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If you are looking for a little extra motivation to eat more fruits and vegetables, check out these great entries for the MyPlate Fruits & Veggies Video Challenge.  It’s a little hard to write a good song about eating healthy but these entries show that it can be done!

First, the “Fruit Veggie Swag.” These cute kids pack a lot of information into this short video, including recipes! Love it!

Next, the “Make Half Your Plate Fruit and Veggies Rap.” Hilarious vegetable costumes to boot!

“Healthy Snacks” was written by an adorable 8 year old boy with diabetes. Quite impressive!

And it’s not just kids either! Check out the “Wrap Rap.”

As fun as the music and songs are, my kids’ current favorite is this fruit and vegetable race video.

You can vote on your favorite (including the above entries and many, many others) at fruitsandveggies.challenge.gov. Voting ends December 12 and the winning videos receive prizes from $500 – $1,500.

Maria Mendez (left) and Jilver Castillo (right), Arlington Food Services serve lunch of Baja Fish Taco wraps, Turkey Hot Dogs, Cherry Tomatoes w/dip, Baked Beans and Fresh Fruit for Washington-Lee High School students in Arlington, Virginia on Wednesday, October 19, 2011. The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service operating in public, nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. USDA Photo by Bob Nichols. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

I owe you an update on my diet and exercise status but that will be coming on Thursday. I have been continuing my progress and have a lot to tell you.

Today, however, I thought it would be interesting to expand on our discussion of organizing healthier eating by extending our discussion from eating healthier in our own homes to looking at an example of how expanding healthy eating to the national level faces extreme challenges. Food is so personal and people have strong opinions when anyone tries to implement (rather than just “encourage” or “suggest”) healthy eating.

If you are concerned about obesity (and who isn’t?), then it would make sense that if you are a taxpayer and you see the government spending a lot of money on food through programs like the National School Lunch Program, you might want to see if you could make a difference in kids’ health by changing the food content of those programs to include healthier options. Simple, right? No way.

The main goal of the National School Lunch Program of course, is to make sure that poor (and often hungry) children in the public school system don’t starve and are getting at least one, if not more, meals each day. I would hope most of us can agree that that is a good idea. School lunch currently includes a variety of foods, some healthy and some not so healthy, that kids will eat, including things like burritos, hamburgers, pizza and French fries.

Healthy meal choices of Baja Fish Taco Wraps and Turkey Hot Dogs at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia for lunch service on Wednesday, October 19, 2011. USDA Photo by Bob Nichols. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

The U.S.D.A. seems to have a particular interest in school lunches when it comes to nutritional content.

“Because children in low socio-economic status households are more likely to have the lowest
intakes of fruits and vegetables (Dubowitz et al., 20082), increasing fruit and vegetable
intakes in this population even by small amounts is likely to confer a health benefit.”

–U.S.D.A., Evaluation of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program: Interim Report, September 2011

So what happens when you try to tinker with school lunch? The sparks start to fly. The Washington Post reported on the complex procedure of this legislation in a story on November 15.

Essentially, the U.S.D.A. was proposing to limit the amount of “starchy vegetables” to no more than 1 cup per week. These “bad” vegetables include:

“Bad” Vegetables

White potatoes
Corn
Peas
Lima beans

Healthy choices of fresh fruit, salads and vegetables at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia for lunch service on Wednesday, October 19, 2011. USDA Photo by Bob Nichols. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

The U.S.D.A. also wanted to change how tomato paste is counted as a vegetable for purposes of school lunch. (I am not exactly sure if they wanted to increase the amount or discard it altogether.) There were also proposals to limit sodium and increase whole grains in the lunches that were also discarded.

Why would anyone vote down these changes? While obviously some food businesses had interests in maintaining the status quo, there were also concerns about costs for these changes and also some common sense questions that intake of any vegetables “bad” or not would be better than nothing.

“[S]tudents would not be allowed to eat a baked potato one day and an ear of fresh corn later that week, an ‘absurd result.’”

–Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), quoted in “Obama administration loses effort to make school lunches healthier,” The Washington Post, November 15, 2011

One commenter on the article aptly stated, “It doesn’t do much good to serve kids food they won’t eat.” Some felt that each school should be able to make these decisions.

NPR did an interesting story about how difficult it is to make even small changes to school lunch programs, like eliminating chocolate milk in favor of plain milk. Here in Virginia, for example, a local lunch lady is quoted:

“‘When we eliminated chocolate milk’ explains Penny McConnell of the Fairfax County Schools, ‘we had as many parents upset as the ones who were pleased with it.’ Some worried their children would stop drinking milk and wouldn’t get enough calcium.”

– “What’s To Love And Loathe About Chocolate Milk?,” NPR Morning Edition, November 21, 2011

Not all news is doom and gloom about the school lunch program, however. CBS News found Michelle Malm, a school lunch lady in California who transformed the nutritional content of her school lunch program by partnering with local farms to use fresh, local produce. While not every school is as lucky to have those types of farms nearby (or such an innovative lunch lady), it is an incredible example of how school lunch could be done right.

Clearly, healthy eating is something we need to continue to educate ourselves about throughout our lives. Food education in the school system has a lot of benefits, both for the kids who actually eat the food and the knowledge that these children will hopefully share with their parents and other people in their lives.

