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FOOD RULES (an eater's manual) by Michael Pollan

Today was our last day of our "64 DAYS OF FOOD RULES" campaign.  We hope that you have a new and healthier relationship with food now.  Operation Boot Camp Los Angeles selected this particular book as the focus of our "food relationship" series due to the content, easy-to-follow chapters, and the easy-to-understand/implement information.

This is a great book and one that we suggest be part of your personal lobrary.  Continue practicing these very basic, yet common sense rules and you will continue your healthy journey feeling better & looking great! 

For more information, please visit www.michaelpollan.com.  This book may be found online or at a local Whole Foods store.

OBC Food Rules Day 64: Break the rules once in a while

Obsessing over food rules is bad for your happiness, and probably for your health too.  Our experience over the past few decades suggests that dieting and worrying too much about nutrition has made us no healthier or slimmer; cultivating a relaxed attitude toward food is important.  There will be special occasions where you will want to throw these rules out the window.  All will not be lost (especially if you don't throw out rule 60).  What matters is not the special occasion but the everyday practice-the default habits that govern your eating on a typical day.  "all things in moderation," it is often said, but we should never forget the wise addendum, sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde: "Including moderation."

OBC Food Rules Day 63: Cook

In theory, it should make little difference to your health whether you cook for yourself or let someone else do the work.  But unless you can afford to hire a private chef to prepare meals exactly to your specifications, letting other people cook for you means losing control over your eating life, the portions as much as the ingredients.  Cooking for yourself is the only sure way to take back control of your diet from the food scientists and food processors, and to guarantee you're eating real food and not edible foodlike substances, with their unhealthy oils, high-fructose corn syrup, and surfeit of salt.  Not surprisingly, the decline in home cooking closely parallels the rise of obesity, and research suggests that people who cook are more likely to eat a more healthy diet.

Last day and food rule is tomorrow!  Check back for one more great peice of advice regarding living a healthy and fit lifestyle.

OBC Food Rules Day 61: Leave something on your plate

Many of us were told by our parents while growing up that we should always clean our plates-an instruction that in later life we have perhaps taken a little too much to heart.  But there is an older and healthier tradition that holds it is more genteel not to finish every last morsel of food: "Leave something for Mr. Manners," some children were once told, or, "Better go to waste than to waist."  Practice not cleaning your plate: it will help you eat less in the short term and develop self-control in the long.

OBC Food Rules Day 60: Treat treats as treats

There is nothing wrong with special occasion foods, as long as every day is not a special occasion.  This is another case where the outsourcing of our own food preparation to corporations has gotten us into trouble:  It's made formerly expensive or time-consuming foods-everything from fried chicken and french fries to pastries and ice cream-easy and readily accessible.  Frying chicken is so much trouble that people didn't use to make it unless they had guests coming over and a lot of time to prepare.  The amount of work involved  kept the frequency of indulgence in check.  These special occasion foods offer some of the great pleasures in life, so we shouldn't deprive ourselves of them, but the sense of occasion needs to be restored.  One way is to start making these foods yourself; if you bake dessert yourself, you won't go to that much trouble every day.  Another is to limit your consumption of such foods to weekends or special occasions.  Some people follow a so-called S policy:  "no snacks no seconds, no sweets-except on days that begin with the letter S."

OBC Food Rules Day 59: Try not to eat alone

Americans are increasingly eating in solitude.  Although there is some research to suggest that light eaters will eat more when they done with others (perhaps because they spend more time at the table), for people prone to overeating, communal meals tend to limit consumption, if only because we're less likely to stuff ourselves when others are watching.  We also tend to eat more slowly, since there's usually more going on at the table than ingestion.  This is precisely why so much food marketing is designed to encourage us to eat in front of the TV or in the car: When we eat alone, we eat more.  But regulating appetite is only part of the story: The shared meal elevates eat from a biological process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community.

Only 5 Days left of the "64 Days of Food Rules"

Over the past 59 days, we've shared a lot of helpful, useful, and common sense information regarding food and simple, easy-to-follow rules to make your eating an enjoying ans satisfying event that will fuel your body rather than overwhelm your body.

All information was provided by the book, "Food Rules" by Michael Pollan.  We would encourage everyone to go out and pick up a copy for yourself and your family.  This is good stuff and it's eay to read and follow.  For more informatiotn regarding the author, please visit www.michaelpollan.com

Please feel free to refer back to the previoous food rules and apply them to your life.

Keep checking back over the next 5 days for the remaining tidbits of great information. 

Remember....get healthy, stay healthy.....get fit, stay fit!

OBC Food Rules Day 58: Do all of your eating at the table

No, a desk is not a table.  if we eat while we're working, or while watching TV or driving, we eat mindlessly-and as a result eat a lot more than we would if we were eating at a table, paying attention to what we're doing.  The phenomenon can be tested (and put to good use): Place a child in front of a television set and place a bowl of fresh vegetables in front of him or her.  The child will eat everything in the bowl, often even vegetables he or she doesn't normally touch, without noticing whats going on.  Which suggests an exception to the rule:  When eating somewhere other than a table, stick to fruits & vegetables.

