Back To The Future

Starting tomorrow, I'll be a gainful restaurant-industry employee once again.  Whether I like it or not, this probably means a massive change in my diet, a move I'm reluctant to make.  

Forget about being thin.  Since I quit refined sugar (and the dreams eventually stopped haunting me), I have slept better, had more energy, and felt less hungry more of the time.  Despite the insane amount of tortuous exercise I have subjected myself too, my cravings never got the better of me.  Sure, pizza still called to me from the slice vendors.  At times.  But those cravings that had seemed insurmountable completely disappeared once the white flour and sugar filtered out of my system. 

Yesterday I ate an entire head of cabbage.  I cooked it--I'm not completely off my rocker--but still, I'm pretty sure you couldn't have convinced me, three months ago, that I could be the type of person who could actually sit down and enjoy a head of cabbage.  But I did.  I found it delicious. 

Like most Americans, I was probably suffering a pretty severe B Vitamin deficiency without even knowing it.  Weight drops off me at the rate of two pounds a week (for those counting, that's ten pounds since I quit refined sugar).  

But I'm going back to a controlled environment, where my food is prepared by other people.  I'm also going back to service, which means ten hours on the floor with little to no food, certainly not in tune with my "eat every three hours" mantra.  

I'm planning the following strategy to combat a relapse: I will stuff my pockets with snacks, I will eat breakfast and pack my lunch, I will eat a very small amount of family meal just so that I don't look like a complete a-hole, and I will stay away from candy, which has always been my go-to decadence when I'm starving during service. 

And no matter how much they tempt me, I'm not making bacon the staple protein of my diet, though it is secretly my favorite thing on earth. 

Cookie Monster

(Guilty as charged.)

If you're wondering why I spend so much time thinking about and trying to bake cookies, well, it's because I love love love cookies.  Love them.  So yesterday, after a long and labored conversation with a fellow cookie baker, I decided to try a different tack. 

Instead of whole-wheat flour, which, I learned last week, creates a cookie with the density of a steel ball, I used the finer ground whole-wheat pastry variety.  Pastry flour, like cake flour, works well in pastries but can't be substituted for things like bread and pizza dough.  It's too light and airy to be substantial. 

This time, my cookies came out much better.  I substituted all of the flour in the Toll House recipe for pastry flour.  I used half of the butter required and substituted the rest with unsweetened applesauce.  Dark agave nectar, twice as sweet as regular refined sugar, did the job of both white and brown sugars, cutting the sweetening agent down by half.  I did add, for consistency's sake, a teaspoon of evaporated cane sugar, an unprocessed natural sugar found at health food stores everywhere.  Note to bakers: when you cream together butter and agave nectar, it does not reach that buttery consistency you're accustomed to seeing in regular cookies.  Even when you add the eggs, the dough can look off.  But as soon as you add in the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder), the dough comes together like any other dough.  

Chips go in last.  I eliminated walnuts this time around.  This dough was looser than the last two doughs I've made, a good thing.  When spooned onto the baking sheet (when you're using less butter, you'll want to spray your sheet first with a non-cooking spray), they begin to spread out a little, a harbinger of more normal cookiedom.  

This version cooked on the lower end of the 9-11 minute suggested Toll House time (375), browning at just about nine minutes.  They aren't exactly chewy, but they do have an airy quality that I like.  As for the sugar, flavor would never cue that it's missing.  Texturally, they're a little softer than normal cookies, but you'd never know that most of the bad stuff had been eliminated.  

My friend wrote about her peanut butter oatmeal cookies the other day and added a disclaimer to her post.  She wrote that although her cookies were a healthier version, "they do not fight the flu, they do not help you lose inches from your waistline, they will not improve your digestion... but they do taste damn good.  So eat 2 or 3 of them, not 12 or 13."  