The other large food distribution program administered by the government is the food stamp or SNAP program, that essentially provides grocery money to those in need. A recent NBC Rock Center report indicates that a staggering 15% of the population is currently receiving SNAP benefits. Can the government dictate the types of foods that SNAP benefits can purchase?

Under current SNAP regulations, SNAP recipients can use their benefits to purchase most food items at the grocery store. They cannot purchase alcohol or tobacco or pet food with their benefits but they can purchase junk food, including soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream. In the past, it has been too costly and administratively burdensome to attempt to limit the exact types of foods that can be purchased by SNAP familties.

However, under a test program in Hampden County, Massachusetts that started this month called the “Healthy Incentives Program” or HIP, 1,500 SNAP families can receive extra SNAP money if they choose to purchase certain kinds of fruits and vegetables in their monthly grocery shopping. You can read the restrictions here. In general, families can buy any fruits or vegetables that don’t have added sugar, salt or fat. But interestingly, there is a particular hostility to allowing these families to buy white potatoes, beans, “fruit-nut mixtures” and “mixed vegetables containing white potatoes.”

No program will ever be perfect in its design but I am pleased to see someone trying to encourage healthy eating in this vulnerable population. It will be interesting to see if it has the intended result.

In reading the transcript of a SNAP symposium on the HIP program, I was struck to read this quote:

“[I]f the kids want it, the parents buy it. That’s been pretty well borne out in the literature.”

–Debrah Palmer, Associate Extension Specialist and Director of the New Jersey Food Stamp Nutrition Education Program, speaking at a panel discussion for the HIP Symposium, October 16, 2008

So yet again, we see an emphasis on influencing children rather than adults to implement healthy eating initiatives among the poor.

I am sorry to see that the legislation improving school lunch did not pass. Did it perhaps go too far in its attempt to differentiate between good and bad vegetables and tomato paste? If those provisions were left out and instead we reduced sodium and increased whole grains might it have passed? Who knows? I hope this is a conversation that Congress will continue to have in the future or that school lunch professionals around the country can be incented by local school boards or parents to improve lunches on their own making this conversation unnecessary.

What are your thoughts on school lunch or SNAP legislation? What rules would you like to see to improve the health of school-age children and poor families? Please share in the comments.

Our Thanksgiving meal. The popcorn is my daughter's addition.

What a feast! I spent all day cooking and just about the time many people were probably getting in their cars for some early Black Friday shopping we were sitting down to eat. My 3 year old decided that the proper attire for such a meal was pajamas. Obviously, I still need to work on my timing but our meal was probably the best full Thanksgiving I have ever prepared!

We tried the collard greens and have mixed feelings about them. They are kind of delicious but the chewy texture is a little tough to get used to. They go down best with extra red hot pepper sauce and they were pretty good again today in our Thanksgiving leftovers sandwiches.

Collard greens (from Paula Deen's recipe).

I also made Cristeta Comerford’s sweet potato pie. This was kind of a funny experience. For some reason, even though I read through the recipe beforehand, I did not process exactly what would be required to make this pie. Here is a bit of my thought process.

First, I put the “aromatics” on a sheet tray and baked the sweet potatoes. I forgot to buy an orange so I quickly grated the zest off the lemon that I needed for the custard part and cut that up instead. I left them in the oven for about an hour.

I then worked on the dough which ultimately came together nicely into a ball as the recipe described.

After taking the dough out from its “rest,” I suddenly realized that I would need to roll this out into a real pie crust…something I have NEVER done before. After a few false starts, I finally got it rolled out

and made a half-decent pie crust.

Then the recipe said, “Top with parchment paper and cooking beads and bake blind for 12 minutes.” Small problem . . . we didn’t have parchment paper. I am not sure what cooking beads are and I don’t know what “bake blind” means. Somehow I recalled either a recipe I made years ago (or maybe something I saw on TV) and lined the crust with aluminum foil and put some uncooked rice in to weight it down.

Fox Run Ceramic Pie Weights at amazon.com.

It came out OK so I figured that must have been close enough.

Next it was time to prepare the sweet potato puree. Things were going OK until the recipe said, “Scoop the meat and pass through a chinoise.” What in the world is a chinoise? I scooped out the sweet potato meat and mashed it with a fork. (I thought to use the strainer in the picture below but the meat was too tough to go through.)

It was still pretty lumpy so I put it in the blender for a bit! The blender couldn’t handle it either so it was back to mashing with a fork again.

Norpro Stainless Steel Chinois with Stand and Pestle Set at amazon.com.

I got it as smooth as I could but there were still a few lumps in it. I probably should have cooked the potatoes some more at this point to make it softer but I needed the oven and didn’t think to do it on top of the stove. I assumed the chinoise must be some super sort of masher or blender that would get all the lumps out. It is.

After getting the puree as smooth as I could, I made the custard and added it in. Things were looking pretty good at this point!

I poured the filling into the crust and put it in the oven.

Fat Daddio's Fluted Tart Pan 12 Inch x 2 Inch Removable Bottom at amazon.com.

