Foodist Page 25

  When the quinoa is finished cooking, drain and set it aside. Heat a frying pan on medium-high heat and add the olive oil. Add the onions and red peppers and cook until caramelized, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Turn off the heat and add the quinoa, stirring to mix. Fold in the arugula or spinach and season with salt and cayenne pepper to taste.

  Transfer the quinoa mixture to a large serving bowl and add the tomatoes and cilantro. Squeeze in the juice of half a lime, add a few dashes of Tapatio or other hot sauce to taste, and stir. Adjust salt and spices. Garnish with green onion slices, extra cilantro leaves, and a wedge of lime. Store leftovers in disposable containers in the fridge.

  Unfortunately, sometimes eating in an airport or on a plane is inevitable. Maybe your flight is delayed, maybe your flight is super long, maybe you packed your food but ran out the door without it. It happens. Eating in an airport every once in a while won’t kill you, and there are a few tricks you can use to minimize the damage. Your number one goal should be to find simple food. I’ve mentioned nuts, but I also sometimes look for boiled eggs, vegetable and fruit salads, and other foods in which I can identify all the ingredients by eye. Mexican food is often a good choice, since you can typically find beans, rice, salsa, and simple grilled vegetables and meats. I love a good pizza, but would never eat it at an airport, since it’s probably filled with industrial dough conditioners and overly processed mystery cheese and meat.

  On the plane I sometimes opt for the vegetarian, gluten-free, or diabetic meals. This will typically result in more vegetables, less industrial meat, and fewer flour-based foods. I often do this at conferences as well when I know the food won’t taste very good and I want it to be as healthy as possible. Be careful, though, if you do plan to go with the vegetarian option; you may want to double-check with the organization (or flight attendant) beforehand to see that you aren’t trading down for pasta, which won’t score you any points in the health game.

  FAST FOODIST

  The other big issue when traveling for work is the lack of a kitchen. At home, a small amount of planning on weekends can easily set you up for healthy snacks and meals the rest of the week. But on the road, healthy eating is a bit more challenging.

  When staying in a hotel for work in another city, the first thing I look for is a Whole Foods or other health-food store that is likely to have a decent selection of healthy snacks.* If they have a deli or prepared-food section, this is my first choice for quick, healthy meals, a foodist version of fast food. Alternately, organic cafés or specialty vegetarian or vegan restaurants are usually a reliable source for real, unprocessed foods. Plugging terms like “organic,” “natural foods,” “whole foods,” “vegetarian,” and “vegan” into Google maps can open a world of possibilities. Although I don’t think eating vegetarian or even organic is necessary to be healthy, these terms filter out a lot of the industrial stuff we’re looking to avoid and are a useful hack for finding healthy food in an unfamiliar city.

  In general, if you spend a lot of time on the road for work, you need to become an expert in finding stores and restaurants that specialize in whole, unprocessed foods. You must also master the art of navigating restaurant menus and portions, which we cover in chapter 12. Finally, don’t be too hard on yourself. You should certainly do your best to eat healthy whenever possible, but occasionally it won’t work out and you’ll be stuck eating something you would have rather avoided. So long as this doesn’t become a habit, it’s not the end of the world.

  TWELVE

  RESTAURANTS

  THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

  “One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”

  —LUCIANO PAVAROTTI

  “In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner.”

  —MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN, THE NEUROTIC’S NOTEBOOK, 1960

  Eating in restaurants means different things to different people. For some it’s a rare opportunity to go out and celebrate life’s great milestones. For others it’s a way of life. I pity the fool who puts health over pleasure every time he or she enters a restaurant. Great food is like great art, and the experience is often worth looking past carbs and calories for the sake of living life. Foodists have already budgeted for the occasional guilt-free splurge anyway.

  If you eat out often, however, too many dips into the bread basket will quickly size you out of your favorite jeans. Knowing when to say when at restaurants is one of the most difficult healthstyle skills to develop, but if restaurants are more than a casual hobby for you, then it is essential.

  Tackling restaurants like a foodist requires an intimate understanding of your own healthstyle and values. We already know we can’t rely on willpower to force ourselves into smart decisions, so it helps to have a strategy that accounts for all the factors that are important to our health and happiness. That way, when we’re faced with the choice, we already have a plan of action.

  THE DINER’S DILEMMA

  Some problems with restaurants are universal. Even when the ingredients are listed on the menu, you are rarely warned about all the butter, cream, oils, bread crumbs, sugar, and other hidden ingredients that make food yummy and decadent. Not that you need to actively avoid these ingredients if you like them, but it is important to remember that they are very rich and add a huge number of calories to a meal that might otherwise sound light and healthy. Predicting what exactly will arrive after you place your order is difficult, and once it’s in front of you resisting temptation is even harder. Thus one of the most important strategies for avoiding overeating in restaurants is focusing on the things you can control, such as eating slowly and mindfully.

  Rare is the eating establishment that doesn’t serve portions fit for a king. Most of us could stop at 75 percent of what we’re served and still consume far more than we need to be satisfied. Since we’re so bad at judging large portion sizes, few of us even realize how much restaurants cause us to overeat. There are a few ways to handle this issue. One solution is to simply stop eating, though this may be easier said than done. As one of my very slender friends explained to me, “People just need to get over the guilt of leaving food on their plate when they’re no longer hungry.”

