Clean Your Plate?

On my journey from chubby to champion I've learned that almost all of my previous weight problems stemmed from cultural beliefs that I had simply never questioned.

For example, although I can remember few actual instances of anyone telling me to "clean my plate" it was always an unspoken expectation that there wouldn't be any food left on the flatware at the end of the meal. I don't know why it never occurred to me to just stop eating when I was full. But it didn't. I just plowed on through, no matter how my stomach felt.

I've been thinking recently about what messages I was receiving from my environment that made me believe so unquestioningly in the "clean plate" idea.

First, there is the worry of being ungrateful for the food we have. When I was a kid Ethiopia was famous for its starvation problems, and I distinctly remember the old standby "there are starving kids in Ethiopia who'd love to have that much food." Starvation is a terrible thing, but obesity isn't much better. There's no cosmic balance of hungriness, it's not as if stuffing an American kid to the gills will somehow alleviate the suffering of a malnourished Ethiopian. But to leave some extra food on the plate was like a slap in the face of a starving kid. There's a happy medium where we can be grateful for the bounty we have while eating just enough to keep us healthy and active.

Next was the idea that uneaten food was an unconscionable waste of money. This seems like a holdover from the days before modern farming hadn't made food ubiquitous and cheap. It's especially on display in restaurant settings. The percent of our budget we spend on food is lower than ever before, yet people seem to think throwing away uneaten food is going to break the bank. While we should cut waste wherever possible, it doesn't make much sense to "save money" by sacrificing your waistline (and piling on a bunch of weight related disease costs later in life).

And then there is the feeling that not eating everything on the plate is a kind of insult to the person who made it. Maybe this is just because I'm too sensitive, but I noticed early that eating everything offered to me plus seconds made the cook extremely happy. Picture "Well, you must really have liked it!" said with a grin spreading across the face. I often ate more than I really wanted just to make sure the preparer knew how much I appreciated it. We need to reorient ourselves to the idea that quality food enjoyed slowly and with care is the greatest complement to the chef. Shoveling it down and asking for more with your mouth full certainly has a dramatic effect but it'll catch up to you in the long run.

Finally, there is the biggest misconception, that eating a lot of food makes you more robust. We even have the phrase, "he's a healthy eater" when we want to communicate that someone eats a lot. Again I think this is a remnant from a time when abundant food was the exception and not the norm. Eating more calories than you consume in a day is not being a healthy eater, it's being an unbalanced eater who doesn't have a handle on their nutritional needs. Especially as a kid, I was encouraged to fill all the way up because to do so was a sign that I was a healthy boy, it made the people around me proud. As childish as it may seem, these first impressions stick with people far longer than they realize.

So what's the alternative, especially for parents trying to feed their brood?

First, I'd start by jettisoning the idea that a human being eats a certain total of food every day. The human body is an impossibly complicated system, and it will require different amounts of nourishment each day. Especially kids who go through periods of high caloric intake to power a growth spurt and then just as suddenly taper off and need to eat less. The body is custom made to respond to changes activity, stress, even weather. We need to learn to listen to our stomach, not our preconceptions of what three square meals a day looks like.

Similarly, we need to embrace the concept that you can be fully nourished and not yet "full". It takes a little practice, but anyone can learn to find that point in an eating session when they are satisfied but not full. We have the image of a truly good culinary experience being one in which we push back from the table, loosen our belts, and say "now that was a meal!" Actually, you've just put your internal organs through a system shock and will feel lethargic for hours. That's not eating, it's gorging. There's another way, and it's taking the time to enjoy each flavorful bite, and standing up from the table feeling light and upbeat, saying "that was a great meal, and now I'm ready to get on with my life!" No more food comas!

The easiest way to facilitate this more natural relationship to our portions is to let our family and children serve themselves, and switch the emphasis from "Eat as much as you want, we've got more in the back!" to "Don't worry about eating it all, it'll keep for a few days in the fridge."

Now I know a lot of this is head-slappingly obvious and you're probably already doing many of these things. The point is that, when I was growing up, no one ever told me this stuff. I really had no idea you could step away from the table at a time of your choosing, not when you finished a marathon of whatever portions had been allotted for the meal. Not until I was already way behind in the fitness department

So even if it seems stupid, find a young person in your life and tell them, "There's no need to clean your plate, just eat until you feel satisfied."