While Cristeta’s recipe calls for a “12 inch tart pan,” the grocery store did not sell this so I substituted a 9” pie pan. The problem is that making the pie deeper will increase the cooking time. After the 35 minutes the recipe called for, the crust was perfectly brown but the center of the pie was still uncooked. I gave it 10 more minutes but it still was nowhere near to being cooked. I lowered the heat to 250 and let it cook for probably another hour or so. This pie smells incredible while it is baking! I think it is due to the anise. My husband came down and said, “Mmmmm…..something smells soo good!” which was very satisfying after all that work. I let the pie cook for as long as I could but eventually I needed the oven for my turkey so I took it out and hoped for the best.

As I was washing up dishes after our meal, I noticed that the tag for my Pyrex pie pan indicated that you should never put glass under the broiler. Small problem for the honey meringue topping for dessert! Rather than risk burning the whole pie and cracking my pie dish, I decided to make the meringue on a metal sheet tray and just scoop it onto the pie.

The honey meringue topping is the very best part of this whole dish. Even if sweet potato pie does not appeal to you, you should try this meringue and have it on ice cream or cake. It is soooooooo good. I whipped the egg whites.

Added the warm honey (which, unfortunately had boiled over on the stove leaving me a honey mess to clean up).

Poured it on the baking sheet . . .

and put it under the broiler for about 30 seconds. It came out nice and brown.

The broiler just browns the top and doesn’t firm the meringue so it doesn’t scoop all that well but you can imagine how good this would be if done properly.

When we cut into the finished pie, it was pretty good!

My daughters who liked the mini pumpkin pies I made earlier in the week anxiously wanted a slice. But then they saw that my pie had some chunks of sweet potato in it.

“I don’t like this. It has vegetables in it.” my 3 year old reported.

After this experience, we can conclude two things:

1) Cristeta Comerford is a seriously talented chef. If I can mess up her recipe this badly and it still comes out relatively great, that shows some serious cooking skills. Her flavorings are so subtle, beautiful and unique. The Obamas must eat some elegant food.

2) Before I attempt another recipe of this culinary magnitude, I need to double check for the right cooking utensils as well as ingredients. If you have all of these utensils in your kitchen, you are probably a seriously talented chef as well!

I hope your Thanksgiving cooking (or eating) experience was just as fun and interesting.

Ruly Tip: If you did cook this year, consider taking a moment to write your recipe(s) down as well as any notes about shopping for special ingredients or cooking tools, how long it takes to make, etc. Store your notes and recipes in a special file, binder or type it on a 3×5 card and create a flip-book ring. Not only will this help you next year when you are planning your meal but it is a great way to preserve memories and would make a great gift to a new cook as well.

What were your favorite foods at the Thanksgiving table this year? What other memories do you want to remember? Please share in the comments.

So far, almost everyone I have spoken with is not cooking this Thanksgiving! They are all traveling or joining a group dinner at a family member’s home. We are on our own this holiday (but missing our families across the country dearly) so I will be cooking for my family.

I had a little Thanksgiving preview this morning, having the privilege of accompanying a young “Native American” to her preschool Thanksgiving feast.

We made mashed potatoes and mini pumpkin pies and had a mini feast with the other kids and moms and dads. The house now smells of pumpkin pie and is setting a warm and festive tone for the long weekend.

While I have told you numerous times that I am still a novice cook, there are a couple lessons I have learned the hard way about cooking for Thanksgiving.

1) If you don’t have your turkey, go to the store as soon as possible! Last night, the grocery store closest to our house ran out of frozen turkeys! “And we aren’t getting any more,” the butcher informed an inquiring customer. But don’t stress, you could always go for something else—a turkey breast instead of a whole turkey, turkey drumsticks or wings, ground turkey for turkey burgers, etc. Over the years, we have been so busy working that the only time we had to go to the store was right on Thanksgiving Day. At that time, all that was left were some Cornish game hens in the freezer section. Those worked out just fine too—much better than the year that all that was left was an enormous 20 pound turkey! After years of getting it wrong, this year I got my turkey early, picking up a frozen turkey breast in early November.

2) If you have a frozen turkey, it is time to put it in the fridge to defrost. If it doesn’t defrost in time, you will have to put it in cold water baths in the sink. (I have no idea what happens if you put a frozen turkey right into the oven but I suspect the results are terrible as no one recommends this.)

3) Spread out the cooking. If you are making a lot of side dishes or desserts, many chefs suggest that you make them tomorrow, one day ahead, and store them in the fridge so they just need to be reheated on Thanksgiving Day.

4) Create a cooking timeline. It is also a good idea to review your recipes today to see what you should cook tomorrow versus Thursday so that you have enough oven space for your dishes. It is also time to buy any missing ingredients and start setting your table.

We try to mix things up each Thanksgiving and add something new to the menu. This year, we are adding a Southern twist to our meal. For the first time ever, we will try cooking collard greens! We have never tasted them before but we understand that many people consider them a Thanksgiving staple. The nutritional value of the greens is so high it probably would be a good idea if we all started eating them. We are using Paula Deen’s recipe. By the time Paula Deen finishes with these greens, they may not be nutritious any more but they are certain to taste incredible!

Collard greens in abundance at the grocery store.

The other new food we are trying out is sweet potato pie. Until we moved to the D.C. area, we had never heard of sweet potato pie. It too is a southern staple. Those that don’t eat sweet potato pie, have a casserole of sweet potatoes, marshmallows and brown sugar. For my first sweet potato pie, I am being a bit ambitious and trying out White House chef Cristeta Comerford’s version. I know I am already in over my head as our local grocery store does not carry star anise nor crème fraiche. We had to substitute anise extract and sour cream. I hope this doesn’t ruin it. I have also never broiled meringue before. Wish me luck that I don’t burn it! If all else fails, we have the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies on hand!

