Real Fitness Solutions Blog

Okay, okay.  I should have written this about two weeks ago.  Unfortunately, the official end of the challenge coincided with the resumption of my temporary-part-time job as well as one too many home improvement projects; the result of which has been that I haven’t even logged into my blog since June 7th.

So that’s my excuse.  But now that I’m done (again) with my temporary-part-time job, I have a chance to catch up.  And I figure it’s about time I shared my thoughts on the whole food challenge thing.

Here are a few things I’ve noted:

-I added up all my grocery receipts for the month, including trips to the farmer’s markets.  I spent a total of $386.66 on food for 30 days, for 1.5 people (I’m only counting my husband as half a person in this respect, since he’s on the road about 60% of the time and isn’t home to eat any of the food that I buy).  So that means I spent $257.77 on food for myself for the month, or 15% of my income.  The average American spends about 12% of their income on food, so this is a little high; however, there are 3 things to consider.  First of all, I had to stock up on food, so there was a big initial expenditure; there was also a big “entertaining” expenditure in the middle of the month, when I bought enough food to prepare for 6 people instead of 2.  Second of all, I don’t cut coupons and I don’t look for sales.  Anyone willing to do this can save quite a bit of money.  And third, I went all-out and made sure that even the meat and dairy products I bought were “non-convenience.”  I didn’t buy any conventionally raised chicken, beef, or eggs; I looked for pastured, grass-fed, free range, or organic products whenever I could.  I don’t expect everyone to do this (although I now believe there are very good reasons to do so), so you can save money on that aspect as well.  The point of this challenge was to prove that it really is not as hard as everyone seems to think to plan ahead and prepare real meals instead of pre-packaged, processed, or fast food.  I think I’ve done that; it was not my intent to prove that one type of chicken is better than another, so I’m not going to get into that.  You can plan and prepare a homemade meal just as well with industrial beef as you can with grass-fed beef.  I will say, however, that I plan to continue buying meat and eggs from local, sustainable sources.

-I don’t feel that I spent all of my free time cooking.  I don’t feel like I spent any more time than I did before, actually.  If you’ve been following my daily blog entries, you’ve noticed that pretty much every day I recorded how much time I spent preparing food that day.  Hopefully you’ve also noticed that the average time spent (on a total of 3 meals a day) was about 10 minutes.  Overall, I spent about 30 hours this month cooking and baking.  That’s an average of an hour a day.  But before you say, “I don’t have an hour a day!” keep in mind that this includes a lot of inactive prep time: waiting for bread to rise for 3 hours (which I said at the beginning probably wasn’t necessary; it is possible to find bread with natural ingredients in the store, or better yet, a local bakery… in my neighborhood, I discovered the Franklin Street Bakery and will be going there for all my hamburger-bun  and apple-fritter needs from now on), or waiting for chicken on the grill for an hour, or waiting for  pulled pork roast to roast for 3 hours.  When I make a recipe that takes 2 hours, I don’t spend 2 hours in the kitchen.  I’m not crazy, and I don’t like cooking that much.  But it’s a good rule of thumb that if you’re making  recipe that takes that long, make a double or triple recipe and freeze the rest; that way, you won’t have to spend another 2 hours making it again next week.  Plan ahead; that was my mantra for this month, and for the forseeable future.

-I felt way better eating whole foods that I prepared myself than I did when eating convenience food.  I thought I ate pretty well before and made healthy choices even if I sometimes ate fast food and tv dinners.  But I also used to get heartburn or indigestion on a regular basis; I cannot recall a single instance of that during the official challenge.  Two days after the challenge ended, however, I finally had that soda I’d been craving since Day 20; I didn’t even drink half the can before the acid in it made me feel like there were needles in my stomach.  Awesome.  So if you have random mild stomach problems that you’ve never been able to attribute to any particular food, and maybe you think it’s just normal, you might want to try cleaning up your diet a bit.  You might be surprised.

-I didn’t see any weight changes or anything like that.  Of course, I wasn’t trying to; that wasn’t the point of the challenge.  But I started at 139 lbs and ended at 141.5 lbs; a difference that could easily occur over the normal course of a day.  It’s also easily explained by the sheer amounts of cake I ate while working at the bakery part time for two of the four weeks; add that to the fact that I’ve been too busy to work out more than twice a week (which is highly unusual for me), and 2.5 pounds seems natural.  Assuming, of course, that it is actual weight gain and not just daily fluctuation.  Actually, if you go back and look at my food journals, you’ll find that I should technically be at a 1520-calorie deficit for the month (a little less than half a pound), but that doesn’t include the alcohol-and-guacamole-soaked Memorial Day Weekend, when I did not keep track of my calories.  Or the ridiculous amounts of cake I ate (bakery job again!) in the three days since the challenge officially ended and I actually remembered to weigh myself.  My point is, I’m not worried about it.  So I would say that I managed to maintain my weight without counting calories or working out like a fiend.  Whole foods make you feel more satisfied, so you eat less.  That means you don’t have to think as hard about your food choices and trying to keep your calories in check.

