Resolutions to eat in a healthier, leaner, better way have a habit of falling apart. Whatever weight-loss program you last tried has become boring and restrictive and hard to stick with. As for the super-low-fat or almost-no-carb meals you’ve cooked, or the liquid meal in a can, well, how could anybody look forward to them?
So maybe, just maybe, that diet-until-I-lose-10-or-whatever-pounds approach is not the answer. What does that leave you with?
Well, how does a plate of Sichuan pepper-crusted steak smothered with onions sound? Or a curried chicken, lentil, vegetable and potato stew?
These suggestions (and dishes) come from books by chef Sally Schneider (“A New Way to Cook,” Artisan, $40) and nutritionist Katherine Tallmadge (“Diet Simple,” Lifeline Press, $21.95), women who have spent their personal and professional lives thinking about these challenges. Joining them is Kathleen Daelemans’ “Cooking Thin” (Houghton Mifflin, $27) in which a formerly fat chef shows how she reined in her appetite while eating well (see accompanying story).
And sure, there’s food for thought in just about any diet book. But these approaches–let’s call them the “undiets”–confront the problem in productive, manageable ways that address healthful eating rather than dieting.
The solution is never simple. Many diet books prescribe strict eating plans and calorie limits that take a one-size-fits-all approach. But these three books promote self-knowledge and an attitude that food is not an enemy. They encourage people to learn as much as possible about food in the hope that sound information–rather than magical thinking or rigid adherence–will help people make better food choices.
It’s not surprising that these authors urge readers to listen to their bodies and not to expect, or even hope for, quick results.
“People are so confused and so unhappy,” Schneider says. “This is a slow process of learning to listen to your body and how you feel and how your spirit is.”
Schneider and Tallmadge approached the problem differently. “A New Way to Cook” teaches the reader how to cook all over again, with some–but considerably less–fat and with intense flavors. “Diet Simple” focuses on changing negative eating behavior through strategies (achievable goals, mental tricks, substitutions, activity changes) that can help people lasso their eating.
Schneider is a chef who rejoiced in the pleasures of serious French and Italian cooking, but she had, and continues to have, food allergies, sens-itivities and constraints such as fluctuating blood sugar levels and a propensity to gain weight easily.
“I wanted to find a way where I didn’t have to forgo foods that fed my spirit and made me happy, but that fit my needs,” she says.
Taken as a whole, her approach resembles the Mediterranean diet–more plant-based than the average American one, with moderate amounts of fish, poultry, nuts and wine; and small amounts of red meat, saturated fats, dairy products and sugar.
Only a chef or serious cook would have come up with some of her techniques–for example, creating a fake whipped cream with low-fat, salt-free cottage cheese and only 4 grams of fat per half cup.
As a result, readers who will get the most out of the book are the ones who like to cook and are willing to do things like toast spices to enhance flavor.
The “Diet Simple” approach is the result of Tallmadge’s more than 20 years spent developing strategies to help other people learn how to lose weight and keep it off, or to recover from rigid diet programs at which they’ve failed.
She’s been there too. Growing up, she was aware her mother was always on a diet.
“Kids can’t help modeling their behavior after their parents,” she says. And although she didn’t have weight problems as an active, athletic child, once she got to college her eating increased and her activity plummeted. For the first time in her life, she gained weight, tried rigid diets and, when her grandmother died, developed a full-blown eating disorder.
She managed to get herself out of the binge/purge cycle by telling herself the next time she overate, she would live with the consequences.
Now she plans her eating and her exercise (she even calculates a certain amount of city walking to and from appointments) and urges her clients to do the same.
Her profession necessitates the kind of sound science involved in any successful weight-loss program, that is, the interrelationships of an individual’s resting metabolic rate, activity and exercise, and food intake. Her book helps readers evaluate those factors to determine how much they can eat.
The notion that any major body change can take place speedily is probably also destined for the trash heap. But Tallmadge says her clients usually come around to a more realistic set of goals.
Quick roasted red pepper sauce
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Yield: About 1 cup
Smooth and rich-tasting, this has no fat at all. Daelemans likes to use it under fish cakes, grilled steaks or roasted chicken. “I bet you can come up with half-a-dozen uses for it too,” she writes in “Cooking Thin With Chef Kathleen.”
2 large red bell peppers, roasted, cored, peeled, seeded, see note
1 clove garlic, peeled, crushed
2 tablespoons each: Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt, freshly ground black pepper
Place bell peppers, garlic, mustard, vinegar, basil and pepper flakes in a blender. Pulse until smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Store up to 3 days in the refrigerator.
Note: To roast peppers, cut in half, core and place cut-side down in a small roasting pan. Broil until skin blisters and chars. Remove from heat. Let cool slightly. Place in plastic or paper bag until cool enough to handle. Strip away charred skin with paring knife.
Nutrition information per 1/4 cup:
35 calories, 20% calories from fat, 0.9 g fat, 0 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 190 mg sodium, 7 g carbohydrate, 1.3 g protein, 1.8 g fiber