Louisiana yams (sweet potatoes).

As I mentioned above, my other dessert risk this year was to make mini pumpkin pies. They turned out really cute and my pumpkin pie hating husband even liked them since they don’t have a soggy pumpkin middle and are more crunchy in texture from the crust.

We took this recipe for graham cracker crust and pressed it into mini muffin cups.

The finished mini pies. They were quite popular and my picky 6-year old even ate them! Success!

To all of my readers, wishing you a very Happy Thanksgiving and hope that you enjoy this special time with your family and loved ones!

Are you cooking for Thanksgiving? What is on your menu this year? Please share in the comments.

"Tofurky" Photo by Mike Linksvayer. From the Flickr Creative Commons.

Next week, we are coming up on the biggest meat-eating holiday of the entire year . . . Thanksgiving!  As a special challenge to Ruly Ruth, I inquired what she would do if she had to host a vegetarian Thanksgiving.  While I have never been invited to such an event myself, I have encountered several people in the D.C. area who have hosted vegetarian Thanksgiving celebrations.  One friend indicated that her father was livid that there would be no turkey on Thanksgiving, even though she was preparing “Tofurky.”  How would Ruly Ruth resolve this situation?  Read on for her suggestions.

Ruly Ruth is a carnivore who seeks out rare meats–I’ve eaten kangaroo, crocodile, alligator, caribou, elk, deer, buffalo, moose, and the list goes on. So 2 problems with this presented themselves immediately: 1) wrapping my head around a non-traditional turkey Thanksgiving; and 2) Thanksgiving is traditionally a meal around a large meat roast–the iconic image of Norman Rockwell! It’s not like other holidays where the meal can be mixed or matched…..it’s turkey! And Stuffing! And gravy! And potatoes (usually) and vegetables–often carrots, sometimes parsnips….with cranberry jelly or sauce…or lingonberry jelly for me! So why or how on earth would I come up with a MEATLESS Thanksgiving???

Then I had an epiphany. And it was actually based on a new recipe for turkey–this woman did it southwest style with tamales instead of stuffing inside! So I’ve decided that Thanksgiving is more about regional and hearty and beloved cuisine than the traditional magazine spread.

So for your main course–to veer from that roasted meat platter….go regional! Make tamales, or enchiladas. In Greece, we could do a lovely spanikopita. Or Italian–with raviolis or lasagna. Or eggplant parmesan! That would make a lovely centerpiece. And couscous or a rice dish to compliment. Obviously sweet potatoes or regular potatoes go with all of this! My mother makes a killer stuffing out of pine nuts, celery, carrots and who knows what else—it’s not a bread-based stuffing–but it’s AMAZING and lovely! Something like that would be a great compliment too.

Another idea especially with the colder weather approaching for most of us, is to do a wonderful hearty soup! Potato leek or a nice pumpkin soup with a lovely roll or bread load would be wonderful. (This would also make a wonderful appetizer as well.) And a great side salad—sounds like a great meal to me!

And lovely fruits for dessert–I just watched Gordon Ramsay on the F Word make a lemon curd tart, to mix it up from a traditional pumpkin pie. We’ve also had cheesecake in the past, and special ice creams as well–very fun to mix it up at times.

Sourcing ingredients for special meals is often where I will splurge on my precious grocery dollars. Going to a farmer’s market for the vegetables and fruit, and specialty shops for jams or lemon curd or fresh breads or what-have-you is a special treat–and what better time than the holidays to do this, when you’re preparing a meal for very special family and friends! Also this supports these local businesses that may not get our usual weekly grocery money. A win-win, I’d say!

Also don’t forget to spread the love of the meal and donate an item or more to the local food bank. My daughter’s preschool is collecting food for a meal for 4 for Thanksgiving. She’ll be bringing in 2 boxes of turkey stuffing. Canned cranberry jelly, stuffing, mashed potatoes mixes, canned pumpkin–don’t forget to add 1 or more of these basic Thanksgiving items to your cart this next shopping trip! It’s greatly appreciated.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

So, Ruly Ruth says if you are serving veggie Thanksgiving to meat eaters, don’t use a soy-based meat substitute but rather go for something completely different.  Would you mind if there was no turkey at your Thanksgiving celebration?  Any vegetarians out there?  What do you say?  Please share in the comments.

P.S.  FabFitFun also did a post today about vegetarian Thanksgiving.  You can read their suggestions and recipes here.

I’m over the halfway point in my healthy eating and exercise experiment this month!  How are things?

Healthy Eating Progress

I would give myself about a B- for my fruit and vegetable eating efforts.  We have eaten every single meal at home this month so far but our produce quotient is below where it needs to be.  I started off the month strong but now at Day 17, I have lost a lot of that initial enthusiasm.  I still like my blueberry-orange smoothies and my 3-year old even asked for one for her the other day!  (For diadia’s benefit, I recently tried replacing the milk with water and it is just as yummy and cuts out about 1/3 of the calories, although it cuts the protein out too.)

