How does a chef lose weight?

The dilemma I find myself in now is needing to lose weight without losing the joy of mealtime and of cooking. If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I love to cook and we eat well thanks to our garden and thrifty shopping. I want to slim down, but I don’t want to stop eating well. It’s a big part of who I am. Exercise alone won’t make it happen. So, what is one to do?

The answer has several parts, one of which is smarter cooking like using arrowroot to thicken a dish versus a buttery roue or air frying potatoes and egg rolls versus oil frying. These will help, as will smarter choices like smaller or leaner cuts of meat and incorporating salads fresh from the garden more. Another technique is reducing portions; simply eating a little bit less, aka dieting. (Boo! Hiss!)

Decades ago on PBS, there was a show called The Galloping Gourmet with Graham Kerr. He made some of the most decadent dishes you have ever seen and would choose one lucky guest from the audience to share it with him at the end of the show. While he wasn’t universally liked in the culinary world (James Beard loathed his way of cooking), The Galloping Gourmet was a popular program which ran from 1968 to 1972 (Have I just dated myself?) and was one of the shows that sparked my interest in cooking.

He slowly changed his entire way of cooking, becoming more health conscious over the years and in various other shows he hosted. Then, in 1986, after his wife suffered a heart attack (not fatal), he developed what he called the Mini-Max approach, minimizing the fat and cholesterol while maximizing the flavor, aroma, and appearance. He found entirely new ways of making gourmet dishes that stacked up against his earlier masterpieces. While I wouldn’t label my creations masterpieces, they are restaurant quality or at least decent take-out.

I find myself in a similar position as Chef Kerr. Incidentally, Mini-Max is where I first learned of arrowroot. Watch cooking shows. You will learn a great deal. While getting hungry.

Changing my entire way of cooking is not what I need (or am willing) to do. We already eat a balanced diet with a lot of fresh vegetables (obviously) and a moderate amount of fat, etc. We eat pizza and burgers, but not every day. I also don’t drink much soda or booze these days, not even wine or beer (only three so far this year). What I’m up against mostly is my metabolism, which has slowed considerably from my teen years. We all have a weight that our bodies seem to settle on for the lifestyles we lead. The only way to change that, they say, is to make drastic changes to those lifestyles and watching what you eat, aka (Boo! Hiss!) dieting.

Or is it?

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how I’d gotten back in the gym. You could call that a drastic lifestyle change. Iron Chef Champion Geoffrey Zakarian maintains his perfect weight with a seriously rigorous exercise program. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to get into a wrestling match with him. For me, though, returning to the gym was getting back to normal. And while I may have been slimmer in earlier years, I was never thin. I never found my six-pack. I told people I had an awesome one, just under a couple inches of fat. In short, my lifestyle is not changing, simply recovering itself from my bout with cancer, with Chef Zakarian videos for motivation.

They say to create a life you don’t need a vacation from. I’m basically there. I’m not changing it when I feel I’m finally getting it right. Don’t be changing life’s questions when you finally know the answers.

A big part of that lifestyle is the food I prepare. They also say, replacing your morning coffee with an algae smoothie will reduce 80% of what joy is in your life. Why would I do that? Why would I make myself miserable with depressing diet changes? It’s not the years in your life but the life in your years that count. Right?

Okay, maybe I’m being melodramatic and a little bit silly. The point is there’s a quite feasible and attractive alternative.

Expand my culinary horizons.

Improve my cooking skills with lighter and vegetarian dishes, incorporating more ethnically based foods. Hence the expansion of our Tex-Mex and Asian gardens. By adding in other awesome foods, I’ll default to eating less of the richer dishes I’ve been preparing without losing any joy from our meals. Instead of taking away, I’m adding to. More brings less.

For example, I make ramen twice a month. I’ve already made egg rolls from scratch and this year we’re growing the ingredients. I haven’t yet made chicken ramen broth from scratch. I will begin doing so. This will bring joy to the making as well as the eating, and will be a light meal in terms of fat and cholesterol. Adding and improving meals like this will help me “diet” without really changing anything.

