Homemade brownies.

You know what makes those brownies even better?

Vanilla ‘ice cream’.

You know what makes those brownies and ice cream so awesome that the sheer density of awesome threatens to collapse and form a singularity whose pull will be so strong that even light cannot escape?

Rainbow Sprinkles.

So just be warned, if you’re suddenly pulled into a black hole, you’ll know who to blame. But it’ll be too late cuz you’ll be pulled into spaghetti and then your atoms will be pulled apart.

It would still be worth it though.

The NY Times has an article comparing two studies done on the effect New York City’s calorie-labeling law has had on people’s food choices. You can read the whole article, but long story short, it hasn’t had a big effect so far.

Really. Color me surprised.

The article points out that in poor communities (where one of the studies focused) people tend to be more concerned with price that calories. Hence the finding that people were getting *more* calories from subway since the law went into effect – a consequence of the five dollar footlong deal, they guess. Otherwise, they note that a lot of people don’t notice the information, but even among those who do, only a small percentage use this information.

Why is this? I don’t know, but since this is the internet I can definitely make random guesses.

1) Not everyone is concerned with some aspect of their weight. If you’re not, then who cares if one latte has 70 more calories than another?
2) As I said in this post, lots of people have absolutely no clue as to the amount of energy they’re using or eating. Calorie counts are meaningless if not in context.
3) People are constantly bombarded with the message that calories don’t matter. It’s the carbs, the chemicals, the blocked chi etc… I would honestly not be shocked to find out that among people who would say they want to change their weight, more than half would think that calories don’t matter.
4) People already have favorites at their regular restaurants/coffee shops. It could be that rather than give up that pumpkin scone, people are trying to compensate elsewhere.

Does this mean that posting calorie information is a bad thing? I don’t think so. Any more than we should stop building sidewalks or cleaning up parks if some studies find that people don’t instantly start walking an extra five miles a day when a new sidewalk is put in.

You know what’s nice? It’s nice not having enough time to write or even think about an actual post because I’m busy having a life. It’s been too long.

On a different topic, do any of you have any favorite audiobooks you can recommend to me? I walk dogs at least an hour a day and I love listening to a good book, but I’m running out of ideas. I’m a big fan of non-fiction, but it’s not a must.

Really. Let’s see, I used to think

lifting weights burned more calories than cardio
carbs were the food culprit behind weight gain
fat was the food culprit behind weight gain
animal products were behind all weight gain and many health problems
one had to be hungry in order to lose weight
there was a ‘correct’ way to build muscle
the body had a fixed genetic setpoint which was unchangeable
weight was entirely a product of environment

There are more, I’m sure. Even now, there are things I take for granted which will end up not being true. Such is life. Such is science.

Now, there are a lot of people who make a lot of money off of promoting misinformation in the areas of diet and exercise. For the rest of us, there’s no reason other than pride that we shouldn’t admit when we are wrong or when the picture is more complex than we once might have believed. It’s not always fun to be wrong to be sure, but I’ll take it over never learning anything new.

Alliteration is the best.

Many years ago, not so long after I had first ‘discovered’ feminism, I encountered an idea in Susan Brownmiller’s Femininity (which is required reading of all people who click over to this blog so go ahead and get started) that blew me away. It was so obvious- like looking for lost keys and then discovering them in your hand. I felt stupid for never having thought of it before.

One of purposes/side effects of most of the trappings of femininity is to erase functionality.

There are some obvious ones, of course. High heels, super tight and/or short clothes. And there are some slightly less obvious ones. Lots of aesthetic rituals turn functional parts into decoration (and really, that might be a stretch, but I can see it.)

And it occurred to me, while people-watching at the gym the other day, that women’s fitness is all about femininity too and therefore all about illusion in place of function.

Whether it’s laying on a mat and doing useless crunches until your abs seize in the hopes of attaining that ‘perfect’ flat belly or spending hours using machines to work muscles in ‘problem areas’, what most women do in the name of fitness has nothing to do with being able to actually, you know, do stuff.

