Worth much more than 1000 Words

I've been reading the literature for the P90X workout program and learning what they want you to do before you begin working with the DVDs.
There's a basic fitness level test that they want you to take and pass before you start the program. It's nothing outlandish, 3 pull-ups for men, 1 for women, 15 push-ups for men, 3 regular or 15 from the knees for women, etc. There are other tests for strength, flexibility and the like.
It also gives you a place to write down your results so you can chart your progress from before you start the workout routines and then again after 90 days is over.

They also want you to take a photographs of yourself once before you start, again at 30 days, 60 days and finally after 90 days when you've completed the program. You're supposed to take a front view, shirt off picture (or with a sports bra on if you're a woman) with your hands on your hips, another with your arms raised to the side and curled in bicep flexes, two back shots just like the front views and one picture with a side view.
Don't worry I'll spare you posting them here, at least for now.

That got me thinking about how hard that can be, taking body shots of yourself especially when you feel like you're out of shape. I consider myself to be in decent shape and the idea still makes me a little uncomfortable.
That may sound odd to friends of mine who have known me to be, well, not exactly body shy but there's just something especially nerve wracking about having photos taken specifically for evaluation purposes.
However, I've come to realize taking those dreaded "before" photos is a damned good idea and I won't make the mistake again of skipping this step.

I believe I've mentioned on here before that although for much of my life I was the tall lean type, there was a period of time in my mid/late 30s that I started getting heavy and I really put on quite a few pounds. While I never got to the point that one might think of me as a fat guy, I did get quite a gut, pronounced love handles and soft, flabby arms .

Back then I was relatively new to Seattle. I was living with my girlfriend of the time, I had a few work friends but aside from that I didn't have a very large social circle. Even the couple local folks I knew from before I moved to Seattle I had very limited contact with for a couple years. I didn't even travel back home to visit old friends and family for the first couple years I was in Seattle.
Time went by and I managed to shed those excess pounds. My old girlfriend and I have long since parted, I left that job ages ago and have lost contact with just about everyone I knew from there.
It wasn't until after I started getting myself in shape that I started going out more, being more social and I began to meet the people that have become the wonderful circle of friends I now have. I've also since began traveling back east at least once a year to visit old friends.

The point of this long-winded piece of personal history is that when I tell friends I have now that I used to be heavy or at the very least, heavier, I sometimes get remarks to the effect of that's hard for me to picture, if not outright smirks of disbelief.
Last summer a couple of old friends came through Seattle to visit and the two of them went out to dinner with my girlfriend and me. Unprompted by me one of them pointed out to my girlfriend “you wouldn't know this to look at him now but Patrick got got fat there for a while”. The look on my girl's face, I could swear, was a look of Really? I always thought you were full of shit about that.
Of course I would never have to worry about any of these looks of disbelief if I only had some photographs of myself from back then.

There are a few different things that finally woke me up and got me motivated to change my diet and live a more active lifestyle. One that stands out very clearly in my mind is a snapshot my old girlfriend took of me back then. I was sitting on the couch watching TV and believe and I wasn't aware she was taking the picture at the time.
I remember when I first saw that photo, it was almost like I couldn't believe that was me; my stomach was hanging well over where my belt would've been, my arms looked bigger than they ever had before but not in a good way and my face looked puffy. However the thing that really struck me most about that photograph was that I just looked unhealthy.
Seeing myself look like that was startling and depressing.

It was quite a few years later when I went to go searching for photographic evidence of how heavy I had gotten, that I realized that I had no photographs of me from then. Even the photo I just described above I seem to have misplaced somewhere along the line. I swear I did not consciously get rid of that picture but some part of me obviously didn't want it around.

While I didn't have the interest in photography back then than I do now, I've always enjoyed taking pictures and I have photographs from just about every era of my life. During the time that I put on that extra weight though I apparently also put my camera in a drawer and forgot about it for while because I was taking no pictures back then. Again, I never consciously thought to myself that I wanted to avoid having my picture taken because I was out of shape. I think it must have just been some sort of an internal vanity self-preservation instinct that kept me from breaking out my camera.

