Imagine turning the tables on the folks in white coats who daily tell us what's right and wrong with the foods we eat and the ways we eat them. Getting a doctor or nutritionist to talk candidly about what he or she eats for breakfast and saves for moments of indulgence is not the easiest assignment, even for a writer with all the right credentials. One prominent nutritionist who constantly warns the public to lose weight and eat less junk food promptly ended the conversation when her own vital statistics and eating habits came up. Another talked openly, then demanded that the interview be scrapped because of a potential conflict of interest with her employer, a major nutrition institution.
Clearly, eating well is a personal thing, but the following experts opened their refrigerators and talked freely about how they eat at home, at work and on the road.
For anyone trying to balance good health with good food, their approaches are enlightening, often at odds with each other, and sometimes unorthodox. They do, however, affirm for each of us the value of finding a personal daily eating pattern that can satisfy and sustain for life, not just to lose the next five pounds.
James O. Hill, Ph.D.
Professor: Pediatrics and Medicine,
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, Colorado
Cofounder: National Weight Control Registry
Fancy bumping into renowned obesity expert James Hill at an extravagant eat-all-you-want breakfast buffet at the Sundance Resort in Utah. While we were serving ourselves from the sumptuous array of pastries, Hollandaise-covered egg dishes, mayonnaise-laden salads and mountains of crisp bacon, I asked, "Now, what would members of the National Weight Control Registry do here?"
As cofounder of this much-quoted, ongoing study of thousands of people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept at least that amount off for a minimum of one year, Dr. Hill's response was quick and sure: "They probably wouldn't be here!"
Hill is a highly affable, unassuming guy for all his credentials. Author of more than 200 scientific articles and book chapters on the subject of obesity, he wears a tiny step counter wherever he goes in order to help him control his weight. For Hill, movement is tantamount to weight maintenance.
Vital Statistics: 52 years old, 5'9", 185 pounds. ("My preferred weight would be 175, which is what I weighed in college.")
Q. How would you describe your approach to eating?
I am a strong believer in the value of a low-fat diet and try to eat this way. I'm a big fan of low-fat products (with the exception of low-fat cheeses, because, in my opinion, they don't taste very good). My wife is a dietitian, and she does most of the cooking; she tends to cook low-fat and purchases lower-fat foods. But for me eating low-fat comes secondary to watching portion sizes. I try to leave a little something behind at each meal. Also, I avoid calorie-containing beverages and favor water instead.
However, I'm not obsessive about what I eat because of my activity level. My philosophy is that, with adequate physical activity, you have a lot more leeway on the diet side; if you exercise, you don't have to fret about every single meal. My goal is to take 11,000 steps a day (the average American takes about 5,000), but because of my schedule—I travel a lot and have lots of meetings—I count my steps by the week, with a goal of 77,000 steps per week. So one day I might get in 9,000 steps, the next I might play 90 minutes of tennis (worth 6,000 steps) and walk another 7,000 steps. I get my walking in between meetings, in airports, and with my dog after dinner. Of the three years during which I've used my counter, I'm pleased to say that I've only had two weeks of walking less than 70,000 steps, my minimum goal.
Q. What is a typical daily menu for you?
I start with a cup or two of black coffee. Then I typically have a bowl of high-fiber cereal with 1% milk. Sometimes, instead, I have a bagel with low-fat cream cheese.
Midmorning, I might have some water or more coffee and a piece of fruit. (At work, I always have on hand bottled water and bags of cleaned mini carrots, which I love to snack on.)
My lunches are often eaten in restaurants. A typical lunch for me would be a club sandwich made with whole-wheat bread—right off the menu, no special requests, like hold the mayo. If chips come with it, I eat them, but I prefer coleslaw. My beverage is water.
When I get home from work, I might have a piece of fresh fruit or carrots. A typical supper would be grilled chicken or fish, a baked potato with low-fat sour cream and some steamed green beans. Again, my drink would be water. We usually have dessert only when we have company. But occasionally, later in the evening, I have a cookie or two or some sorbet.
