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  DESSERT

  Unless it’s a special occasion, you probably shouldn’t be eating dessert regularly at home, particularly if you’re trying to lose weight. If you find yourself craving sweets at night, it’s possible that your dinners are not satisfying enough. Try adding more starchy foods like beans, grains, or root vegetables to see if they decrease your cravings.

  Better Than Butternut: The Delectable Delicata Squash

  Like most people, I hadn’t heard of delicata squash before, but was a big fan of butternut. Butternut squash tastes rich and sweet and has a wonderful texture. It’s also very filling and is a fantastic substitute for more starchy carbohydrates. But anyone who has tried to cook with butternut squash knows it isn’t easy to work with. Butternut squash are huge, have a tough outer skin, and take longer than most vegetables to cook through. Lazy people don’t cook butternut squash, and I came to accept the fact that I am one of those people.

  Everything changed when I learned that not all winter squash require peeling. To me the difficult (and sometimes painful) peeling is the hardest part of cooking winter squash, so I was instantly intrigued about the possibility of alternatives. I was delighted to discover that the beautiful green Japanese “pumpkin” kabocha squash don’t require peeling (woo-hoo!). I also discovered delicata.

  Delicata are much smaller than most winter squash, making them substantially easier to get home from the market and more amenable to the needs of a small household. More important, delicata squash are a cinch to clean, cut, and cook, making them any winter squash lover’s dream. Their flavor is even richer and their texture creamier than butternut.

  I prefer to roast my delicata squash in a metal pan, allowing the outer edges to brown and caramelize. Although a Pyrex or ceramic pan will also work, I’ve found that I get better browning when I use a metal pan. Foil will give you a similar effect. The caramelization creates an almost sweet potato–like flavor. This is an all-time favorite winter home court recipe.

  Roasted Delicata Squash

  SERVES 2 TO 4 AS A SIDE DISH

  2 to 4 delicata squash, depending on size (about 1½ pounds)

  2 tablespoons olive oil

  Salt to taste

  Preheat the oven to 425˚F. Clean the delicata squash by running them under warm water and scrubbing away dirt with a vegetable brush. If there are any hard spots on the squash, you can scrape them off with a butter knife.

  With a sharp knife, cut the delicata in half lengthwise. This should be easy and not require any crazy hacking. With a spoon scoop out the seeds and discard (or save these and prepare them like pumpkin seeds if you wish).

  Cut each delicata half into ½-inch segments, creating moon-shaped pieces that have slight bumps around the curve. Toss and coat the squash pieces in the olive oil, then arrange the pieces in a single layer in a metal baking pan. Too much oil can make the squash soggy. Salt gently. It’s okay if the pieces are a little crowded, but try to maximize the surface area of the squash touching the pan. The browning only occurs where the squash and pan meet.

  Place the pan in the oven and roast 10 minutes. Using a spatula (I use tongs for most veggies, but delicata squash are easily squished and hold up better if you don’t pinch them), turn the squash in the pan so that the light sides are now touching the pan and the brown sides are facing upward.

  Continue roasting, turning every 7 to 10 minutes until both sides of the squash pieces are golden brown and the texture is creamy to the teeth all the way through, about 25 to 30 minutes. Adjust salt. Serve as a side dish with the rest of your dinner.

  Fruit is an excellent option if you want a little something sweet and is often able to more than satisfy that nagging desire for sugar. I sometimes find that I’m more susceptible to sugar cravings if I’ve eaten something with a strong garlic or onion flavor. Fruit works wonderfully on these occasions, but often I just need to change the flavor in my mouth by brushing my teeth or having some mint tea. Herbal teas or tisanes are a delicious evening ritual that can sooth the nerves and tame cravings. Making these one of your home court habits might be your answer to ending those late-night splurges and saving your indulgences for when they’re really worth it.

  ELEVEN

  THE OFFICE

  BROWN BAGS AND BULLIES

  “Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness.”

  —RICHARD CARLSON, AUTHOR OF DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF

  “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

  —T. S. ELIOT, THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

  “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”

  —DOUGLAS ADAMS, THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

  For anyone with a day job, lunch at work is often the biggest challenge to eating healthier and losing weight. There is nary an office kitchen that isn’t chock-full of junk food, from doughnuts and chips to sodas and Red Bull. Layer on hefty doses of stress and time pressure, and you have a recipe for a healthstyle disaster.

  Even if you do manage to navigate the land mines of processed foods in the kitchen, limited facilities can mean there’s no refrigerator or heating element, and what you bring from home is limited to what can be stored in your desk or shared space. Some office cultures create pressure to go out to restaurants, so bringing your own food can be seen as antisocial or, worse, a form of judgment on everyone else’s eating habits. If your schedule is unpredictable, finding time to eat at all can be a challenge.

  As hard as it is, finding a way to eat well at work is worth the effort. If you eat twenty-one meals during a typical week, almost a quarter of them will occur at the office. On the other hand, if you do manage to create a healthstyle that optimizes your workplace for health, it can put you well on your way to achieving your goals.

