FitDelicious: Living and Writing the Experience

The Food Your Children Eat Could Change Their Lives!

2010-11-27T14:30:00.000-08:00

Read the newspaper, flip through a magazine, turn on the TV or radio, or surf the internet and you'll be bombarded with marketing messages, research studies, or statistics about your health and weight.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), two-thirds of the American adult population is now overweight or obese. That's 127 million overweight adults, 60 million obese and 9 million severely obese. Equally disturbing are the one third or 26 million children who are also overweight or obese. Since 1980, obesity among children ages 6 to 11 more than doubled while the rate among adolescents aged 12 to 19 more than tripled to 17.6 %. In some states, the rate of childhood obesity has exceeded 20%.

Unfortunately just like adult obesity, childhood obesity increases the risk of obesity-related diseases (together now estimated at $147 billion annually) including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and bone and joint problems. Obese children are also more likely to suffer self- esteem issues and become overweight or obese adults. Even more alarming is the prediction that children born in the year 2000 and after will be the first generation in America's history to die at a younger age than their parents!

WHAT CAN YOU DO? MAKE YOUR HEALTH AND YOUR CHILDREN'S HEALTH YOUR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY. Healthy food habits start at home. Be a role model for more positive eating behaviors. Eat healthier foods. Healthy foods lead to healthy minds and bodies. Better nutrition leads to better academic performance too!

Start Now. Show your kids how eating healthier foods can be fun and delicious. Teach them to be TasteFit - how to master the art of tasting - to develop a discriminating and discerning palate, one that knows how to distinguish quality from mediocrity, authenticity from artificiality, and foods that deserve their calories and foods that don't. The more you get your children away from processed foods (high in fat, sugar, and salt), the healthier they will be when they're young and grown.

Teach them how to use and develop their five senses - taste, smell, sight, touch and hearing. Start with their taste buds, the 10,000 they are given at birth. Teach them to become a connoisseur of great food instead of a collector of wasted calories. Select and prepare a variety of colorful foods that are sweet, salty, sour, fruity, spicy, and savory naturally, without added sugar, salt, fat or calories. Let your kids touch and feel the foods in their hands and mouths. Grill, roast, steam, stir-fry or sauté them and let the aromas and sizzling sounds fill your kitchen.

Show your kids how to make better food decisions. Take them to the farmers' market or favorite food store when you go shopping. Let your kids choose a variety of brightly colored and textured fruits and veggies each week, ones that are grown locally, regionally, and from different parts of the country or from around the world. Train your children's taste buds when they are young to love fruits and vegetables and they will love them for a lifetime. Buy an assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables to make sure they get their daily recommended servings -- at least 5 servings daily or 1 - 3 cups veggies and 1 - 2 cups fruits daily; check www.mypyramid.gov for recommendations by age and sex -- and vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Less than 25% adolescents eat enough fruits and veggies a day. Make sure to buy them when they are ripe and in peak season so they will taste their best.

Make food tasting a fun adventure. Have tasting parties with your kids, their friends and family. Taste testing is a wonderful way for you and your kids to explore and discover new foods to enjoy that can become part of your family's daily meal plan. Experiment by tasting different fruits and vegetables raw, especially different varieties of the same food, like apples, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, tomatoes and peppers. Then prepare them using different cooking methods so they can taste the difference between ones that have been steamed, poached, grilled, roasted, baked, pureed or sautéed. Let them taste the food by itself and then in combination with other foods. Try popping their flavor with different herbs, spices, sauces and dressings that will add variety and taste without adding too many more calories. Broaden their horizons and experiment with ethnic and world cuisines. Keep test tasting activities to itty bitty bites and small sips to keep their calories in check.

Give your kids a vocabulary to describe the foods they taste. Or let them come up with their own fun descriptions. Words like crunchy, crispy, creamy, buttery, fiery, spicy, tangy, tart, fruity, smoky, fizzy, silky, smooth, mellow, sharp, lemony, and garlicky are just a few of the words that can make food tasting more fun and interesting.

