Girl of Cardigan

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Hi friends.  It’s breakfast time.

Let’s review, shall we?  At this point in our journey, you’re eating off of salad plates instead of those monstrosities that pass for dinner plates these days.  You’ve taken half that plate and covered it with veggies/fruit/somethingthatqualifiesassalad and, in doing so, minimized your main course serving to what can fit on that other half of your little plate.  You’re making an effort to eat at the table, and you’re drinking at least one glass of good old fashioned water every day.  How does it feel to know that, even if we stopped right here, you’ve already taken serious strides toward portion control, hydration, and eating more plant foods?  Yay you!

This week, we’re adding something instead of taking something away, and it’s my favorite: eating breakfast!  Yes, you habitual breakfast skippers, you coffee only drinkers, I’m looking at you.  It’s time to eat some honest to goodness food in the morning.  Breakfast calories are important.  Take it from the kids: studies have shown that children and teen who eat breakfast have statistically lower BMIs, do better in school, are better at math, are less likely to snack on unhealthy foods, you name it.  I believe the children are our future, after all, and if it works for them, it probably isn’t going to suck for you.  Eat breakfast.

There’s a curve here, obviously.  Some of you are already eating breakfast every day.  So we’re going to do three categories: No breakfast eaters, crappy breakfast eaters, and nutritional rockstars.  Take this brief quiz to determine your category:

Do you eat breakfast?  Yes or No

If you answered No, you’re a No Breakfast Eater.

Is your breakfast rainbow colored, sugar-coated, purchased in a drive thru or at a Jamba Juice, or made up entirely of white flour, eggs, and dairy?  Yes or No.

If you answered Yes, you’re a Crappy Breakfast Eater.

Does your breakfast consist of oatmeal or unsweetened cereal, homemade smoothie or juice, veggies and fruit, the occasional egg, or some other snooty healthy stuff that isn’t a Clif or Lara bar?  (Side note: what is it with bar makers and omitting letters from names?  Cliff?  Laura?  Explain yourselves.) Yes or No

If you answered Yes, good for you.  You’re a Rockstar.

If you answered No to all of the above, you best comment below and tell me what the heck is going on with you.

Attention, No Breakfast Eaters!  Your instructions are as follows:  Eat breakfast.  Any breakfast.  Whatever you can stomach in the morning.  Get your body used to eating something before you start your day.  Some good ideas to ease in – a piece of fruit, a glass of no-sugar-added juice, a small serving of oatmeal or relatively bland cereal, a piece of whole wheat toast with peanut butter.

Crappy Breakfast Eaters: Ditch the sugar.  If you’re eating a donut, switch to a whole wheat bagel.  Frosted Flakes?  Get thee some plain Cheerios or something.  Crazy sugary oatmeal?  Tone it down a bit, try using honey or adding fruit instead of sugar – we just discovered that fruit purees intended for baby someones can make very tasty oatmeal sweeteners.  Jamba Juice or other chain smoothie sugar bombs?  Try some fruit frickin salad, with some greek yogurt or something on it.  Or make a smoothie at home!

Nutritional Rockstar: I mean, do what you do.  If you want to get fancy, try adding some ground flax to your breakfast somewhere (more on the benefits of flax later – they aren’t kidding about that stuff).  Sneak in another healthy fat somewhere maybe (avocado?  salmon?  hmmmm.)  Try limiting the dairy and meat in your first meal – explore milk alternatives (almond!) or grilled veggies instead of sausage or bacon.  Not that I have anything against bacon.

There you have it, friends.  Eat breakfast.  For the children.  And the flamingos.

love.

Oh hi friends.

Let’s review, shall we?  At this point, we’ve assembled a team.  We’ve started eating off of smaller plates.  We’ve added some water.  We’ve covered half of those small plates with salad.  How are you doing?  Where are you struggling?  What’s going well?  I’d love to know.

This week’s challenge is another easy one.  I know many of you are still figuring out how to make the salad challenge work for you (and hang tight – lots more fun with salads is headed your way in the next few weeks), so all I’m asking you to do this week is make an effort to eat at the table.

Why?  So many reasons!  Table eating is relational, and it makes eating feel like an intentional ritual instead of something you’re mindlessly doing while you watch The Voice.  Yeah, I see you.  Sit down with your spouse, your roommates, your kids, a good book – eat at the table.  Not the TV tray.  The table.  That’s it!  That’s all!  You can do it!

love.

Go-Ahead Challenge: Shrink the sweetener in your coffee.  Normally order a vanilla latte?  Get half the syrup this week.  Two sugar packages in your iced tea?  This week, try just one.  We’ll have a Starbucks Life Hack post coming up that will teach you some insider tricks to having your coffee and drinking it too, but for now, see what happens when you half the sweetness.  You may be surprised.

Okay, kids, it’s about to get real.

This week’s challenge might be a bit of a challenge, but we want you to try it.  Give it a go for a week or two or four, don’t give up, keep on keeping on, and see where you wind up.  You’ve already assembled your team, shrunken your plates, and swapped out one of your daily beverages for good old fashioned water, which is awesome.  Now here’s what I want you to do:

See that plate of yours?  The small one you switched to a few weeks ago, the 7-8 incher that you used to eat salad off of but now have to squish your whole meal on to?  It’s time to bring back the salad.

