Back in the Saddle Again

I've been having a tough time convincing myself to get out on my bike recently. It's been pretty chilly and wet and I've had odd pockets of time where other potential riding buddies were not available. I struck out on my own for a quick 12 mile ride and then waited for my triathlon team's annual training weekend in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

If you think it's a good idea to start the season with one short ride and then a long, extremely hilly ride, think again! While it did show a fair amount of optimism on my part, Saturday's 66 mile ride reminded me of several things which all boil down to the same lesson: the best way to get something done without feeling ill affects is to ease into it. That lesson manifested itself in two places. The first, as you might expect, was that my legs and my sit bones were super sore the next day and I biked slower than I would have liked during the ride. The second was with my nutrition. As you might imagine, I tend to think of myself as a person who listens to her body and has a pretty good idea of what to put into it and when. However, it had been longer than I'd like to admit since I had gone on a ride of that distance and length and elevation gain. So after eating a breakfast of oatmeal and fruit, during the entire six hours that we were out on our bikes, I ate a Clif bar and a Luna protein bar. Some people, in the same circumstances, would have been fine. But I was out of practice with what my body needs under those circumstances and ended up not feeling as good as I might have if I'd brought along some whole foods (banana, nuts, crackers) or had stopped for a small meal in addition to the bars that I ate. I just didn't put the right amount of the right things into my body.

Looking good despite not feeling great after biking 66 miles in the White Mountains of New Hampshire (my Co-Membership Director Bernadette is pictured here with me on the right)

I should add that I still had a ridiculously fun time on that ride - I got to know five of my teammates really well (while the other 35 teammates were off climbing other mountains at other distances) and saw some beautiful scenery. But if I had put in a couple more rides ahead of time, I would've had a better idea what to expect from my body that day. I think this lesson applies to a lot of aspects of eating and working out; want to stop being a vegetarian? If you start by one day eating a bacon cheeseburger, you'll probably make yourself sick. Want to run a 10K? If you start by running that distance you'll probably do yourself more harm than good in your training process (and could injure yourself early on). So, try new things, but give yourself time to adapt and let your body learn to love eating healthy and being active.

Enrich Your Life

Have you ever looked at a food product in the grocery store and wondered just what that word "enriched" means? It's a little bit abstract when you think about it. The claim that the quality or value of the product has been improved or enhanced in some way doesn't exactly tell you what they've done to your bread, pasta, rice, etc. That's why you need to be an informed consumer!

The enrichment nutrients are (drum roll please)...  

IRON! THIAMIN! RIBOFLAVIN! 

NIACIN! FOLIC ACID! 

These vitamins and minerals are required to be added at specified levels (minimum and maximum) according to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations. The term enriched, when used with food products, means that things are added back in that may have been lost during manufacturing of the product. You're likely to see this word on bread bags, pasta boxes, flour sacks, rice bags, and more. The term fortified  means that vitamins or minerals have been added to a product that were not originally there. You're likely to see this word on milk containers, juice cartons, and cereal boxes. Often products are fortified with vitamin D, calcium, omega-3s, and other healthful things like that.

Your best bet is always to get vitamins and minerals from their most natural source, but people don't tend to get enough that way, which is why fortifying and enriching has to happen. Should you eat tons of dark leafy greens for your folic acid or 10 pieces of enriched toast? Definitely get it from the greens, but rest more comfortably knowing you're getting an extra boost from your toast in the morning.

Once you've eaten plenty of iron-fortified or enriched foods, you can buy yourself this t-shirt!

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You: Forks Over Knives

Thanks to my roommate Jessica for sharing the info about this documentary, which comes out today (check your local listings for showtimes). You can't deny it anymore, food = medicine. What you put into your body affects your health. Whether or not you get up and go affects your health. Eat! (healthy) Drink! (water) and of course, Be Active! (all the time)

Proverbs On Your Plate

This is officially the first guest blog for Eat, Drink, and Be Active! This post comes from Tim Brooks over at Mulligan Stew. Tim and I both grew up in Madison and he's got a long history with food. From being a chef in a restaurant to being a fishmonger in Seattle, he's had his hands (and knives) in food just about as long as I've known him. Today, he posts about getting variety on your plate, something that any dietician would approve!

***
Proverbs On Your Plate

When sitting down to plan out what's going on your plate for dinner,
there's a lot to consider: Nutrition, flavor, how things look on your
plate. We've been inundated with information about the four food
groups, the food pyramid, and every fad diet craze out there, but the
greatest thing that works for me in selecting a healthy, interesting
dinner, comes from friends in Japan. Just as we're told to get five
servings of fruit and vegetables per day, Japanese mothers tell their
children that if they eat 21 different foods in one day, they will be
healthy and wise.

