Foodist Page 10
To identify a reward, use a method like the one described by Duhigg in his cookie experiment. In order to figure out why he was eating a cookie every day at 3:30 p.m., he isolated the three parts of his activity that could be the source of his craving: (1) the sugar, (2) the physical act of getting up from his desk and moving around, and (3) socializing with friends. It seemed obvious the reward was the cookie. Don’t we eat cookies because they are filled with delicious sugary goodness? To test this, he tried replacing the cookie with a candy bar, but was careful to eliminate another critical part of his habit—the socializing. It turned out the candy bar failed to satisfy his craving, so a sugar fix was not what Duhigg was really after each day at 3:30 p.m.
Similarly, he tested the hypothesis that he was just antsy to get out of his seat and move a little. When he allowed himself this reward (taking a walk) while restricting his sugar and socializing, he learned that physical movement was also not the reason for his daily pilgrimage to the cafeteria. His final hypothesis was that he was motivated by a desire to socialize, which he tested by walking to the cafeteria and chatting with colleagues without actually buying anything to eat. Indeed, this was the only activity that was as satisfying as his original cookie adventure; it seems his elephant wanted to gossip. He used this knowledge to construct a new habit using the same 3:30 p.m. trigger, but instead skipped the cafeteria and chatted with coworkers on his own floor.
Duhigg deconstructed his habit by isolating the three critical components that had the potential to provide the reward. He then selectively eliminated each action while leaving the others intact, so he could test the ability of each to satisfy his craving. Once he identified the reward, he set up a new script for his behavior and was able to alter his habit to achieve his rider’s loftier goal of weight loss. Both the elephant and the rider were satisfied with the result, and Duhigg developed a healthier habit.
Changing this one habit enabled Duhigg to lose twelve pounds without any pain or suffering. If this doesn’t strike you as remarkable, it should. Duhigg told me his daily cookie was the size of those typically sold at cafeterias, which are not small. A conservative estimate of the calories in one of those cookies is about 350, but a big cookie can easily reach 500 calories. We can therefore calculate that he was eating at least 1,750 extra calories per week in cookies and possibly up to 2,500, almost an entire extra day’s worth of food. Just one habit can make a tremendous difference. Although you can’t count on all your habit changes having an effect of this magnitude, keep in mind that this was just one healthstyle habit out of dozens that Duhigg was performing each week that were cumulatively affecting his health and body weight.
This is exactly why being a foodist is so powerful. Most of us ignore the dozens of small, mindless activities that habit forces us to do automatically and blame our weak will whenever our cookie craving gets the better of us. But when habits are constructed purposefully, all these little behaviors can have a life-changing impact on how we look and feel. Focusing on eating real food and optimizing your healthstyle with rewarding, healthy habits is much more enjoyable and has a far more positive impact on your quality of life than any restrictive diet could ever pretend to offer.
TAKING INVENTORY
By the time you’ve finished with two weeks of food journaling, you should have a good idea of where your healthstyle stands. Even if you think you know all your habits, take a minute to skim your journal and look for repeated entries. Anything you’ve done more than two or three times in two weeks is a potential candidate. Write these down in two columns, one labeled “Healthy” and the other labeled “Could Be Healthier.” The goal here is not to judge yourself and feel guilty. The goal is to identify the habits that will be the easiest to move from the latter column to the former column as well as those that will have the largest impact (like Duhigg’s 1,750 weekly cookie calories).
For each habit in the “Could Be Healthier” column, attempt to identify the cue and the reward. Put a question mark next to those for which you can’t pinpoint either the cue or the reward and pay special attention to these mystery habits over the next couple weeks. Perform experiments like Duhigg’s that help you isolate possible rewards and test how well each reward is able to quench your craving. Your ultimate goal is to understand what triggers all of your habits and what your elephant is seeking when it carries out your script. This will give your rider a fighting chance to guide your elephant in a new direction.
Some habits will be easier to rescript than others. Start with those. For instance, eating a pastry for breakfast every day is an easy one, and cutting out this habit could be as effective as Duhigg’s cookie elimination. Simply replace it with something healthier and tasty, like eggs, hot muesli with cinnamon, or plain yogurt with fruit. This may require a bit of grocery shopping or waking up five minutes earlier, but it should be fairly easy to reprogram. Most of us sleepwalk through the morning anyway. Start with the easy stuff, and don’t bite off more than you can chew. Working on two or three new habits at a time is reasonable, but more will take up too much of your mental resources and leave you too depleted to carry any of your plans through.
EXTENDING BRIGHT SPOTS
Good habits are your bright spots, and these can often be expanded or mimicked to replace some of your “Could Be Healthier” habits. For instance, one reader found that she loved cooking meals from scratch on the weekends, but on weekdays she often made excuses not to and ended up making poorer food choices as a result. Together we analyzed what was preventing her from cooking dinner on weeknights despite her best intentions. The moment of her decision was her cue. Although she thought she was too tired after a long day of work, she realized that what usually prevented her from making dinner was a lack of ingredients and simple meal ideas. She already had the healthy habit of going grocery shopping most weekends, but she usually found recipes beforehand and only shopped with these and snacks in mind. It was less fun for her to plan a week’s worth of meals when she was so excited about trying one new recipe.