Q. Are weekends significantly different?
I typically work Saturday mornings, then spend time with my two sons in the afternoon. I might take the kids out to lunch at Subway. In the evening, we're like everyone else on weekends—we're more likely to order pizza or take-out Chinese.
Q. What is your typical daily calorie intake? What is your typical percentage of daily calories from fat, protein and carbohydrates?
I have no idea. I don't have a clue. The only time I counted calories was when I took part in a study to see if nutrition professionals are more accurate than laypeople in calorie-counting. (They are, a little more.) I'm guessing that about 30 percent of my calories come from fat. I really don't obsess a lot about what I eat. This is the beauty of being physically active. Actually, in April, I have a book coming out about this subject (The Step Diet, Workman)—it illustrates how physical activity can enable you to eat more, while managing your weight at the same time.
Q. What's in your refrigerator?
Bottled water, mini carrots and low-fat milk. I can't think of much of anything to which I'd say "Never."
Q. Do you drink alcohol?
Yes, I have a glass of wine with dinner two to three times a week. I also have an occasional beer.
Q. What foods do you allow yourself to indulge in?
Bacon—I had it today at brunch, which was the first time in months. I also indulge in nuts, in part because of the health benefits. The trick is to have just a few.
Q. When you first began this approach to eating, what were the greatest obstacles you had to overcome?
The biggest change is from my childhood. I was raised in the South on much-higher-fat food. For instance, we would have fried chicken twice a week, and our green beans would be cooked for five days in fatback pork.
Q. What can trip you up?
Krispy Kreme doughnuts—I never buy them because I'd eat them!
Q. Where do most people's diets go wrong?
I think that the main problem is this slow, steady gain that most people experience with time. It essentially stems from eating, on average, an excess of 100 calories per day, which results in a 10-pound gain each year. My desire for society at large is to stop the gain because most people are not very good at losing substantial amounts of weight and keeping it off. My advice is to try to cut back by about 100 calories a day. But since this is hard to measure, I feel that upping physical activity is easier because it's more measurable. I encourage people to find out their usual number of steps per day, with a step counter, then to increase that amount in 2,000-step increments over the course of weeks or even months.
I also feel that one of the big problems is being too restrictive. I don't think that it works to say, 'I never have this, this or this.' I agree with the French: we take food too seriously and, as such, have lost the pleasure of eating. It becomes stressful, not fun, when it's so serious. The main thing is portion control and physical activity.
Q. What do you do when you're on the road and fast food is the only choice?
I never supersize, but I might have a regular-size burger and some water.
Q. Do you take supplements?
I take a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement, an aspirin, calcium and occasionally some vitamin C, which comes from my grandmother who thought vitamin C was good for everything. I've stopped taking vitamin E because recent studies have suggested it's not beneficial. —A.F.
Miriam E. Nelson, Ph.D.
Director: John Hancock Center for Physical Activity & Nutrition, Friedman School, Tufts University
Author: Strong Women, Strong Bones; Strong Women Stay Young; Strong Women Stay Slim; Strong Women Eat Well;Strong Women and Men Beat Arthritis
Getting to Miriam Nelson at home, you first navigate a tangle of bikes clogging the front porch and meet 11-year-old Alexandra, the youngest of three children, who is in the large kitchen experimenting at making deviled eggs. Neighbor children swing in the backyard and Nelson herself is typing away at the latest grant she is hoping to land. It seems chaotic, but Nelson, author of the bestselling Strong Women book series, is used to a fast pace. She has shown that through simple strength-training exercises that increase muscle mass, women can more successfully maintain a healthy body weight while they reduce their risks of chronic diseases like osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, heart disease and hypertension.
When she's not in the physiology lab, Nelson may be hiking with her family, climbing the Matterhorn ("Next to my first childbirth it's the most athletic endeavor I've ever done," she admits) or, most recently, training for the Boston Marathon.