And I don’t mean that the option is working out with an eye towards body composition or you workout to increase your fitness. It’s not either/or. Nor do I think there is a correct way to go about functional fitness. But I guess I’ve always thought the point of working out was to expand your world – go farther, run faster, be able to do more without getting tired. And I find it disheartening how many women don’t seem to feel that way.

One of the big lessons I am trying to learn these days is how to fully embrace the slack. As I see it, the problem isn’t in having a lazy day where you don’t work out or even move much. Nor is it a problem to have a less-than-ideal diet on these days. No, these things are normal and fine. The problem is with spending these rare days thinking of how you need to get moving, cook some veggies and really any minute now you should be doing this and maybe once Dr Oz is over and hey, let’s have another twizzler and look it’s time for the shame spiral!

A consequence of this constant internal admonition to *not* ever be lazy is that I don’t ever fully relax even when I don’t manage to get anything done. Which means that I fail at doing nothing. Wow. Great.

Instead, I’m trying to, when I encounter a day that is perfect for slack, to take a real look at what things I want to accomplish. Are any of these things something that can’t wait? Are any of these things going to get in the way of my enjoying a responsibility-free day? If so, then I go ahead and do those before I embrace the slack. And when I say embrace, I mean fully enjoy. Silencing that voice that loves to list the things I could be doing and focusing on doing whatever I want. Being okay with looking back over my day and seeing nothing but an empty bag of twizzlers, some diet root beer and scattered Battlestar Galactica dvd cases (allowing of course that spending most of my time this way would be depressing.)

I’m finding it surprisingly difficult.

Tom Venuto has an interesting article on clean eating and orthorexia. As someone who believes in enjoying food to the fullest and yet eats in a way that is characterized as super restrictive (even neurotic) by much of society, I too have mixed feelings about orthorexia.

I recently started reading “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain” . Very interesting so far. It definitely has me thinking of how to best do my schedule for next semester so I can get a workout in before differential equations.

I’m not a big fan of the category of foods I would label as ‘diet’ foods. Recipes that call for multiple substituitons (applesauce for oil in baking, steam ‘frying’ veggies instead of using olive oil, replacing all sugar with splenda) are, imnsho, a lot of work for a lot of blandness. And most of the time they don’t even cut that many calories per serving.

But of course there are exceptions. Generally these are foods where for whatever reason, I prefer the taste of the modified version (I’m realizing that it’s so often all about taste for me.) Protein pancakes are one of these foods. I’m not a huge fan of pancakes in general. I sometimes get a mad craving for them, but whenever I eat them, I’m tired of them after a few bites. Plus they make me sleepy and gross feeling. So only eat a few at a time and save the rest, right? Well, I don’t like the way they taste when they’ve been heated up. Which has long meant that I simply don’t eat pancakes.

All of those issues are gone with these babies. They’re high protein and have some fiber so they are filling, but won’t leave me lethargic. They heat up well so they’re great to make and then keep around for the week. Now, not everyone likes these so if you don’t have the ingredients handy, then I’m not telling you to run out and make some right now. But if you happen to have some protein powder around, then definitely give them a try.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup oats
1-2 scoops protein powder
2 “eggs” or egg white equivalent
1-2 tbsp water
optional:
banana and/or choc chips

Now I grind up my oats in the vitamix to make oat flour first, but you can just dump all the ingredients in a blender and blend until well mixed. Check your consistency and add water as needed. If your protein powder is not sweetened, then also add some sweetener to taste. If you’re using a banana, put it in with the rest of the ingredients.

Heat up a griddle or whatever you cook pancakes on, make sure it has some cooking spray or oil on it. Pour batter in the pan and keep an eye on the pancakes. Most of the time, I find they’re ready to flip by the time I see a single bubble, but I’ve also burned a few in that time.

One of the most awesome ways to eat these is fresh off the griddle with a smear of peanut butter. OMG. So good. A warning though, these are pretty heavy. It’s easy to snarf down three of these things quickly and then suddenly feel like you’ve eaten a lot. I speak from experience.

If I make them with 2 scoops of protein powder, I get about 6 medium sized pancakes. At about 94 calories and with 10g of protein each, they’re a great breakfast or post-lifting snack.