How to Make Your Own Muesli—It’s Stupid Easy
Muesli is my favorite alternative to traditional breakfast cereal. It’s minimally processed, has no added sugar, and when made properly is quite tasty. The only problem is that these are features that food companies hate, because foods that have them are not big sellers. This makes it difficult to find muesli, particularly a high-quality version at a reasonable price.
Luckily, it’s stupid easy to make your own muesli. Doing it yourself is also a lot cheaper and lets you customize the mix to your preferences. All you need is some rolled grains (oats or mixed grains work fine) and an assortment of nuts and dried fruits of your choosing—you don’t even need a real recipe.
For my personal recipe I use a five-grain cereal that I found at my local market (about $2). I add some roasted and lightly salted mixed nuts, some extra hazelnuts (because I love them), some golden raisins, and some dried currants (about $4 total). It tastes amazing, even better than the expensive stuff I used to buy, and lasts much longer.
I sometimes eat my muesli mixed with a little plain yogurt, but these days I prefer to just pour half a cup of it into a bowl (I leave a measuring cup in the container as a scooper), add some water, and microwave it for 2 minutes. It comes out like the tastiest oatmeal you’ve ever had. I sprinkle a hefty dose of cinnamon on top and maybe add a splash of unsweetened hemp or almond milk, and it tastes delicious. If you’re still acclimating to the lack of sugar in muesli, you can try stirring in a spoonful of peanut butter, low-sugar jam, or honey.
The solution was to change her shopping strategy and channel her weekend enthusiasm into preparing a few ingredients that could be used in several dishes throughout the week. She discovered that as long as she had an idea of what could be eaten as a main course, usually a protein-rich food like roast chicken or simmered beans, then it was easy for her to visualize herself throwing something quickly together after work by adding some vegetables to an ingredient she alread
y had. All she had to do was to alter her shopping routine to include a single item that could be used as a main course for several days and buy a few extra vegetables that go well with everything (broccoli, kale, and carrots became her go-tos).
Another friend solved a similar problem in a slightly different way. He prefers not to give up any of his weekend time for shopping, but doesn’t mind cooking at home on weekdays, since it is usually faster than going out in the city. He opts to do his shopping on Monday nights after work instead, but allows himself to pick up dinner from the Whole Foods deli that night, so he isn’t overwhelmed by having to both shop and cook or shop and go out on the same night. Now he can get a decently healthy and tasty meal on Mondays, then have plenty of food to cook for the rest of the week. Weekends he usually eats at restaurants, but his healthy weekday habits have helped him maintain a twenty-five-pound weight loss.
Finding the Courage to Roast a Chicken
I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard a foodie proclaim that roasting a chicken is the easiest thing in the world and the perfect place for new cooks to start. Please. I can think of at least a hundred things easier to cook than roast chicken, with salad being the undisputed champion (and scrambled eggs the runner-up).
Buying and cooking a whole chicken requires a number of steps that can make a new cook uncomfortable. First you have to know where to get the chicken—and if you want a pastured, antibiotic-free bird (as you should), this isn’t always straightforward. To make the purchase you must also be comfortable talking to the butcher, even though there’s a good chance you have no idea what you’re talking about. You have to be willing and able to deal with raw meat, which makes many people queasy in and of itself. Cooking meat also requires special equipment, such as a meat thermometer and a roasting pan, which newbies might not have access to. So, no, roasting chicken is not the easiest thing on earth. But if you can get over all those things, it really isn’t that hard either.
I had a zillion excuses for why it took me so long to roast my first chicken. I think the main one was that a whole chicken just sounds so big, like too much work and too much food. But I was inspired by Ruth Reichl’s recipe in her book Garlic and Sapphires,2 so I finally built up the courage to make it happen.
I’m happy to report that I now roast chickens regularly and finally consider them one of the easier dishes in my repertoire. The difference in flavor between a real farm-fresh chicken and the massive “boneless skinless” breasts I grew up eating is truly phenomenal. That alone is reason enough to try the recipe in my opinion.
Here’s the slightly easier version of Reichl’s recipe I’ve adapted.
Simple Roast Chicken
1 3- to 4-pound roasting chicken
Chopped fresh herbs
1 to 2 tablespoons butter (optional)
1 lemon (optional)
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Remove the bag of innards from inside the cavity if necessary. Rinse the bird with cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Place the chicken, breast side up, in a 9 × 13-inch roasting pan (one with at least 2-inch sides). Remove the excess fat from near the tail and put it under the skin of the breast meat (or use a couple of pats of butter if there isn’t enough fat). Season the meat by placing fresh chopped herbs like rosemary or chives under the breast skin with the fat or butter. Put a fork-punctured lemon into the cavity (optional, but recommended). Coat the skin with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and bake for 1 hour or until the temperature reaches 165˚ in the thigh meat (away from the bone).