So these are my main observations.  My conclusion is that this type of lifestyle is do-able.  I know that I don’t lead the most typical life, but I also went out of my way to eat less conveniently than I had to.  As I’ve said from the beginning, who really bakes their own bread? 

I encourage everyone to give it a try.  I am not going entirely back to my previous lifestyle.  I really did enjoy eating whole foods, and the effort I put into preparing them made them more satisfying, so I was less likely to wolf it down mindlessly.  Cooking your meals makes you conscious of the effort it takes to put calories in your stomach, so it makes you appreciate it more.

I’m going to keep posting recipes and tips.  In fact, this week I’ll be trying a slow-cooker burrito recipe, given to me by the Evil Cake Genius that I work for sometimes.  I even bought a slow-cooker just to make this happen (why didn’t I think of this before?).  And I’m working on another friend of mine who makes her own ketchup; she hasn’t given me her recipe yet because she doesn’t technically have one, so I’m waiting for her to throw together another batch and remember to write it down.

I hope this has been helpful for those of you who have been following it.  I apologize again for my inconsistent posting.  But if anyone else has tried their own inconvenient food challenge, let us know how it’s going!  And please, please share your recipes!

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Hi everybody!  I took a little food adventure today.  Since I recently found out that the St. Paul farmers’ market is 100% local (see last Thursday’s blog entry), I decided to check it out and see what I could find for dinner.  Did you know sugar snap peas are in season right now?  I didn’t…but I learned something today.  

So I ate sugar snap peas for dinner tonight, along with another round of beer-can chicken (the recipe is posted here http://realfitnesssolutions.com/blog/?p=188).  The chicken was also from the farmers’ market, raised by Prairie Pride Farms, without hormones or antibiotics, given free range, and sold directly to me.  I like the idea of meeting the person who provided my dinner.  Anyway, I got a 5.5 lb chicken for $18.50 (about $3.36/lb), which might sound like a lot for chicken, but comparatively speaking I can buy a 3 lb free-range, organic, hormone- and antibiotic-free SmartChicken at Lund’s for about $16, or about $5.33/lb.  So the farmers’ market is a good deal for non-industrial meat.  Plus, 5.5 lbs will feed a lot of people…or two people for a lot of meals.

I also got a dozen free-range etc eggs for $3.50.  Again, a lot for eggs, but compare it to the supermarket where organic eggs are $4.99/dozen, even at Rainbow or Cub.  Plus, since I eat so many egg sandwiches (where the main flavor is the eggs) I figure it’s a good idea to spend a bit more on quality.  And in the case of egg sandwiches, a dozen eggs=a dozen meals.  So $3.50 is a small price to pay for the main ingredient for a dozen meals.

I took a picture of the beer can chicken this time.  You’ll also see the sugar snap peas, which we tossed with a tiny bit of olive oil and salt and grilled in a packet for about 5 minutes.  They’re best when they’re not really cooked.

St. Paul Farmers' Market Special: Beer Can Chicken and Sugar Snap Peas (with grilled potatoes that were in our fridge, from the grocery store). Whole food at its best.

Today’s fast food facts: I made bread, so about 4 hours spent baking, but most of it was inactive.  The chicken takes about 10 minutes to prepare, but you have to prep the grill and drink a little of the beer (because you can’t use a full beer can when you make beer can chicken), and then for a big chicken like this one was, it takes almost 2 hours on the grill.  But most of that is inactive, too; you just put the chicken on and leave it. 

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Among the many things in my freezer, there is a tub of ice cream that has been sitting there, not being eating, for almost a month.  How is this possible?  Well, I made the mistake of looking at the ingredient list.  Or should I say, luckily, I looked at the ingredient list.

My husband came home from the grocery store the night before I started the No Convenience-Food Challenge with this ice cream, thinking it would be a nice treat since I probably wouldn’t be eating much ice cream during the challenge.  He was right, it would have been a nice treat, had I not looked.  After reading the ingredients (purely out of curiosity, not to make a point), I decided not to eat it anyway.