Examining that for a moment, it sounds like a good idea. Look at your
diet for a day. Discard things such as coffee, and the lettuce on your
burger, and you begin to realize just how monotonous our daily routine
of eating can be. Breakfast, for me, usually consists of a coffee and
a scone or pastry at work. What's that for lunch? A sandwich and a
soda? I have a long way to go before I make it to 21.

My cousin Peter has passed along a quote that says, "Eat breakfast
like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper." I tried
it, and it doesn't necessarily work for me. I'm not a morning person.
When I get home from work, I need to play catch-up with my nutrition
in order to make this work. Fortunately, I have more time to relax in
the kitchen, and working at a grocery store affords me the opportunity
to come home with a cornucopia of fresh produce.

The produce is the key. In general, I try to have something green on
my plate. A well balanced meal, from what I've been taught in the
restaurant industry, has a Protein, a Starch, and a Green. Meat and
potatoes just doesn't cut it for health. This doesn't mean that you
have to cut it out of your diet altogether. It just means that we need
a little bit of sunshine on the plate.

In my pantry, I try to have the staples of onion, garlic, and
tomatoes, as well as enough fruit and vegetables to make a quick
salad. Everything branches out from there. If I'm only making a dinner
for two, I bring home a green leafy or green flowery vegetable. Along
with a good protein, and with a little planning, here's meal can be
made in one pan.

Step 1: Assemble the vegetables. In this case, I have pea pods,
broccoli, bok choy, carrots, onions, mushrooms, pepper,  garlic, and
ginger.  Mince the garlic and ginger, finely chop the harder
vegetables, and slice the softer ones.

Step 2: Assemble the protein. In this picture, I'm using shrimp. It
doesn't have to be jumbo, and it doesn't have to have the shell, but
for best results, get the raw stuff. Most places have peeled and
deveined shrimp, but for flavor, it's better to shell them yourself.
Don't worry. This'll give you a better appreciation of your food. Peel
it, and slice it down the back. Pull out the vein if it has one. Rinse
if you must.

Step 3: Everything in the pan. Start with your aromatics. Little bit
of oil in the pan, some garlic and ginger over medium heat, and let it
sweat until your kitchen starts to smell good, about five minutes.
Next, add the other vegetables in order of hardest to softest at
intervals of two minutes. Carrots and Broccoli take longer to cook
than the others, so put them in first. Onions and peppers come next,
followed by mushrooms, pea pods and bok choy. Add the shrimp last, and
let it cook for about three to four more minutes. When it's ready, the
shrimp should curl into a J-Shape. Curled into a C-shape, they're
still going to be tender, but turn off the heat before they curl into
an armadillo ball. They'll get really tough on you.

Season it up with a little pepper or red chile flakes, and add a
couple splashes of soy sauce or low sodium tamari. If you have a rice
cooker or even a spare pot, make a big batch of brown rice and keep a
couple meals' worth in the fridge for quick access to hearty
nutrition. Spoon it over rice, and you have a colorful, nutritious
meal with at least eight different foods to get you closer to your
goal of a complete, healthy day.

As in the game of blackjack, 21 is a winner. Make it there with your
food every day, and your body will thank you.

***

For more exciting recipes and humorous anecdotes, swing by my blog at:
http://mulligansoup.wordpress.com. Just like this post, it's got a
little bit of this, and a little bit of that.

Strawberries. Forever.

I had to great fortune to be in sunny California for a quick visit this past weekend just as the strawberry stands were opening. According to my Grandma, strawberry season there is from April to October. I don't generally use sports references, but imagine having a pint of fresh-picked strawberries to eat at every single baseball game of the season! Craziness. The rest of my family who came out from the Midwest was equally as excited as I was about having delicious fresh fruit so we bought somewhere around 20 cartons from this stand just outside of Sonoma:

We even had to stop and buy more on the way home because we had indulged in a few too many strawberries while stopping in at a couple of wineries! That night we made a delicious take on strawberry shortcake. With apologies to everyone living in a place where the strawberries are still being flown in (myself included now that I'm back on the East Coast) here is a modified recipe for healthy strawberry shortcake:

1. First, buy a lot of delicious strawberries. 
2. Then, go to your favorite locally owned kitchen shop or on Amazon to buy a Strawberry Slicer which is similar to an egg slicer and works like a charm. 
3. Next, cook your favorite (and healthiest) biscuit recipe. This weekend I cheated a bit and used a mix, but I just found this recipe for Whole-grain buttermilk biscuits on the Mayo Clinic website that looks worth a try! 
4. When the biscuits are fresh out of the oven, split open and heap sliced strawberries on top (no sugar is needed, the berries are naturally sweet). Top with your favorite low-fat vanilla frozen yogurt and savor!

Nina and I enjoying our first(ish) strawberries of the season!