Last week I registered for The Food Revolution Summit, a free, online series of lectures by some of the most well respected professionals in the field of nutrition, longevity and health. Thus far, I have gotten to tune into some awesome speakers, including Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who all spoke about food as medicine. Regardless of who spits it, the message is the same. We can prevent and reverse most all diseases of “affluence,” by avoiding the foods that are making us sick and substituting them, instead, with a wide variety of colorful plant-based choices. Always hungry for more information on this topic, I am thankful to John and Ocean Robbins (of the Baskin-Robbins family) for putting together such a comprehensive summit and making it available to the public, free of charge.
But I want to go back to the myths that are sabotaging our weight loss goals, and myth number 2 is one that I am guilty of, but definitely paying more attention to, now. The myth is that healthy oils are good for our diet.
Healthy oils are good for us, but it turns out, the quantity at which they consume them, is negatively impacting our weight loss. It is estimated that Americans are eating up to 700 calories a day in healthy oils. If, like me, you make your own healthy homemade salad dressing, you will be using a decent amount of olive oil, right there. At 120 calories in a tablespoon, we can all see where the calories might add up quickly. So you take this huge, gorgeous salad, filled with all the colors of the rainbow and very low in calories and you add a few tablespoons of olive oil and boom, you just increased the calories by a few hundred. Then, if like me, you are using olive oil as a base to marinate foods, in my case veggies and tofu, it is easy to see how the numbers get out of hand.
Dr. Furhman makes a great suggestion in that you can saute onions, garlic, etc., in a little bit of water and get a very similar outcome. If you are using tomato sauce in your dish, you can use that to saute vegetables. Sunday, instead of grilling my veggies, I cut up the eggplant and tomatoes (from Erica and Jeff’s garden–thank you) and did the same with some zucchini, onions and mushrooms from my fridge. I used the very tiniest amount of oil (like one teaspoon) and then added some water as needed–I added one veggie at a time and then added just a few spoons of tomato sauce and let everything simmer down, covered. The veggies came out great. Last night I added a few strips of Beyond Meat chickenless, chicken (in the Publix freezer aisle near the Gardein products) to the leftovers and had a low calorie, high protein, and extremely satisfying meal.
No one is saying you can’t have your healthy oils. They are in fact healthy. Healthier, though, is being at your ideal weight. Cutting back on some of the oil, and getting those healthy nutrients through a few walnuts tossed on your salad, will help bring you closer to your goal!
AWARENESS is everything. Once we are aware of anything in our lives, we are able to make choices that can lead us closer to our goals, be they on the scale, in the gym, or in all aspects of life.
I will be at the gym today at 10 to sub for Ellen who goes back to the doctor for a follow-up tomorrow. I will be at the gym for my own 11:30, 6 and 7 o’clock classes. See you there, or right here. Thanks for stopping by for a little dose of peaceandfitness.