Being so active, Nelson says, she is careful to eat energy-dense, nutrient-rich, fresh foods that hail from local producers whenever possible.
Vital Statistics: 43 years old, 5'4", 117 pounds. ("I've been 117 ever since I was a teenager. I know my weight will go up some after menopause, maybe 10 pounds. It's inevitable. I'll just have to get used to it.")
Q. What is your exercise regimen?
I run four times a week, 3 to 13 miles at a time. I rock climb twice a week, and I stretch. I like to move and I'm very opportunistic—if my daughters want to bike ride, I'm with them. I do prophylactic strength training to keep my hips, knees and feet in good strong shape.
Q. Do you follow any particular approach to eating?
I eat whole foods first and foremost—fruits, vegetables, whole grains and locally and organically grown foods whenever possible, especially yogurt and meat. My eating is related to my health and to the overall environment. The farms that grow our food are critical in terms of a sustainable environment.
Q. What is a typical daily menu for you?
Breakfast: Orange juice, dense whole-wheat toast with an egg; or homemade granola with milk. And the first of three daily cups of tea.
Snack: At 10 a.m., particularly if I've had a run at 6 a.m., I'll have yogurt, always organic, and a quarter-cup of dry-roasted almonds. My caloric expenditure is going up because I'm training, so sometimes I'll bring in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a snack.
Lunch: Leftovers, soup or a sandwich. We have a little cafeteria at work that does a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce, sliced apple and brie (they don't have whole-wheat bread yet, but we're working on them). They also have good soups.
I usually don't have time for an afternoon snack, and then I'm famished by the time I get home. Sometimes I'll split a smoothie with the kids (organic plain yogurt and frozen mango, raspberries blueberries, strawberries and wild blueberry juice). Or I'll have cheese and crackers and carrots.
A typical dinner is brown rice, roasted vegetables, shell beans (canned) and tofu—my mother-in-law's recipe, where it's sliced and dredged in nutritional yeast and pan-fried in olive oil, or I'll just chop it up and put it in with the roasted vegetables because I'm lazy.
Q. You say you eat this frequently?
Three times a week.
Q. And the kids like it?
[Laughing] They do! But we've always eaten this way. I'm lucky my kids are really pretty good eaters. They eat their fair amount of junk, but we'll sit down and fight over how many pieces of tofu and beans everybody gets. We also do a lot of grilling: hamburger, chicken, tofu, fish. We used to never have meat, but the kids love it.
Dessert is always ice cream or cookies and there's always a chocolate bar hidden somewhere in the pantry—the best you can buy. We may have a smoothie if we didn't have one in the afternoon. Smoothies have replaced a lot of the ice cream eating, which I'm happy about. Not that ice cream is bad.
Q. Are weekends different?
We usually have pancakes or waffles, made from grist-mill corn, white flour and whole-wheat flour. The waffles have sunflower seeds, brown rice, oats, everything.
Q. What is your typical daily calorie intake?
I have no idea. I eat when I get hungry, but I have good appetite regulation and I'm lucky in that respect.
Q. How do you approach restaurants?
I find restaurant eating a challenge, but I do it all the time because of my work. I like a lot of courses…mesclun greens, the soup of the day, and I'll often order fish for an entrée because we don't eat it that often at home. I always, always ask for extra vegetables and only half the potatoes. I'll pay for the extra vegetables. I won't finish the entrée, because they give me twice as much fish as I could ever eat. My husband and I will often share an entrée…and we'll pay for a plate charge.
Q. What is always in your refrigerator?
We always have Cheddar cheese (cheese is a big staple in our house—it's high in fat but I'm not concerned because we're all really active and we're all quite slender). We also always have yogurt, orange juice, 2% milk (our local dairy has skim but not 1%), tofu, carrots, broccoli, salsa, soy sauce, butter, beer and eggs. Those nights when there's just nothing in the fridge we have omelets, our standby. Eggs don't get as much positive recognition as they should.
