 cups

1 bulb of organic garlic *

3/4 cup olive oil (not extra-virgin)

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/8 cup water

1 teaspoon honey (or sweetener of your choice)

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

pinch of dry oregano

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat an oven to 375 degrees farenheit. Chop the stem side of the garlic off so that almost all of the cloves are peeking out (see photo above). Place the bulb in a small oven-safe pan or dish, cut side up, and pour the olive oil over the bulb. * If you cannot find organic garlic, you can substitute conventional, but I would recommend removing all the skin from the cloves and simply putting the cloves in the oil before baking. Roast for 20-30 minutes or until the garlic is softened; it is best to check it with a thin sharp knife or a wooden skewer. Remove from the oven and allow to cool to the touch.

Squeeze the softened cloves of garlic out of the bulb and into a blender. Add the lemon juice, water, honey, and dry mustard; puree. Add the olive oil which the garlic roasted in and blend. Remove from the blender and stir in the dry oregano and salt and pepper to taste; be aware that the flavor of this dressing will intensify as it sits when considering how much salt to add. This dressing can be thinned out by adding additional water.

For you die-hard fans of garlic, here is yet another reason to visit Vermont in the early fall: The Annual Southern Vermont Garlic and Herb Festival is happening on September 4 & 5 in Bennington, in the southwestern corner of the state. Many different varieties of garlic, from the sweet to the spicy, are available for sale, as well as everything from garlic jelly to garlic ice cream. And while you are in the area, swing by and visit our healthy weight loss program to see how you can continue to enjoy that ice cream and jelly and maintain your health.

How do you like to use roasted garlic?

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Food Addiction: Don’t Assume the Worst First

Robyn — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:52:14 +0000

At Green Mountain at Fox Run, it’s very common to hear women state that they are food addicts, or sugar addicts. The most common description of this is that once a person eats foods high in sugar or refined flours (often accompanied by fat) they have difficulty stopping. They may also notice that they want more of the same, as the day progresses. While I don’t doubt that some of us may have undesirable physical responses to such foods, I don’t immediately assume that a person is a sugar addict just because they have trouble eating sweets in moderation.

Initially, if we feel like a specific food is problematic, I’d suggest taking a closer look at the make-up of that food. For example, cookies. You may feel that once you start eating cookies, you just can’t stop. Does this mean you are a food addict and are responding to the starch and sugar in this food? Not necessarily. You may be responding to the fact that cookies lack some key things that help us feel satisfied. For satisfaction, carbohydrates and fats are important, and the cookie provides both of those. However, protein, fiber, and fluid-containing foods are also important for satisfaction, all of which the cookies lack.

So I say, fix the nutrition piece first. Cookies eaten as a snack versus cookies as part of a well-balanced meal may feel quite different to you. Even cookies with a glass of milk, to add some protein, may be enough of a modification to help you feel more satisfied. I encourage people to play around with combinations first before throwing in the towel and assuming you can’t eat something because they are addicted to it. Why bother to figure out a way to eat cookies versus just giving them up? I think I’ll blog about that next week…

Moving on, if we are still focused on eating more of the same food after we’ve corrected the balance, the next thing I would look at is what we think about the food. Often our opinion of specific foods plays a major role in influencing how much of them we eat or how often we reach for them. Feeling deprived of a food may actually makes us think about it more and we often end up eating more of that food in the long run, especially when deprivation triggers binge eating.

If after experimenting with different combinations and truly giving ourselves persmission to eat the food, we are still experiencing increased hunger and intense food cravings, then I’d take a closer look at whether or not something physiological is going on. However, starting with food addiction may be putting the cart before the horse. Ruling out balance issues and evaluating our relationship with the food is a better (and easier) place to start.

Are there any foods that you’ve changed your relationship with through this process?

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Is It Any Wonder? Diet Advice from the Past

Marsha — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:30:50 +0000

My daughter Lesley was at Green Mountain for the past month, going through our women’s wellness program. When she wasn’t in class or out on a hike or other fun fitness activity, she pitched in with good cheer and willingness to do whatever needed to be done at a moment’s notice. As anyone who runs a business knows, having that kind of person around is invaluable.

I’m not sure what she was doing when she discovered what I’m going to blog about, but suffice it to say that I was pleased she pointed it out to me. She had found an old book on one of our office shelves, the title of which claimed to provide wisdom for dieters. Not sure how it got into our offices, but I can assure you it wasn’t because we were looking for wisdom from it.

