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Healthy Parents: 5 Steps to Planning Vegetarian Meals

December 20, 2011 at 6:26 am , by 

13 months.

What is the proper size portion of meat to eat in a meal? In the documentary Super Size Me, Lisa Young, PhD, RD, CDN and the Professor of Nutrition at New York University explains that the federal government defines 3 ounces of meat as a sensible portion.

I knew a guy who got an app on his iPhone that kept up with exactly how many calories he ate each day, as he wanted to only consume the appropriate amount for his age, weight, and height.

Despite being very careful about his food choices, he reported back to me after a week that he was coming up too high on his sodium count each day. I suggested he only eat meat in one of his daily meals, and that he make sure the portion was no larger than a deck of cards.

He did, and that was the only way for him to consume the proper amount of sodium.

To be clear, I am suggesting that eating meat for more than one meal a day (and/or consuming more than a deck-of-cards-sized portion of meat in that one meal) is adding too much meat (and sodium) into one’s diet. So for those who are crazy enough to follow my logic on this and actually believe that information is true and relevant, I want to explain how vegetarians plan their meals; at least how my wife and I do it.

So for the meals you don’t eat meat, you can remember what you learned here today to build a satisfying and fulfilling meal, sans the meat.

1) Half-veggie, half-whole grains, seasoned with cheese. That is the formula for how we plan our meals. No vegetarian should ever finish eating a meal and still be hungry. That’s why whole grain pasta, bread, and rice (along with beans) are crucial  for making a hearty vegetarian meal. Don’t even bother with “white bread,” which  leaves you longing for more substance unless you pair it with meat. It’s like eating a Kleenex; virtually no nutrition.

2) Think of your favorite meals that do contain meat, but remove the meat. My wife and I both love lasagna, pasta, and pizza. So we make the healthy version of these foods with whole grain pasta and whole wheat dough. We pack these meals full of veggies, like spinach and zucchini, held together with a little bit of cheese. What’s interesting is that when you use whole grain instead of white noodles or dough, you get fuller quicker on less food.

3) Put together a list of your “heavy rotation” vegetables to serve as your staples. Our list is basically this: spinach, zucchini, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, cucumbers, avocados, romaine lettuce, green beans, green peppers, celery, okra, and basil (which is actually an herb.) We keep all these veggies stocked every week in our fridge to serve as the “flavor” of our meals, whereas the whole grains are the “substance.” Cheese is the “fun part.”

4) Make a distinction between your main dish and your side dish(es). Much of the time, our side dish is a salad consisting of romaine lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, and Italian dressing (full of good fats from oils.) Sometimes it’s sauteed spinach with garlic and a little bit of butter. (As you can see, we’re not opposed to a bit of dairy to make things interesting.) Meanwhile, the main dish may be veggie lasagna or bean and rice burritos stuffed with veggies and avocados in a whole wheat wrap.

5) Make sure your meal has some fat in it. If you end up making a meal that doesn’t have cheese in it, make sure you throw in a whole avocado or at least some almonds. At least for me, I got to have some fat in my meal to be full. Again, vegetarian meals shouldn’t leave you hungry. Otherwise, you’re doing something wrong.

Image: Vegan lasagna rolls via Shutterstock.

 

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Healthy Parents: 6 Reasons Not to Join a Gym

December 16, 2011 at 7:44 pm , by 

13 months.

Featured pictures are from July 2008.

Back in August, in the midst of a Facebook message conversation, a friend I have known since Kindergarten described her perception of my wife and me:

“I think of you both as health conscious people….but I can’t picture either of you working out in a gym. I picture you as people who hike on the weekends or bike to dinner.”

Little did she know that I was already mapping out this post, explaining why I passionately oppose going to the gym, yet passionately promote daily exercise in other ways. It’s true, the last time I went to a gym, they had just discovered the hatch on Lost.

My friend was right. I am a biker; mountain biker, that is. At all times, my bike is stored in my Honda Element with me. Every day during my lunch break, I bike to Starbucks to read a book, or to the bank to deposit some cash, or to Whole Foods to pick up some Christmas presents for people.

I pretend that I live in a Mediterranean village in the year 1533, where I would literally have to travel miles at a time in order to get everything done that day. If I want to read a chapter in the current book I’m reading, I have to earn it by biking a mile and a half to get to a place to read it.

If it rains or is too cold, I have a heavy raincoat and “outside workout” clothes to change into. Even when it snows, I’ll still at least walk a few miles outside.

The point is to find someway to get daily exercise (at least 25 minutes) without having to depend on paying someone to use their facility. It doesn’t have to include a mountain bike, but it’s a matter of finding a creative way to get out of the office; even it’s just walking with a friend during designated breaks during work.

I say fresh air (even when it’s cold and wet) is still better than stagnant air inside an office. So let me go ahead and get into it, here are 6 reasons I don’t go to the gym:

1. Joining a gym often promotes an “all or nothing” mentality in which one’s diet follows. ”I was just too stressed to go to the gym for the past two days” often means a backslide into fast food lunches and potato chips as snacks.