And model that behavior. That's all kids pay attention to anyway.

What Health Food Really Looks Like

People often give up on eating well before they even start because they picture a monotonous rotation of flavorless meals that don't satisfy the taste buds.

I'll try to bust that myth up by showing the kinds of foods I eat in a typical week. I'm not really interested in you trying to duplicate any of these meals, I just want to give people an idea of what a well composed meal looks like and give you some guidelines and principles to keep in mind as you make your own food. Also note that some of these meals aren't exactly what you'd be eating during the PCP. Mostly because of the inclusion of cheese. Take away the cheese and all of these would work on the PCP with a few tweaks to make the grams come out right.

I'll start off with the kind of breakfasts I eat. In my heavy days I used to skip this meal, but I'm a breakfast animal now. It's usually my biggest meal of the day. Today was two egg sandwiches. That's right, two. And you'll notice that at every opportunity I pile on as many vegetables as the bread will hold. The eggs are sunny side up and made with just a dab of olive oil to prevent sticking. On the PCP you'd have the second sandwich without the yolk. Thin pieces of bread and a lot of veggies will keep you carb/veg balance in check. The vegetables have been slightly sauteed with herbs and spices (no salt) Mustard gives the sandwiches some punch.
Other days I'll have what I call breakfast Udon, which is noodles with scrambled eggs and a ton of vegetables. I have a salt free Udon spice mix that Kazue's grandfather makes that is mind-blowingly delicious. The secret ingredient is orange peels but he won't share what else goes into it.
I'll often have a chopped apple with some sugar free muesli and milk for my mid-day snack. A little honey on top brings all the flavors together. PCPers, if you want to try this, cut 30 g of carbs from your breakfast and put them here with your sugar free cereal choice. I have this snack once or twice a day.
The key to making a lot of these meals work is to get a stock of steamed vegetables ready to go. Here's my awesome steamer working away with some pumpkin next in line on the counter. Most of the vegetables you see popping out here and there will come from this supply.
It's pizza time! The one on the right is eggplant and zucchini with mini tomatos and basil from my own window sill garden. (I have a Bay Window so it's a big sill) The other one is pesto with eggplant, brocolli, and coriander also from my garden. Just a sprinkling of cheese is enough to give it the flavor. Don't drown pizzas in cheese. The pizzas are fun but the real action is in the back. The salad has a lot of veggies and a bean mix for protein. PCPers, you'd need to put your protein on here somewhere. The thin crust pizzas are great because the carbs stay low and you can stack them with vegetables. They are a bit salty though. Everything is topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Not an ideal meal because of the salt content but a nice treat.
Sorry this next pic is a little blurry. What do you do when you need to eat a lot of veg but don't have a carb allowance to put them on? Make your veggies the dipping mechanism! This photo shows a mix of carrot, cucumber, and daikon sticks ready to be dipped into baba ganoush (eggplant) on the left and hummus (chickpeas) on the right. For a little extra flavor there is a small dish of miso with chilies on the left and a tofu and corn dressing on the right. Current PCPers, you'd have to pass on the hummus.
Mexican night! Tortillas are also excellent vegetable delivery systems. You can absolutely stuff a tortilla with good stuff. Sorry the pic is a little blurred. Pictured here is my famous homemade salt-free salsa, truly a dream to behold. Just the salsa alone will cover most of a PCPers vegetable grams. Fresh guacamole is in the back there (with a little salt, salt free guacamole is a tough one) and the tortillas with fish or chicken will round out the meal. Awesome stuff. The salsa keeps for a week and is great with your morning egg or on top of rice.
Finally, Eggplant Parmesan. I go heavy on the eggplant and light on the parmesan cheese. Bread crumbs baked on to the eggplant makes up the carbs. You'll notice the salads are piled high with vegetables. The tomato sauce has a little salt but since it was homemade I decided how much sodium went in, not the folks over at Prego.
So there are just a few examples from the past seven days. You can probably tell that my fridge had a lot of tomatos, eggplants and a block of Parmesan cheese. Work with what's seasonal and cheapest at that time of year. We PCPers eat so many vegetables we'll go broke if we don't eat a lot of what veggie is on sale. I'll do another one of these food posts in a few weeks when the vegetables have changed out and show you some more possibilities.