This week I am stuck in a treacherous soup rut.  I dusted off a soup cookbook that has been sitting on my shelf for years now.  I bought all the ingredients for 4 different soups.  We have had two of them so far—a white bean and a beet soup—and we don’t particularly care for them.  These soups are probably extraordinarily healthy for you.  They are full of veggies and have very low salt.  But that’s also the problem.  There is nothing to draw you to eat them.  I struggle to make myself cook them and we struggle to finish them off.  Each soup makes enough for about 2 meals worth.  I have two more soups left to make from this cookbook.  If I were a better cook, I might know how to season them better or swap ingredients to make them more to our taste.  I feel compelled to finish the two remaining recipes because unless I come up with another recipe that uses the same ingredients, I will have wasted my grocery money—defeating part of the purpose of this month’s challenge.

White bean soup. Good but could use more seasoning.

Beet soup. Not my favorite.

Greek salad. One of the yummier vegetable dishes this week!

To compensate for my bland soups, I find myself eating more sweets, bread, yogurt and granola bars.  My “half your plate” balance is getting quite off.  After we get through the last two soups, I will look for vegetable recipes that have something else in them we will really want to eat, like cheesy veggie lasagna!  My 6-year old asks every two days when we will get to eat at Subway again.  “December,” I keep telling her.

Exercise Progress

I have kept to my 20 minutes of exercise every day and give myself an A for effort in this area.  I don’t see a dramatic difference in my weight as yet but I certainly do see a difference in my strength and endurance.  Push-ups aren’t as much of a challenge as they were on day one.  I still need to work on my cardiovascular fitness but I can “jump rope” in place for 30 seconds without dying now.

One big difference I have noticed is that there are a lot more aches and strains exercising now than when I was a teenager.  I don’t ever remember feeling any sort of pain when exercising when I was younger (unless I had some sort of diagnosed injury).  Now, I seem to encounter them all the time!  During the Level 1 workouts, I had mild pain in my mid to lower back when doing jumping jacks.  It was an odd pain.  I didn’t have it on day one but it showed up around days 2-8 or so.  I tried Googling a reason for this and didn’t find much of one but did find it was a common complaint among novice exercisers.  In my case, I think the pain stemmed from either a lack of leg muscles to absorb the shock of the jumps (sending it right to my back instead) or feeling stress about whether I would have the cardiovascular stamina to finish the set and subconsciously tensing my muscles during the movement.

Now 7 days into Level 2, there is no more back pain but instead my Achilles tendons are constantly sore.  I really don’t know whether I have injured something or if I am again working through some temporary pain while I build muscle strength.  Achilles tendon pain can be a sign of weak calf muscles.  According to this orthotics site, discussing the relationship between ballet and Achilles tendonitis, you can also shorten your Achilles tendons by wearing high heels too often (something I am definitely guilty of).

“The Achilles tendon, the largest tendon in the body, extends down the back of the leg to the heel and allows the dancer to rise onto pointe. Not lowering the heel completely down between relevés, ribbons that are wrapped too tightly around the ankle, and drawstrings or elastic which is too tight around the heel can all contribute to tendonitis. Symptoms include tightness, soreness, and swelling of the tendon, pain during relevé, and sometimes a slight stretching noise. Icing, stretching, and anti-inflammatory medications are recommended. While wearing high heels outside the studio may help alleviate the pain of Achilles tendonitis, prolonged wearing of high heels will contribute to it. . . .Though dancers are used to spending a lot of time on demi-pointe, it only feels natural to walk around in high heels. Over time this places additional stress on the balls of the feet and shortens the Achilles tendons.”

–“Ballet Dancers,” Foot Dynamics

I am trying more stretching and massage and wearing warm socks to bring heat to the area.  They do all seem to help.  Interestingly, the pain does not get worse while exercising and in fact tends to lessen!  The next day, especially in the morning, however, it can be hard to walk or go downstairs while the tendons (or muscles or whatever it is) get stretched back out.  I have kept up my workouts while I figure this out but I have kept my intensity level on jumps and other Achilles tendon exertions to the minimum.  Today, the pain seems to be dulling a bit so I am hoping that this is just part of the “breaking in” period.  Certainly if the pain gets worse, I will reduce my exercise and see a doctor.

I am glad there are only 13 days left in the month and looking forward to a change in routine.  But at the halfway mark, I am hopeful that I will be able to finish!

I was so excited to be asked to review Peter Walsh’s latest book, Lighten Up. If you have been with me from the beginning of this blog, you know that the very first organizing book I reviewed was Peter Walsh’s classic uncluttering book: “It’s All Too Much: An Easier Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff.”

Peter Walsh is the Jedi Knight of streamlining and uncluttering. He has written books on reducing physical stuff, weight loss and mental clutter. He pushes all of us to focus our lives, prioritize and eliminate distractions from everything except those things that bring us true happiness. It’s an intense, difficult goal and Peter Walsh is the tough love messenger. In his latest book, Peter Walsh takes us to the most emotionally charged issue of the moment. . . money. The subtitle of Lighten Up is “Love What you Have, Have What You Need” (and the hardest to hear) “Be Happier With Less.”

Peter Walsh’s special gift is that he is able to deliver messages that have the equivalent emotional impact of being hit in the head with a 2 x 4 and we still love him and listen to him!