2. Gyms promote a perfectly sculpted body as the goal, instead of a realistic, healthy one. We’re not movie stars; we don’t need six pack abs. The focus should be on being healthy, not losing weight. Weight loss is a side effect of active habits, not a target itself.

3. Gyms cost money. I’m not going to pay for what I can get for free.

4. There is a pressure to commit to a gym. Remember that episode of Friends where Chandler tries to quit the gym, recruiting Ross to help him, but then Ross gets suckered in to joining the gym too?

5. Working out puts too much focus on calories. For me, it’s about the the right food choices to begin with. I bet my daily calorie intake is slightly high, because I eat plenty of whole fruits (which are already naturally loaded with sugar) as well as avocados, nuts, and whole milk (full of good fats), but I weigh 20-something pounds less now than I did in these featured pictures of me from 2008 on my honeymoon in New England, before I had made my lifestyle changes- like biking and cutting out processed foods.

6. People size you up at a gym. Plus, it’s easier to do the same to other people; focusing too much on bodybuilders who basically live there.

So I say, liberate yourself from the gym.

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7 Steps to This Dad Becoming a Vegetarian

December 11, 2011 at 7:28 pm , by 

One year.

I guess, honestly, I’ve known this about myself for nearly three years now. But it took this long to work up the courage to come out of the closet. Plus, I didn’t want to deal with the label of it and the usual assumptions based on stereotypes.

However, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to deny who I am as a person based on my own preconceived ideas of people who are just like me.

So here at the very end of 2011, I am ready to show the world my true colors. For the most part, they’re green:

I am a practicing vegetarian.

This is 7 Steps to This Dad Becoming a Vegetarian, not 7 Reasons Why You Should Become a Vegetarian. This is simply the story of my journey to “meatlessness.” By all means, this has been a slippery slope of a process. Perhaps an alternative title to this should be 7 Things Not to Do If You Want to Continue Eating Meat for the Rest of Your Life.

Here’s how it happened:

1. I watched the documentary Super Size Me. It didn’t make me immediately stop eating fast food, but it did cause me to question the quality of food I was putting in my body and realize the connection of America’s obesity and our Western eating habits.

2. I married a health nut. My wife, who is from northern California, hadn’t eaten fast food since 1999 when she got an ice cream cone from the drive-thru at McDonald’s. Call it love or call it intimidation, but I stopped regularly eating fast food. It helped that she was making us healthy meals which I could have the next day for lunch instead of going to Subway or Wendy’s like I had been.

3. I stopped eating processed foods. The reason for this is that I developed eczema on my hands. My skin disease got to the point where I could barely type, which is unthinkable for a blogger! I learned that whenever there is “no medical cure” for something, it means to change your diet. So I stopped eating processed foods; anything in which sugar is added. I even stopped drinking fruit juice; and for the first time in my life, actually started eating real fruit instead on a daily basis.

4. I watched the documentary Food Inc. Though I knew that meat came from living animals, I never considered the actual process of slaughter or even worse, factory farming.

5. I went kosher. Many people thought I converted to Judaism when I cut out pork and shellfish from my diet; but a kosher diet, along with cutting out processed foods with added sugar, caused my my eczema to finally disappear!

6. I stopped buying meat to cook with. By the time my wife and I had gotten used to the no pork and shellfish thing, not to mention only eating whole grain pasta and bread (no more “white”), our bodies didn’t crave meat as much. So we only ate meat when we went out to eat over the weekend. In essence, we were “weekday vegetarians” by this point. After about a month of this routine, the only meat I even wanted anymore was fish.

7. I read the book Eating Animals. During my very first book giveaway here on The Dadabase, one of the winners was a cool guy named Mike Mitchell. I’m not exactly sure why, but he went through the trouble of mailing me a copy of Eating Animals. It is my opinion that reading this entire book is the point of no return. By the time I was halfway through, I had already made up my mind.

Will I ever eat meat again? Sure. If I it were my only source of nutrition and there was no other option in order to survive, yes I would. I would even eat a pig, which isn’t kosher.

If I was stranded from a plane crash in the Andes Mountains and had to eat the corpses of fallen human beings, I would, if it meant I stayed alive to see my family again. (This is a reference to the actual events portrayed in the 1993 movie, Alive.)

I guess the real question is whether, like a lot of vegetarians, I eventually will become vegan.

But an even more important question is how my wife and I will raise our son, concerning the consumption of meat. As for now, he doesn’t like meat anyway. I seriously wonder though, if I will let the pressure of social expectations cause us to allow our son to eat meat when we won’t eat it ourselves.

I’m still sorting that part out right now. I don’t want to be labeled as the wacko guy on Parents.com who deprives his kid of hormone-injected, factory farmed meat from animals who are so physically weak and unnatural that they can’t even reproduce sexually.

Fun Bonus Thought!

If nothing else, becoming a vegetarian this year has answered one of my life-long questions: What are Vienna sausages made out of?

After learning that most pigs are castrated because Americans don’t like the taste of pork with that much testosterone, I know of at least one ingredient not found in Vienna sausages.