Stock your home with healthy snacks and tasty, healthier foods. Be prepared and plan ahead. The best offense is a good defense. Keep your kitchen stocked with a supply of delicious, healthy snacks and foods to satisfy their taste. Keep on hand bowls of fresh fruits, peeled and cut veggies with healthy dipping sauces, and mixtures of dried fruits, nuts and seeds. Look for beverages made with low-fat or non- fat milk, soy milk, yogurt or 100% fruit juices. Beware of foods marketed as "healthy" or "better-for-you".

Read the list of ingredients and nutrition label carefully. ALWAYS check the calorie, fat, sugar and salt content and avoid foods with trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, additives, food coloring, pesticides and hormones. Read the FitDelicious LabelFit chapter to learn more. Avoid snacks that will pack on the pounds. Limit junk foods, fried foods, and foods low in nutritional value. Check the FitDelicious Healthy Snack Chart for recommendations or test drive and prepare the hundreds of FitDelicious recipes that are great for snacks, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert too.

Make sure your kids eat breakfast. It's one of the most important meals of the day. Short on time, try making some of the FitDelicious breakfast recipes the night before, refrigerate and reheat (microwave) in the AM for your kids or take the 5 - 10 minutes to make them fresh in the morning. Smoothies can be put in a cup to go, omelets wrapped in a tortilla or stuffed in a pita to take along.

Increase your Kid's Activity Quotient. Make a list of fun "motion" activities to get your kids more active and fit. Don't let them sit in front of a computer or TV when they could be active instead. Let them walk or ride their bike whenever possible. Find physical activities you can share together and ones they'll enjoy. Get involved. Volunteer for school projects that will get your kids moving. There are plenty of schools and recreation centers that could use the extra help. Show your kids you care.

GIVE YOUR KIDS THE GIFT OF HEALTH, A GIFT THAT WILL LAST THEM A LIFETIME. Remember, obesity prevention and eating healthy starts with you. Give your kids the best start in life you can give them. Feed them foods that will help them be fit, healthy, and smart!

Don’t Quit

2009-03-15T02:10:00.000-07:00

Still Just January

It’s hard to sleep when I’m worried. I go to sleep, wake up, go to sleep, wake up … how will I ever get through this night? How will I finish this book? How much more money is it going to cost that I don’t have? All my fears seem to surface late at night. Then I go to my refrigerator. Not to get something to eat, but to read one of the messages that’s scotch taped to the door. I started taping inspirational quotes and messages from friends … anything I read that I thought might help get me through one more day, one more night. Tonight is one of those nights. So I’m reading the poem given to me by my friend Donna, a poem her mother gave to her, author unknown. It’s called Don’t Quit.

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low, and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh.

Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is strange with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about,
When he might have won had he stuck it out;

Don’t give up though the pace seems slow,
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you can never tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit,
It’s when things seem worst…
That you must not quit.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

2009-03-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Still January 2008

It’s been a very long week. I’ve had to retest about 25 recipes with no one to help. This is not what I thought it would be like when I decided to write my book. But I can’t stop now. I have to keep going. There’s too much at stake. There’s no turning back.

While I’ve been waiting for my chicken to finish roasting, I’ve been reading my nephew’s latest blog. He sends one every week. This one is called “Why I love life”. He’s traveling around the world living his dream while I’m here counting the minutes until my chicken is done. What’s wrong with this picture? Do I really have to ask?

There are three video clips on this week’s blog. He’s in Argentina. Video one - some guy is playing a flute at the bottom of this incredibly beautiful canyon while my nephew’s girlfriend is waving. It’s so surrealistic. Next video is a couple dancing the tango. Third one is my nephew taking a polo lesson riding a horse. It’s like a scene out of a movie. And here I sit with bits of food stuck to my arms, my hair and apron. Again I ask myself, what’s wrong with this picture?