  JUNK FOOD, JUNK FOOD EVERYWHERE

  The number one complaint I hear from my readers is that their work environment is flooded with junk food. Organizations want to provide snacks for their employees, and by far the easiest and most affordable options are from big-ticket stores like Costco or Walmart, since they offer countless snack foods in bulk at rock-bottom prices. Health is rarely factored into the equation, and even if some healthy choices make it back to the office, they will likely to be accompanied by a lion’s share of junk food to go around.

  It’s hard to blame anyone for this, since it is part of our culture. Most people grew up with and therefore like junk foods, so whoever makes these decisions at your company is surely just trying to make people happy by giving them what they want. Also, healthy foods tend to be more expensive and perishable, making them extremely inconvenient to stock unless a significant portion of employees will eat them (good luck with that). The end result is that almost everyone who works in an office is surrounded by free, convenient, and hyperpalatable food. For better or for worse, this aspect of your work environment is unlikely to change.

  There are several things you can do to combat the allure of those sweet, sweet empty calories. The first step is changing the way you think about junk food. It may be free and convenient, but foodists recognize that processed foodlike substances aren’t actually food, so on a typical weekday they should not be on the menu. Instead of telling yourself “I shouldn’t” or “I can’t” eat those generic boxed cookies, remind yourself, “As a foodist, I don’t eat that way.” In a series of studies published in the Journal of Consumer Research, scientist Vanessa Patrick and her team showed that saying “I don’t” was almost three times more effective as saying “no” and eight times more effective than saying “I can’t” in turning down food.1 According to Patrick, “With ‘I don’t’ you’re choosing words that signal empowerment and determination rather than ones that signal deprivation,” and that empowerment helps you make the right decision when faced with temptation.* Telling yourself that you don’t drink calories, eat processed foods, or indulge in sweets at work is far more powerful than trying to convince yourself that you shouldn’t. Patrick’s team also showed that
this strategy helps you make healthier decisions later on, empowering you to make better food choices even after you skirt the first temptation. In other words, how you think about unhealthy foods at work can boost your willpower at those times when you need it the most.

  HEALTHY SNACKING 101

  The next step in avoiding workplace junk food is having a healthy, reliable alternative ready to go. You can’t expect a temporary bolstering of your willpower to last indefinitely, so having a snack food you can turn to when your stomach is trying to overpower your brain is absolutely necessary.

  10 Reasons to Never Eat Free Food

  Most people’s eyes light up if free food is mentioned at work. But using the fact that something is “free” as an excuse to eat junk food is nothing to be proud of. We get excited by the concept of free food, because at first glance it seems like a good deal. But cheap, mass-produced food isn’t worth much in health, taste, or even satisfaction. Thus one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my twelve years of higher education is:

  JUST BECAUSE IT’S FREE DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO EAT IT.

  Occasionally someone will offer you high-quality food at no cost, but these opportunities are few and far between. More often you will find yourself wading through a sea of doughnuts, pizza, cookies, and other junk food. Your best bet is skipping the empty calories altogether when attending meetings, seminars, and other public events. Here’s why.

  1. It’s cheap

  You might think that free food is a bargain, but if you think about what you’re really getting, it won’t seem like such a good deal. Cheap food means low-quality, mass-produced calories made by industrial processes. That’s the stuff we want to avoid.

  2. It’s flavorless

  The right combinations of sugar, fat, and salt pretty easily deceive your brain, as these ingredients strongly activate your neural reward pathways. But if you try to focus on the true flavor of food and eat mindfully, you’ll learn to taste the difference between real food and the flavorless industrial stuff.

  3. It’s bad for you

  Processed foods are responsible for almost all “diseases of civilization,” including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. When you wolf down a few of those brownie bites at happy hour, you are directly contributing to your likelihood of developing these chronic diseases. Is that value?

  4. You aren’t saving money

  You may tell yourself that this free meal will keep you from eating later, but there’s a good chance you will eat again anyway. Processed foods do not satisfy you, but actually stimulate your appetite and strengthen future cravings. Also, if you factor in your future health-care costs, what you save by eating that $2 slice of free pizza starts to seem rather trivial.

  5. You’ll feel gross later

  Junk food makes you feel bad, both physically and mentally. If someone offered you a free headache, would you take it?

  6. It screws up your metabolism

  Highly refined foods can induce insulin resistance over the next few hours, making both this and your next meal more fattening. If you make a habit of eating cheap abundant food, this condition can become chronic and develop into type 2 diabetes. What a bargain!

  7. You’ll gain weight

  With insulin resistance comes weight gain, and with time you will gain more weight eating fewer calories. Unfortunately, people aren’t often giving away free plus-size jeans.

  8. You’re eating empty calories

  When you submit to eating cheap food, you are also choosing not to eat nutritious food. Choosing a diet rich in vitamins and other essential nutrients is necessary for reducing risk for sickness and disease, not to mention cravings. Foods typically offered as free don’t even fulfill our most basic nutritional (or emotional) needs.