Imagine with me, for a moment, that Peter Walsh is the star of a TV special on the difficult economy, promoting Lighten Up. First, he parachutes into the middle of the Occupy Wall Street movement (why parachute? . . . well, it’s just more dramatic that way), pulls out a megaphone and shouts to the unsuspecting crowd:

“You may think the tension in your life stems from your unpaid student loans but is it really coming from the fact that you haven’t figured out what you want to do with your life and you hate your current job? Be honest.”

–Peter Walsh, Lighten Up

He then goes knocking on the doors of the parents of Occupy Wall Street protesters, with this message:

“When your home is overrun with clutter and debt, you’re channeling a hopeless message of I don’t like this but I can’t change it into your children . . . They learn to push away their emotions like you and absorb a message of powerlessness.”

–Peter Walsh, Lighten Up

He then visits a giant stadium filled with a mixed crowd of: homeowners deeply underwater on their mortgages and facing foreclosure; seniors who have drained their meager 401(k) savings and are living on Social Security; people who have been unemployed 99 weeks (and counting) and homeless families living in hotel rooms and unable to afford sufficient food. His message:

“[N]o matter how many people contribute to your life and your problems, you have to take a personal stand all on your own. . . . The path to happiness starts with you owning the life you have. Until you take no less than 100 percent responsibility for your life—and your choices, your debts, your failures, your disappointments, your unhappiness, and so on—you won’t ever gain financial freedom.”

–Peter Walsh, Lighten Up

Whoa! That would make for some intense discussion.

Peter Walsh is not wrong in this message but it is still a tough message to hear.

If you follow the latest economic news, you can terrify yourself. No one knows what the economic path forward from here looks like. Most of us, emotionally, are still in a place where we think that the economy will eventually rebound to exactly where it was before and that we just need to tough out a few difficult years. But there are those who believe that the world has just drastically and dramatically changed, that there could be even worse years yet to come, that we may never get back to the way it was before and that is time for everyone to adjust to the new economic reality and plan the way forward.

I would count Suze Orman’s latest book in support of the latter proposition and Peter Walsh is on that track too. If the whole idea that life as we know it has dramatically changed overnight is terrifying to you, take heart that Peter Walsh is there to guide you through the process and the new world is not all bleak.

“Most of us need an attitude adjustment at two big levels. One, we need to shift our emotional relationship with money from one of fear to one of empowerment; and two, we need to change our sense of entitlement.”

–Peter Walsh, Lighten Up

Lighten Up takes you through a series of life audits, asking you to examine your goals for your life, your relationships with others, your money and your possessions. Peter Walsh draws the connection between cluttered and disorganized possessions and cluttered and disorganized lives.

“When most people think of clutter they think of the stuff that fills their garage or closets, of all those things strewn across kitchen countertops, and the flood of paperwork that seems insurmountable. If that’s your concept of clutter I need you to think much more broadly. In the work that I do clutter means anything that stands between you and the vision you have for your best life—it’s so much more than just the stuff. Those repeated bad decisions you make in your relationship? Clutter. Your anger and anxiety at work? Clutter. That voice in your head that tells you you’re not worthy of happiness? Clutter. The thoughts and feelings that constantly say you don’t deserve to be happy? Clutter. The fear and self-loathing that consume your days now that life ain’t what it used to be when money was abundant? Clutter.”

–Peter Walsh, Lighten Up

The only minor point I would disagree with Peter Walsh about here is that it isn’t always the case that people disorganized with physical possessions are disorganized with money as well. I have also seen plenty of examples of people with perfect physical organization whose financial lives are chaotic. But I believe he is correct that we all have clutter in our lives somewhere and that that clutter spills over and affects every facet of our lives.

Lighten Up asks some deep and thoughtful questions. The sections on money and financial responsibility were primarily aimed at those struggling with basic budgeting issues. People who need to scale back or people who disagree with their partner or children about where to cut expenses will find this section extremely helpful. There is even a nod to this month’s Ruly theme about healthy eating at home.  If you feel that you have a good handle on this aspect of your financial planning you may find the financial section a bit light, but will still learn from his audit questions. All of us, however, will learn something from the relationship and possession audits.

Overall, Lighten Up is a brave work that asks all of us to face the economic downturn head on and do the difficult work necessary to transition to what lies ahead, which Peter Walsh argues (and supports with insightful testimonials from his readers and clients) will ultimately lead us all to deeper happiness.

“Remember, change starts at home. We cannot expect (nor should we ever) that our government will bail us out and fix the problems that were a collective force in the making to begin with. If there’s one thing that I want you to take away from this book, it’s that you can make a tremendous difference in your own life—and even in the world at large—if you commit to just cleaning up your own little space.”

–Peter Walsh, Lighten Up

I would strongly encourage anyone struggling with the economic crisis to give Peter Walsh’s book a read and I thank him for getting us out of our comfort zones and empowering us all to embrace the future and not fear it.

How do you respond to Peter Walsh’s call for change? Please share in the comments.

With the weather turning colder, my body is ready to hibernate. I find myself wanting to eat slightly more than usual and sleep. It takes extra discipline to think about diet and exercise when nature is telling you to store up your winter reserves.

Eating Update
Yesterday, I felt like I hit the wall on my new eating plan. I was sick and tired of cutting up all those vegetables and was so ready to have my husband pick up take out for dinner on his way home. But, I managed to resist temptation and picked out a super-simple dinner of frozen cheese tortellini and some frozen broccoli. Hardly gourmet but it was sustenance!

