"Consult Your Gut!" & Rule #49

A common phrase this past week in the Orwick household has been "Consult your gut!" (usually exclaimed as someone gets up for seconds of something). It's amazing how much your visual perception of something dictates how much you eat. For example, if I dish Ryan up and spread the helping all over the plate he seems more satisfied with the portion size than if I put the helping in one heap on his plate. Sometimes it was not fun consulting my gut because I would really want "one more piece."

This upcoming week we have Rule #49: Eat Slowly. I ate dinner the other night with a dear friend and we had these amazing wings at Pok Pok (Portland people should know what I am talking about). My friend and I marveled afterwards on what a good menu choice this was because it forced us to eat slowly (pulling the meat off the bones with our hands), which in turn helped us to consult the gut. Pollan recommends you eat slowly in one of two ways: 1. Liquefy your food & 2. Put down your fork between bites.

Here is a picture (sorry it's kind of dark) of me learning to belly dance at a Lebanese restaurant we went to for my friend's birthday (another occasion when it was not so fun to consult the gut!):




HAPPY 4th of JULY EVERYONE!

Lunch Time? & Rule #48

I learned that I eat when I am bored but at least I do not snack. My day consists of eating breakfast and then sitting around at work thinking: I could either write this psychological evaluation or I could eat my amazing tomato tart? Hmmmmmm......this is how I end up eating lunch at 10:30am and then I am starving by 5pm. This is also why I do not have unhealthy snacks in the house. If there is food in my sights then I have no self-control. I combat this by only allowing myself healthy fast stuff such as fruit and veggies.

Aside from realizing how early I eat my lunch when I am bored this rule was pretty easy. Next week is Rule 48: Consult your gut. I am anticipating that my gut and I will become ONE.

Full-less and Rule #47

Wow, when you make really really good food it is so hard (for me) to show any sort of self restraint. This week we cooked several amazing meals and I took a modest portion and refrained from going back for seconds. Why do I like to feeling of being really full anyway? It's not like it's a good feeling. BUT, for some reason I always look for that feeling to dictate when I should stop my indulging.

So, I said good meals and I captured two of them:

The first was a grilled pork loin with a mango and jalapeno chutney (my fingers burned for days after peeling the jalapenos!).




The second delicious meal was a simple spaghetti with buffalo meatballs. Even though it was a simple recipe it was hands down the best meat balls I have EVER eaten.




Next week we have Rule #48: Eat When You are Hungry, Not when you are Bored. Luckily, with all the wedding planning, cooking, salsa dancing, and friend adventures, I haven't felt bored in a while....and when I do I will remember my poor garden that has really been suffering lately.

Seatt-less & Rule #46

Busy busy week! I think we had plans almost every minute of every day. Eating less was hard several times. The biggest challenge was celebrating Ryan's promotion of Senior Engineer at an amazing restaurant and listening to my gut instead of my taste buds. We also went to Seattle and I wanted to eat everything I saw. I had several proud moments such as asking Ryan to share a piece of cake with me instead of having my own piece (oh my goodness that took self restraint) and when I never went back for seconds (if you know me that is amazing because I always want "one more bite"). I also made cream cheese brownies for something and gave them ALL away (normally I would have eaten half the batch)!

Next week we have a similar Rule #46: Stop eating before you are full. Instead of asking myself, "Am I full?" I will be focusing on, "Is my hunger gone?"

Here is a picture of my beautiful Seattle friends who I got to visit with very briefly and I hope to see more of this summer!

Margaritaville & Rule #45

We finally got sun in Portland! AND heat! Yay for vitamin D! I was so good this week and really focused on buying higher quality food and not overeating. The one night where Ryan and I ate way too much was when we went to the restaurant Pok Pok with a friend. We let our friend order because Pok Pok is one of her favorite restaurants and she knew all of the best dishes. I couldn't control myself the food was so good--if you haven't been there you should go! You will pay more, but you might also eat more too....

To celebrate the sun Ryan made me a homemade margarita. Ever since we gave up high fructose corn syrup I have been missing my margaritas (the majority of margarita mix from the store is filled with horrible stuff). Ryan used limes and lemons and made a simple syrup. It definitely hit the spot!



This week we will focus on a similar rule, Rule #45: . . . Eat less. Pollan discusses how the caloric intake for Americans is way higher than necessary and is a major contributor to things like obesity and cancer. I will continue to work on skipping unnecessary second helpings and avoid eating when I am bored. I am sure Ryan will continue to accuse me of starving him. ;)

Week of Wining & Dining and Rule #44

It's hard to fail a rule telling you to drink a glass of wine with dinner every night. Sometimes we were even overachievers...



This next week, Rule #44: Pay more, eat less will be more of a challenge. My biggest food obstacle is overeating. This week we will really REALLY focus on the delciousness involved in every bite of food. Got to make it count! We will pay more and hopefully make up for it within our food budget by eating less.