Sure it’s simple, but I know I’m not the only one intimidated by the idea of buying and cooking an entire chicken.
If you don’t know where your bright spots are, turn to your journal and ask yourself when you eat the healthiest food, when you do your grocery shopping, and when you get the most exercise. What are the cues and rewards that help create these situations? Can they be repeated elsewhere or work on a slightly different task? Also pay attention to where you are at these moments, along with who you’re with and how you feel. Don’t panic if you can’t identify many bright spots. Chapters 10–13 offer plenty of tips on how to upgrade breakfast, lunch, and dinner in different settings.
ORDER OF OPERATIONS
Just as important as choosing the right habits to reprogram in the beginning is the order in which you tackle them: if you start by trying to eliminate all the cookies and doughnuts in your life without finding anything to replace them with, you’ll basically be putting yourself right back on a deprivation diet and sabotaging your efforts.* In the first few weeks of upgrading your healthstyle your focus should be on eating more healthy foods that you enjoy, not cutting stuff out. This will help you create a foundation of healthy habits that gives you something positive to build on.
Summer Tomato reader Patrick Birke is a perfect example of the kind of success that is possible when you get your healthstyle timing right. Patrick’s journey started when his first daughter was born in 2009. Wanting to feed her the healthiest food they could find, he and his wife subscribed to a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share (we’ll discuss these more in chapter 6) not far from their home in Minnesota and started making their own baby food. This exposed them to a world of new vegetables, and fresh food became part of their lives. But when their summer share of the CSA ended and they were left with only meat from the animal CSA they subscribed to through winter, Patrick reached his highest weight ever and realized his diet wasn’t yet optimal. The following spring they subscribed again to their vegetable CSA, and Patrick added some exercise to his healthstyle. He made a little progress on his weight, but it wasn’t until summer that he was ready to start cutting junk foods out of his diet. By autumn he had lost forty pounds and decided to continue his vegetable CSA through the winter. A year later he had lost more than sixty pounds, and over the next two years he’s maintained a sixty-five-pound weight loss.
Would Patrick have had the same success if he attempted to make these changes in a different order? I don’t think so. Popular TV shows like The Biggest Loser help people lose weight by severely restricting food and implementing strenuous exercise programs. Sadly, weight loss through these methods almost never lasts, and the contestants are notorious for gaining the weight back.* For Patrick, maintaining his weight loss has been easy because he spent the first year developing healthy habits that he actually loves. “Eating healthy has become second nature, and I don’t even think about it,” he told me. He also explained that he now feels the urge to work out so strongly that it’s “almost like an addiction.” That doesn’t sound like deprivation to me. It sounds like an incredibly effective healthstyle humming away on autopilot. Though a show about people like Patrick would never be dramatic enough to make it on TV, if it did, it would have to be called The Biggest Winner.
10 Simple Goals to Get You Started Eating Healthy
1. Eat breakfast
Eating a healthy breakfast is one of the easiest ways to improve your healthstyle. Breakfast is quick and easy to make, and even healthy ones taste great. Start here to automatically improve 30 percent of your daily meals.
2. Buy groceries weekly
Shopping is an essential habit for the obvious reason that to eat better, you need to have better food in your house. Get yourself on a regular, practical shopping schedule, and don’t be lazy about it. Use all that willpower you saved up by ditching diets and build a healthy shopping habit.
3. Eat something green at lunch and dinner
This is one of those simple, easy-to-implement changes that gets you in the habit of making healthier choices on a regular basis. You don’t need to go all in on salad every time, just try to include something green, even if it’s a small side dish. Train yourself to eat those veggies.
4. Eat fish three times a week
Fish is especially healthy, and getting in the practice of having it several times a week is a great habit to develop. When possible, use fish to
replace less healthy foods, like processed meats.
5. Limit added sugar to once a week
It’s smart to start recognizing foods with added sugar for what they are: dessert. If you’re currently eating a lot of sugary foods, start by cutting back gradually, working your way down over time. The important step is that you learn to keep track of how often you eat dessert each week and keep the number in a range that optimizes your health and happiness.
6. Try a new type of vegetable every week
In the foodist spirit of adventure and in the name of nutrient diversity, getting in the habit of trying new vegetables is an excellent way to keep your healthstyle exciting. There’s no need to go nuts with this, but trying a new fruit or vegetable every week or so is a great way to develop your foodist palate, particularly if your current diet is limited to a handful of common items.
7. Bring your lunch to work
This isn’t going to be feasible for everyone, but if you can swing bringing your lunch to work, even for a few days a week, it can have a tremendous impact on your health and body weight.