Bacon, spinach and tomato sandwiches -- a good way to eat veggies when it is cold outside and your body tells you that you need a warm, fulfilling lunch. Add carrot sticks as a side.

The eating part of my goals is the hardest for me to sustain. I don’t necessarily mind eating vegetables but I do mind doing all the work to cut them up, cook them and then clean all those dishes afterward! This is the area in my life where I accept “help” in the form of various restaurant take-outs and frozen foods. I know cooking fresh is better for my health but it does have a cost in terms of time. I am still running my numbers but it may have a cost in terms of money as well. Some dishes are cheap to cook but some are at least as expensive as eating out. Also, when we eat out, we are a little more mindful of portions. We don’t order seconds, for example, because it would cost to do so. At home, we don’t hesitate to have seconds because they are “free.”

Thai soup from this recipe but with chicken added. (My apologies to vegans everywhere.) Who better to tell us how to combine vegetables than vegans and vegetarians?

If I ever was in a financial position where I had to cut back and I had to cook all our meals at home and they all had to be healthy and inexpensive, it would be a tough adjustment! Not impossible, but this 30-day trial is a good taste of how much more energy I would need in my life to do this.

Exercise Progress

I am starting to enjoy my exercise program and actually look forward to my 20 minute workouts now. At first, my muscles hurt so much and I was so exhausted and felt like the workout was beyond my capabilities. After sticking with it for a few days, I started to get a little stronger and a little less sore. Now 10 days in, I am far stronger than when I started and am actually ready to move on to a greater challenge in Level 2.

So far, I notice the difference in my thigh muscles the most. All of Jillian’s squats are paying off. I don’t really want to have a muscled look in my legs but the toning that I am getting has helped me feel so much stronger. From experience, I also know that when I have stronger thigh and calf muscles I reduce the strain on my knees and ankles when doing cardio workouts. I still want to stretch out my muscles a bit more and definitely need to do some heel-cord stretches (the tendon running up the back of the heel and lower leg).

I also think I am starting to get a small exercise high after working out. Rather than feeling tired after working out, I have a huge boost of energy. Interestingly, it is a slightly addictive sort of feeling.

Over the weekend I have a wonderful task to finish! I recently received a review copy of a book by one of organizing’s giants. I am halfway in and loving it so far. I will be sharing my thoughts with you on Tuesday. Hope you will find it as fascinating as I do!

Have a great weekend!

Eight days in to my new diet and exercise regimen and the going is both easy and tough.

Vegetable Eating Progress

I am getting more used to fixing meals at home with fresh vegetables but also tired of the effort too.

A typical lunch. Tuna on whole wheat with carrot sticks and a concoction my husband calls "tomato sludge" -- a can of organic diced tomatoes run through the blender.

My mother-in-law's homemade chicken soup recipe. So easy and delicious! We added in the Barilla vegetable-flavored Piccolini noodles for an extra veggie boost. My kids love to eat this too (at least to pick out the chicken and pasta).

Spicy cabbage and sausage. Great for colder weather.

And it’s not all fruits and vegetables and healthy eating.  Last night, my daughter talked us into buying a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts (which she calls “Happy Home” doughnuts) which we all devoured with gusto.

Exercise Progress

I am building more stamina to complete my workout program at the easiest “Level 1″ setting but also getting bored with the routine of it, even though the workout still is challenging to me. In two days I bump up to “Level 2″ and am terrified at how hard that will be!

I sent Jillian Michaels a tweet about my last blog post and to my great shock she (or a publicist) replied!

So the guru herself does not necessarily recommend the 30 Day Shred and instead advises you try the Ripped in 30 Days video. I plan to finish up with the Shred regardless since I have already started but I look forward to trying the Ripped video–hoping I will continue my regimen after November is over.

Reader Questions

diadia commented about my blueberry smoothie recipe:

“In ‘Fit for Life’ the authors stress not mixing fruits with other foods in combination. It slows the digestive process of the stomach and small intestine. Fruits, eaten alone, should be left in the stomach 30 minutes before other foods enter. This is the nutritional and body cleansing action fruits provide. Fruits for dessert is questionnable–before meals or for meals or snacks between meals to benefit our bodies.”

Thanks for the great comment!  You could modify the recipe to meet this criterion by leaving out the milk and just putting in water.  I assume fruit mixed with other fruit and water would be OK?  The other day I counted the calories in this and with 1 cup frozen blueberries, 1 cup milk and approximately 2 oz orange juice concentrate, you are looking at around 300-350 calories depending on the fat content of your milk.  This smoothie gives you 25% of your daily fiber, 160% of vitamin C and 8g of protein, plus it’s yummy!  As for the 30 minute rule on fruits, I don’t doubt the expertise of the authors but this is probably too perfectionistic for my lifestyle.   Do you find you follow this rule?

Ruth commented:

“How much money are the videos? And I HATE exercising with my 2 year old…it feels like child management to me…I have to pay a sitter to work out to feel good about it…but everyones different. Also my toddler is in a phase of fright mares so no sleep around here and no sleep means little to no energy for much…also I think the fruits and vegetable plan sounds good but expensive…any advice for those on very tight budgets maintaining this diet??”