But now, purely to make a point, I’d like to show you that ingredient list.  There are two points, actually.  The first is that “food-like substances” seem to be more common than actual food, and you have to keep your eyes out–because the food industry is looking to make a buck, which means adding “value” where ever they can (i.e., processing).  The second is something I’ve said before: don’t trust “Healthy!” labels.  These are the ingredients for Roundy’s Select Chocolate Fudge Chunk Light Ice Cream: a name that would have you believe that not only is it wholesome (“select”) but that it is also good for you (“light”).  If a food product has to tell you that it’s healthy, it’s probably not.

Without further ado:

Nonfat milk, sucrose, corn syrup, cream, chocolate butter fudge ribbon (high fructose corn syrup, water, dextrose, corn syrup, nonfat dry milk, cocoa processed with alkali, margarine (liquid soybean oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, water, salt, whey, soy lecithin, soy mono and diglycerides, sodium benzoate, artificial butter flavor, beta carotene, vitamin A palmitate), modified corn starch, salt, soy lecithin, potassium sorbate), chocolate flakes (sugar (sugar, corn starch), coconut oil, cocoa processed with alkali, butter oil, soy lecithin, natural flavor, milk), cocoa processed with alkali, stabilizer (whey protein isolate, tapioca starch, guar gum, mono and diglycerides, tara gum, cellulose gum, polysorbate 80, xanthan gum, carrageenan).

Not only does that list read like a foreign language (my spell-checker almost crashed), if you know anything about grammar and you’re slightly OCD–like me–the use of parentheses within parentheses within parentheses hurts your head a little bit. 

Did you notice that the “Chocolate butter fudge ribbon” contains margarine and artificial butter flavor?  And here I thought it should be made with butter.  And the “sugar” listed after “Chocolate flakes” is actually sugar and corn starch.  Sugar has its own ingredients.

For comparison, I just googled “chocolate ice cream recipe” to see what ingredients you should actually see in ice cream.  The second search result was from Alton Brown, who has never done me wrong on a recipe.  The ingredients needed are as follows:

Unsweetened cocoa powder, half-and-half, heavy cream, egg yolks, sugar, pure vanilla extract.

6 ingredients.  And spell-checker recognizes them all.

Of course, it’s probably not a “light” recipe.  But then, would you rather eat a little more fat in the form of recognizeable food, or a little less fat in the form of corn syrup and cocoa processed with alkali?

Once again, I am amazed at what people consider “food.”

Well, here’s today’s food journal (sans ice cream, of course).  Hey, but I just remembered: yesterday I wrote that Crema Cafe on 34th and Lyndale is approved by Slow Food International…and they have homemade ice cream!  Woot!  Anyway, today’s total cooking time is once again under 10 minutes; I took some time to microwave a burrito, and cook an egg while toasting an english muffin.  Boring, I know.

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So, I was doing a little research today because I wanted to find out where to buy sustainably raised meat from local sources.  I guess this doesn’t have much to do with convenience vs. non-convenience; it takes just as long to cook an industrial steak as it does to cook an all-natural, grass-fed, hormone- and antibiotic-free hippie steak.  But it turns out that the deeper I get into this non-processed food thing, the more of a hippie I become.  It turns out that I care what my food eats, too. 

It’s kind of funny, though.  If any of you have read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan, you’ve read the account of how most of the meat in this country is raised, and it’s not pretty; kind of the way Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” exposed the meat-packing industry of the early 1900’s for it’s food safety issues.  I say it’s funny because I’ve read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” before, and I just kind of shrugged my shoulders while going to Arby’s for my corn-fed industrial roast beef sandwich.  In other words, it didn’t change my mind about where my food should come from.

But this time around, since I’m much more conscious of the food that’s going into my body and the effort it takes to get it there, I started wondering if maybe I should be concerned about what’s going into the bodies of the cows and chickens and pigs that I eat, too.  The part of the book about commercially-raised meat resonated much more this time; I am actually disgusted enough to try to change my habits.  And since there is no way on earth that I’m going to become a vegetarian, I decided it was time to look around for a different source for meat.

I want to be clear; I’m not trying to change your mind (or anyone else’s) about the sources of your food.  I just want to tell everyone my experience.  So I won’t go into details about why commercially-raised meat isn’t as healthy (my decision has nothing to do with the “happiness” of the animals, only their nutritional value), but if you want to find out for yourself you are welcome to read “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”  I think this is a state of mind that you have to come to on your own. 

Anyway, long story short, I  googled “local food minneapolis” or something similar to that.  And I found the mother lode.  There is a local chapter of Slow Food International in Minnesota.  Slow Food is a movement that started in Rome, as a protest to the opening of a McDonald’s in Rome.  It has since gone international (obviously) and the goal of the movement is to try to preserve local flavors and food traditions.  In other words, to try to maintain a cuisine, rather than give in to simply eating.