Whatever it was, it's clear to me now that during that time I didn't want to be social, I dressed to hide my form and I clearly did not want to have my picture taken. I didn't even take pictures when I was joined a gym to mark my starting point. That was probably because I didn't have faith in myself that I stick to my plan and get myself in shape.

It's a shame because now I would really like to have photos of myself from back then. Certainly it might be a good thing to show on this blog. An image of how I looked at 35 compared to how I look at 45 might add a little bit of credibility to what I have to say.
For myself I wish I had pre-fitness pictures just to remind myself where I've been and what I can accomplish when I make the right choices.

So yes, before I start this P90X thing I'm going to take those photos. Even if I don't show them to anyone else, I'll have them for myself as either mementos of what I accomplished or reminders that I need to try harder next time.
None of us like the idea of being the “Before” picture but that is after all part of the process of becoming the “After”.

A Chef's approach to eating lighter, losing weight, and getting in shape .... Part 2

This is the continuation of an earlier post.
You'll want to read Part 1 before continuing here.

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Anyway, I embarked on my own mission to find a way to not only lose weight but also put on some muscle and get healthy. You do know that losing weight and improving your health do not necessarily go hand in hand, right?
I decided I would find a way to achieve my fitness & health goals without ripping all the decadent pleasures from my life.
The really weird thing is that I actually did it. I lost the all the excess weight I had put on and then some. I toned up and put on more muscle mass by far than I had ever had in my life before and I entered into my 40's in the best shape of my life.

Of course, it wasn't simple. It could have been much easier had I known then what I know now. However I took a much less direct path, filled with plenty of trial and error on my way to a healthier, trimmer body. There was the aforementioned bad advice fom those trying to sell products and gimmicks. There were the diet plans that work for a short period of time if they work at all and usually left me feeling hungry and deprived.
Then there were the various processed diet foods and weight loss supplements. Now those actually worked. My wallet lost a bunch of weight from buying them. My belly may have been hanging over my belt but my wallet had six pack abs.

It took a little while for me to realize that what I thought was my greatest obstacle in losing weight, my career and passion for fine food, was actually my greatest stength. I understood food and how to work with and create flavor. I also knew which products and cooking techniques were fattening and which were healthy. I could make healthy, lighter food taste good.
Correction, I could make it taste GREAT.

I also realized that when you have been working in my profession long enough you develop and understanding of how people eat and relate to food. Simply stated, people often don't realize what they are hungry for. I know that sounds a little odd but I'm going to ask you to trust me about this for now.

What we do as restaurant and catering chefs is not as simple as make delicious food and the people will come. There are techniques we use to gently nudge the way you eat this way and that.
Sometimes we use such methods so that you feel full and satisfied at the end of your meal while not having to give you too much of the “center of the plate” item which is generally the most costly item for us to serve.
We also do little things to encourage you to order more food from us than you may have done without our nudging.
If we are serving a buffet or catering event where we are paid a set price no matter how much the guests eat, it's in our best interests to guide you to eat less or eat the items that don't cost us as much to serve while still making everyone feel like they have gotten their money's worth. Let's face it though; if you were really getting your money's worth then we wouldn't have a very profitable business model, would we?

The unfortunate part of this is that whether we are trying to get you to eat less or eat more, we are pretty much never trying to get you to eat healthy. When it comes to making you feel sated while keeping costs low, salt, fats, sugar and simple carbohydrates are an easy out for many professional kitchens.

However I realized that these very same techniques that are all to often used to get us to make poor dietary choices can also be used to guide us toward eating better. In essence I found that I could use my powers for good as well as evil.
So that is what I did, even if just on myself at first. I was able to eat well, that is, really enjoy the food I had and in portions that didn't leave me hungry all the time. I was able to do it conveniently because even I, a cooking professional, don't have time to spend making involved meals for myself all the time.
I was still able to go out and treat myself to fine food and drinks without having to ask the waiter for steamed vegetables and sauce on the side. Not that either of those is a bad thing, but when I go out for dinner, I like to experience the food the way the Chef intended. In fact for me, that's often the point of going to a restaurant. Besides, as much as I believe in delicious yet healthy food, I can assure you that there is no such thing as a decent, low-calorie crème brulee. And to me, a world without crème brulee just isn't a world in which I want to live.