These videos are not expensive at all.  The 30-day Shred is just $7.25 or you can download a digital copy of each level of the workout (Level 1, Level 2, Level 3) for $1.99 each.  The Ripped in 30 video Jillian recommends is not much more at just $9.49.  I can sympathize with the babysitter comment but I know that I would NEVER get a workout done if I had to transport my kids to the sitter plus pay for the sitter every time I wanted to exercise.  20 minutes at home is far from perfect but it is getting the job done.  As for the expense of the diet phase, I am tracking expenses this week and will post next week on how that turns out.  In general, I am finding that fruit and vegetables are some of the cheapest things on our grocery bill.

Bertie commented:

“Well done for you! I had the Jillian Michaels DVD. It is good and I agree it could be used for both genders, but it is very bootcamp style, which is not my favorite. One of my favorite DVDs for shorter workouts is Emergency Workout by Minna Lessig. It has 2 workouts about 25-27 minutes. One is a cardio workout that combines athletic moves with some more dance-y inspired moves. The second workout is a basic all-around strength/toning workout. I have had this video for years and still enjoy doing it because it is structured well, has a variety of exercises done for just the right amount of repetitions, and is well cued with a likeable instructor. I would say it is not quite as challenging as Jillian’s, though.

I also like two of the new Trudie Styler series by Gaiam. One is called Cardio Dance Flow and is a cardio workout with a few ballet and yoga moves mixed in. The other is Sculpt and Tone Ballet. Both of these workouts are also under 30 minutes. I am interested to hear which stretch video you found. I think it is really hard to find a great stretch video because most don’t provide a long and deep enough stretch for me.”

I was glad to receive this comment, particularly the part about how Jillian’s workout is “challenging” even to someone who has done as many exercise videos as Bertie!  I just assumed that I was miserably out of shape.  Yes, it is hard!  Even at Level 1 it is really hard!  The first day it doesn’t seem that hard but start doing it every day and it gets harder and harder to sustain! As for the stretching, the library video was a Jazzercize one that I have not actually tried yet.  I agree that it is hard to find a good stretch video.  My favorite stretch class was the yoga for ballerinas class I took from Regina Bogomolova since no one stretches more deeply than a ballerina!  She should make a video!

P.S. Bertie, you should start a blog reviewing exercise videos.

Thanks everyone for your comments and for joining me on this experiment!

Woman being weighed, state fair, Donaldsonville, Louisiana (1938). Photo by Russell Lee for the U.S. Farm Security Administration. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

I am now 8 days into my new diet and exercise regime. I can tell that I am getting stronger and gaining more stamina in my exercise program and I am getting used to thinking about fruits and vegetables all the time. But, to be sure, nothing I am doing is “perfect.” It might not even be “good,” but it is a step in the right direction at least.

Too often, when we think about diet and exercise, we think in absolute terms. We inherently assume that our own diet must be so terrible that we need something extreme to fix it. Forget moderation, we go right for the nearly impossible diets: no sugar, no fat, no carbs, no meat, low calorie, etc. It is probably true that if you were actually able to stick to such a diet that you would see an improvement in your health and lose weight to boot. The problem is that for most of us, these diets represent a goal that we have a very low chance of achieving before we cheat or give up out of hunger or frustration.

The same goes for exercise. Rather than start something simple like a walking regimen, people go for marathon training or P90X or something that is really ambitious. After a few days, they give up out of exhaustion, injury or being overwhelmed and disillusioned.

I often wonder why we do this to ourselves. Why do we always go to the extremes? The answers I have come up with are:

• We lack knowledge about what a realistic diet and exercise plan looks like. All we know are the extremes: couch potato or fitness fanatic.
• We buy into the fantasy that we could be the kind of person who _______ (eats only pure, organic foods, goes for a 10 mile run every morning, etc.) but are not willing to make the sacrifices that the person who actually lives that lifestyle makes.
• We want a criterion to judge our progress (or others’ progress) by. We prefer simple judgments like “Does this have sugar?” to complex judgments like “How much sugar does this have?”

I am living proof that a person can eat a pretty awful diet with minimal exercise and not be obese or have terrible health problems. (Of course, I know I should do better and that I may not enjoy this advantage forever. . . hence, this month’s theme.)

I think a big part of my success to date has to do with having a healthy psychological relationship to food. I don’t eat in secret and I don’t make a big deal if I overindulge in sweets or fatty foods (or if my kids do). I don’t obsess over my own appearance or anyone else’s. I see beauty as a complex formula of confidence, clothes, hair, skin and body size that does not have one answer. My priority for exercise is to have a body that functions the way I want it to with good energy, strength and flexibility rather than fitting into a particular dress size. Yes, sometimes I wish my body looked like a supermodel or some airbrushed image in a magazine but most of the time I have too much else to do to worry about that. I also accept that some people have the magic concoction of genes (or plastic surgery) that lets them look like that with minimal effort on their part.

So, as you read the posts this month, please don’t assume that I expect everyone to follow the diet and exercise plan that I am trying. I am just encouraging you to think through any challenges you are facing in this area and to find creative solutions that will work for your lifestyle. I hope to provide a successful example but even if my example is not successful I will have gained knowledge in the attempt and hope that you will too.

Do you always find yourself attempting the “perfect” diet or workout plan? Why? Do you think you could accept a realistic plan? Please share in the comments.