All About Oats

For some reason, a lot of the health bloggers are obsessed with oatmeal.  I mean, I guess it makes sense - oatmeal is definitely good for you.  But I just never saw what the big deal was.

When I was overweight, I did one of the most horrible things you can do to yourself:  I would skip breakfast.  I just wasn't hungry in the mornings.  Little did I realize at the time, I wasn't hungry because I was overeating at night.  Once I ate more reasonably in the evenings, I woke up hungry.  So I had to learn how to eat breakfast again.

When I was first losing weight, I would occasionally nuke a packet of Quaker Oats instant oatmeal, and although I found it bland, I would still eat it because it was "good for me."  The problem I have found with eating something you aren't crazy about is that you aren't satisfied and end up compesating for it somewhere else later.  So somewhere along my journey to lose weight, I decided it was pointless to cram down a bowl of bland oatmeal in the morning when I preferred to have, and was more satisfied by, a granola bar or PB&J on toast.

But the more I read about oatmeal on other blogs, and all the creative ways bloggers have found to dress up their oats, the more curious I became.  I went out on a limb and bought some steel-cut oats and a cheap rice cooker, and gave oatmeal a second chance.  Once I "oatmeal-ed" the right way, I finally got what all the fuss was about. There is such a vast difference between the cheap instant packets, and actual home-cooked oats.  It's definitely worth the extra time and effort to make them right.

My rice cooker/new best friend:

My method for oat cooking (there are lots of them out there) is to put 3/4 cup oats in with a cup and 1/2 of water in the rice cooker at night before I go to bed and let it sit overnight.  In the morning, as soon as I wake up, I plug in the rice cooker, and within 15 minutes I have my lovely, fluffy, chewy oats ready to devour.  I dish it into some "to go" tupperware with a plastic spoon, and add my toppings:

Today I added some granola, reduced sugar grape jelly, and a glob of my homemade sunflower butter.  I usually bring it with me in the car on my way to work, and eat a few bites at the stoplights and then eat the rest throughout the morning.  Oatmeal is so much more satisfying to me than scarfing down a granola bar like I used to, and I'm not nearly as ravenous when it gets to lunchtime.  And, as we all know, we tend to make much better meal choices when we aren't about ready to chew off an arm.

Readers: What do you eat for breakfast?

Fresh Eats

Last week, I blogged about how much better I feel when I am eating real, whole foods as opposed to processed and packaged foods.  Not only do I continue to maintain my weight loss, I get a lot more variety in my diet and save some money at the grocery store.  I thought it might be a fun idea to give my readers a better picture of the types of food that I eat on a regular basis by taking you through a recent shopping trip.

This Sunday, I bought 4 sweet potatoes, 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, some baby spinach, a package of blue cheese, some English muffins, some Arnold's Thins and 2 packets of this stuff:

What I love about Justin's Nut Butters is that they come in these little one serving packs. A year ago, despite how much I absolutely love it, and despite that the fact that it's actually better for me than peanut butter, I had to stop buying Nutella.

Why, you may ask, if I love it so much?  Here's the long story:  I was recently having a conversation with my parents about willpower versus portion control.  My mom suffers from lack of willpower.  She will go to the store and see a decadent gooey brownie, absolutely have to have it even though she knows it's horrible for her, but then she'll take it home and only eat two bites of it each day for a week.  My dad's problem, on the other hand, is that while he can easily walk past the brownie aisle and opt for a much healthier jar of macademia nuts, he will then go home and consume the entire jar in one sitting.  Where he has willpower, he lacks portion control.  Like my dad, when it comes to certain foods, I lack portion control too. (I also sometimes lack willpower, as we all do, but not nearly as often.)  My lack of portion control was the sole reason for my break-up with Nutella.  I eat too much of it too quickly.  I don't trust myself to even have it around.  So, when I found these Justin's packs, I realized I could still enjoy chocolate hazelnut butter and have the portions controlled for me.  Problem solved!

One thing about eating fresher foods as opposed to processed foods is that you do have to do a little prep work.  So, when I got home from the store on Sunday, I got right to cooking.  I started by cutting up my sweet potatoes up into little squares, gave them a bath in a drizzle of olive oil, some salt, pepper and cajun spice, and baked them for 45 minutes.  After they were cooked and cooled, I put them in some Gladware:

Ah, I just love fall foods!  I think they are just as good cold as they are warm, so while they are great as a side with a sandwich or burger, they also make for a great snack right out of the fridge.