We always have vegetables in the fridge that are ready to eat, and washed fruits in a bowl on the table.
Most nights my husband and I split a beer. A half a beer is a regular occurrence and a whole beer is a celebration.
Q. Do you think about protein when you choose your foods?
Yes, and this is something new for me. There were times in the past when I used to have toast and a cup of tea for breakfast. Now I'm more likely to add an egg or milk to the meal. I like to snack on yogurt, nuts, cheese and crackers. A lot of women don't get enough protein (and some get way too much). I try to get a protein-rich food at every meal. It helps with appetite, the sustainability of the meal, and it's good for my muscles and bones. I do not, however, advocate a high-protein diet.
Q. Do you take supplements?
Although I eat a lot of calcium in my diet, I take calcium citrate and vitamin D (400 IU) for bone strength.
Q. Any overviews on diet and health for EatingWell readers?
Typically, both men and women start to lose muscle in their late thirties and early forties—about a quarter of a pound a year. Your lean tissue really drives your metabolic rate and we've seen that in middle age and in older individuals who start strength training their metabolism goes up. And we know that metabolism in individuals who have more muscle is higher than in people who have less.
When a woman diets without exercising, both aerobic and strength, the weight she loses includes 20 percent muscle mass, which is detrimental to metabolism.
So we try to combine reducing calories, improving the diet and stimulating the muscles to—even at rest—burn more calories. Through walking and other physical activities, we want to increase caloric expenditure. All of that goes into making long-term weight control easier. Nutrition and physical-strength building are a completely natural marriage. Without one or the other you're only getting half of what you need.—A.J.C.
Arthur Agatston, M.D.
Director: Non-Invasive Cardiac Laboratory, Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Miami, FL
Author: The South Beach Diet
As a cardiologist concerned about his patients and the health consequences of their weight problems, Arthur Agatston says he had gradually grown disillusioned with the low-fat diets routinely recommended to heart patients. His patients would start out inspired but they simply couldn't stick to the regimen. Like most physicians, he'd had almost no training in nutrition, but he turned to all the medical research on diets, studied the fad diets that were popular, and ended up experimenting with his own weight loss. The result was a plan that focuses on eating "good carbs and good fats"—while shunning high-glycemic-index carbohydrates and saturated fats of animal origin. The plan was so successful it soon took on its own momentum. His patients lost pound after pound, and kept them off, and the resulting South Beach Diet (Rodale, 2003) shot to the top of every nonfiction bestseller list in the country (Agatston's agent calls it "the My Big Fat Greek Wedding of the publishing world").
Agatston—an athletically built former competitive basketball player and a self-described golf nut, lives by the guidelines of his three-phase diet, staying mostly in Phase 3 (maintenance), but going back occasionally to the stricter Phases 1 or 2 whenever he feels his cravings are more than he can handle or when his belt feels tight.
Vital Statistics: 56 years old, 5'8", 165 pounds.
("I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I'm not worried about it.")
Q. What is your exercise regimen?
StairMaster, treadmill or light weights first thing in the morning, and I work with a personal trainer for one hour twice weekly.
Q. Have your dietary goals changed over the past 10 years?
Drastically. Like most cardiologists, I used to follow the low-fat, high-carbohydrate recommendations of the American Heart Association—I'd eat all the low-fat things I could get ahold of. But I'd find myself having out-of-control cravings, and I was starting to get a belly. So I started looking at literature about the glycemic index and about Metabolic Syndrome, which was just starting to be defined back then, and I looked at the Atkins and Zone diets. I began to understand the importance of keeping down high-glycemic-index carbohydrates like white flour and sugar, as well as saturated fats, while allowing plenty of vegetables and fruits, good fats like olive oil, and ample amounts of protein. When I started eating this way, I lost weight without feeling deprived, and I lost my cravings. That became the basis of the South Beach Diet.