Since my challenge for the last month or so has been to eat real  food, I was totally stoked to find this website.  Yes, I said “stoked.”  You can check it out yourself at http://www.slowfoodmn.org/.  For those of you not in Minnesota, I’m sure you can just google “slow food (insert state here).” 

So as I said, I was looking for local meats: mostly beef and chicken, but I was open to anything.  And this website pointed me to so many different sources that I never even knew existed!  This link http://www.slowfoodmn.org/local.html  will take you directly to a list of restaurants, farms, co-ops, and other businesses where you can buy non-industrial food.  Here is a list of things I discovered on this website:

-There are several restaurants in my area that are “slow-food” certified; in other words, they hold up Slow Food’s principles of “good, clean, and fair.”  These include a few restaurants I have eaten at and several I’ve been wanting to try: Barbette, Broder’s Pasta Bar, Bryant Lake Bowl, Crema Cafe (literally right across the street from the studio where I train my clients), and French Meadow Bakery and Cafe are just a few that you Minneapolis people might have heard of.  There are at least a dozen more.

-You can buy an eighth of a cow.  The Grass Fed Cattle Company is a co-op of farmers that raise pastured beef.  You place an order (minimum order is 1/8 of a steer, but you can order more) and pick it up in Edina.  You can get about 60 lbs of beef for about $3.95/lb.  In comparison, a pound of grass-fed ground beef in the grocery store is around $7.99/lb.  And that’s just ground beef; not even a good steak.  Another good reason to have a big freezer.

-The farmers’ market in St. Paul only sells local food; I believe the radius is 50 miles (but please don’t quote me on that yet).  From their website: “The [St. Paul Growers' Association] allows only fresh, locally grown produce to be sold–directly from the grower to the consumer. Also available are bakery goods, cheese, poultry, buffalo, venison, beef, pork, lamb, maple syrup, eggs, bagel sandwiches, honey, organic plants and produce, flowers, plants, shrubs and many other items.”  On another page: “All produce must be locally grown.  Value added products must be produced locally using local products.  The St. Paul Farmers’ Market is open to agricultural items.  Craft items will not be considered. You are not allowed to buy and re-sell produce at any of our locations.”  I was excited to find this because I have gone to the big Lyndale farmer’s market in Minneapolis and found everything but locally produced food.

-The Minneapolis and St. Paul are even has a few “slow food” approved beverage companies, including Alexis Baily Vineyard, which I’ve never heard of; but we are also home to Summit Brewing Company and Surly Brewing Company.  If you’re from the area and you like good beer, you’ve heard of Summit and Surly.  Also if you’re looking for a beer that will punch you in the face with its hoppiness and alcohol content, try Surly.

Anyway, as you can see, I’m really excited about the possibilities for local, sustainably produced meat (and other products).  I am once again trying to convince my ever-patient husband that we need a separate freezer; I want to buy 1/8 of a cow.  And then I’m going to have a hell of a barbecue.

Today’s food journal: boring in comparison.  I didn’t make anything; just microwaving, as usual, so the time spent cooking today is less than 10 minutes.

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Well, we’re getting towards the end of the one-month challenge that I set for myself.  Only a few more days to go, and I’ve been thinking that I’ll be glad when it’s done.  Not because it’s hard or anything, but because I don’t like blogging every day.

Sorry, readers.

I find the most difficult part of this whole thing is writing the blogs at the end of every day, or at the beginning of the next day.  It always takes longer than I think it will, and quite frankly, at the end of the day, I’m not as creative or thoughtful or interesting as I would like to be.  So I worry that what I write is not very exciting.  But the whole no-convenience food thing is fantastic; I will keep it up after this month, at least 95% of the time.

And I’ll probably still blog about the benefits of eating real food.  I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I’m amazed at some of the things that people consider “food.”

So here’s today’s food journal.  I avoided the leftover pancakes, salsa, chips, and guac, only because the calories were adding up faster than I could count them.  I tried to go back to normal today.  Total prep time was no more or less than usual; 10 minutes in the toaster over to reheat the pizza, 5 minutes to fry an egg and toast an english muffin for my lunch-time egg sandwich.  Oh, and 5-10 minutes to make popcorn tonight.  I’ve been craving popcorn for a while, so tonight I decided to pop in a movie (I just got Sherlock Holmes in the mail) and satisfy my popcorn craving.  I have to admit, though, that I thought it would have been nice to have a soda to go with.