This week’s challenge: Fill half your dinner plate with salad or other green food.  Draw a line right down the middle of that little plate and declare that everything to the left (or right, whatever) of said line is going to be made of plants.

photo by the incomparable Shannon Hannon

Take a breath, all you lettuce haters.  You’re gonna be okay.  But it’s tough love time.

We talked in the beginning of this challenge about it being time to eat like a grown up.  Here’s the thing:  if you want to live a long time, and feel healthy, and have good blood pressure and a happy little heart and all of those lovely things, survey says you need to eat a lot of plants.  I will not rob you of cheese, or steak, or hot dogs, or pulled pork sandwiches (or donuts), but the compromise is that you’re going to have to teach yourself to enjoy some vegetables.  Now, I’m not saying you have to tuck into an iceburg lettuce and carrot shard mountain with a smile on your face – try some different things!  Figure out what works for you.  If it’s a vegetable or fruit, I will count it as salad for this first leg of our run.  Half your plate is strawberries?  Fine.  For now, I’ll take it.  But don’t you pansy out on me here.  You need to try.  Try messing around with some fresh vegetables – it’s spring!  The world is abundant!  Roast some asparagus, broil some broccoli, saute the heck out of some spinach… try.

If you can make it a straight up salad, you may consider yourself superior to others.  Way to go, you!  And, for now, I’m going to leave you alone about what’s on the salad.  Whatever you need to put on there, fine, as long as about 90% of your salad is actual plant matter – toss in a bit of cheese, or some ranch, or BY ALL MEANS nuts.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be entering a “Pimp Your Salad” series, in which we will slowly makeover the salad half of your plate until it is so ridiculously full of nutrition that no one even notices the mac and cheese on the other half of your plate because you look like such a gersh dern healthy eating rockstar.  Which is the goal.  Naturally.

Half that plate goes green.  Downsize your other entree/side items so they fit nicely on their own side of the line.

If you need ideas, or struggle with how to find some veggies you like, or want some recipes, I will answer your comment below faster than you can say “Don’t give up!  You can do it! ”  Or at least by that very evening.  Scout’s honor.

Go forth and eat green food.

love.

 A note on science: This idea to do a half plate of salad is basically a generalization of about a bazillion studies that suggest eating a diet with large amounts of fruits and vegetables does everything from prevents disease to improves blood flow to God knows what else.  But the good folks at Harvard sum things up nicely with their cute little plate illustration, and if you can’t trust the smarties at Harvard, who can you trust?  In fact, Harvard’s Nutrition page is actually pretty great in Fave’s opinion.  Check it out here. 

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Hello, and welcome to week 3.

When I was a kid, we were huge fans of the Dr. Demento’s Christmas Album.  We listened to it obsessively every year, and one of the tracks was a sketch from a Canadian comedy show that featured Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas as two goofy Canadian guys doing their own version of The 12 Days of Christmas.  During the song, there’s a moment where one of them says “Hello, and welcome to day 10.”  What is the point of this pointless story?  There isn’t one.  That’s just the voice I hear when I type “Hello, and welcome to week 3.”  You are soooo welcome for that detour into my crazy little world.

Anyway.

Week 3, kids!  By this time, you are hopefully getting comfortable eating off of smaller plates, and you’ve hopefully had some heart to hearts with the fam to make sure you’re all on the same team.  I’d love to hear how that’s been for you, if you feel inclined to comment!

This week is another pretty simple one – don’t worry, the challenges will get more difficult as we go, but keep in mind that our goal is to make small, slow, sustainable changes – no quick fix dieting here.  These are permanent swaps, so we aren’t going to rush things.  That said, this week is a Swap for Water week!  To play, swap one of your beverages per day out for plain old water.  Usually have a soda at lunch?  Water.  Usually grab a Diet Coke as a midday thirst quencher?  Water.  Orange juice with breakfast?  Try good old fashioned water!  Late morning coffee break?  Grab a glass of tasty tasty water.

I used to hate drinking water, so I get it if this bugs you.  Try it with cucumber, or lemon, or mint, or just really, really cold!  Add some fresh ginger or peppermint to some hot water to make tea! (I will count unsweetened tea as water, here, kids.  Cheat away.)  You only have to swap out one daily beverage for this challenge, so decide which one it will be (you know your usual habits) and commit!  I’d recommend not forgoing your morning coffee on this challenge, because I’d like you not to hate me and your life.

IMPORTANT: No Crystal Light or other weird droppy business in this once a day water beverage.  Add anything else you want to your water, but no chemicals and no pure sugar.  Fruit?  Yay!  Herbs?  Yay!  Whatever the hell this stuff is?  Booooooooooo.  Box of shame for you.

“But Karyn,” you say, “I don’t really drink anything but coffee during the day.”  Cool.  Add a glass of water.  ”But, Karyn,” other you says, “I already drink a crap ton of water and nothing else at all save for a nightly glass of wine that I cannot willnot forfeit!”  Word.  You’re done here.  Skip ahead to the Go-Ahead Challenge.

Swap one daily beverage out for water.  Keep eating off of your shrunken plates.  Have a real, homemade cookie if you can get your hands on one.  Because I said so.

love.

Go-Ahead Challenge: Two vegetarian days.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you stop eating meat or animal products all together and live off of juice or anything like that.  But this week, try having two full days where you eat no meat at all.  Bonus points if you eat actual vegetables instead of meat, but it’s early yet.  Do what you can.  Two veggie days!  Go forth and carrot.