Balanced Diet

Food Resolutions for 2020

~ gradschoolgirleats ~ Leave a comment

Yup, I know.  I said I was back in the kitchen, and I was-~-sort of.  But I got into a post-comps funk.  I stopped cooking interesting things.  I stopped exploring new recipes. There was a loss of the inspiration that was needed to keep producing food that I really wanted to share, as opposed to food that just sustained me.  I went into a post-comps funk with my work, too; it is almost as though I lost momentum and once I lost it I had trouble getting moving again.  After all, an object at rest will stay at rest unless it is prompted to move by an outside force.

But it’s a new year!  You know what the best part of the academic calendar structure is?  Every few months, there is a new semester.  A fresh start. Oh, all the work is still there, of course.  But our schedules shift.  The classes we take or teach may change, or at the very least, the students in those courses may change.  We get to reset ourselves through a break, through a new schedule, and that can be exciting.  I still have the same papers to push out, the same data to try to make sense of.  But hopefully I also have a little fresh perspective now that I’m a little less burned out.  And that’s exactly what I’m hoping to have with food as well.

If you haven’t yet, now’s a good time to think about a Food Resolution.  The most common resolution made in the United States is exercising more, followed by saving money, and eating more healthily.  Losing weight is consistently in the top 10 most common resolutions made every year in the US.  But most New Year’s Resolutions fail-~-some surveys estimate that as many as 80% of us fail to achieve our resolutions.  One reason is that we’re not specific enough: we say we want to exercise more or eat healthy, but we don’t come at it with a specific plan.  So before you tell yourself you’re going to “eat better” in 2020, here are a few, more specific goals that may be easier to follow through on:

  • Eat more meatless meals!  Melissa Clark, cookbook author and NYT food writer, published a piece entitled “The Meat Lovers’ Guide to Eating Less Meat”.  She describes how, for the sake of environmental sustainability (and our health), we need to cut down our meat (and dairy) intake-~-at the national level, by up to 40%.  I talk about some similar articles in my post on “Meatless Mondays for Beginnings”.  So maybe make eating meatless ONE more day a week than you currently do.  It’s an easier starting point, and  it’s a clear goal for you to hold yourself accountable.  Some recipes that might be a good starting point include this coconut curry ramen with tofu, this sweet potato and black bean hash, and this vegetarian skillet pot pie.  Want something that feels “meatier”?  Check out these 30 minute vegetarian meatballs from Pinch of Yum, these vegan Sloppy Joes from Minimalist Baker, or these slow cooker Indian butter chickpeas from Simple Healthy Kitchen.
  • Make a concerted effort to eat a range of different colored vegetables!  Maybe you’re already on top of your green veggie intake, but how about your yellow/orange vegetables?  Or your blue or purple vegetables?  They all have important nutrients that you may be missing out on!  Some recipes that might provide a starting point include these Butternut Squash and Black Bean Enchiladas, this Skillet Eggplant Parm Pasta, this Ratatouille Tart, or this Summer Nicoise Salad.
  • Eat less sugar.  Sugar is hidden all over in our food.  In an attempt to reduce fat in many foods, companies often increase sugar-~-but constant intake of excess sugar is bad for us metabolically and dentally, among other ways.  Take a look at the broader discussion of this I have in my post on snacking, or take a look at this piece from Harvard Medical School on how to reduce both sugar and salt in your diet.
  • Eat more fresh fruit.  It’s a good snack, a tasty treat, and better for you than a lot of sweet alternatives.
  • Cook something new on a monthly/bi-weekly/weekly basis.  Continue to expand your cooking skills and your palate, as well as your list of recipes you can go to for healthy and interesting meals.
  • Speaking of cooking, cook at home more!  Cooking at home will save you money and give you a LOT more control over what you consume.
  • Increase your intake of foods with healthy omega-3 fatty acids, such as fish, avocado, peanut butter, nuts, and chia and flax seeds.

There are tons more food resolutions you can make, but I would caution you this:  dieting just for weight loss often is not sustainable, and many diets may cause you to focus a lot on all the things you cannot eat or when you cannot eat, leading to a restrictive mentality regarding food.  Don’t let your desire to be healthier or to lose weight lead you on a path towards disordered thoughts about food.  There are not “good foods” or “bad foods”.  There are more nutritious and less nutritious foods, but that does not mean you have to give up food you want to eat entirely just because it’s not as densely nutritious.

So go!  Find your food inspiration!  Find foods you like to eat, foods you’re excited to make, foods that make you feel good.  Find foods that help make you healthier, foods that satisfy your cravings.  And check back here, because starting soon, I’ll be doing a series of posts on my go-to recipes (vegetarian and otherwise).

Meal Planning Part 3: Diversifying Your Diet and Making Meals Work Together

~ gradschoolgirleats ~ Leave a comment

It has been a loooooong time since I just talked about meal planning, but it is something I get asked about a fair bit, especially in my off-line life. I still plan out all the meals I am going to make in a week in advance, but I have gotten a little more sophisticated about it as I have gotten better at it and learned to cook more things. Also, I cook for 2 people now instead of just one, which has shifted how portions work a little bit.

As a reminder, this is my own approach to meal-planning. There are plenty of other ways to approach planning meals, and lots of resources online, so if the way I describe here doesn’t work for you, but you still want to meal plan, then definitely go forth and research!

