Cook This, Not That! Skinny Comfort Foods: 125 quick & healthy meals that can save you 10, 20, 30 pounds or more. - Couverture souple

Zinczenko, David

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1609618734 ISBN 13 : 9781609618735

Editeur : Galvanized Media, 2012

Synopsis

Book by Zinczenko David Goulding Matt

A propos du livre

Extrait :

Remember how simple and comforting food used to be?
 
When you were a kid, there was nothing better than waking up to a thick slice of French toast, maple syrup and butter running over the edges, filling the kitchen with the smell of autumnal goodness.
 
Or coming home from school to a thick wedge of lasagna, the tangy sauce tickling your tongue and the melted mozzarella stringing little spider webs between your plate and fork.
 
Or taking a break from ice skating to linger over a mug of hot chocolate, its little marshmallows floating on top, keeping you warm on a cold winter’s day.
 
Of course, that was then. You were a kid. You didn’t know any better. Now you’re a grown-up, and when you hear French toast, lasagna, and hot chocolate, you think, Egads! Carbs! Saturated fats! Sugar! I can’t eat that!
 
Being a grown-up sucks, doesn’t it?
 
Well, this book is about to change all that. Eat This, Not That! Skinny Comfort Foods is like a high school reunion where only the kids you really liked show up. Steamed Broccoli? Couldn’t make it.
 
Tofu? Not invited. Lima Beans? Serving a 6-month prison term for DWIF—Dining Without Intoxicating Flavor. You won’t find any of those bullies and bums in here.
 
But Fettuccine with Turkey Bolognese, Molten Chocolate Cake, and those old jokers, Mac and Cheese? They’re all waiting for you inside. My goal is to get you reacquainted with your very best friends from child-hood—some close buddies that maybe you grew a little wary of over the years, but you never stopped missing, never stopped thinking about.
 
Sounds great, you’re thinking. But I’m a grown-up now, and I have grown-up concerns, like the refined carbs and the trans fats and the sugars and the glycemic index and...ahhhhh!
 
Well, yes, we are grown-ups now, and watching our weight is more important than ever before. That’s why Skinny Comfort Foods is here, to make all your favorites a lot less scary—and to help you lose weight, eat great, and start enjoying the company of some wonderful old friends.
 
Stop Stressing, Start Indulging
 
In reality, a lot of the foods we remember from childhood weren’t necessarily all that bad for us—at least, back when we were kids. What’s happened is that food processors and chain restaurants decided that the foods we already loved needed to be “improved,” and so starting in the ’70s and increasingly through the ’80s, they started “improving” them by adding new kinds of sugars and other chemicals, turning misdemeanor indulgences into nutritional felonies.
 
CONSIDER THIS: How much high fructose corn syrup did you eat today?
 
YOUR ANSWER: Uh, none?
 
CORRECT ANSWER: If you’re an average American, you ate 12 teaspoons’ worth. That would be just today. It was probably in the sauce you tossed with your spaghetti, the ketchup you spread on your burger (and the bun as well), the bread your turkey sandwich came on, and the iced tea you washed it down with.
 
But you don’t need to be downing a chemical cocktail of bad-for-you stuff every time you crave the comfort of your old food friends. And you don’t have to live on a diet of romaine lettuce and kidney beans to start dropping pounds and keep them off forever. In fact, you can run for comfort any time you want—and still lose 10, 20, 30 pounds or more. All you need are a few smart swaps, and a quiver of simple recipes. Once you know a handful of secrets, you’ll be indulging in all your favorite comfort foods, and watching the pounds disappear.
 
Before we get started, however, it’s worth answering one question: What exactly is “comfort food”?
 
The first thing you might think of is that creamy tomato soup Grandma made for you when you came in with a chill from building a snowman in the backyard; the mac and cheese Mom cooked up when you got the mumps in fourth grade; the chocolate brownie sundaes that you and your friends shared after you got dumped by that loser they all warned you about. Comfort food is about memories, right?
 