Q. What's your greatest food weakness?
I'm a chocoholic, so anything chocolate is a temptation…. I used to be a Wheat Thins addict too. Sometimes we'll have leftover cake in the refrigerator from the kids' birthday parties—that's hard to pass up.
Q. What's always in your refrigerator?
Fresh fruit, yogurt, lean cold cuts, sugar-free Jell-O. Once in a while we'll have ice cream for the kids. I'll indulge occasionally.
Q. What's never in your refrigerator?
Soft drinks (nondiet).
Q. What diseases do you worry about personally?
Diabetes—it's not in my immediate family, but some of my distant relatives have it.
Q. Do you take supplements?
I take a multivitamin, multimineral supplement, plus fish-oil supplements that provide 1 to 2 grams of EPA [eicosapentaenoic acid] per day.
Q. What's a typical day's menu for you?
I'll usually have two eggs for breakfast and a handful of nuts for a midmorning snack. I'll try to have a good lunch in the physicians' dining room—usually fish or cottage cheese, a salad or cold vegetables like cauliflower and broccoli. If I need an afternoon snack, I'll have nuts or some low-fat cheese. Dinner might be fish like salmon, or lean meat or chicken, plus plenty of fresh veggies. Drinks are usually sparkling water and the occasional diet cola, and wine with dinner once in a while. For dessert, I might have sugar-free Jell-O or Vanilla Ricotta Crème [a recipe provided in his book]. I don't go wild with big portions or try to clean my plate. Weekends, I'm usually even better at sticking with healthy eating, because I'm not so rushed.
Q. What do you do when you're on the road?
I'll have a burger without the bread or some nuts or yogurt. But I predict that in the future there will be more low-glycemic-index foods available for travelers.
Q. What circumstances can trip you up?
Airplane travel is the worst—I'm usually under stress, exhausted and don't have time to plan, so I'll just succumb. I was just on a flight that had us sitting on the tarmac for two hours with nothing to eat. My seatmate was handing out crackers she'd saved from another flight, so that's what I had. They don't hand out peanuts anymore—that would have been a good option. —J.H.
Michael Roizen, M.D.
Professor: Medicine & Anesthesiology, SUNY College of Medicine, Syracuse, NY
Author: RealAge; The RealAge Diet; Cooking the RealAge Way
It's full winter in this snowbelt college town, and Michael Roizen is taking a break after a day of teaching nutrition and cooking to medical students and doing his weekly local health-news broadcast. He gnaws on a stump of celery, alternating with gulps of diet cola. It may not look like a menu from the fountain of youth, but everything Roizen puts in his body he sees as a prescription to living a younger life. "Roughly a third of arterial age-related disease—heart disease, stroke, impotence, wrinkling of the skin—and a third of immune aging—cancer, infection, many forms of arthritis—can be better managed with nutrition." His best-selling RealAge books are based on the premise that lifestyle changes, particularly in diet, can stave off many diseases and allow you to live younger, with greater health and vitality than your calendar age would predict.
Once Roizen's concept took off he enlisted the culinary genius of fellow physician John La Puma, an M.D. with professional chef training, and the two created a cookbook (for some RealAge recipes, see page 30). Unlike traditional medicine, in which disease is treated, Roizen's focus is on prevention and improving the quality of life.
Vital Statistics: 5'4", 132 pounds. ("My calendar age is 57, but my RealAge is 40. My ideal weight is 130.")
Q. How would you describe your approach to eating?
The first words that come to mind are enjoyable, fun and healthy. Based on the available data we have, I eat food that will keep me younger for a long time.
Q. What is a typical daily menu for you?
I start every day with a cup of tea, for the flavonoids. Then, a breakfast of Cheerios or oatmeal with soymilk and banana, strawberries or whatever fruit is on hand. If I'm in a real hurry I'll throw fruit into the blender with fruit juice for a smoothie.
