Have you ever bit into a sandwich or a piece of chicken and remarked on how dry it is? Yeah, so have I, yet such a disposition can quickly affect ones waistline in a negative way. We all love mayonnaise, cheese, oil, butter, and cream added generously to our foods, yet sometimes it irks us to notice when our foods lack these delicious ingredients. It is at that realization that we deem a baked potato or a sandwich too dry and unappetizing. Thinking of foods as dry and moist in regards to how they taste can become a slippery slope. Let me give you an example from one of my recent experiences. Last week I was ordering a sandwich at the market and told the woman to make it without mayonnaise. Upon being asked weather or not I cared for cheese I told the woman no thank you and she looked at me in an odd way stating; you dont want cheese, oil, or mayonaise!? followed by your sandwich is going to be too dry. Perplexed, this woman seemed to take offense to the fact that I left these crucial items off of an otherwise perfect sandwich. I was insulting her work! But I did this for good reason. The fact that I left these items off my sandwich was indeed what made it healthy. Dodging these three simple ingredients shaved about 25 grams of fat and countless calories off my hoagie. You want moist food: rely on fresh ingredients and beware of hidden fats and oils before adding more. Fresh bread, fresh lean cold cuts, seasoned vegetables, a properly (not overcooked) meats can remedy our lust for fried, greasy, cheesy, and buttery. This isnt to say that the moisteners discussed above have to be left off altogether (lets get real now), yet lets not base all of our meals around them. I wince whenever I see someone spread butter over one of those giant moist blueberry muffins that are commonly served with breakfast. Any one of those good breakfast muffins worth eating is jam packed with almost a quarter cup of oil and butter as it is, so do you really think it needs yet more butter. Same goes for mashed potatoes, which are almost surely based with cream and butterskip that pad of butter melting over an already oily serving of mashed potatoes and save yourself the extra 12 grams of fat and 115 calories. Dont make fatty foods even fattier, you will regret it in the long-run. We all love the moistening oils and fats in our foods because thats what adds that extra flavor and richness that we crave. Learning how to step away from this keystone of The Fat Mentality is to do our bodies (and waistlines) a great service. This was also one of the hardest aspects to step away from when I decided to abandon my own Fat Mentality. A good friend of mine from high-school and college was raised by one of the best home-cooks to ever walk the planether mother. Every time I was invited over to her house I would be greeted by some of the most decadent and delightful montages of food I have ever seen in my life. Weather it be Eggplant parmesan, 9 layer lasagna, cheesy gumbo, or turkey tetrazzini, a dinner feast was always to be had upon visiting her house. I would frequent their house for potlucks and get-togethers lined with pastries, cheese spreads, desserts, and anything else that tickled a diners fancy. I even joined the family for breakfast on a few occasions and was guaranteed something greasy, heavy, and downright delicious. Turns out, this is the way the family always ate, meal-in-meal-out. This really moist and heavy style of eating stayed with my friend into her first years of college (when she lived away from home). She noticed that as she grew into her early 20s and her metabolism slowed down a bit, coupled with a lessened level of activity and this already ingrained perception of what food should taste like..she gained weight. This standard of eating that she had enjoyed her whole life was now catching up to her at a fast pace. She was never fat or obese in the traditional sense, but she realized that her dieting habits and her perception of food needed to change, and it did. She abandoned the sentiment that every meal needed to be heavy, deeply satisfying, and moist as we discussed earlier and began to return to her normal weight. Abandon your own perceptions of whether or not your foods are moist enough and take steps to improve them. Next time you make any one of your favorite foods, try to leave out, or use sparingly, the most detrimental of ingredients so as to enjoy the same foods you love without doubling the fats you dont need. Now this will take a little work and self-control of course, but realization is the first step in changing this integral aspect of the Fat Mentality. |