One look at what was contained within made me sure of that. If it was thought of as wisdom for dieters just a decade or so ago, it’s no wonder that as a society we continue to struggle with taking care of ourselves.

Several of its tips that stand in for wisdom:

If you can stay on them, unbalanced diets work. I don’t even know what to say in response to that.
If you reduce fat consumption from 40% of calories to 10% of total calories, you can eat 1/3 more food yet take in the same number of calories. Okay, so what does that look like on your plate? Hint: Not good, at least in my humble opinion. But then again, I love food.
Rice cakes and sugar-free jelly or jam is good low-calorie, fat-free fare. Ditto my comment in the previous bullet. I’d vote for a nice juicy piece of fresh fruit instead.
For each small pretzel that you eat, walk three minutes. Do I even need to say anything?
Nothing will ever taste as good as thin looks. I can barely type this one.
Chocolates are a more disastrous binge food than cookies. Who says?
Never eat anything larger than your head. What?
No one wants to hire you when you are fat — and wages prove it. I don’t think I can go on.

To be fair, there were some good tips in the book. But with tips like those above, I say it’s no wonder that people are confused. The really disturbing thing is that these kinds of tips aren’t confined to this one book; they’re something we’ve all heard many times before.

Do you have any old diet books on your shelves that make you wonder what people were thinking when it was written?

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Eating Lessons from Eat, Pray, Love

Marsha — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:30:53 +0000

Last week, friend, colleague and writer Carolyn O’Neil, RD, contacted several “mindful eating expert RDs” (her words) to comment on food lessons that could be learned from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, a story of Gilbert’s search for self that started with an Italian food journey. What grabbed Carolyn’s attention (and she likely bet grabbed the attention of many, hence her decision to talk about it in her column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution), is that as Liz happily ate her way through Italy, she gained weight but didn’t worry about it. She’d “get back on track” later.

While getting back on track isn’t a foreign concept to weight strugglers, truly enjoying the time before getting back often is. Or actually, what’s really foreign is understanding that enjoying times that aren’t all about eating in terms of calories, fat, weight, etc., etc., don’t have to be followed by “getting back on track,” at least in the way that phrase is generally interpreted. A lot of us don’t understand that eating like this can be healthy and doesn’t necessarily mean anything negative to our weight. Indeed, it’s part of a continuum of normal eating that addresses different aspects of why we eat.

The outcome of this failure to understand, of course, is that so many of us can’t let ourselves enjoy eating when the eating truly calls for it, such as in Italy. Unfortunately, no one wins in that scenario. We not only miss the moment, we often end up creating more problems because of the guilt and self-loathing that can come from something seemingly as simple as enjoying food.

Not surprisingly, this isn’t a foreign concept to us here at Green Mountain. Women come to us every week in the hopes of ending this cycle of negative thinking and behaving around food.

Carolyn only took a few of my comments for her column so I thought I’d share more here to give some deeper insight into what we think we can learn from the eating — and weight — attitudes depicted in Eat, Pray, Love.

Q: Are Americans especially ‘guilty’ of feeling guilty about eating what they consider to be indulgent foods?

A: Many of the women who come to Green Mountain at Fox Run are for the most part overwhelmed by feelings of guilt. They believe they can’t eat indulgent foods without gaining weight, and then in an attempt to lose weight, they forbid those foods. Then they end up overeating them out of feelings of deprivation. Then, when they overeat them, they feel bad about themselves and continue eating the foods to cope with those feelings, or to beat themselves up. They’re caught in a deny-binge cycle that ends up creating more problems.

I see a similar scenario acted out in women (usually young) who may not struggle so obviously with weight, too. They may not binge on these foods, but they certainly eat them in larger quantities than would be considered healthy. I suspect the attraction is due to an extent to, or at least began as a result of, feeling like they shouldn’t eat them. There’s something in human nature that makes forbidden things more appealing. But because it doesn’t show up as extra weight, women continue to eat such foods in excess, generally not realizing the impact on how they feel. But eventually these eating behaviors show up in the health of their skin, their energy levels, their mood, their zest for life.

Q: What do you counsel your clients about the proper way to enjoy foods, especially foods like pizza, pasta, ice cream, etc.?