Give Me Another One, Just Like the Other One & Rule #43

Our rule to regard nontraditional food with skepticism was so similar to many of the others we have done...basically eat food....not food-like substances that food scientists have created. We are getting so good at these types of rules that it has just sort of become our everyday diet (just like we originally hoped!).

We love the bulk section at Winco because you can get healthy things for super cheap.



The lesson is that you must read the ingredients (or notice their unnatural color!) because some things are definitely more food scientist creations than actual food, despite what the large sign might suggest...

Next week's rule is amazing! Rule #43: Have a glass of wine with dinner. YES PLEASE! This is a rule that Ryan and I will be able to stand behind one hundred and fifty percent!

Turning Japanese & Rule #42

We stuck with the traditional Japanese diet almost all week with only a few exceptions. Every morning we ate miso soup or rice and egg. For lunch and dinners we had tofu, rice, noodles, veggies, soy sauce, miso, ginger, fruit, fish, fish and more fish. The only time we strayed from this diet was when we ate outside of our house. On Saturday night we celebrated my birthday and my mother cooked us some french food (there is no better birthday present than a home cooked meal by your mother--especially if your mother is as good of cook as mine!).

The hardest part about this week was avoiding white flour (aka bread!). A traditional Japanese diet only consists of maybe rice flour or buckwheat flour (no wonder Japanese are so skinny--bread is something I eat way too much of). Japanese also do not eat very many sweets (a daily battle I struggle with). I felt like my meals filled me up more quickly because they were so full of protein. Also, Japanese only traditionally eat until they are 80% full--this was hard for me to stick to. Overall, I felt extremely healthy this week!

Here are just a few pictures of some of the meals we had (I did not capture nearly all of them and Ryan is currently in the kitchen cooking our last Japanese meal of the week--a veggie tofu stir-fry that smells amazing).

We obviously had to try out some traditional Japanese beer.



Japanese noodles and veggies.



Salmon and miso green beans.


Had to go out for sushi (we have all of the materials to make our own but we have still not gotten around to it).


My friend Susie trying to protect herself from the crazy boys taking sake bombs.


Next week we are moving on to Rule #42: Regard nontraditional foods with skepticism. Basically this rule boils down to avoid foods created by food scientists.

Supplements-Be-Gone and Rule #41

We managed the whole week without any supplements. This is what we said goodbye to:



Ryan accidentally bought orange juice fortified with calcium but that was are only real mishap. The good news is that I did not get sick (gasp!). I was pretty sure I was going to be sick more due to the psycho-somatic reasons than anything else. Whenever I was craving a vitamin I picked up a piece of fruit instead. I'm still not too sure about this rule because I believe you should be eating foods that provide you with all the vitamins you need; however, what if you are not aware of the things your body needs? Is it better to be safe and take vitamins than sorry later? Also, can you really get too many vitamins? SO many questions I haven't had time to find the answers!

In other news we celebrated a wonderful mother's day with my favorite mother in the whole entire world. Ryan made a spinach gruyere strata and I made sour cream coffee cake with strawberries and strudel. We had a wonderful day!

The next week we will be on the mouthful that is Rule #41: Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. We went shopping tonight and loaded up on groceries for Japanese food. We will also be researching traditional Japanese breakfasts and other eating habits. Let me know if you have any ideas!

Some junk, Some Adventure & Rule #40

I had a lot of grand plans...such as making homemade donuts. We were having burgers for dinner, however, and I thought onion rings would be a good start to cooking homemade junk food. And by the time I finished with the onion rings I could not bear to look at, much less EAT, anything cooked in that amount of oil. So beer-battered onion rings were our homemade junk food this week and they were delicious. It was my first time making them. Ryan whipped up a spicy creamy sauce and I was in heaven. Even though they were onion rings they tasted healthier because I made them--less grease and less salt. At the same time, making this meal myself made me realize how unhealthy they were--they were fried in a huge pot of oil....so that meant that I ate less, or at least didn't want to make the donuts for dessert that I intended on cooking.






In other news my wonderful life partner cooked an amazing Asian meal. Please see the pictures below of the tofu stir fry, citrus sesame salad, and noodle crab cakes and you will understand why I am marrying this guy.




Next week we will be following Rule #40: Be the kind of person who takes supplements--then skip the supplements. AAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! I don't care if it's mental or what but I rely on my supplements like none other. My prediction is that I will get sick without them. The challenge will be trying to eat healthy enough foods that I won't need the supplements. I am guessing there will be a lot of fish in my future this week.

In happier news here is the most beautiful orange I have ever seen:


PS. I can't end this post without mentioning that I went food trippin' this past week with Erin. I don't know if you have ever heard about this but it is seriously weird. You dissolve this berry (in pill form) and swish it around your mouth. It then blocks off certain taste buds so that you experience food entirely differently--most food became sweet. Tonic water tasted like soda! Lemons tasted like lemonade! I was peer pressured into this but I was happy I tried it. Luckily, the effect only lasts an hour and then your taste buds return to normal. I highly recommend this activity!