Some other principles to take away:

• Carbs are not the gravitational center of a good meal. I think of them as vegetable delivery systems. If you have more carbs on your plate than anything else something is going wrong. Note that we don't advocate a low carb diet, just a diet in which carbs are in harmonius balance with the rest of the meal.

• Make your salads count. This is a mental trick. Your main dish can be a small flavorful affair while your salad is the workhorse. A fluffy, leafy salad is not a good thing. Fill up the bowl with steamed and freshly chopped vegetables, beans, proteins, etc... A low calorie dressing makes it all palatable and you don't feel like a rabbit because it's just a salad after all, you still have your main dish!

• The less heat the better. Nothing in these meals was cooked to death. All of the vegetables should still have a slight crunch to them. That tells you most of the nutrients are still intact.

• Salt free / sugar free = eat as much as you want. If I can pull off a salt-free / sugar-free meal I have no problem eating till I'm stuffed. It will all be burned up as I move about my day and the lack of salt and sugar means there won't be any downside. Calorie burning is no problem post PCP, it's the sugar and salt that get you. I love looking at a table that doesn't have a single milligram of these two additives. Every bite is that much better when you know it's full of good stuff.

• Cook at home. Even a fattening meal cooked at home from scratch will be light years healthier (and cheaper) than anything you get at a restaurant. Restaurants have no interest in your health. They just want you to have such a delicious meal that you come back again.
  

I hate when people write diet cookbooks and when you look at them on the cover they seem about 10 pounds over-weight. Why should I trust the information in their books when they don't seem to have a handle on food themselves? This is the food I really eat. And this is how I really look (picture taken two days ago at the yoga studio, after eating all the foods on this post) :
Even if you have no interest in the full PCP, start to make some small adjustments towards health in your meals. You have a chance to get it right three times a day!

A Quick and Dirty Motivational Trick that Really Works

My schedule has finally smoothed out so there should be a piping hot blog entry here every Monday.  Come back as often as you like and follow along as all the nice people below get their bodies into peak condition.Today I'm going to share one of my most powerful motivational tools.  I've restrained myself from divulging this because it's 100% original and I always thought there'd be some way to make some money off it.  But holding back as you wait for imaginary dollars to roll in is not a very satisfying way to live, so I'm finally ready to share it with the public.

This trick works when you're confronted with a small scale task you don't want to do.  Meeting with a difficult client, getting started on a project, working out, going to your in-laws house, that level of thing.

It's pretty simple.  You just say the following phrase to yourself.

"If I do X, I'll get 1000$"

That's it!    ... uh... you're not impressed. 

Let's take the example of cleaning out that closet full of junk that we all have.  If you want to super-charge your motivation to get it done, just say this.

"If I clean out the junk closet, I'll get 1000$"  Boom.  instant energy and desire to complete the work.

How does this possibly work?  

If you've spent any time examining how your mind works you'll know that it's always much harder thinking about doing something than actually doing it. Before you've even lifted a finger your brain has thrown up a battalion of reasons why you shouldn't do something unpleasant. Before your eyes marches a parade of all the things that could go wrong, all the things you could be doing, all the excuses, rationalizations, and loopholes to get you out of the unpleasant task.

All too often this makes actually doing the thing feel like an insurmountable chore.  And we give up, delay, or beg off from our commitments.  Nothing gets done, we feel crappy later, and we've wasted a lot of psychic energy to get right back to where we started.

The "If I do X, I'll get 1000$" phrase short-circuits this pattern.  It's like a hiccup in your mental chatter.  Internally, the "clean the closet" dialogue might go something like this:

"Yeah I need to clean it but I've got more pressing matters to deal with today it's just a closet some people are addicted to crack, you've just got a messy closet, you're doing great in comparison so just let it go but there's no more room to hang the jackets, somethings got to be done but there's stuff in there I haven't seen in years, I don't have the time to decide what to throw away oh yeah Patrick had that crazy advice ok let's try

  If I clean out the closet I'll get 1000$ 

what does that even mean?  how could that even make sense? maybe it means that over the years of not having to struggle to find my jacket I'll come out with an increased productivity of 1000$?  that doesn't add up well whatever it has to be done and no time like the present right better just get to it."

The process of saying the 1000$ sentence, even if it isn't true, breaks up the mental sluggishness, sends a quick surge of adrenaline through the system (your reptile brain doesn't know you're just saying a phrase and greedily wants that 1000$ pure and simple), and allows you to get some perspective on the relative simplicity of the task at hand.

