Ornishspectrum

Ornish’s rating of foods, good to bad

Category 5 is the really bad stuff. It includes these items that figure in our diet:

Cheese, butter. Deviled eggs, egg yolks

Uta’s vegetarian, but I’ve been known to eat:

Bacon, Beef, Bison, Ham, Lamb, Pork, and occasionally Venison.

Chicken, albacore tuna, and oysters are in the not-so-good Category 4.

For reversing heart disease:

Small frequent meals spread throughout the day help avoid hunger and keep energy levels constant. Portion control will assist in reaching and maintaining a healthy body weight and controlling blood sugar levels.

Caffeine — All sources of caffeine are eliminated, including regular and decaffeinated coffees and teas, chocolate, cocoa, and regular or decaffeinated dark colas, with the exception of green tea.

Alcohol — Allowed in small amounts but not encouraged. If consumed, enjoy one serving a day: 1.5 ounces liquor, 4 ounces wine or 12 ounces beer.

Moderate exercise, stress management techniques, social support, a multivitamin, and 3 grams/day of fish oil to provide omega-3 fatty acids are also recommended for most people. Fresh, organic produce is optimal.

Simple carbohydrates such as sugar and white flour are limited in a whole-food diet. These foods are low in fiber, and provide calories that don’t make us feel full, and they get absorbed quickly, causing blood sugar to spike and insulin surges that may cause us to gain weight. Equally important, refined carbohydrates are deprived of many of the vitamins, minerals, and health-promoting phytochemicals present in their unrefined versions.

Red meat and trans-fatty acids are excluded. Red meat is rich in artery-clogging saturated fat and has been linked with an increased risk of cancer. Trans-fatty acids have been found to be equivalent, or possible worse than, saturated fat in increasing the risk for heart disease.

Exercise

The MacDougall Program

this is just the beginning…

The world defies logic.

A couple of nights back, I stepped on the scale right before bed, something I usually do only first thing in the morning. It read 163.

Hallelujah! That’s the lowest I’ve weighed in 20 years. Maybe the next morning I’d crack a record, 161!

To my dismay, the next morning the scale read 167! WTF? How could this be? I’d put nothing in my body. Was the mere act of breathing causing me to gain weight?

Even though I know that day-to-day fluctuations are meaningless, I was crestfallen. My hopes were dashed.

“What can I learn from this?” I asked myself. (That’s my knee-jerk reaction to bummers. It keeps me going.)

The lesson is that what happens in the world is the result of many forces, some of which are in sight and others that are hidden from view. There’s simply not an answer for everything. You have to accept that.

Eating healthy is imprecise and always will be.

Day-to-day measurements are important only because they are the components of trends. Single-point observations are meaningless. Out of context, you can’t tell an outlier from a pattern. Maybe sunspots interfered with the accuracy of my scale.

Last night I again stepped on the scale before heading to bed. It read 163. This morning it read the same. I’m not a logical person. None of us are. I was happy. Although I would have been happier had it read 161.

The Eatery is an iPhone app that tracks what you eat, rates caloric intake, and shares your eating habits on Facebook.

Some people detest the Facebook tie-in, not wanting to pollute their timelines with photos of everything they put in their mouths.

More than 50 comments document what’s wrong with The Eatery’s approach. The first commenter hits most of the points:

This is a great idea and a well executed app. I love how easy it is, so it actually becomes part of your eating life. The opportunity to literally ‘see’ your eating habits at a glance is so helpful and can be rewarding, horrifying, encouraging, inspiring.. It’s a great concept.

BUT.
- it is infuriating to have meals rated incorrectly (either because it’s not clear exactly what the item is or because the raters don’t know what your particular health priorities are or what else you’ve eaten that day!). It makes many parts of the app (like your overal ratings) redundant or irritating.

- as many others have commented, someone regarding something as healthy or unhealthy does not make it so. It’s not helpful for me to hear people’s prejudiced views. The over-eater who views my biscuit as healthy (compared to…?), or the undereater who views my cup of lentil soup as an indulgence.

- the daily healthiness rating also doesn’t take into account scale. I might eat 2 very healthy meals and have one boiled sweet, and the app thinks that 1/3 of my day’s intake was ‘fat’. Not helpful. Of course every little bit counts and that’s part of the whole point, but that can be quite demoralising if in reality you’ve been very healthy.