A: We encourage our participants to eat regular, well-balanced meals that include richer components if they feel like they want them. But we also talk to them about the definition of “want.” If “want” only applies to how something tastes, we encourage them to expand the definition to include how they feel after eating. If we are in touch with how we feel, we can see that eating richer foods in excess doesn’t make us feel well. That’s a much more immediate gauge of whether we’re eating in a supportive manner, rather than what the scale tells us.

The trick here is being in touch with our bodies. Many of us are so removed from that due to stressful, sedentary lifestyles and poor eating habits, that we don’t realize what feeling good feels like any more.

Q: If you did read the book, see the movie….any thoughts of your own on these scenes and concepts shared? She was enjoying her meals in India and another guy nicknamed her “groceries” for digging into her food. Thoughts?

A: Food is one of the greatest pleasures in life, and the current attitudes about eating in this country seriously interfere with that enjoyment. We can dig into our food, enjoy it thoroughly, and still walk away healthy. In fact, enjoyment and happiness even promote good digestion and utilization of the nutrients in food.

Q: If someone does feel as if they’re gaining weight and are uncomfortable about that….what advice or counsel do you have?

A: I encourage them to look at the big picture of their life. Often weight gain isn’t about what we eat. It’s about how we are living our lives. Just focusing on what we eat leads us down a very narrow path that doesn’t address what’s really going on. In the end, it distracts us from solving the real problem. We are addressing a symptom instead of the cause of a problem.

Q: Have you been to Rome? Did you gain weight?

A: I’ve never gained weight on the many trips I’ve taken to Italy. In fact, for several years we ran Food Lovers’ Adventures in Mindful Eating tours of Italy for our participants, to show them how you can eat such wonderful food and not gain weight. If you are in touch with your cues for hunger and satisfaction, and are not using food to cope with emotions, you can be satisfied with much less food when it is so healthy and tasty at the same time.

Living in another country like Italy with such wonderful food, however, often does mean weight gain. Exchange students often gain 10-20 pounds, and the sponsoring organizations warn the kids and their parents that it’s likely to happen. My daughter gained probably about 15 pounds when she was an exchange student for a year in Belgium because she had such a wonderful time enjoying all the different foods and the culture around those foods. Yet when she returned home, she didn’t diet. She returned to her normal way of eating, and the extra pounds disappeared on their own.

Q: What do you think is the point of the movie?

A: I didn’t see the movie yet so not sure what the point of it is. But I think the point of the book is that we do much better in life if we stay in touch with ourselves and live life fully, enjoying what is there to be enjoyed, examining the challenges life presents, and making choices and decisions about how to live the lives we want.

Q: As an RD….what would you say are the positive messages for healthy attitude about eating in Eat, Pray Love?

A: To realize that food is a wonderful part of life but it is only one part. Enjoy it as part of a full life that includes other things.

What do you think about the eating attitudes portrayed in Eat, Pray, Love?

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It Happened This Week: Green Tea, Eating Your Sunscreen & Dieting Daughters

Marsha — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:30:11 +0000

Have you been drinking green tea to speed weight loss? If so, read what the LA Times has to say about the claims.

Summer may be coming to a close but there’s still plenty of sun in our future. And that means, of course, that we still need to watch out for those damaging rays. The good news: What we eat can help us do that. Science Daily reports on SPF on Your Plate, connecting the Mediterranean diet with skin cancer prevention. That Mediterranean diet just keeps getting better and better!

Now for the not-so-good news: The Emily Program reported on a study out of the University of Minnesota that showed almost half of 365 adolescent girls interviewed, many of whom were overweight, said their mothers encouraged dieting. “Girls whose mothers encouraged them to diet were two times as likely to binge eat and five times more likely to engage in extreme weight control behaviors than girls whose mothers did not encourage them to diet. Extreme weight control behaviors include taking diet pills or laxatives and vomiting for weight control purposes.” Sigh.

Have you seen Eat, Pray, Love yet? I haven’t but did read the book. So was able to give my thoughts to friend and colleague Carolyn O’Neil for a column on what we can learn about food from the book/movie. Read them in her article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Hint: It’s about enjoying our food as one part of a full life.

Check out this recipe from our talented culinary team for Zinfandel Honey Yogurt Parfait with Almonds, developed for SpaIndex.com. Check out their site for a lot of other tasty-sounding recipes.

It’s over & out for me — I’m off to enjoy a walk on a lovely Friday as the summer draws to a close in Vermont.