It also means my food will contain fewer chemical preservatives, anti-clumping agents, and all manner of other unpronounceable ingredients. Even pre-shredded cheese gets dusted with cellulose to keep it from clumping. The more you do for yourself, the purer your food will be.

The Japanese greens and mild radishes we’re adding to the garden will make salads more interesting, perhaps served with lighter vinegarettes made with seasonings from the garden. The new peppers and Mexican herbs will increase the spicy, savoriness of several dishes – and spicy food makes you feel full sooner – while killing whatever ails you. (Hooray for Capsaicin!)

Basically, I’m going to space the heavier meals out more by inserting lighter, just as satisfying meals in between them in our dinner rotation, which I wrote about earlier in the year; the schema which keeps me from making the same thing over and over too often.

I’m shifting further from hearing, “Not X again!” to, “Hey, you haven’t made X for a while,” and expecting to lose weight in the process. And I still get to enhance and show off my culinary skills. Win win – not counting the dishes.

Another Step Taken on the Road Back

As part of taking the steps I need (and want) to take to be here for a nice long run, I rejoined our local fitness center at the beginning of January. Despite some days that were colder than Alaska, I completed this first month back without missing a day. (Go me!) I did have one rough day where I just couldn’t get it done all that well. But I was still there. I did what I could and it’s never a “bad” day if you made it to the gym and got something done.

I started slowly to re-accustom my body to working out. On day one, I did five simple exercises and moved a grand total of 810 pounds of iron. I finished with five laps around the indoor track, which is a tenth of a mile, mixing in enough slow running in segments to equal one of those laps. By the middle of the month, I had my chosen routine going: eight exercises on machines for upper body strength, four exercises for all-around core toning, and a mix of running and walking that I lengthened almost every day. On the last day of January, I moved a total of 1852.5 pounds and out of twelve laps, I ran five.

You wouldn’t know how hard I was working from those brand-new shoes I got for $10.87, though (double-clearance priced plus a coupon for half-off that included clearance). They are still bright white. We’ll see how long I can keep them looking new by only wearing them indoors at the gym. Make people think I’m lazy.

Despite the effort my scale disappointed me, showing no appreciable weight loss. I was 237 on January 1 and 239 on February 1, completely within the range of natural, day-to-day weight fluctuations depending upon what you ate the day before, etc. Then again, I did take it easy those first two weeks, and maybe a cheese and salami laden charcutierie board wasn’t the best thing to have the night before a weigh in. We’ll see what February brings as I continue to increase the running, and watch what I eat on the 29^th.

I saw my oncologist this past Friday for my quarterly bone-strengthening treatment (zoledronic acid, aka Zometa). Having spread into my spine and ribs, the cancer left little pockmarks behind when the chemo killed it. Cancer doesn’t sit on your bones. It eats its way into them. With the cancer killed, we need to work on repairing the damage. There is no timeline for how long we’ll continue this particular treatment. It’s not like you can make your bones too strong.

He was happy to hear I had returned to the gym and was getting stronger – carefully. I don’t have brittle bones. I don’t think we could call them weak either. But I’m sixty-five, not twenty-five, and caution is prudent. Form and workout intensity give you the most results, anyway, not slinging the most weight you can manage. So, a measured start and workout are best.

I’ll pump up the volume as I get stronger and leaner.

To wit, I intend to increase the intensity quarterly. In April I’ll add a fourth set for each exercise. In July I’ll make it five each. In October I’ll add a couple more exercises with possibly a couple more added next January. I feel the need to do so not simply to become stronger and better, but also because I still love to pump iron. Back in the day (some thirty-five years ago) I used to joke that I would die in the gym and everyone would be saying, “A ninety-year-old man shouldn’t have been trying to bench 500.”

More likely it’ll be when I’m hoeing the garden or something like that. We’ll find out in another forty years or so, I guess.

And when I’m a ghost, I’m going to tilt all your pictures, or maybe prune your plants, just to let you know I stopped by.