Next Thursday is Thanksgiving, the food holiday to end all food holidays. For one day in the US calendar (Sure Canadians hold Thanksgiving, but my recollection has it that they doesn’t overly glorify the goodies: squash, brussels sprouts, cornbread stuffing, sweet potatoes, shoofly pie, every conceivable way of cooking a turkey so that I swear to God one day a book the size of the OED will be published with the complete
annotated guide to American turkey preparation, the first edition of which will sit in a room in Plymouth, Mass., like the Book of Kells in Trinity College, Dublin, but not as tastefully done, surely.
For the first thirty years of my life, I ate to live. Now, in many ways, I live to eat. It helps of course that I’m blessed with a gazelle-like metabolism. I’m just shy of six feet, and about 145 pounds, which I have been since I talled-out in my late teens, and it has not hurt that I’ve been running long distances every other day since I was a young man, but as I’ve written, I am a skinny man. So I can eat. In the past few years, I’ve had to watch my cholesterol, which is borderline high. And like every guy I know, I should check it more regularly.
And drink more water. That, if you want to know, is the secret. Always the most obvious, these secrets. Staring you right in the face. What M does while we’re watching “Criminal Minds,” or “Prime Suspect,” or “DaVinci’s Inquest,” she’ll zero in the episode bad guy; just like that, the one, more often than not, in plain view. The FOOD secret? Simple. Drink water. Surprised? Well there you go. Now you know how I feel every weeknight, cozy in the den, watching dumb television with M.
(My homeboys in Canada know about. Water use, that is. The Nov. 6 issue of The Economist, on page 8 of the special report on smart systems, lays it out. A text box titled “Splashing” shows that in the year 2000 the daily domestic water consumption per person in Canada far outstripped the rest of the world. More than 800! liters per person per day. Americans were a distant second at 600 liters. Let’s say you drink two liters, which is a lot of water. Just how do you use the other 798? Thoughts?)
When you get home from work in the evening, before you pour yourself that glass of wine or ice-cold beer, take an eight-ounce tumbler and top it up with filtered water. Drink it down, and for good measure, pour yourself another one, and sit it down at your dinner table. The water does two things: It starts the process of filling up your stomach so that you do not eat as much as you would otherwise, and, more important, it satisfies your thirst so that when you do pour yourself a booze reward for getting through another day, it is for the taste and relaxation it brings.
Takeaway: Drink a big glass of water before dinner. You’ll eat less and drink less booze.
I’m not one for earnest warnings. And, besides, there isn’t a magazine stand in North America that doesn’t have scads of titles staking claim to that territory. (Pretty f-ing badly, if you ask me, but hey, do you see any advertising on this site? Case closed.) Me, with US Thanksgiving only days away, and many moms and dads and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters laying in bags of fowl and fruits and vegetables and cans and boxes, and I don’tknowwhatatall, I do have a few bullet points I’d like to shoot out. If it gets one reader though the food holiday to end all food holidays with a little Running for Your Life wisdom, I will feel I’ve made some contribution to our general eating health. (Please note: Nowhere, except in this parenthetical rambler will you see the word DIET mentioned. I hate the word DIET – think about it; couldn’t such a word be closer in form to life than death? I may, if a blog post takes me to Japan and I find myself talking about its form of government, use the word DIET again. I’d have to say that isn’t so likely though before the Boston Marathon in April.)
We can be strong, but it’s Fast Food Nation out there. (Read Mr. Squishy, the lead story in David Foster Wallace’s “Oblivion.) Resist at your peril. What is it? Candy corn, 25-cent Salt and Vinegar chips, M&Ms, Twinkies. Eat them. Not often, but pleasure comes from the least expected places. And hey, those chemical alley “flavorists” in southern Jersey have got your number. Just try to have one Wendy’s fries.
A glass of water, natch.
Carbs, baby. Mark Bittman, the food author and Trail Head marathon blog writer at Runner’s World, is a believer. And, thanks to M, who is a creative cook as well as an amazing writer, I get more than my share of tasty pasta, particularly during marathon training. And artisan bread, if possible, not the storebought kind.
Fruit in the morning and through the afternoon. We buy from the farmers’ markets, which are ubiquitous in New York. (New Yorker cartoon: Man is coming home to his wife in a railroad apartment, where to his surprise he encounters some market stalls, and remarks, “Farmers’ markets are springing up everywhere, aren’t they?”) In fall, pick the Asian pears and Honey Crisp apples. And bananas, all year round.
KALE .¤.¤.. There are many varieties, and, in my case, where my Fast Food Nation choice of trash food is salty potato chips, oven-roasted kale chips – no salt added – satisfy the craving.
Sweets? I have to say I’m not the biggest fan, so it is not something I crave. A week, two, will go by that we don’t have a dessert after a meal. (Don’t hate me; stop reading after this.) But, really, if you do love sweets don’t deny yourself. Remember the first bullet: “the flavorists” have your number. For me, it’s salt, not sweet.
Salads? Not so much. Boring. At work, it seems, everyone is ducking into a salad. What’s up with that?
Moderation. Oy. Yeah, pretty much in all things. Particularly in alcohol. (That is except when you’ve just finished a milestone marathon, passed that intermediate French class, seen your daughter through a first-class education, witnessed the wedding of your first-born niece .¤.¤..)
I don’t know what it is about running and food. There is a LOT written about it. Maybe it has more to do with addiction. After thirty-plus years of running, if you were to ask me what I could not live without it, reading, writing or running, I wouldn’t know what to tell you, but during the Thanksgiving meal my body will be craving the food yes, but also the road. If I have a regret, it would be that I will never be pregnant, never feel what it’s like to feed and care and emote for a person inside who is not yourself. Second-best is that I care for the runner, the reader, the writer in me. It is a poor substitute, but this Thanksgiving, like all the others but maybe even more so this year because I have given voice to it, I will be in no small part feeding the runner in me.
Next: Running for Your Life: Planning for Boston
0 comments:
Post a Comment