  We are naturally wired to finish our plates, no matter how big. When I was growing up, my mom always told me that I needed to eat everything I was served, because children in other countries were starving. Of course, she never bothered to explain why our family’s gluttony made everything okay in the rest of the world. Nothing good happens from you stuffing yourself, and if it really bothers you, go ahead and mail your leftovers to the other side of the planet. Better yet, take what you don’t eat in a doggy bag and make another meal of it or offer it to a hungry person on the street. The key point to understand is that, since restaurant portions are absurdly large, you need to train yourself to stop eating when full or close to full.

  Once you’ve convinced yourself you don’t need to clean your plate, the challenge becomes stopping yourself before all the food is gone, because, let’s face it, tasty food is tasty. There are a few effective strategies that can help. First, research has repeatedly shown that people get more pleasure from the first bite of food than any other. With this in mind, start your meal by eating the best things on your plate rather than saving them for last. That way when you start to feel full, it is much easier to set your fork aside, since you know you’ve already had the most delicious bite. Another way to avoid the oversize-portion trap is to get in the habit of sharing plates. It feels unnatural at first, but once you try it, you’ll see that you can share most dishes with a dining partner and still get plenty of food; this holds for men as well as women. If you really want your own entree, chances are you don’t need anything else on the menu, such as an appetizer or dessert.

  At restaurants, the only thing worse than jumbo portions is t
he bread basket. Premeal bread is the worst. Not only does it contain some of the most useless calories in the human diet; it tortures and taunts you while you’re waiting for the food you’ve already decided is worth your time and calories. More often than not, I choose to skip it altogether. If you can’t handle the basket sitting on the table, explain to the server that you don’t need any bread. If you’re trapped because everyone else at the table is on a dinner-roll feeding frenzy, distract yourself by ordering a good drink and striking up conversation. As I explained in chapter 2, the bread basket is one of the few places I still need to exercise willpower in my healthstyle, but I never regret it when I do.

  That restaurants frequently course meals is another reason they encourage overeating. When plates and plates of amazing looking and smelling foods are placed in front of you, who wouldn’t want to try everything? Variety may be the spice of life, but it’s also a great way to eat more than you should. Avoid this by ordering less. Ask your server how many plates are appropriate for your party, and assume that’s at least 20 percent more than you need (i.e., drop a small plate). It’s easier to have restraint briefly and order less than to rely on willpower to restrain yourself when all that food shows up on your table. You can always order more if you find it isn’t enough, but this will rarely be the case.

  Alcohol is another reason it’s tough to have restraint at dinner. Even as devout foodists brimming with willpower, we need to exercise restraint at most restaurants worth eating at, given how much extra food we are confronted with. The problem is that the source of willpower is the frontal lobes of our brains, and alcohol is notorious for shutting these down. Another issue is the significant amount of extra sugar and calories in the drinks themselves. Although a glass of wine or spirits won’t do much damage, a margarita or other sweet cocktail contains hundreds of calories, mostly sugar. Just think of it as dessert in a glass. As obvious as it sounds, drinking less can really help.

  A good friend in the restaurant business recently introduced me to the “half cocktail,” which is basically half the size (and sugar/alcohol content) of a regular cocktail. The half cocktail is brilliant, because you get the pleasure of trying some wonderful drinks, but the damage done by the calories and booze is a fraction of what it could be. This might not be an official option at the bar, but it is certainly a possibility at home or if you’re out with a close friend with the same taste in drinks.

  8 Tips for Drinking Less Without Your Friends Knowing

  I have nothing against people who like to party. Partying is really fun, and a lot of the time I’m right there leading the crusade. But we all know those people who really like to drink, and like to do it often. Not only do these people take their own drinking a little too far; they’re experts at pressuring others to keep up with them drink for drink. And they’ll use mockery, guilt, generosity, logic, peer pressure, and dozens of other tactics to get everyone around them to keep the party going. These friends are fun to have, until they aren’t. As fun as it is to party, sometimes you want to go out and have a good time without regretting it the next day. Rejecting drinks can be even more awkward if alcohol is a big part of your offsite work culture, where turning down a glass makes you look antisocial or not a team player. It is nice to have a way to hit it a little less hard, preferably without drawing attention to your secret plan. Feel free to mix and match these tricks, as different situations call for different lines of defense.

  1. Alternate with water

  Alternating with water is a tried-and-true way to both cut back on alcohol and stay hydrated, thereby preventing a hangover. Every drink or two, go to the bar and ask for some water. You don’t need to make excuses for this: you’re thirsty and will get another drink in a second. Just be sure to finish the water and feel free to take your time.

  2. Drink clear liquids

  Clear liquids like gin and vodka look like ice that has melted. So if you don’t want to finish every drink that comes your way, you can always leave a little in your old glass, and no one will notice you aren’t tossing back as much as everyone else is.