OBC Food Rules Day 57: Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does

American gas stations now make more money inside selling food (and cigarettes) than they do outside selling gasoline.  But consider what kind of food this is: Except for the milk and water, it's all highly processed, imperishable snack foods and extravagantly sweetened  soft drinks in hefty twenty-ounce bottles.  Gas stations have become "processed corn stations": ethanol outside for your car and high-fructose corn syrup inside for you.  Don't eat here.

A View From The Ticket Stock: Well, here we go... BOOT CAMP.

A View From The Ticket Stock: Well, here we go... BOOT CAMP.

A View From The Ticket Stock: Shopping for Food. Meh.

A View From The Ticket Stock: Shopping for Food. Meh.

OBC Food Rules Day 56: Limit your snacks to unprocessed plant foods

Remember the old taboo against "between-meal snacks"?  Decades of determined food marketing have driven the phrase from our consciousness.  But the bulk of the 500 calories American have added to their daily diet since 1980 (the start of the obesity epidemic) have come in the form of snack foods laden with salt, fat, and sugar.  If you are going to snack, try to limit yourself to fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

OBC Food Rules Day 55: Eat meals

This recommendation sounds almost as ridiculous as "eat food", but nowadays it too goes without saying.  We are snacking more and eating fewer meals together.  Sociologists and market researchers who study American eating habits no longer organize their results around the increasingly quaint concept of the meal:  They now measure "eating occasions" and report that we have added to the traditional Big Three-breakfast, lunch and dinner-an as yet untitled fourth daily eating occasion that lasts all day long: the constant sipping and snacking we do while watching TV, driving, working, and so on.  (One study found that Americans ages eighteen to fifty nearly a fifth of all eating takes place in the car.)  In theory, grazing-eating five or six small meals over the course of the day-makes sense.  Keep your grazing to real food, stick to meals.

OBC Food Rules Day 54: "Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper"

Eating a big meal late in the day sounds unhealthy, though in fact science isn't conclusive.  Some research suggests that eating close to bedtime elevates triglyceride levels in the blood, a marker for heart disease that is also implicated in your weight gain.  Also, the more physically active you are after a meal, the more of the energy in that meal your muscles will burn before your body stores it as fat.  But some researches believe a calorie is a calorie, no matter what time of day it is consumed.  Even if this is true, however, front-loading your eating in the early part of the day will probably result in fewer total calories consumed, since people are generally less hungry in the morning.  A related adage:  "After lunch, sleep awhile; after dinner, walk a mile."

OBC Food Rules Day 53: Serve a proper portion and don't go back for seconds

You lose all control over portion control when you have second helpings.  So what is a proper portion?  There is folklore offering sensible rules of thumb based on your size.  One adage says you should never eat a portion of animal protein bigger than your fist.  Another says that you should eat no more food at a meal than would fit into into the bowl formed by your hands when cupped together.  If you are going to break the rule on seconds, at least  wait several minutes before doing it:  You may well discover that you don't really need seconds, or if you do, not as much as you thought.

OBC Food Rules Day 52: Buy smaller plates and glasses

The bigger the portion, the more we will eat-upward of 30% more.  Food marketers know this, so they supersize our portions as a way to get us to buy more.  But we don't have to supersize portions at home, and shouldn't.  One researcher found that simply switching from a 12 inch to a 10 inch dinner plate caused people to reduce their consumption by 22%.

OBC Food Rules Day 51: Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it

This is a pretty good metrix that honors the cook for for the care you or he or she has put into the meal at the same time that it helps you to slow down and savor it.

OBC Food Rules-Day 50: "The banquet is in the first bite."

Taking this adage to heart will help you enjoy your food and eat more slowly.  No other bite will taste as good as the first, and every subsequent bite will progressively diminish in satisfaction.  Economists call this the law of diminishing marginal utility, and it argues for savoring the first few bites and stopping sooner than you otherwise might.  For as you go on, you'll be getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.

OBC Food Rules: Day 47: Stop eating before you're full

Nowadays we think it's normal and right eat until you are full, but many cultures specifically advise stopping well before that point is reached.  The Japanese have a saying-horah hachi bu-counseling people to stop eating when they are 80 percent full.  The Ayurvedic tradition in India advises eating until you are 75 percent full; the Chinese specify 70 percent, and the prophet Muhammad described a full belly as one that contained 1/3 food and 1/3 liquid-and 1/3 air, i.e. nothing.  (Note the relatively narrow range specified in all this advice: somewhere between 67 and 80 percent of capacity.  Take your pick.)  There's also a German expression that says: "You need to tie off the sack before it gets completely full."   And how many of us have grandparents who talk of "leaving the table a little bit hungry"?  Here again the French may have something to teach us.  To say "I'm hungry" in French you say "J'ai faim"-"I have hunger"-and when you are finished, you do not say that you are full, but "Je n'ai plus faim"-"I have no more hunger."  That is a completely different way of thinking about satiety.  So ask yourself not, Am I full? but, Is my hunger gone?  That moment will arrive several bites sooner.