It’s 1 AM and the oven buzzer just went off. Finally the chicken is done. There is something very primal about pulling the meat from a roasted chicken with my hands. It’s also incredibly messy! I stuffed the chicken with a few lemons and rubbed it all over with my rosemary spice rub. I started with a four pound chicken tonight. Two hours later, I ended up with one and a half pounds of succulent, roasted boneless chicken. I’ve been nibbling at the bits of chicken on the bones. The rest has to be refrigerated for tomorrow’s day of recipe testing.

I’m tired but I still have to clean the kitchen. I’m also my own clean up crew. I thought at my age I wouldn’t have to do the grunt work anymore but it has to get done and I’m the only one here.

My fingertips and hands feel like sandpaper because I’m constantly washing pots and pans, trying to keep the mess to a minimum. It’s too hard to wear rubber gloves because I’ve got too many things going on at once. I have to take things off the stove, out of the oven, chop, prepare and assemble foods, take photos, write, and work on the computer and whatever else needs to get done throughout the day. Not even slathering my hands with hand cream and wearing cotton gloves to bed seems to work. Maybe I should have tried using the chicken grease? Don’t think so! And don’t even ask me what my nails look like. I can’t remember the last time I had a manicure!

Ah bedtime, finally I’m done for the night.

Retesting Recipes – It Can Drive Me Crazy

2009-03-02T18:38:00.000-08:00

January 2008

I am constantly retesting recipes that I’ve developed for the book. I want to make sure the weights and measurements are correct and that the recipes are reproducible. I also need to make sure they taste as great as I remember when I first developed them. Sometimes that’s not always the case.

After developing recipes all day long, day in and day out for up to 18 hours a day, my taste buds sometimes trick me or I can’t read my own notes. And let me tell you, I hate it when that happens because then the development process starts all over again.

That’s happened already twice this week. Two simple recipes turned into a nightmare until I got them right. Making the red cabbage coleslaw and zucchini soup over again was like something out of a bad movie. I had grated red cabbage and carrots everywhere and let me tell you those anthocyanins (the purple color of the cabbage) and beta-carotenes (orange color of the carrots) stain if you don’t clean up the mess soon enough. I’m not thinking about the benefits of their vitamin content at a time like that! Before long, I was up to my elbows in zucchini puree and covered with red cabbage coleslaw all because the recipes didn’t taste quite like I remembered. I made batch after batch until I finally got the taste right – a small victory for me!

What did I get myself into?

2009-02-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

January 2008

I’ve decided to join the ranks of bloggers. I need to keep a record of my life right now to get me through the meltdowns and keep my sanity intact while I work day and night on this book I’ve been writing and will be self-publishing.

I’m a 55 year old woman who has spent the past thirty plus years of her life in the food industry as an educator, entrepreneur, consultant, researcher and self proclaimed foodie. For the past three years, I’ve been working on my book FitDelicious: Lose the Pounds, Not the Taste. I’ve calculated that I’ve probably spent more than twelve thousand hours on research and development to date. I have a mission – to put the tools of my trade and personal weight loss experience in writing so that others can lose weight and be healthy, too.

In 2005, on the suggestion of some friends, I wrote a book proposal and sent it to some publishers and agents. Although I had a lot of knowledge about food and the food industry, they weren’t interested. Ever persistent, I sent it around again. I had business writing and teaching experience, but that wasn't enough; I wasn’t a celebrity so they didn’t think it would sell. For a while, I put it aside and focused on my consulting business but that was slow and the population kept gaining weight and I knew my book could help. Finally in frustration, the entrepreneur in me decided it was time to take the risk to fund and publish the book myself. The funding part has put me in debt and the self-publishing part has been a nightmare.

Then today, the idea of writing a blog about the experience and including some of the things I wish I could have included in the book, seemed like a great idea. In this blog, I will share the process of writing this book, including developing and retesting recipes, taking pictures, designing and formatting, hiring people to help me with the project, computer glitches, accumulating and reviewing research, and carefully editing everything. The blog will be about the trials and tribulations of losing weight, self-publishing, and being a self-employed, woman entrepreneur. I figure it should be compelling if you've ever tried to lose weight OR tried to do something on your own OR believed in yourself even when it felt like no one else did OR ran a business OR written a book OR been frustrated (does that cover everyone?).