I discovered it by accident one slow day at the yoga studio.  It was about 5 minutes before the lesson started and no one had turned up yet.  This is bad for business but felt good for me as it meant I could knock off early and goof off for a few extra hours.  I found myself strongly desiring not to have any customers that class.  This is a dangerous place to be because when the customer does show up you have a lot of internal conflict about them being there and don't give very good service.  A few experiences like this and the customer will subconsciously get the message that they aren't welcome at your place and won't come back.  I'm sure you've all experienced being on one side or another of this when dealing with the service industry.

So I performed a little thought experiment.  If a new person came to class in those 5 minutes, there's a good probability that they'd become a regular student for a year or two.  In a year or two of yoga they'd probably spend about 1000$  So "If a student shows up, I'll get 1000$" formed itself in my mind.

I was amazed at the way my mind turned on a dime.  Suddenly I was quite eager for someone to arrive.  I had some pep in my step, I was looking forward to the class.  And when someone did roll in a little late I greeted them with a genuine smile and gratitude for their business.

I tried the sentence on a few other chores and found that even though I knew at some level I was tricking myself, it didn't matter.  I really wanted to do those things, I was just having trouble getting started.  The 1000$ sentence gets you over that hump and into the not-so-hard business of actually doing the thing.  From there you don't care if you'll never see the 1000$, because you're the momentum and enjoyment of getting a task done takes over and you can coast to its conclusion.

So give it a try and get back to me if it works for you as well as it does for me.  I'd love to have some more anecdotes to back up my experiences.  Be warned though, that the 1000$ sentence should only be used when you're really having trouble getting started on a SMALL project.  If it's overused or used inappropriately the magic will quickly wear off.

Make some progress this week!

Your Only Possession

First off, if you haven't noticed, we have a new round of PCPers starting their 90 days to top fitness!  There's 8 of them and they're all a bunch of characters.  Click on their names to see what they're up to in their blogs and lend them some support.  Sometimes a helpful comment can do wonders when your motivation is flagging.

It's funny, up until a few years ago, I didn't give a passing thought to economic news.  Upturns, downturns, bulls and bears, it never meant anything to me, mainly because there's only so poor you can get and I constantly skated on that line.

But with one business up and running (Yoga Garden) and a fledgling business getting off the ground (The Peak Condition Project) I was a little freaked out by news that things were "the worst since the Great Depression." 

I ran through some EAPs,  (Emergency Action Plans) most of which ended with me teaching English to Japanese housewives and selling plasma just to scrape by.  I was braced for the worst as we moved into 2009.

But we actually got a little bump in January and February at the studio.  The January number wasn't a big surprise, never underestimate the buying power of the New Year's Resolution crowd, but the February student numbers were an unexpected bonus.

Why, when the economy was in the toilet and people weren't sure they'd have a job next month, were they coming in larger numbers to do yoga and get fit with me and my team?  After thinking through a few explanations, this is the one that rings the most true for me:

Healthy is the new rich.

I keep getting the feeling that the Western world is finally "growing up" to a certain extent.  When you're a kid/early teen, life is all about instant gratification.  You want that new plastic piece of crap, you want that trip to Disney, you want to eat McDonalds seven days a week.  But then you grow up.  You realize that the plastic pieces of crap are, well, crap, that Disney is fake and slightly sinister (check out the Southpark episode "The Ring" for a great riff on this), and that McDonalds makes you feel kind of nasty inside.

Similarly, it seems like we spent a few post war decades in our teens, building big cars, consuming vast swathes of resources, and eating ultra-processed food that delivered on taste but little else.  I'm not terribly upset by this.  It seems like a pretty natural reaction when science starts to deliver the whiz pop bang that people only dreamed about before.  But just as you start to realize that fast food 7 times a week is a really bad idea, we're starting to see that scaling back our consumption, spending time with people we love, and eating real food has benefits far beyond the simple pleasures of getting back to basics.

I feel like our society is finally getting to the point that being a whole, healthy human being is taking precedent over material gain.  Healthy is the new rich.

I hope it's not too late for the planet.  But I know it's not too late for you to start living better, eating better, and enjoying the fullest potential of your one and only true material possession, your body.