- I’d like to see different kinds of ratings. Maybe my weight is good but I’m trying to get more vitamins. Or I’m cutting out gluten. Or I’m trying to cook more adventurously. Or I need to gain weight in a healthy way. At the moment the fat or fit ratings system could make me feel terrible about myself even if I were eating just the right diet for my needs…

Perhaps one way of doing this would be to divide users into groups? Weightloss groups, celiac groups, high energy groups etc?
- I’d also like the opportunity to log meals privately. If I have particular dietary needs that don’t fit the mould, or if I’d just like to be private about it, it would still be a great tool for healthy eating.

- Facebook. Seriously? One great thing about the app is that you can be totally honest an anonymous, but with Facebook integrated you feel self conscious.

- I’d also like to be able to delete posts (I was going to eat it but changed my mind) or add non image posts (oops it’s all gone).

Apart from these, it’s a great idea and a great app. Looking forward to seeing it grow!

LiveUp, from Jawbone, is a multi-function combination of a wrist-band sort of like FitBit and a companion phone app. LiveUp tracks activity, sleep, food, and attainment of goals.

LoseIt is a text-based phone app that focuses on calorie counting and social support.

Nike has an exercise-tracker similar to the FitBit, the FuelBand, but it’s currently sold out.

I wonder how well these devices are doing.

On another note, some friends are looking into the equivalent for tracking moods and well-being. Think of it as the qualified self to complement the Quantified Self.

DoLoveLive is a step in this direction. It’s an interactive vision board. Unfortunately, it’s also tied into Facebook. Those hundreds of millions of FB users seem to have become the bolt-on social aspect for a variety of apps. People who sign up for several services must have the most boring Facebook pages on the planet.

I’m interested in how this stuff ties into tracking and improving the way we learn things. People are taking learning into their own hands. The right apps can lend support.

There, I said it. I know it’s vital to my health, that it keeps the weight under control, that it generates endorphins that make me smile, and my doctor says it’s a must. Nonetheless, I’ve avoided exercise like the plague for years.

I am probably the only person in U.S. Army history who served two years of active duty without ever doing a push-up or running a lap. My disdain for physical activity goes way back.

Four days ago I again took up the practice of daily walks. I walk in my hilly neighborhood or in the beautiful park just over the hill. So far so good. It’s a new experience. I’m drawn to being out in nature and soaking in the sights. I’ve encountered wild turkeys and beautiful wildflowers. I’m into it for the moment but need some discipline.

Tilden Park

I’ve purchased a FitBit to track my progress. Just as taking pictures of everything I ate helped me reform my eating habits, I’m looking for the FitBit to monitor my exercise routine (and make me feel guilty if I falter.)

This afternoon I slipped the FitBit into the pocket of my jeans before hiking around Lake Anza. Upon my return home, the FitBit fed my exercise stats into my Mac and reported:

Last night I strapped the FitBit to my wrist before hitting the sack. This morning it reported:

Damn. It fell out of its little bracelet after only 17 minutes. I’ll try again tonight.

I’m not into the Quantified Self, where people seem to track everything trackable, but I’m optimistic about using the FitBit.

Next day…

The FitBit stayed in its bracelet last night, yielding these results:

Interesting but this doesn’t compare to the information provided by the Xeo clock’s wireless headband which tracks quality of sleep. Tonight I may wear both.

This afternoon I went for a walk in the woods but stopped a lot to write and snap photos.

Neighborhood: South Berkeley

(510) 848-9200

Tuesday through Friday 11am to 11pm
lunch 11 to 3pm:
dinner from 5:30pm on
with a midday menu
in-between
and
Saturday and Sunday
5:30pm to 11pm

Wow! Uta and I lunched today at Origen, a four-month old restaurant on Telegraph Avenue near Ashby in a space that has housed six different restaurants in the past six years. The concept is “farm to fork,” a celebration of local suppliers, seasonal flavors, and artisan farming. The food is tasty, the prices are reasonable, and I’ll be back.

We began with an order of flash-fried spinach. The stuff was so light we had a hard time serving ourselves; we ended up scarfing up the airy-thin leaves off the table. You’d chomp down into nothing but flavor only to get a pungent olive-oil hit after-effect. Our next course, wild arugula with mandarin slices appealed to my like of strong, bitter tastes.

The asparagus pizza was out of this world. Lighted blanched asparagus was sliced into thin slivers. The feta was just enough. The occasional hit of preserved lemon added just the right zing.

Pizza cries out for red pepper and this is the good stuff.