I also whipped up some more of my pesto and put that in some Gladware too:

Then, I made some barbeque chicken.  All I did was take the three boneless skinless chicken breasts I bought and threw them into the crockpot with store-bought barbecue sauce, Dijon mustard, worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and a hickory barbecue spice rub.  Three hours later, the chicken was so tender that it fell apart as I scooped it out of the crockpot, and into my Gladware went this delicious concoction:

For lunch today, I warmed-up some of the chicken and made a sandwich on 100-calorie Arnolds thins, and it was soooo sloppy and tasty:

When I came home after work last night, I was hungry but was heading back out to go play flag football.  So I whipped up what is quickly becoming one of my favorite snacky, light dinners.  I toasted an English muffin and dressed it with some leftover shaved turkey meat that I bought last week:

I sprinkled on some of this wonderful stuff, which was part of my Sunday shopping trip:

I broiled the whole mess in the oven until the cheese was melty and bubbly, then I sprinkled some basil and garlic salt on it, and...the best part...a drizzle of honey:

One word: Yum!  The sweetness of the honey really balances out the sharpness of the blue cheese.

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While we all know that eating healthy is essential to losing weight and maintaining weight loss, it doesn't have to be boring. You don't have to eat rubbery Lean Cuisine chicken and tasteless soggy vegetables for lunch every day.   I still enjoy cooking and eating, as well as watching my calorie intake and managing my portion control too (as long as there's not a jar of Nutella in the house).  It does take a little more time and effort to eat fresh foods, but the payoff is worth it!

Why I Hate The Biggest Loser (But Watch It Anyway)

Kicking off its 10th season last night on NBC, The Biggest Loser was once the one show on television that I hated to love. Now it has become the one show I love to hate. 

As someone who has done what the contestants have done, I can relate to what they are accomplishing.  You get to a point, as I did, where you can't see the forest through the trees anymore.  Losing 100 pounds seemed like such a monumental undertaking that I just kind of gave up on myself.  In its early seasons, TBL inspired me to believe that it was even possible for me to lose that much weight. 

On the other hand, I immediateley dismissed the show's concept: "Of course, anyone can lose weight when they have 24/7 personal trainers, a fridge stocked full of healthy food, and no pesky distractions like jobs or families!"  Oh, and if that weren't enough,  they also have the incentive of winning lots and lots of money.  Who couldn't manage to drop a few pounds under those circumstances?!

In the past few seasons, TBL has added "at-home" players, obviously in response to viewers who felt the same way I did about the lack of real-ness in this "reality" show.  So these new "at-home" players still had daily distractions and temptations, and only the incentive of winning lots and lots of money.  Still not anything like real life, but getting a tad closer.

The flawed concept of TBL isn't the reason I hate it though. Because it feeds on ratings, over the years it has strayed further and further outside of the realm of reality and now plays to the extreme.  Watching a trainer scream and swear at a contestant for 4-6 hours a day while he/she suffers through agonizing weight training sessions and arduous speed drills on a treadmill isn't teaching anyone anything educational about losing weight.  In my opinion, this extreme method that the contestants are put through is for the purpose of boosting ratings and isn't an appropriate or sustainable way for most people to go about trying to lose weight.  When I started my weight loss plan, I began with a healthy diet 4-5 days each week, and a half hour of walking on a treadmill.  No 4-hour workouts, no gym, no trainer.  Just walking and eating right.  I lost 85 pounds within a calendar year.  Yes, it's possible.  No, you don't have to suffer like that to do it.

The extreme nature of TBL has gone one step further in the past few seasons in a way that has really, really gotten under my skin.  The contestants run a full marathon at the end of the season, which, I'll concede, most of them are probably ready to do.  However, TBL's portrayal of marathoning is inaccurate, if not downright irresponsible.  Never once has any trainer on TBL mentioned the need for an altered higher-carb diet while training, nor do they even mention any sort of training plan at all.  During the marathon, you never see the contestants take in any calories during the run (what, wouldn't GU be a sponsor?), and after the 26.2 mile trek they are shown standing around without anything to eat or drink!  They couldn't show someone having a banana? 

While surely one can attribute most of this to creative editing in order to make the show seem more extreme, I think it sends the wrong message to would-be marathoners.  While not impossible, it is unlikely that you could complete a marathon--without risking injury--without proper fuel before, during and after a race.  When someone has the nerve to tell me that running marathons is bad for you, I always respond that running marathons without following a proper training plan, including diet and cross-training, is what's bad for you.   Any sport is bad for you if you don't take the necessary steps to avoid injury.

Despite it's many flaws, I will still watch TBL anyway.  I absolutely love watching these stories play out about these brave individuals who want nothing more in life than to find their way to healthy, and will do whatever it takes to get there.  Their stories reminds me of my journey, even though I didn't get to do it at a secluded, posh ranch in California and I did it all without any hope of financial gain. When it comes down to it, the show isn't all bad.  If you want to lose weight, though, or if you want to run a marathon, don't look to a reality show for tips.  Talk to someone who's done it -- in reality.