Slimming in Summer

So here are my summer survival and slimming tips.  I lost 20 of the 44 lbs I lost in 2008 over the summer, and didn't feel deprived or melt to death in the Haifa heat.

Cook at night.

A part of my winding down routine every night in the summer is planning the meals for the next day.  Salad is the default food on the menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so I chop or shred my vegetables or prepare the salads the night before.  Cucumbers and tomatoes don't fare so well being chopped ahead of time, but carrots, radishes, onions, and cabbage will store quite nicely.

If I want to make beans, rice, or another whole grain, this is when I put it in the pot to soak and ferment.  This both reduces the cooking time and makes it healthier.  If I intend to make pancakes, night time is when I make the batter for the next day.  If I'm making a soup, this is when the ingredients go into the slow cooker.

Cook and freeze.

Chicken can be cut into parts, baked, and frozen without sacrificing too much of the taste and texture.  Just about any meat can be slow cooked until it's tender and then divided into containers.  Cooked beans also freeze nicely, and you can even season them to taste before freezing to save a step in cooking.  Basically, pick a night on a weekend to cook all your meat, beans, and vegetables that require cooking, for the month.  You can even make meatballs a pan at a time, and freeze those too.

Make and freeze your own tomato sauce.

In the summertime, people tend to eat alot of tomato sauce.  I cannot stress enough, the importance of making your own.  Tomatoes are in season in the early summer in most places, so you can buy many at a time, and make lots of sauce.  To make tomato paste, you just need to reduce the pomodoro you make until it has lost half or more of its water.

Why? Tomato sauce in the can has way too much salt, and usually added sugar.  Besides, tomato sauce you make at home tastes so much better.

Add a clove to your coffee or tea.

One place where empty calories can hit you is in sweet drinks in the summer.  If you have to have caffeine as a lesser evil to synthroid or ADHD meds, tea and coffee can be where you lose your resolve in reducing the sugar.  So aside of switching to honey or silan, adopt an old southern tradition and add a clove.

A warning about this though.  Clove oil or the strong scent of cloves can trigger seizures in some people with epilepsy, so don't try it if you have seizures.  If you don't collapse when you pass a donut shop or confectionary with ginger bread though, then cloves won't be a problem for you.  Cloves make tea and coffee taste sweeter without adding sugar.  So you can use about half of what you normally do, and a clove dropped in while it's hot, will make up the difference.

Use stevia herb tea as a sugar booster.

On its own, stevia is a great herb to use as an alternative to sugar or artificial sweeteners.  The problem is that in recipes it doesn't help with browning, and also lacks any carbohydrates.  For those of us who sometimes lose our appetite for 12-24 hours at a time, we need our little bit of sugar and vitamins from honey or palm syrup (silan) to keep a low appetite episode from becoming a crash fast.

Stevia also has a kind of strange sweetness that hits the taste buds right, but is difficult to gauge.  It is much easier to measure the actual sweetness of stevia if it is cut with a little sugar.

So what I started doing was making a stevia tea from a couple of heaping teaspoons of stevia herb and a cup of hot water in a French press.  You can use a regular tea strainer or tea pot.  This was much easier for me to both reduce my sugar intake, and properly sweeten my tea.  A tablespoon of the stevia tea, a good teaspoon of honey, and a clove makes for a liter of perfect iced tea for me.  You may need more or less.

I don't use stevia for baking because it just doesn't do what sugar does.  For drinks and liquid or semi liquid cold "no-bake" desserts, it's great though.  For baking, using apple or another fruit puree, date paste, or silan is best for me

Have informal dinner parties and potlucks often.

If you have friends who are also committed to a similar nutrition plan, have dinner parties and potlucks.  This will help you stay the course, and you'll have who to share ideas and recipes with.

If you don't have friends who share your style, having a dinner party can be a good way to convince them to adopt it. Most of my friends have started along the way of small changes.

Potlucks are also good because instead of having to prepare multiple dishes, you can just make one thing and be out of the hot kitchen sooner.

Do picnics instead of eating out when you're not going out to eat.

Unless it's specifically a trip out to eat, pack a small cooler with lunch for yourself or those you're out with.  It's very rare to find a place that has authentic pre industrial ethnic, or "anachronutritionist" food.  However, outings and eating during outings is a social activity that might make you or your friends feel left out if you just bring snacks or a meal for yourself.  Because of the diet industry's propaganda, some people have alot of guilt connected to food, and your chewing on celery while they're scarfing chicken nuggets might trigger something.

So instead of creating an awkward situation, pack something to share.  Encourage your friends to bring something too, if they can.

Another fun thing to do at the mall is instead of heading for the food court, go to the grocery store.  Browse around with friends, and chip in for a healthy lunch that you can throw together on the spot.  This makes it social and healthier.

Click here for information on mchana, or African style lunch baskets.
Click here for information on bento, Japanese style lunch boxes.