I was too carried away with the flavors to take photos of my pomelo sorbet, too bitter for Uta but great for making my taste buds tingle. The house digestif, vin d’orange, was the perfect accompaniment.

Origen is a great addition to the Berkeley eating scene. The place was nearly empty at lunchtime today. I hope they make it.

It’s crazy how a little measuring device, my bathroom scale, can jerk my emotions around. I’ll keep eating my morning yoghurt and berries, but it’s a disheartening bummer to find that I really didn’t reach a breakthrough.

Today I lunched at Postrio. Ten years ago this was a happening place. Wolfgang Puck was its muse. The food was fantastic. The dining room bustled. Sic transit gloria mundi. Only six of us lunched at Postrio today. It’s a ghost town and that’s sad.

My prosciutto and fig pizza was good but not knock-your-socks-off good.

Then again, maybe Mr. Scale had colored my judgment. I was bummed.

No diet, not even the extremely liberal and optimistic Berkeley Diet is all sweetness.

Last week I pigged out on seafood in Washington, DC. It’s easier to find great fish, especially shellfish, on the East Coast than the West. I treated myself to a visit to the Old Ebbitt Grill, right across from the Treasury Building in downtown DC and a favorite of Presidents U.S. Grant and Teddy Roosevelt.

Despite the soft-shelled crabs, lobster ravioli, and bowls of clam chowder, I returned home to my lowest weight in twenty years!

Part of the loss is attributable to a monumental reduction in alcohol consumption. My gastroenterologist told me, “If you don’t cut back on your drinking, you will die a miserable, ugly death.” Then he threw in, “Your liver is a ticking time bomb.” So I cut back to two drinks a day in early February.

161! My goal of dropping to 150 now seems within reach. I have my eating and drinking act at a reasonable place. I rarely clean my plate and think twice before eating stuff that’s bad for me.

My gut tells me the missing piece in my quest to get my weight back to what it was when I graduated from college is EXERCISE. Thirty minutes a day seems to be the sweet spot but anything trumps nothing, which is what I’ve been doing. I need to exercise not only to make my weight goal but to maintain my health in general. Here’s a compelling video on the benefits of the non-sedentary life.

Daily dog walks.

In line with the Berkeley Photo Diet philosophy, I’ll be taking a photo of my daily walk. Every day I expect to shoot three sorts of photos:

• a picture of the scale each morning
• photos of everything I eat or drink
• a picture taken during my daily walk

Roquefort is a creamy cheese with a fantastic sharp taste; it’s my all-time favorite. Maytag and Pt. Reyes Blue are not far behind; I could not tell them apart. Cambozola (a portmanteau name combining Camembert and Gorgonzola) is so creamy and rich you know it’s sinful to eat. Our cheese monger said the Bleu de Basques is the second most popular blue cheese in France; I found it a bit bland. And the Mountain Gorgonzola was mildest of all; I can do without it.

Uta unearthed a bottle of wine we had bought decades ago for its label. It’s a 1973 Mouton Rothschild. The price tag shows we paid $10.39 for it.

Picasso did the label. He died later in 1973.

Mouton was not designated a Premier Cru in the classification of 1855. It was elevated to that rank in 1973, the only wine to move from Second Growth to First, by French Secretary of Agriculture Jacques Chirac after intense lobbying by Philippe de Rothschild.

I managed to get the spongy cork out of the bottle and poured. The wine tasted pleasant but a bit thin.

I checked the going rate for ’73 Mouton on the net.

Imagine my surprise to discover we were drinking a $850 bottle of vin!

This is the beginning of what will eventually be a loooooong post on the Mediterranean Diet.

Hundreds of books and thousands of studies have described the Mediterranean Diet and its benefits since the term since researchers at Harvard coined the term in the early 50s. In 1970, Dr. Ancel Keys published a study of 12,000 people that tied the Mediterranean Diet to the incidence of death from heart disease.

The research was carried out with more than 12,000 men of Finland, Greece, Italy, Japan, Holland, the United States and Yugoslavia. There were high correlations between the amount of saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet of the people, the cholesterol levels in their blood and its percentage of death by cardiovascular diseases. Of these seven nations, the United States and Finland had the highest animal product consumption, the highest saturated fat intake, the highest cholesterol consumption and the highest percentage of death by cardiovascular diseases. On the contrary, the Mediterranean countries and Japan were in the opposite pole.