I'm going to have to agree with that philosophy.  These cookies, though less evil than most, are still 130 calories a pop, so you don't want to eat all 32 in a sitting, unless you're looking to fit into those pants you relegated to the back of the closet five years ago (yes, your fat pants).  Refined sugars cause cravings, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.  The sugar in refined versions converts to fat because it's an immediate kick without long-lasting energy potential, not far off from the white bread/wheat bread equivalent.  In the 1900s, sugar cane farmers noted that island natives who chewed on sugar cane daily did not develop diabetes, whereas cane farmers who ate the processed result daily developed diabetes almost 80 percent of the time.  Diabetes is one of the great preventable diseases and it's also a disease that afflicts more--and not fewer--Americans every year, despite our knowledge of what causes it and how to keep from developing it.  

So no, eating my cookies will not make you skinny and if you're sick they aren't the equivalent to bed rest and Vitamin C.  But if you're the type of person who can't imagine a world without cookies (me, me, me!), these cookies could help you live a little healthier. 

And just one more note about refined sugar, before I hit the trails for the Bronx Half-Marathon.  Ever since I decided to eliminate most refined sugars from my diet, I've been having strange dreams.  Two in particular have found me in homes with stockpiles of candies and chocolates, unable to control myself.   I have always had vivid dreams, ever since I was a little girl, but usually they point to something going on in my life.  When I prepared to go to Belize in 2000, I took a six-week regimen of Malaria pills, which provoked psychedelic dreams.  Before a major race, I generally dream that I've slept through my alarm clock.  But this week, my dreams have centered on sugar binges, the kind one can only justify around Halloween.  Internet research provided a somewhat questionable answer to why my dreams had changed: according to some, sugar withdrawal can create effects similar to opiate withdrawal, causing headaches, muscle pains, debilitating cravings, and strange dreams.  

Basically, if the Internet holds any validity, I was addicted to heroin and didn't even know it.  Food for thought.  

The Morning After

My new approach to eating, which involves few refined sugars/carbohydrates, lots of lean proteins and vegetables, and a sprinkling of whole grains, was kind of a dicey undertaking in preparing for my first 09 half-marathon. Note to new athletes: it is never a good idea to make drastic changes to one's diet before an important race. But part of this was experimental; I knew, running yesterday's race, that it would be unlikely that I would beat my own half-marathon personal record of 1:57:45 (Brooklyn Half, April 2007, pace/mile 8:59), not because I was incapable of doing so but, rather, because I had run that race after months and months of rigorous training.

But I only returned to running in early December, after a posterior tibial stress fracture had me casted and grounded for two full months. Recovery to superfitness seemed difficult at best.

I did change the way I went about my workouts and I also integrated much more weight training this time around, as a preventative measure against future bone issues. And then I changed my diet.

I can't tell you how many books have been written telling runners to eat white things--bagels, breads, pastas, etc.--before and after a run. I did a little of that, born more of necessity than anything else (sometimes you just have to eat what other people want to eat). Mostly, though, I tried to cut refined sugars from my diet. I got whole-wheat everything and replaced the sugar on my grapefruit with agave nectar. I felt less hungry all the time, a side effect of the 30+ mile a week runner's regimen. I also felt stronger during my workouts, a change noted by my pilates instructor who, after three years, noticed the most dramatic change in my strength in the past month.

Then there was yesterday. My one mistake during yesterday's race was that I waited too long to eat my fuel gel. I didn't feel the wall coming until mile eight, and by then my body was likely already depleted. In future races, I'll eat my gels an hour in, before the fatigue starts to hit. But, after only two months' training (let it be states that I have participated in competetive running events since 2005), I completed the race with a final time of 2:04:05, a pace/mile of 9:28. Of eight half-marathons, this was my third fastest finish. And I stopped to use the restroom at mile six, which cost me two minutes. My pace/mile was probably something closer to 9:20.

In short, it is my athletic opinion that the reduction and/or elimination of refined sugars and carbohydrates from one's diet contributes to overall improvement in athletic ability. My next half-marathon is February 8, at which I do, in fact, hope to break that record of 1:57:45. Time will tell.