------------ To be concluded -------------------

A Chef's approach to eating lighter, losing weight, and getting in shape .... Part 1

Right from the start, I'll acknowledge that when one starts thinking about whose advice to seek out in order to help them lose weight, shape up, and live a healthier lifestyle, a chef probably isn't the first person most people think of. After all, the classic image of a chef in most people's minds isn't exactly the lean, fit, athletic type. Usually when we think of a chef, the image that comes to mind is a portly, somewhat effete gentleman, often with an accent, an over sized mustache and, of course, holding a large plate of tempting, but hardly healthy, food. The kind of guy you'd love to have cook you dinner but not exactly your first pick to be on your team in a game of softball.
Granted, with the rise in popularity of food TV and celebrity chefs, the image in many people's minds of what a chef looks like has expanded in recent years. Yet, still to this day, when I meet someone and tell them what I do for a living, it's not uncommon for them to respond “Really? You don't look like a Chef!” Understanding what they mean by this I usually respond “Thank you.”

Some years ago there was a slogan that you could find printed on novelty cook's aprons, hats, t-shirts and even bumper stickers, “Never Trust a Skinny Cook.” Since in my younger days I was rather thin, that saying got tossed in my direction fairly often. Always with a sense of good natured teasing of course, but still something about that saying always bugged me. I think it was because that what it said to me at the time was that if I didn't clearly over indulge in my own craft, that I obviously wasn't very good at it.

I learned a response to that phrase from a co-worker of mine. “Yeah, well a fat cook is like a drunk bartender.”
OK, it's probably not a very good analogy but it was a gentle way to snap back without going into a soliloquy about long hours, hot kitchens, no time to actually eat what I was cooking, etc.
However, I didn't have to worry about responding to that remark for very long because the time soon came that the term “skinny cook” no longer applied to me. And it was then that I realized what was probably the real underlying meaning of that slogan. Yeah, I'm overweight, but I have a passion for fine food and cooking and an unhealthy, overweight body is that price of that passion. And that meaning bothered me even more.

So that was it? Since I lived in the world of cooking and dining, I was doomed to be out of shape, overweight and probably in poor health? Talking to my colleagues at the time about it seemed to reinforce that idea. It seemed like everyone I spoke with about how I was getting heavier, came back with a response like “Yeah, what are you gonna do? That's just the way it is with us.” Or “Sure you can lose weight if you want to give up eating anything good.”
Then, when I decided to look outside the culinary world to find out what I needed to do in order to reverse the direction in which my body and health were headed, it seemed like all the standard advice from the diet experts wouldn't work for me.

How was I to remove temptation from around me when I worked with and around non-diet food, some of it extremely non-diet, on a daily basis?
How was I to avoid snacking between meals when it was part of my job to taste test the food my crew was creating?
And keeping count of calories in that situation? Are you kidding me?
As far as finding a diet/accountability partner with whom to share the effort; I don't know how much you know about the culture of the restaurant world. Suffice to say that my colleagues and peer group wasn't exactly full of people interested in living a healthy lifestyle.
Speaking of lifestyle, I didn't exactly live the life of Jack la Lane myself. I worked long, erratic hours. My social life consisted of late night drinks with friends and dining at the most decadent restaurants I could afford. And when I wasn't going out I was, and quite frankly still am, a bit of a couch potato. What can I say? I'm a child of the TV generation.
Was I going to have to give up my social life and my beloved TV?

However, my biggest concern was having to give up eating the foods that I so dearly loved. I lived in a world where sauces were started and finished with butter, cream was its own food group, and we lived by the words “fat is flavor.”

So I finally concluded that if I really wanted to do this, I was going to have to find my own way. I could do that couldn't I? After all, we all pretty much know what we need to do in order in order to eat a more healthy diet and lose those extra pounds, don't we? It's not like there are scores of “experts” out there bombarding us with false claims and conflicting reports after all.
Oh wait....


Don't worry, if you care to follow along I'm going show you my method for navigating through all that mess.

---- To be continued ---------