  9. You don’t need it

  Chances are you get plenty of calories in your typical day. So why do you feel you need to eat junk food just because it is free?

  10. It isn’t worth it

  The truth is free junk food isn’t really free. Even if processed foods don’t cost you money, they still cost you your health, happiness, and sense of well-being. As a foodist, you can do better.

  There’s nothing wrong with snacking. Having a small bite to eat between meals is a great way to give your metabolism a little kick and keep you from becoming ravenously hungry later, which can lead to overeating. Snacking is also fun and can be a great way to socialize and connect with others. There is a difference, however, between snacking and compulsive, emotional, or hormonal eating. There is also a difference between snacking and bingeing.

  No matter what your reason for snacking, the goal should always be satiation. If you are hungry, you want to eat enough to refocus your attention and avoid future overeating, and that’s it. If you’re snacking at a social event and aren’t hungry, a few bites should be enough to get you chatting. If a midday hors d’oeuvre tastes amazing, a bite or two should satisfy your curiosity. If you’re craving something, you want to stop the craving as quickly and effectively as possible.

  Snacking should be a clearly defined occurrence, not something that drags out over the course of hours. It helps if your snacks come in fixed quantities to prevent mindless eating. When hunger is the issue, your goal should be to find snacks that are as healthy and satisfying as possible. Choose foods that are dense and digest slowly, so you feel as though you’ve eaten enough and aren’t tempted to return for round two. Thinking about foods in terms of their macronutrients is rarely useful, but as a rule of thumb the most filling foods tend to have protein, fat, fiber, and water or some combination of these. Foods that have a lot of sugar or refined carbohydrates tend to do the opposite and encourage continual eating.

  Cravings are a different beast and are the least awesome reason for snacking. They can be caused by nutrient deficiencies, hormone imbalances, or mental disquietude and can seem to come out of nowhere. Though giving into cravings sounds like a bad idea, attempting to ignore them can be distracting and often pointless.* So it is better to have a strategy for dealing with cravings rather than waste your time and energy putting off the inevitable. That said, cravings can often be alleviated without the specific food you think you want, so healthy options should always be your first resort. For instance, sugar cravings can often be eliminated with a piece of fruit, and a desire for calorie-dense, fatty foods can sometimes be quenched with a handful of trail mix. Even calorie-free beverages such as sparkling water and herbal tea can be effective.

  Healthy Snack Ideas

  Here are some snack ideas to get you started, but don’t feel limited by this list. Start with foods you enjoy and work from there.

  apples

  pears

  melon

  grapefruit

  oranges

  pistachios

  almonds

  cashews

  trail mix

  nut butter on fruit/veggie

  smoked salmon

  jerky

  charcuterie

  sardines

  string cheese

  fancy cheese

  kale chips

  carrots

  avocado

  celery

  bell pepper

  zucchini

  hummus

  edamame

  lentils

  boiled eggs

  sparkling water

  tea

  tisane (herbal tea)

  dark chocolate

  dried fruit

  mint tea

  juice spritzer

  bean salad

  peanuts

  yogurt

  INSTAGRAM: A PARABLE

  As much as we’d like them to, healthy snacks and lunches are unlikely to pack themselves. Enlightened organizations like Google take pride in supplying as many healthy treats as unhealthy ones for their employees, but the majority of us must fend for ourselves if we hope to stand a chance against the cookies and granola bars.* This poses a serious problem. When I polled my Twitter followe
rs about the biggest challenges for eating healthy food at work, a popular tech writer replied with an answer that echoed what I heard from dozens of others: “All the reasons can be translated into this one sentence: ‘I’m a lazy fuck.’ ” Planning ahead so that you have the resources to eat well on the job takes effort, and effort for distant goals like health and weight loss is more than a little hard to come by when work takes center stage.

  To get a sense of what it takes to overcome these obstacles in a high-pressure office environment, I sat down with Instagram’s founder, Kevin Systrom, and its first engineer, Shayne Sweeney. Instagram is a mobile application for taking and sharing photos that launched in October 2010. By December 2010, it already had one million registered users, and maintaining and scaling the app became the number one priority for the company’s small team of five. “We never ate healthy at the release,” recalled Systrom. “At least in the beginning, we’d be so into our work that crafting a salad out of arugula and radicchio just wasn’t going to happen midday.” Instead, they’d opt for the local food trucks or burritos near the office. Without their even realizing it, weight started to creep on:

  “We were looking at old pictures from Instagram, and people were like, ‘Oh my God, you look so young,’ and I was like, ‘What does that mean? Do I have gray hair? That was like six months ago,’ ” Systrom explained. “After that I kept telling myself, ‘I’ve got to get healthy again, I’ve got to get healthy again.’ So I bought a scale one day and realized my weight was up to 235, and I had never been this heavy in my life. I used to be 210, and I was like, ‘That’s not okay.’ But I knew I was not going to pull a sorority girl and just eat salad, because I love food. I can eat less, but I’m not going to stop eating food I like just to lose weight. That would make me unhappy.”