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Do Fathers Have Lower Testosterone Levels Than Non-Dads?

November 28, 2011 at 7:31 pm , by 

One year.

If you’re asking me, based on personal experience, the answer is… NOOOOOO!!!

{morphs into the Incredible Hunk, as conveniently, only the bottoms of pants tear off }

Back in September the Assistant Editor of Parents.com, Jessie Assimon, sent me a link to one of the other bloggers’ articles here entitled “Study: Testosterone Levels Lower in Fathers.” Knowing she was curious for my thoughts on the piece, I thanked her for thinking of me, as I planned to soon write a post responding to the new study’s findings.

But what could I really say in a Dadabase post about the subject?

“Since becoming a dad, my level of testosterone has dropped. But that’s okay, because now I really can empathize with my wife. When I tell her that I know what’s she going through, I really do mean it.”

Yeah right.

Now, two and half months later, I have finally figured out my response and my take on the issue:

I am convinced that my level of testosterone has actually increased since becoming a dad.

Especially now that my son is a year old and I have 12 solid months experience, I know for a fact that I am more aggressive, more likely to stand up for myself, more likely to hurt peoples’ feelings, more likely to say no and not feel bad about it, and more likely to be seriously tempted to challenge the arrogant [bloke] to a fight outside after he made a rude comment to my wife at Pei Wei Express.

It’s like suddenly every Third Eye Blind song that talks about punching another guy in the nose (“London,” “Camouflage,” “Don’t Believe a Word”) serves as the soundtrack of my life.

In a matter of a year, I’ve gone from being Paul Rudd to Clint Eastwood.

I’m no longer patient to wait to see if the problem works itself out by me being nice. I take control immediately of the situation before it takes control of me.

My son would still be waking up throughout the night if it weren’t for me implicating the “make him cry it out” method in our house. I laid down the law and felt great. And that was only the beginning.

Granted, anyone who has actually read the article I mentioned in the beginning will know that the symptoms for having less testosterone have nothing to do with being more “on edge” like the way I am describing and experiencing.

The article instead focuses on a dad’s increased likelihood of further commitment to his family, as his testosterone drops by near half:

“The study, experts say, suggests that men’s bodies evolved hormonal systems helped them commit to their families once children were born. It also suggests that men’s behavior can affect hormonal signals their bodies send, not just that hormones influence behavior.”

Well, if that’s what this is about, then consider me the effeminate lion from The Wizard of Oz. 

But if having a lower testosterone level means that I’m more mild-mannered and motherly… forget it!

If nothing else it’s pretty interesting that in theory it actually takes having less cojones to be man enough to not run away from your family when things get tough or seemingly less exciting. Man, I could have told you that!

I wonder how much money was wasted on doing the scientific research for that report. Do yourself a favor and come to me next time, scientists.

Just ask for Mr. Chutzpah.

 

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Why My Son Isn’t Allowed to Watch TV

October 28, 2011 at 12:41 am , by 

Eleven months.

Yes, I’m that kind of dad. From the very beginning, I have stuck to my guns about my son not being prematurely exposed to TV, computers, smart phones, or any other kind of device that might confuse his brain regarding what is reality and what is a simulated image.

I’ve written about this before, saying that I’m part of the school of thought that believes there is a tie between Autism and TV. For me, letting a child under the age of 2 watch TV is like feeding him soda in a bottle; it’s simply unnatural in every way.

So ultimately, that is why my son isn’t allowed to watch TV, for at least another year. But the physical reason he can’t watch it is because we currently don’t really have one; unless you count the old-school (2006) 34 inch we keep just for watching Netflix and playing Wii, which rarely happens these days.

Even if we could afford cable, we wouldn’t have time to watch it without seriously jeopardizing the small amount of time we have together as a family. The TV we have is so outdated it won’t even pick up the main networks with an antenna.

Additionally, I’m not cool enough to have the Internet on my phone. Therefore, I’m fine with my son playing with my phone: The worst he has done so far is to text the message “xykghild” to an imaginary contact named “olkhgenjnbsd.”Sounds Icelandic to me.

Heck, he doesn’t even have age appropriate toys to play with. How does an eleven month old little boy learn to psychologically mature with a toy basket full of stuffed animals and some wooden blocks he mainly uses for chew toys? He doesn’t.

Instead, my son makes a game out of finding crumbs of a wheat tortilla that fell into the seat of his high chair.

He takes the cupcake pan out of the cabinet and walks to the other side of the room with it; then falls on top of it, using it as a sled across the carpet.

He speaks in some weird robot language to the invisible army of cats he evidently commands on a regular basis.

Honestly, I don’t see how my son would have time for TV and other electronic entertainment even if we could afford it. I guess he’s stuck with just his parents and his imagination. But I really don’t think he minds being a low-tech baby.

My son has plenty of time to catch up to all the cool, tech-savvy toddlers out there. I’m sure he’ll send me a text message from his first day at Kindergarten. That is, if texting isn’t culturally irrelevant by then.