An article titled The Best Foods for Thought, Literally in today’s Wall Street Journal reports that…

We’ve long known that the Mediterranean diet is good for the heart. Now, it may be good for the brain as well.

A study published in this month’s issue of the Archives of Neurology found that the diet might protect against blood-vessel damage in the brain, reducing the risks of stroke and memory loss.

It’s the first study to specifically examine the effects of the diet centered around vegetables, fruits, fish, whole grains, nuts, olive oil and a moderate amount of alcohol, with limited consumption of red meat, sweets and refined grains like white bread or white rice—on the brain’s small blood vessels.

We’d already heard that the “Mediterranean Diet” lowers the risk of heart disease, keeps French women trim, and may keep Alzheimer’s at bay. Now MRI scans find that people who eat Med are less likely to suffer “silent strokes” that lead to regular strokes and degrade memory.

What is it with this Mediterranean Diet? Last year Greek researchers pooled findings from 50 studies covering half a million people and discovered that eating a Med Diet reduced the risk of succumbing to metabolic syndrome by 31%. Metabolic syndrome? That’s high blood pressure and blood sugar, low levels of HDL (“good cholesterol”), high levels of triglycerides, and a fat waistline. This sets you up for obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

to be continued…

When you eat, eat.

Put the food on the table. Cut off the music. Light a candle. Stop talking. Take a deep breath. Again. Again.

Silence the drunken monkey that is your consciousness. Be calm. Take another breath. Live in the moment.

Feast your eyes on the food before you. Be still. Take a minute. Contemplate. Picture the farm where the food was grown. Smile as you think of the farmers. Close your eyes for a few moments. Don’t rush. Relax.

Slowly lift a morsel on your fork. Focus on it. Notice its scent. Put it in your mouth. Nibble. Savor it. Enjoy the texture. Explore the flavors. Chew slowly. Taste it as you would a fine wine. Swallow. Put down the fork. Slowly. Take a deep breath. Enjoy the moment.

Resist the urge to shovel in more food immediately. Enjoy the moment. Tune in to your senses. Pleasant moment, wonderful moment. Take another minute. Be here now.

Perhaps you’re ready for the next bite. Go ahead, but resist the temptation to gobble. Enjoy the experience of eating. Focus. Follow the advice of this delightful article in today’s New York Times:

Continue this way throughout the course of a meal, and you’ll experience the third-eye-opening pleasures and frustrations of a practice known as mindful eating.

My wife’s friend Rita grew up hungry in post-war Germany. As a little girl, she never knew when the next meal would arrive. Despite the fact that times were now flush, Rita would scarf down lunch before you finished your second or third bite. Potatoes, wurst, whatever: now you see it, now you don’t. Rita ate like a Dyson vacuum cleaner. I doubt that she ever tasted her food. She certainly didn’t have time to enjoy it.

We joined good friends in Mill Valley for dinner shortly after their return from a week with the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn at his retreat center outside Paris. We sat at the table in silence, gazing into one another’s eyes. The soft sound of a gong wafted through the air. No words were spoken as we thanked the farmers, the land, and mother earth for the bounty before us. Then we broke the silence and dug in, for our friends are always loaded with great stories and we needed to catch up with one another. You can be mindful without being slavish about it.

Eating Mindfully will become a plank in the Berkeley Diet.

References

Mindful Eating As Food For Thought, New York Times.

Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food, Jan Chozen Bays, MD

The art of mindfulness can transform our struggles with food—and renew our sense of pleasure, appreciation, and satisfaction with eating. Drawing on recent research and integrating her experiences as a physician and meditation teacher, Dr. Jan Bays offers a wonderfully clear presentation of what mindfulness is and how it can help with food issues.

Mindful eating is an approach that involves bringing one’s full attention to the process of eating—to all the tastes, smells, thoughts, and feelings that arise during a meal. Whether you are overweight, suffer from an eating disorder, or just want to get more out of life, this book offers a simple tool that can make a remarkable difference.

In this book, you’ll learn how to:

• Tune into your body’s own wisdom about what, when, and how much to eat
• Eat less while feeling fully satisfied
• Identify your habits and patterns with food
• Develop a more compassionate attitude toward your struggles with eating
• Discover what you’re really hungry for

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, Brian Wansink

Performance Support

Check the video

“The best diet is the diet you don’t know you’re on.”

Savor, Thich Nhat Hahn and Lilian Cheung

Thich Nhat Hahn at Google, YouTube