I previously shared some meal-planning basics and tips on using batch-cooking and leftovers for lunch as strategies in a meal plan. As a recap, since it has been a while, here are some fundamentals:

  • Plan for as many meals as you can. I plan for all of my lunches and dinners, and then buy general breakfast foods like cereal, oats, yogurt, etc.
  • The meal plan is what decides goes on the grocery list. This keeps you focused at the store so you don’t buy random things. It ensures you end up with the right ingredients for the meals you want to make without missing anything key, and it will hopefully reduce food waste.
  • Every meal needs to have at MINIMUM 2 food groups, but should ideally have at least 3. This means protein, vegetables, and grains. Realistically, you may have some meals that have just protein and veggies or grains and veggies, but try not to let this be the norm.
  • Plan for vegetables. If you are making something that does not necessarily feature vegetables, plan for veggies as a side dish and write out which veggies those will be.
  • Use a variety of protein sources. Don’t let yourself just rely on 2 things, try to use 3 or 4 different protein sources if you can. Remember, there are lots of plant-based protein sources like beans, lentils, chickpeas, and tofu, which are extremely healthy and relatively inexpensive.
  • Think about how your meals fit together. If you are buying a vegetable that can only be bought in a bunch (e.g., leeks) or in a larger portion than you necessarily need (e.g. an eggplant, esp if you are cooking for one), think about how you can include two meals that will use those ingredients (but try to space them out so you won’t get bored).
  • Limit the pasta. Many of us have grown accustomed to pasta as a fall-back because it is easy, cheap, and cooks quickly. Don’t fall into this trap. Use other grains such as brown rice, wild rice, quinoa, rice noodles, couscous, barley, bulgur, and farro to help mix it up and add other nutrients to your diet.
  • Try to include at least 1 new recipe per week, especially if you are still trying to expand your cooking knowledge/skills. This will reduce boredom and force you to learn new recipes. It is okay if you don’t do this every single week, but try to throw in a few new recipes a month, just to keep things interesting.

One of the things I emphasize in those rules is diversifying what you eat. You can see this especially in my tips about grains and proteins: use a variety so that you don’t get bored and get a greater range of nutrients. While you definitely don’t need to adopt them, these are my personal rules for food diversification in my own meal plans:

  1. No more than 4 meals using the same protein source
  2. No more than 4 meals including pasta
  3. At least 1 red/purple vegetable per week
  4. At least 1 yellow/orange vegetable per week

Those rules challenge me at times, but in a good way. There are certain proteins I find I always use, like tofu and chicken and ground beef, and some I use with reasonable regularity, like eggs, shrimp and chickpeas. But there are others, like lamb, pork, turkey, lentils, black beans, and fish, which I use much less regularly. Making meal plans with these rules forces me, when I’m about halfway through, to ask myself “What haven’t I used yet?” and then try to work something else into the meal plan.

These rules also help me think through whether I am getting a balanced variety of vegetables and limits the amount of pasta I eat. But implementing all of these rules, and having balance without a lot of waste (keeping in mind that extra meat does get frozen and worked into later meal plans), takes planning, and thinking about how all of these things work together.

In previous posts, I talked about using batch cooking and leftovers for lunch as strategies in the meal plan. I don’t batch cook as much anymore (although sometimes I do, if it’s something that I can easily freeze and cannot easily make in a smaller portion, like lasagna, enchiladas, chili, or breakfast tacos), but I am still a huge proponent of leftovers for lunch.

That being said, sometimes you can’t have leftovers for lunch, because what you are making (e.g., eggs) does not make for good leftovers. And along with my efforts to keep my meal plan diverse, this strategy means I need to think about my meal plan as a whole, and how different meals might work together.  If I am making something with eggs, like an omelette or a hash served with eggs, or I am making something like a hamburger, which does not yield leftovers, I have two options: I can use something else in the meal plan to produce an extra lunch, or I can plan on making sandwiches or salads for lunch. But if I am making sandwiches or salads, I usually can’t buy ingredients for just one sandwich or salad, which means I need to plan for two lunches without corresponding dinners.

If that feels complicated, don’t panic. Here are a few sample meal plans with explanations of how to make this work:

In this sample meal plan, I have included a hamburger, which will mean no leftovers for the next day. But I also know that the lasagna will yield an extra portion (or really, 2 portions, since this meal plan is for two people), meaning I can eat it for a third meal-~-lunch the day after the hamburger. This means that I need to be sure to cook the lasagna before I am going to need those leftovers; I can’t change up the order in a way that puts the burger before the lasagna. Everything else is pretty self-contained, though, so it can be moved around. (It also follows all of the rules I laid out earlier in this post: lots of different protein sources and different colors of vegetables, with limited use of pasta.)

Here’s another example:

In this sample meal plan, both the shakshuka (which is eggs poached in spicy tomato sauce) and the mussels (which are also cooked in a spicy tomato sauce, coincidentally) won’t result in leftovers, which means there are two days which will need something else for lunch. I use sandwiches here, but you could just as easily include salads, or these homemade instant noodle cups, or wraps, whatever works for you.

The point is, I am planning for a week, not just one night at a time. The meal plan becomes a puzzle that I am trying to fit together, where I need to figure out 14 meals: 7 lunches and 7 dinners.

You can definitely throw in there a “TBD” as long as you have things in your kitchen that you can turn into a meal or two, and you can definitely include meals that you plan to eat out. I usually include “1 meal-takeout (leftovers for lunch)” or “1 dinner out, Wednesday” so that I know I need to plan a lunch for Thursday, just as examples.

Hopefully this helps some folks who are trying to get into meal planning or set New Year’s Resolutions about learning to cook or eating better! In the spirit of providing examples, I’ll try to make sure I share partial meal plans periodically, along with links to recipes that are available online. Happy cooking!