If you google ‘protein pancakes’ you’ll find lots of variations with different fillings or made with cottage cheese etc…

You know what I hate? I hate all those lists in magazines, books, websites and on television that match up some kind of ‘bad’ food with the amount of exercise it takes to burn it off. Food doesn’t have to be ‘paid’ for with exercise. What a bizarre and depressing way to look at both food and movement. Plus it just reinforces the mistaken notion that many people have that the exercise you do must exceed your intake in order to lose weight. Yeah, walking a couple of miles burns as much energy as you might find in a bag of potato chips, but being alive for a few hours will also use up the same amount of energy.

Nowadays what I like to do is counter any such comparison with how many hours of sleep it will take to use the energy in a particular food.

“You know that scone is over 400 calories?”

“Yeah, I’ll have to sleep six hours to burn it off!”

Using a value of about 1 calorie per minute (this is an average, of course) will give you a general idea of how much energy your body needs just while you’re unconscious. If you’re someone who thinks of ‘bad’ food in terms of how much you have to suffer to make up for it, then start thinking of how much you’ll have to sleep to use that same amount of energy*. Maybe you’ll get more sleep and let go of some food guilt. Both good things.

*Not because you HAVE to pay for what you eat, but because I think encouraging more sleep is far healthier than people trudging miserably through their workout because of guilt.

I feel like I’m just now coming out of a phase in terms of my eating that I like to think of as my ‘health rebellion.’ You see, ever since I became interested in nutrition 3 or so years ago, I’ve been big into healthy eating. Lots of fruit and veggies, whole grains, lean protein and fats from plant oils and nuts. I ate kale multiple times per week and saw anything with lots of white flour, fat and sugar as an out-of-the-house, ’sometimes’ food.

I felt good eating this way. Good because eating like this gave me a lot of energy and, let’s be honest, good in that somewhat smug Pollan-esque “natural” eating way.

Now when I say my interest in nutrition led me to eat this way, I should fess up and say that I had started on this path before my bullshit nutrition detector had come in the mail. Meaning, I once believed, on some level, that eating a certain way could totally protect someone from certain diseases and conditions. I also had a bit of a fetish for “natural” as a concept.

And then I discovered vanilla coke zero.

I hadn’t been a big soda drinker for years. I liked having a coke at the movies and as an occasional accompaniment to a meal of vegan ribz and coleslaw, but I didn’t miss the way it used to be a daily part of my diet. Oh, but vanilla coke zero? It was delicious and you know, sugar and calorie-free. Yeah, yeah, yeah it was also full of splenda which depending on who you deem trustworthy has been found to be perfectly safe or is a toxin capable of rotting you from the inside, but I was fairly confident that I wasn’t in any danger from an occasional can of chemical loveliness.

Occasional became every day and sometimes twice a day. I had forgotten how easy it was to become accustomed to the sharp sweetness of soda. How water became a little more bland by comparison.

This is the time I was also making a lot of adjustments like moving and starting school full-time again. As I mentioned before my diet was kind of going to hell, but what I didn’t mention is that the 16 year old rebel in me was revelling in it. Gone were the low-sugar whole grain cereals, and in were the frosted flakes. I ate cookies for lunch and had dessert every night. I kept my portions and calories in check so my weight continued it’s slow descent, but my eating habits were almost 180 degrees from where they’ve been the last few years. And every oreo, every chip and every coke zero was a big middle finger to my inner nutritional nag.

Like many rebellions however, it ended with me feeling a bit chagrinned, but also wiser. I do feel better when I’m eating lots of veggies and whole grains. My energy levels are more steady and my digestive system is definitely happier, but you know, there is room in my diet for sugar and white flour and even delicious chemicals that taste like food. I do want to eat lots of fruits and veggies for the health benefits they provide, but they shouldn’t be part of my diet because of fear. And right now, the research on nutrition and disease is interesting, but in many ways in its infancy. The variables are numerous and we’re not in any position for the kind of self-righteous certainty you see in some people – even that I once saw in myself.