  3. Order drinks that look like alcohol (but aren’t)

  Another advantage of clear liquids. Vodka soda with lime is my favorite go-to drink on late nights, and it’s awesome for several reasons. Besides being easily palatable and sugar free, it gives you the option of leaving out the vodka altogether. Just order a club soda with lime and ask the bartender to make it look like a cocktail—they are usually more than happy to comply.

  4. Be forgetful

  You don’t have to be limited to clear liquids to abandon the occasional half-full glass. Leave your drink on the bar, in the bathroom, on a random table, or anywhere it won’t attract attention. That way when someone hands you another, you’re ready.

  5. Drink light beer

  If you’re a beer drinker and all this talk of clear liquid is making you squirm, never fear. There is a huge difference in the alcohol content of beers, with light beers coming in around 4 percent alcohol and some fancy Belgians topping out at over 10 percent. You do the math.

  If you know you’ll have to get through more than you’ve bargaining for, opt for lighter beers. If you’re like me and think some domestic light beer tastes like donkey pee, go with a Mexican beer like Corona and add a lime. I can drink those all night and barely get a buzz going—and I’m little.

  6. Master the shot spit

  Drinking nights often don’t turn crazy until someone starts ordering shots, and then it’s all over. Bartenders have this problem too, since drunk people often think they’ve found a new best friend and gratefully buy their server shots throughout the night. To avoid getting hammered on the job, bartenders keep a half-empty pint of beer nearby and pretend to use it as a chaser when in reality they are spitting the shots back into it.

  If you know your friends are likely to “surprise” everyone with shots, be sure to have a nearby water glass or pint that you’re nursing. Use the old bartenders’ trick, and no one will suspect. I know it’s gross, but it works. Just remember to not actually drink the beer later.

  7. Show up late

  Sometimes special occasions are specifically set aside for excessive drinking. If you need to make an appearance, but would rather not sacrifice your liver, show up forty-five minutes to an hour late. Everyone else will already be one drink ahead of you.

  8. Order half shots

  If you’re in charge of ordering your own drinks and vodka soda isn’t your thing, ask for your regular cocktail, but request a half shot instead of a normal one. You’ll still get the fun of drinking, but each drink will contribute less to tomorrow’s headache.

  If drinking less is really hard for you, try ordering drinks with less alcohol and sugar. European wines, for example, tend to have less alcohol than big California wines. Similarly, white wines contain less alcohol than red wines. On the flip side, Belgian beers can have nearly as much alcohol as a bottle of wine, so lighter domestic beers are often a better choice. If wine and beer aren’t your thing, there are plenty of amazing cocktails that don’t require added sugar. Talk to your bartender to find the best options for you. Another great strategy is alternating between alcoholic drinks and water. This will both prolong your evening stamina and temper tomorrow’s head pain. Choose your drinks wisely to find that perfect balance of fun and foresight.

  Finally, dessert is far more likely than not to be offered if you’re eating at a restaurant. It’s your call if the restaurant is good enough or the occasion is special enough to justify the order. Sometimes it will certainly be worth it. Remember, though, that to dessert or not to dessert is not the only question. Even on special occasions you shouldn’t pretend that ten bites is the same as four. Desserts typically run 25 to 75 calories per bite, and extras really do matter. If you don’t need to finish it, you probably shouldn’t. Sharing makes this much easier.

  YOUR CALL

  You can solve a lot of the difficulties of restaurants if you have a say in choosing th
e spot. Whenever possible, volunteer to do the planning, so you have better options. We’re in the midst of a food revolution, and it’s getting easier to find places that focus on real, local, and seasonal ingredients. These should be your top choices if they’re in your budget. Because high-quality food is typically more expensive than mediocre industrial food, expect these restaurants to be a little pricier than a standard chain restaurant. They aren’t all prohibitively expensive though, and if you look hard enough, you can often find some real gems.

  There are a few ways to identify foodist-friendly restaurants. The most obvious is their emphasis on ingredients. People who make the effort to source excellent food are never shy about the extra work they’ve put in. A restaurant’s philosophy will often be featured prominently on its website or menu. If the ingredients for a dish also mention the farm from which the ingredients were sourced, this is an excellent sign. Similarly, great ingredients tend to be seasonal, and restaurants that focus on local, seasonal products frequently change their menu to reflect this. People who take pride in their work create better products than people just looking to turn a profit. These are the places you want to eat at when given the choice.

  LA VIDA LOCAL

  City life brings lots of options, but most of us gravitate to a few favorite spots for the sake of convenience and familiarity. Sometimes nothing is better than sinking into a booth at your favorite local haunt and ordering the dish you’re convinced is the best of its kind in the city. I love the burger at my secret neighborhood spot more than most other foods on earth, but if I ordered it every time I visited, it wouldn’t be pretty. At the places you eat at often, it’s just as important to find something healthy you enjoy on the menu as it is to find that decadent indulgence that makes you melt, because you can’t splurge every time without consequences. On the other hand, if you eat mostly at home and only go there every now and again, you can eat whatever you want. You need to figure out for yourself what your healthstyle budget can absorb. I indulge my burger habit once every month or so, and it is glorious. Thankfully, the healthy dishes on the menu are just as amazing.