Lunch is a tomato-based soup that I've brought from home and/or a Subway Veggie Delite with balsamic vinegar and olive oil and extra tomatoes, with no mayonnaise or cheese. I eat a lot of tomatoes and tomato sauce because research shows that consumption of 10 tablespoons of tomato sauce a week decreases the likelihood of cancer. It's probably because of the lycopene, although we're still not sure.
I'll have nuts or air-popped popcorn for an afternoon snack.
Dinner is typically one of the RealAge meals from the cookbook. The pastas I eat are always whole-grain.
Q. Are your weekend meals different?
On the weekends I have more protein. Sunday breakfast will be an egg-white omelet (4 to 5 egg whites) with sautéed vegetables, and fruit like an apple, banana, sliced peach or grapes.
Lunch will be tomato-based soup (gazpacho in summer, tomato-spinach in winter, never cream-based), a veggie-stuffed pizza or chicken breast. Dinner is always fish—salmon or a white fish.
Q. No sweets?
This is going to sound stupid but sometimes, for a late-night snack, I'll take 25 semisweet chocolate chips, melt them in the microwave and pour them over fresh fruit. Chocolate—dark, cocoa-based chocolate—has flavonoids that can help to keep you young. But too much sugar can disrupt blood-pressure regulation, and that can make you age.
Q. Are there any foods that you steadfastly avoid?
I avoid four-legged fat [red meat and dairy] and trans fat with a passion, because they age you. They increase the risk of arterial aging, stroke and memory loss, and they increase the risk of cancer. I also avoid simple carbohydrates because they age you, turning on genes that make inflammatory proteins that increase the risk of damaging inflammation in arteries and the immune system.
Q. What is in your refrigerator?
Always: Fresh vegetables, lettuce, celery and tomato sauce. Never: Ice cream and red meat.
Q. Do you drink alcohol or coffee?
Both my wife and I enjoy a glass of wine in the evening. I drink about six cups of black coffee a day, and about six 12-ounce cans of diet cola every day. As long as you don't have one of the side effects of caffeine, like increased heart rate, migraine or stomach upset, coffee can keep you younger. It decreases your risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. But because caffeine can leach calcium from the body, I take supplemental calcium. For every 12-ounce can of diet cola or 4-ounce cup of coffee you should take 20 milligrams of calcium in supplement form.
Q. What are your indulgences?
Nuts and real (cocoa-based) chocolate. I avidly attend Syracuse basketball and football games and I have peanuts at the games. They are a bit of an indulgence but they're healthy. I don't find a need to have unhealthy things.
Q. What is your greatest food weakness? How do you handle it?
I can eat a whole baguette in one sitting with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette. If I do indulge, I try to do it with healthy bread. But as a rule, I just keep baguettes out of the house.
Q. Has your diet changed from 10 years ago?
I had fewer servings of fruit and vegetables each day, less tomato sauce, and I ate a lot more red meat. Also, I loved lattes, coffee with lots of cream and sugar. But as I read the data I decided I had to stop. I just went cold turkey and I haven't really missed it.
Q. If you were left on a deserted island, what three foods would you take with you?
How about nine foods? Chocolate, wine, purslane, spinach—or any green vegetables—salmon, nuts, olive oil, tomatoes and blueberries—or any fruit.
Q. What do you do when you're on the road, in an airport, on the highway, and the only stop is a Burger King or a 7-Eleven?
I try to find a Subway when I'm on the road, so I can eat the Veggie Delite. If I can't find one I will try to find a place with fruit, nuts or a box of Cheerios and a diet soda.
As a last ditch, when I'm starved, say in an airport, I find what I call neutral food, without saturated or trans fats, a bagel or other bread at Au Bon Pain. It's rare now that you can't find something.