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Well, I spent a lot of time cooking today.  I’ll be going up to a friend’s cabin for the long weekend, and I wanted to make sure I had lots of homemade food–not just meals, but treats and goodies as well.  And not just for me, but for the 6 other people too.  So overall I probably spent about 3 hours preparing food to take with me.  On the plus side, I won’t have to spend much time on cooking while I’m there.  I have been assured that there will be grilling, including kabobs (for which I am responsible for the vegetables) and hamburgers made from scratch (not those frozen patties).

Here is a list of things I have done in preparation for the weekend: washed and chopped a large salad, made salsa, guacamole, and homemade baked tortilla chips (from corn tortillas), made cookies (and of course I ate a bunch of cookie dough in the process), and prepared pancake batter (keeping the wet and dry ingredients separate, to be mixed on the morning that we make pancakes).

Except for the salad, none of that sounds particularly healthy, does it?  But eating whole foods can include goodies, too.  I actually looked at the ingredients for the chocolate chips that I use in my cookies (plain old Nestle Toll House semi-sweet chips).  I was expecting to be seriously disappointed, but it turns out that I recognized all of the ingredients in them…and there were surprisingly few of them.  I had a harder time finding real corn tortillas to make my own chips.

I’ll admit right now that I have no intention of keeping a food journal this weekend.  Suffice it to say that I will go way over on calories, but I have plenty of non-convenience food to eat.

So here’s my food journal for today.  I spent very little time on today’s meals, as usual, but like I said I spent about 3 hours on food prep.  Also the cookies I make are about 150 calories a pop…check out what those little bites did to my calorie balance for the day.

See you all on Tuesday!  I’m out!

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So, about 2 days after I began the “No Convenience Food Challenge,” my husband found a coupon for 5 12-packs of Coke products for $9 at Rainbow.  So he went to Rainbow and bought 5 12-packs of soda, because it was too good of a deal to pass up.  That’s normally enough soda to keep our house stocked for about a year.  And I can’t drink any of it.  He got 2 packs of Coke, 1 pack of orange Fanta, 1 pack of Mr. Pibb, and 1 pack of Sprite.  And I thought, no big deal, I don’t really like Coke or Sprite, and I just won’t put the Mr. Pibb or the Fanta in the fridge.  Because nobody likes a warm soda.

Well.  I want soda.  And there’s two cans of Fanta in the fridge, staring at me every time I open the door (I didn’t put them there).  And my willpower is fading in this 85-90 degree weather.  When I come home from trying to walk 3 dogs at the same time (I’m dogsitting two extra dogs for a couple of weeks) and I’m sweating and frustrated because 2 of them just REFUSE to walk nicely, and I open the fridge for water, there’s the soda.  Right there.  Every time.

It’s pretty annoying.  Like I said, those 60 cans of soda would normally last about a year in our house.  We just don’t drink a lot of soda, so I did not think it would be hard to avoid for one month.  I’ve gone more than a month before without soda, unintentionally, and not even noticed.

The moral of the story: if you’re trying to avoid a certain food, just don’t buy it.  Don’t keep it in the house.  And don’t use your family as an excuse: “Oh, I only keep Cheetos and potato chips around for the kids.”  To be fair to my husband, while he knew I couldn’t drink the soda, he didn’t think it would be hard for me to avoid because it’s not a weak spot for me.  Or so we thought.  Oh well. 

I know I said the other day that I’ll continue eating this way after this month is over, and for the most part it’s true.  But on Day 31, I’m going to have one of those orange Fanta’s in my fridge.  And then I’ll probably go back to drinking one soda overy 3-4 weeks.  So I won’t be as picky as I have been…but I am definitely going to make the effort to avoid anything with an ingredient label that doesn’t sound like English.

Oh, speaking of ingredient labels: I’ve thought of yet another way to define this Challenge.  If there is an ingredient on the label that you can’t picture, you shouldn’t be eating it.  If a word does not conjure up a mental image of a recognizable food, it’s probably not food.  Even if the package says “organic” or “all natural.”  High fructose corn syrup made from organic corn is organic high fructose corn syrup, but it’s not any less processed than the conventional HFCS.  The same is true of maltodextrin or carrageenan, or most of the other “ingredients” in processed food.  That doesn’t make them healthy.  And I have no idea what any of those things look like.

Well, I made it thought the day without drinking that soda.  Total cook time: about 5 minutes for my lunch; about 4 minutes of prep/microwave time for my dinner.  Although I have to admit, it’s only about 8:00 at night right now, so I may have a snack yet.  I’m writing this blog a little preemptively, while I kill time waiting for my car at the shop.  I’ll let you know tomorrow if I add anything to my food journal tonight.

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