On Life As A Picky Foodie

Dear Friends;

December is Food-month!  There are the holidays with their accompanying potato pancakes, hams and Chinese takeaway, the work parties, the rendez-vous with old friends and family members we see once a year, the days of shopping punctuated by bites of this, tastes of that, glasses of mulled wine and the like.  No matter how you cut it, it seems there is always something in our mouths on this last month of the year. 

Then comes January, with the quick-fix detoxes and the desperate spike in gym memberships, the gifts exchanged for running shoes and training gear, the resolutions made at 11:59 on the 31^st to “stop now” and start the year “properly.”

How about playing the game a little differently this year?

Don’t worry, I’m not saying you should start your detox now and spend Christmas on the treadmill instead of opening gifts, but what about paying a little more attention to what you’re heaping onto your plate as you’re doing it.  I’ve devised a little something I call Plate by Numbers to help us all.

Plate by Numbers is a bit like those drawings where each part of the canvas is numbered and has an accompanying colour so that amateurs can pretend they know how to paint like Picasso.  Much in the same way, by incorporating creativity and colour into our eating habits, Plate by Numbers is a quick and easy way to feel more in control of our food intake during this challenging time (or at any time for that matter).

The trick to Plate by Numbers is to look at your plate like you would a blank canvas.  And who wants an all-white painting hanging on their wall?  So up on the right-hand side, you might put some green.  Below that, you might like some orange or what about some red?  Then there are the patterned bits between the lines, and the combinations of colours and ingredients that liven up the whole thing.

What I’m saying is get your plate into the holiday spirit: instead of focusing on the old fallbacks, make your feast a festival of colour.  Enjoy the salad as well as the meat, the sweet potato as well as the stuffing.  Use the heavier foods as decoration rather than the basis of your meal.  If your family isn’t big on the veg, offer to make some new and exciting dishes yourself.  If you yourself aren’t big on veg, ‘tis the season to be challenged -- to try something new that is. 

Don’t deny yourself that ham or turkey or stuffing or pudding you’ve been waiting for since last year, but don’t forget, you don’t have to eat it all NOW -- there’s always tomorrow and leftovers are often the best part!

Wishing you a Happy Holiday Season, wherever you are...

Be well and enjoy and don’t forget: I’m always available for a session or twelve. 

Gabriela

P.S.  A couple of announcements:

I will be taking a break from sending out this newsletter until the beginning of 2010. 
And for many reasons, when On Life As A Picky Foodie resumes circulation in January, it will be sent out twice a month instead of weekly.

P.P.S.  The Friday Night Dinner Blog, however, will continue its regular trajectory so please check the website for new and exciting recipes and ideas.  This week, I am in Israel, and Friday Night Dinner is a very different experience here.  To read about it and for a fantastic, simple dairy and gluten-free brownie recipe, check out this week’s blog post.

Cravings Part 2:

For the most part, cravings are one of two things:  either they are emotional or they are physical.  Emotional cravings may be in response to feelings we don’t want to face, they may be a reaction to something or they may satisfy our need for comfort or a treat.  Physical cravings are the way in which our bodies tell us that we are lacking certain nutrients. (Excerpt from last week’s newsletter)

A little while ago, I conducted a little cravings experiment...

You may not know (or believe) this about me, but if I could, I would live on ice cream*.  But ice cream alone does not a healthy, fertile woman make and after losing a few too many battles against my sweet, creamy adversary, I set about declaring all-out peace.  Inspired by Geneen Roth, I decided to allow myself all the ice cream I could possibly swallow.  The plan was to eat whenever and as much as I could fit in my belly and see whether that might help me with my unruly cravings.  It seemed to have worked wonders for Ms. Roth, the theory being that by removing my judgment and prohibition, I would eventually stop enjoying the forbidden aspect of ice cream.  While this might sound counterintuitive, I had exhausted every other possibility and was up for the challenge.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted ice cream on an almost daily basis.  I have celebrated with ice cream and drowned my sorrows in it.  I have served it to friends for dessert only to polish off the carton after their departure, and I have carried on silent arguments with a half-empty tub for days at a time.

For as long as I have craved ice cream, I have fought those cravings.  I would manage to resist for days and weeks.  But “just one bite” and I would quickly resign myself to all-out-fall-off-a-cliff abandon – because, as the little voice in my head would remind me, if I wasn’t going to allow myself any for ages afterwards, may as well have as much as I could in that one sitting.  In the end, I would find myself wracked with guilt, not to mention wicked indigestion.  I would swear that things would change, that I would never eat like that again. But then, only a few weeks later, I would once again succumb to my cravings.

I won’t lie.  For the first few days of my experiment, with close to two decades of restrictions suddenly lifted, I went a bit mad.  I ate A LOT of ice cream: chocolate with vanilla cream, vanilla with chocolate sauce, even something I can only describe as made by the Gods called O-reo.  In that first week+, I went through at least a pint a day.  My belly didn’t thank me, and the emotions involved were quite intense. I went through deep sadness, harsh guilt and violent anger.  Memories surfaced that I had forgotten existed and I cried tears of every emotion available to me.