Q. Do you take supplements?
Yes, a very exact multivitamin I designed that I take two times a day, for maximum absorption. Together, the two provide 1,600 milligrams calcium, 800 IU of vitamin E, no more than 2,500 units of vitamin A, 800 micrograms folate, 1,200 milligrams of C, 600 IU of vitamin D and RDAs of the rest of the vitamins. It's not easy to get this combination in a vitamin. I've been writing to vitamin companies to try to get them to make a reasonable product.
Q. What diseases do you worry about personally?
Every man has a fear of prostate cancer because it can decrease longevity and enjoyment of life. All cancers and all degenerative diseases, particularly heart disease, stroke and memory loss, are worrisome. But I don't worry about them per se because the way I live my life I do the best I can to prevent these diseases, living a RealAge way. It's easy to make small substitutions that make a difference in how fast we age.—A.J.C.
Kathryn Sucher, Sc.D., R.D.
Professor: Department of Nutrition & Food Science, San Jose State University, San Jose, California
Coauthor: Food and Culture
Pamela Goyan Kittler, M.S.
Consultant: Cultural Nutrition, Sunnyvale, California
Coauthor: Food and Culture
Say you're a dietitian and you need to counsel a patient on getting more calcium in her diet. What do you tell someone who comes from a culture like Guatemala's, where dairy products are scarce and cheese is considered "rotted milk"? Or a Vietnamese patient, who's more likely to eat soup for breakfast than cereal? For nearly a decade and a half, America's dietitians have relied on one book for the answers: Food and Culture by Kathryn Sucher and Pamela Kittler (Wadsworth/Thomson). Now in its fourth edition, the book details the cultural/culinary rainbow our country has become.
These days, with salsa outselling ketchup and sushi a household word, Sucher and Kittler find themselves in high demand on the lecture circuit. "Food is a nonthreatening way to discuss cultural differences," says Kittler. "Everybody likes to eat."
Kathryn Sucher:
Vital Statistics: 53 years old, 5'3", 124 pounds. ("I'd like to get down to 121.")
Q. What is your exercise regimen?
My husband and I do yoga three times a week at our local swim and racquet club. And we walk a lot—we try to get in about two miles a day.
Q. Have your dietary goals changed in the past 10 years?
Not really… I've always just believed in moderation. I suppose I'm focusing less on cutting fat or eating more carbohydrates now… I follow a sort of South Beach Diet pattern, a fairly sensible approach for me, because I like protein. The best diet in the world is one you can stick with.
Q. Does your family share your dietary approach?
It's the curse of being a nutritionist: I have a son (age 16) who eats no fruit or vegetables. But my husband and I definitely follow the philosophy that you don't force kids to eat what they don't like, but rather model healthy eating yourself. There's always plenty of fruit in the house and at least we adults eat lots of seasonal vegetables.
Q. What's a typical day's menu for you?
I alternate breakfasts between a bowl of Safeway Select, an "adult" healthy cereal with whole grains, dried cranberries and slivered almonds, and on alternate days, a soft-boiled egg. And coffee—always good, strong coffee.
I don't snack before lunch, but I'm ready for lunch at 11, because I get up early. It's often leftovers from the night before or a container of whipped yogurt and two pieces of fruit—eaten at my desk, usually. I'll have a snack in the afternoon, a piece of fruit or some pretzels, or something I've recently discovered: microwave kettle corn. It's a fantastic combination of sweet and salty, and only about 50 calories per cup. I make sure not to eat the whole bag.
We always eat dinner together as a family—that's really important for us,
with no distractions, no TV, just conversation. We have a lot of pastas, soups or stews in the winter. We have a lot of salads—around here, you can get great salad greens any time of year. Generally, we don't have dessert, but once in a while I'll make something like tapioca pudding. We always end up eating it warm because we can't wait for it to set.
Q. What can trip you up?
There are some things we just can't have in the house, because I can't stop eating them. If there's a box of chocolates, I have a tough time. Tortilla chips or potato chips also don't come into the house, unless we're having a party…for the same reasons, we try not to keep too much cheese in the house.