In part, yes. The taste of melting American cheese on your tongue, the smell of apple pie cooling on the counter, the sound of Mom clanking the pots and pans in the kitchen while Dad sits in the living room, cursing the Red Sox—they trigger our memories, and when we recall happier, more innocent times, we can’t help but feel more at peace. It’s the reason you can still hear Casey Kasem count down the hits on the ’70s stations every Sunday.
 
But there’s actually a science to comfort food, and to why we crave what we crave when we’re stressed or blue, that has nothing to do with Mom’s cooking or Dad’s scatological references to Fenway Park. Let me tell you what happens, in part, when we eat comfort foods, and the biological reason why your college room-mate’s tofu and lentil stew never quite satisfied those emotional needs.
 
The Science of Comfort Food
 
I don’t know about you, but I could pretty much use some comforting all the time. If it’s sweet, fatty, greasy, chewy, or just plain yummy, I’m ready to run into its arms.
 
That’s because, like you and everyone else living in the USA right now, I’m chronically stressed. I probably manage about 500 emails a day, several dozen phone calls, and a few dozen texts. Then there are the Tweets, the friend requests, and the myriad other social media coming at me with the intensity of a 4-year-old on a Butterfinger binge—and that’s before I even walk to my mailbox.
 
That stress triggers the release of several hormones, starting with two main ones, adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline you know—it’s the stuff that gets your heart racing and your blood pumping and your wallet opening for yet another stupid Saw movie. Nothing wrong with that: The occasional adrenaline rush is what makes life worth living, after all.
 
But the other hormone, cortisol, is the real problem. What it’s supposed to do is release fat and sugar into your bloodstream, so you can run away from the snarling sabertooth or the attacking alligator or the uncaged Kardashian or whatever other primitive man-eating predator is on your tail. But when stress becomes chronic—when the untamed tiger is replaced by a daily onslaught of rising bills, mindless tasks, and disheartening remarks from the boss—cortisol can actually signal your cells to store as much fat as possible and inhibit the body from releasing fat to burn as energy. What’s worse, that fat tends to accumulate in the abdominal region, because visceral fat, which resides behind the abdominal muscles, has more cortisol receptors than fat below the skin.
 
I know what you’re thinking: What does this have to do with Grandma’s creamy tomato soup?
 
Well, our hormonal reactions to stress help explain why we develop cravings for fried chicken, chocolate chip cookies, grilled cheese, chicken soup, apple pie, and the like whenever we’re feeling like we need a hug.
 
To qualify as comfort food, a meal needs to be easy to eat, and it needs to be high in fat. In a 2011 study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, University of Texas researchers exposed mice to a chronically high level of stress and discovered that their bodies manufactured an increased amount of the hunger hormone ghrelin. Not only that, but the frantic furry subjects also showed a corresponding increase in their preference for—and intake of—high-fat food.
 
So we not only crave comfort food when we’re sad, we are actually hormonally triggered to eat more of it! That’s one reason why, in a 2009 British study in the journal Obesity, adolescents who reported greater levels of stress had higher BMIs and greater waist circumferences compared to teens with less perceived stress.
 
And obesity and stress are a lethal one-two punch. You already know that carrying too many pounds can put you at risk for every disease under the sun. But check this out: In a study at the University of Western Ontario, researchers took hair follicles from 100 men, half of whom were recently hospi-talized for heart attacks. (Which is exactly what you want to have happen to you after you’ve just had a heart attack.) The upshot: The men who’d suffered a cardiac episode had higher cortisol levels in their hair—a direct link between stress and The Big One.
 
So the plan is obvious: Turn off the phone, shut down the computer, move into a cave, and never eat a slice of meat loaf again. Right?
 
Well, that’s one answer. But we think we have a better one.
 
Take Comfort—and Lose Weight!
 
We all deserve the right to make ourselves feel better. And the crazy thing is, chasing our blues with comfort foods is scientifically proven to work, at least in the short term.
 
In a somewhat bizarre study in 2011, participants had their stomachs filled with either saline solution or saturated fat. Then they were shown images of sad faces and made to listen to sad music. (Apparently, the researchers had a vast collection of Dan Fogelberg records.) Compared to the moods of those who had only salt water in their guts, the subjects who had a belly full of fat reported feeling less miserable. When we’re faced with negative circumstances, fatty foods literally comfort us.
 