But I stuck with it, determined to see things through.  Then, almost three weeks after I started, a funny thing happened -- something so strange, that it took me a good few days to believe it -- I stopped craving ice cream.

Don’t get me wrong: at no point did I stop loving ice cream.  In fact, I still enjoy it as much as I ever have.  But unlike before, when I felt that no matter how much I ate, it might never be enough, these days I find I am fully satisfied with a one, maybe two, scoops. Sometimes a tub of ice cream can linger in my freezer for days and weeks at a time – an absolute impossibility not too long ago.

This newsletter is not a permission slip to go have as much as you can of your favourite forbidden foods.  It is not a carte blanche to eat yourself silly every night on your gastronomic weakness.  Rather, my goal with these words is to point out that cravings aren’t the enemy. In fact, there is no enemy. Cravings are just cravings, and it is up to each one of us to find out what lies beneath.

Deconstructing cravings happens to be one of my specialties – so if you need a little help in that department, give me a shout. You can book a consultation by emailing me at Gabriela@thepickyfoodie.com.

Be well and enjoy,

Gabriela

P.S.  Many people find cooking for children quite a challenge.  In fact a few weeks ago, this interesting article found that most mothers rely on very specific fallbacks.  Curious about what I could come up with, I focused this past Friday Night Dinner on an angelic little three-year old with whom I had a very special play-date.  Check it out!

*  For the sake of clarity, I need to point out that these days, being allergic to dairy means the ice cream I enjoy is made from cashews and not milk. You don’t have to take my word for it, but a good cashew-based ice cream is every bit as luscious as any number of its counterparts.  

Cravings Part 1:

Cravings.  Who doesn’t succumb from time to time?  A pie, a pizza, a box of chocolates, a piece of cake or lasagne that turns into so much more.

A friend recently admitted that when there are certain foods in her house, she simply becomes obsessed. This otherwise exceptionally even-keeled person can’t sleep because of that thing that beckons all night from the deepest depths of the fridge.

There are thousands of books offering “foolproof” advice: don’t keep any around, take a walk, call a friend, find a hobby. Simple right?  But what about others’ parties? Or restaurants? And what if your downfall happens to be your partner’s favourite food and they refuse to give it up? Then there are the days when you find yourself walking (or running) out of the supermarket in possession of said contraband with no idea how it got into your shopping cart.  But there it is – the gummy bears, the box of chocolate biscuits, the tub of Ben and Jerry, the family-sized pack of crisps.

That’s when the negotiations start. You barter with yourself; you promise yourself that you’ll have “just one,” you go back and forth with a sense of purpose and a whole list of good intentions.  It is my personal belief that if world peace were left in the hands of chronic dieters, emotional eaters and bingers, with the amount of back and forth and compromise that happens on a daily basis, there would be fewer conflicts in the world.

That’s when self-righteousness makes its first appearance.  After all, it’s been quite a day/week/year/life and doesn’t everyone deserve a treat from time to time?  Besides, anyone who has ever been on a diet knows that deprivation is so much worse than one little bite.

And what in the world could be wrong with just one little bite?  By now, you’ve paid for it, and you can’t very well go wasting food, can you?

But then you open the refrigerator or the pantry and there are so many other, so-called healthier options.  So you have something else – a piece of toast maybe – to tide you over.  It’s not quite as satisfying as you had hoped and before long, you find yourself roaming around once again.  What about that last apple?  It does need to be finished.  Ooh, you think, there’s that leftover chicken as well.  And crackers with hummus.  By the time you’ve exhausted your alternatives, the fridge is half-empty, your stomach hurts and somewhere in your head a little voice is still clamouring for that original craving.

For the most part, cravings are one of two things: either they are emotional or they are physical.  Emotional cravings may be in response to feelings we don’t want to face, they may be a reaction to something or they may satisfy our need for comfort or a treat.  Physical cravings are the way in which our bodies tell us that we are lacking certain nutrients. I know quite a few people who crave Brussels sprouts around this time of year, for example.  That delicious mini cabbage that so many love to hate is actually a great source of Vitamin C, iron and potassium – all things we might need an extra dose of from time to time.

A craving for a Kit Kat bar, on the other hand, doesn’t scream “my body is lacking sugar/high fructose corn syrup and flavouring agents!” to me.

When parents forbid their children from doing things like putting their fingers in the electrical socket or playing with matches, suddenly that is all they want to do.  Why should adults be any different?  When certain foods aren’t allowed, why is it that we want them so much more?  Because we’re human.

If you suffer from uncontrollable cravings and you want help in dealing with them, consider booking a cravings-focused session with The Picky Foodie.  You can email me at Gabriela@thepickyfoodie.com to find out more or to set up a consultation.

Be well and enjoy,

Gabriela

P.S.  Interested in Raw Food?  Check out this week’s Friday Night Dinner Blog!