Q. What happens when you're on the road and fast food is all you can find?
I happen to like Burger King's vegetarian burger. Or I'll get something with chicken. Actually, I find I eat more healthfully when I travel. I don't snack as much—probably because I go to countries where people don't snack a lot—Europe, the Middle East, Japan, China.
Q. Why do we have such a weight problem in this country?
In other countries, people walk and take public transportation; in this country, we park our cars close to the gym so we don't have to walk far to get there. Another reason is that we eat constantly—and the foods we're confronted with constantly are the hardest ones to resist. There's also an American attitude toward food: that it's just something to fill up that space in your stomach. We don't sit and enjoy our food. I'm a firm believer in sitting down and eating meals.
Pamela Kittler:
Vital Statistics: Just turned 50; 5'8". ("My weight? I'd rather not say. I've recently lost 35 pounds, and have about 5 more to go.")
Q. What is your exercise regimen?
I walk regularly with my husband, and do some stretching and strengthening exercises at home. My fingers stay in good shape with all the keyboarding I do, but the rest of me…
Q. Have your dietary goals changed in the past 10 years?
Starting last February, I've been following a modified version of the Atkins diet—low-carbohydrate, high-protein, but focusing more on using low-fat meats and poultry—and being sure to get lots of vegetables when I do eat carbohydrates. I didn't decide to do this until recent research began to suggest this diet may not be as detrimental to blood lipids as was previously believed.
At first, I was planning on using the diet for short-term weight loss, but now I'm considering how I can turn it into a lifelong approach to eating. It really seems to work for my body type. I've been on other diets and found I was always starving and obsessing about food—eating higher protein helps alleviate those hunger pangs. I'm still in a weight-loss phase, so I only get about 20 to 30 grams of carbohydrates a day.
Q. Isn't that a challenge for someone who likes to eat ethnic dishes, when
so many of them are quite high in carbohydrates?
Well—yes, but in many ethnic recipes carbohydrates are the foundation of the dish, and I can just prepare them without the foundation. For example, I'll make a stir-fry of meat and vegetables, and serve it over rice for my husband and have my portion without the rice.
Q. What's a typical day's menu for you?
I eat one or two eggs for breakfast every day, scrambled with feta cheese and fresh basil or over easy, occasionally with a slice of Canadian bacon, and coffee. (Atkins people tell you not to drink caffeine, but I'm not about to give that up.) Lunch is usually at my desk—even though I work out of my home; it might be a quarter avocado with shrimp or tuna salad, or leftovers from the night before, and another cup of coffee. I rarely eat fruit on my low-carb diet. I mostly eat veggies now.
I'll have a quarter-cup of macadamia nuts or almonds for an afternoon snack. Dinner is usually some sort of a salad with meat, poultry or fish, or a stew or soup. I don't do dessert anymore. Weekends are pretty much the same...my husband and I don't eat out a lot.
Q. Do you take supplements?
I take a calcium supplement daily, because high-protein diets are thought to possibly—possibly—increase calcium excretion. I also find it hard to keep up my potassium levels with this kind of diet, so I take a potassium supplement as well, and a multivitamin.
Q. What foods do you allow yourself to indulge in?
What I really miss is great bread—say, a really good rustic olive bread with grains of salt on the top. If I'm at a restaurant, once in a while, I'll let myself enjoy that. Sweets used to be my weakness, but I have adjusted and have been surprised to find that instead of craving sweets, I am no longer interested in them!
Q. Where do people's diets go wrong in this country?
I don't think it's much of a mystery. We're tempted to eat too much when something tastes good. And since exercise is no longer integral to our daily routine, it has to be added into already packed schedules. What especially concerns me is the skyrocketing increase in obese children. It breaks my heart that so many kids do nothing besides eat and live a virtual life via the television or computer, during the time of their lives when they should be naturally active and engaged with their world and with each other. I worry what will happen to their health in the future.—J.H.
