maven&meddler

I usually find the ‘diet factss’ just as lame as the bullshit they replace. So, here’s my take on the debate as presented in Women’s Health:

The advice: Chug eight glasses of water a day.

Why it’s useless: Peeing every 20 minutes seriously interferes with life.

The real deal: Believe it or not, the eight-glass quota isn’t etched in stone. Yes, we need to be well-hydrated, but if your urine is clear or close to it, you’re probably getting enough fluids. If your No. 1 is neon yellow, lighten things up by adding one or two glasses a day. Once your body adjusts to getting more fluid (and you don’t have to run to the can every 10 minutes), add another, says Karen Benzinger, R.D., a dietary consultant in Chicago who specializes in health care. And don’t forget that all liquids—including tea, juice, even the tonic in your vodka drink—help keep your body sufficiently saturated. 

Maven’s way: Yes, indeedy. Look at your pee. Straw colored? You’re fine. Dark? Drink more liquids. And, just drinking water, although good, isn’t always the only answer. Tea, especially herbal varieties are just as good according to a lot of nutrition experts. Coffee isn’t the total bomb it’s been billed as.

The advice; Don’t drink juice—it’s a sugar bomb.

Why it’s useless: Juice is a breakfast staple, and it’s essential for smoothies.

The real deal: There’s a big difference between 100 percent juice and a bottle of sugar water with a few cranberries squeezed into it. Yes, juice has a lot of the sweet stuff, but a six-ounce glass of 100 percent juice also counts as a full serving of fruit and delivers many of the same vitamins and antioxidants, making it worth the occasional sugar rush, says Jessica Ganzer, R.D., owner of Ganzer Wellness Consulting in Arlington, Virginia. And it can be the easiest way to get a superfood: Drinking 100 percent pomegranate juice is easy; picking apart a real pomegranate, not so much. As long as you drink 100 percent juice (from concentrate is fine) and limit yourself to one six-to-eight ounce glass a day, you’re not breaking any rules of good nutrition. If you’re seriously cutting back on calories or carbs, try Tropicana’s Light ‘n Healthy line; a serving has about half the sugar (10 grams) and calories (50) of normal juice.

Maven’s way: I rarely ever drink fruit juice of any kind. The exception: freshly squeezed tangelo juice. Pomegranate juice? That stuff is so tart it makes my whatsyoumightcallit pucker. And yes, it’s a useless sugar bomb when you can just as easily EAT (chew) a wonderful piece of fruit. Eating the fruit takes longer and is more likely to satisfy than drinking your calories.

The advice: Shut the kitchen down after 7 p.m. to prevent weight gain.

Why it’s useless: After a long day at the office and a trip to the gym, you either eat dinner at 9:30 or starve.

The real deal: The no-food-right-before-bed rule was meant for the nighttime nosher who mindlessly wolfs down a bag of Oreos while watching CSI: Miami. If you get home long after dark, a late dinner is perfectly fine. A calorie is a calorie, no matter what time you eat it, according to Katie Clark, R.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of family health care nursing at the University of California, San Francisco. But do keep your evening meal light—along the lines of a chicken breast, steamed broccoli, and brown rice. Too much chow will keep you up at night: To break down all that food, your gut has to churn like a cement truck.

Maven’s way: I don’t sleep as soundly on an almost empty stomach. Normally, we eat fairly light in the evening, and by 11 p.m. the noshing part of me is awake. I will have something - a piece of whole wheat toast, 1% milk and a small piece of fruit, or a small bowl of whole grain (and low sugar ) cereal with 1%, or a slice of whole wheat toast with a slice of light cheese and some herbal tea. You get the idea here. I sleep much better. My late snacks roll in at about 200 calories with a huge whole grain and nutrient punch. They may even include a small, small piece of dark chocolate.

The advice: Simmer steel-cut oatmeal instead of nuking the instant kind.

Why it’s useless: The only way we have time for breakfast is if making breakfast doesn’t take any time.