But constantly filling your belly with fat—especially when stress-related cortisol is triggering your body to store more of that fat around your middle—isn’t exactly a great long-term strategy for feeling better. And when stress enters our lives, it not only plays havoc with our diets and our health, but it impacts the eating habits of those around us as well. In a 2012 study in the journal Social Science & Medicine, parents who had higher work-life stress levels were more likely to come home to a less healthful family food environment and a higher family intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and fast-food items.
 
So comfort foods are the ultimate catch-22: They help us manage stress and sadness, while they make us fat and unhealthy, causing us more stress and sadness.
 
But there’s an answer, and it’s in these pages: Skinny Comfort Food. If you could capture the rich, creamy goodness of your favorite feel-good foods, keep all the delicious flavor and that chewy, gooey mouthfeel, and yet dramatically reduce the calories, then you’d be able to indulge your cravings whenever you felt the desire.
 
And that’s our goal. My coauthor, New York Times best-selling food journalist and trained chef Matt Goulding, and I have dissected some of the most popular comfort foods on the market. And what we dis-covered is that many of them are loaded with extra fat and calories that aren’t at all necessary for tickling our taste buds or triggering those feel-good hormones.
 
For example:
 
“· Let’s say a bad day at work has you craving a juicy cheeseburger. You could stop in at Ruby Tuesday for one of their Avocado Turkey Burgers (it’s turkey, how bad could it be?). But you’d be drowning your sorrows in 54 grams of fat, amongst the 908 calories you’d down—before you even ate the first french fry. But try our Southwest Turkey Burger recipe and save 438 calories and 28 grams of fat!
 
· Another stressful day with the kids turns a young parent’s mind to...chocolate cake. At Chili’s that cake will cost you 1,110 calories and 59 grams of fat. Turn to our Molten Chocolate Cake, however, and you’ll discover how to enjoy the same gooey, chocolaty awesomeness for just 320 calories.
 
· What’s a scary movie marathon without pizza to snack on? (Food that can’t be spilled is always the best choice for Wes Craven fans.) But order in a Pizza Hut Italian Sausage & Red Onion Pan Pizza, and it won’t be just the actors on the TV who are walking around like zombies. Just two slices will deliver 780 calories. Check out our Spinach, Sausage & Pepper Pizza, and learn how to make a pie that cuts those calories nearly in half.
 
What’s the upshot? You’ll have just saved yourself 1,548 calories by eating pizza, a cheeseburger, and chocolate cake. Just making those simple swaps twice a week could strip away 45 pounds in the next year!
 
So what do you say? Are you ready to start taking comfort in food again?
 
Terrific. Turn the page, and let’s get reacquainted with some old friends.

Présentation de l'éditeur :

The best-selling weight-loss series that ranks readers' favorite restaurant fare now empowers readers to lose weight with recipes for satisfying meals made at home.
Studies show that when people eat out they consume hundreds more calories than they would if they ate at home. So it stands to reason that cooking and eating more meals at home is one of the easiest and most effective strategies to lose belly fat. That's why the authors who have helped millions order smarter at restaurants now extend their life-altering advice to America's kitchens.
Cook This, Not That! Skinny Comfort Foods is not a typical cookbook. While it has recipes and ingredients lists, it delivers much more—an intelligent (and tasty) strategy for controlling the number of calories readers consume. By starting with the best ingredients and the right plan, cooks of any skill level can create delicious meals that actually help them burn more body fat. Best of all, these recipes produce traditional comfort foods like macaroni and cheese, juicy burgers, pizzas, grilled cheese sandwiches—even chocolate chip cookies. Here's the logic: if these foods satisfy their hunger and taste buds, readers will be far less likely to rush for a bag of chips or tub of ice cream two hours after dinner.
Cook This, Not That! books have reintroduced hundreds of thousands of people to the joy of cooking by making meal preparation fast and easy and by showing them that they can achieve restaurant tastes right in their own kitchens for a lot less money and much fewer calories.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Galvanized Media
• Date d'édition: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1609618734
• ISBN 13: 9781609618735
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 368