The real deal: The pros push this tip because people usually eat flavored instant oatmeal, which comes with up to a whopping 13 grams of sugar per 43-gram packet—compared with one gram or less of sweetness in the steel-cut stuff. And steel-cut oats are less processed than the rolled oats used in the just-add-water variety, so they take longer to digest (this keeps your blood sugar nice and steady, helping you avoid mood swings and hunger pangs). That said, instant oatmeal still uses whole grain oats (they’re just mashed a bit more), so it comes with most of the same health benefits. One of these is the cholesterol-lowering, hunger-satisfying soluble fiber beta-glucan: It turns gummy when it hits your GI tract, binds with cholesterol, and drags it out. “I’d rather my clients eat one-minute oatmeal than no oatmeal at all,” Ganzer says. If you find unsweetened oatmeal about as appetizing as paste, combine half a packet of the flavored kind with half a packet of plain. Or consider Quaker Oatmeal’s Weight Control flavored instants, which pack even more fiber than steel-cut oats (six grams per packet) and keep sugar down to one gram.

Maven’s way: Oh, for crying out loud. There’s a middle ground here except that it requires you to get a clue. It’s called quick cooking oats or plain quinoa or amaranth. Even whole wheat couscous cooks in no time at all. If you’re that pressed for time, cook it the night before and heat it up. Cooking brown rice once a week in the rice cooker isn’t a stretch and you can heat that up, add some nuts and raisins and lowfat milk and still be out the door in good time. And, have they heard of whole grain, low sugar cold cereal?

The advice: If you must drink while you diet, order a white-wine spritzer.

Why it’s useless: Despite the dainty name, it tastes just like what it is: watered-down wine.

The real deal: There’s no weight-loss magic in a spritzer, a cup of wine diluted with calorie-free carbonated water. It’s just another portion-control trick that trims your total calorie intake, Clark says. If you balk at the idea of outdated cocktails or weak-tasting grape juice, slowly sipping a glass of water between rounds of pinot grigio accomplishes the same goal.

Maven’s way: Gadzooks! Wine diluted by selzter? What a sad thing to do to wine. If you hate wine that much, don’t drink. Instead have one decently made cocktail and really enjoy it. What was their cheap shot at ‘outdated cocktails’? A martini is a classic and defies dating. Here’s my suggestion: Champagne or Prosecco. And, yes, take a glass of water before and between drinks.

The advice: Put half your entrée in a to-go box before you start to eat.

Why it’s useless: You know you have portion-control issues, but that doesn’t mean you want everyone else at your table to know it too.

The real deal: A better way to cut back on restaurant binging is to pretend the breadbasket is sprinkled with cyanide and to double up on veggie sides instead of ordering fries. Also effective: putting your fork down between bites, which gives your stomach and brain time to register that you’re full (which takes about 20 minutes). Once your gauge hits “F,” ask the waiter to box up the rest of your food right away so you won’t keep nibbling, Benzinger says.

Maven’s way: Actually, I don’t have a lot to gripe about with this one, except (yes, I always have another option…) tell the waiter what you REALLY want and stick to that. I rarely actually order what is on the menu. I dine, shall we say, rather al fresco. I expect the help to step up since I tip rather well. I also don’t dine at chains (where the rules are rather strict) and develop warm relationships with local restauranteurs. They know what I want and how I want it, and are always happy to see me coming by their reactions- despite my eccentric ordering.

The advice: Have just one bite of dessert.

Why it’s useless: That’s like telling an addict to have just a little crack.

The real deal: Eating chocolate cake is like watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians: There’s nothing right about it, so just revel in how deliciously wrong it is. A smarter strategy: Before you begin the debauchery, plan for the extra calories—skip the appetizer, the bread, or (ouch) the booze. “If the dessert is really that good, it’s worth the sacrifice,” Benzinger says.

Maven’s way: If you learn to eat like maven, you’ll rarely ever be tempted by the lame-assed, sugary desserts. They’re right about one bite not being do-able for most people. One bite is about all I can stand before gagging, so it’s not an issue. By the time I get to dessert, I’m flat out full - having savored every bite slowly and thoughtfully - and having gotten exactly what I wanted, prepared exactly the way I like it. You dive into the dessert to fill the void resulting from eating something only close to what you really wanted, that wasn’t prepared exactly the way you wanted, and you ate it fast because you didn’t give a shit.

Ooops! Was I too forceful there?