Eat + Run

I've always loved to be active. As a kid, I enjoyed ice skating, tennis, and any recreational sport offered at school or camp. I was never a great athlete, but my enthusiasm for participating in so many different activities certainly made up for what I lacked in skill.

Although I remained somewhat active as a teen, it wasn't until I was a young, overweight adult that I began to exercise regularly and consistently. The exercise, coupled with eating smaller food portions and making better food choices in general, helped me lose weight. I'm proud to say I've maintained my weight at about 30 pounds less than what I weighed at my highest weight in high school.

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Don't feel like reading about gardening after a failed effort to turn your yard into an Eden-like fantasy? Don't worry—you have a friend in me. I can guess the story, at least loosely.

You got all excited about gardening. Maybe you had a revelation on a trip somewhere, and you realized, from that hermetically-sealed cabin 30,000 feet up in the air, how disconnected from nature your life had become. Or maybe it was when you shelled out an obscene amount of cash yet again at the farmers market and wondered if you could grow your own food instead. So you built or purchased the beds, got good soil, planted seeds, and watered. Things went well. You felt great. Your coworkers got used to you showing pictures of your plants as if they were babies. But then the seasons changed. You got busy. You kind of stopped going out there to check on things. Weeds grew. It wasn't so pretty and fun anymore, and, by the way, you now take a spinning class on Saturdays, leaving you little to no time to garden. Let's just say, the project has become a thorn in your side

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Mama was right—breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Studies have repeatedly shown that breakfast eaters tend to be leaner, eat healthier overall diets, and tend to do better at morning mental tasks. The other mantra that Mama is famous for is equally correct—you need to eat more vegetables. In fact, most Americans don't even come close to the recommended amount of vegetables in their diet; while most adults need at least 2 and a half cups of vegetables each day, many of us struggle to get one measly cup on any given day. This is bad news for our health and probably our waistline. Eating more plant-based foods, including vegetables, is at the top of almost every health professional's advice list and may well be the most commonly given nutrition advice of all time.

Enter the breakfast salad. Adding vegetables to breakfast simply does not happen in many American kitchens, but vegetables are a morning staple for many other cultures. In Turkey, a typical breakfast might be a dish of tomatoes, green peppers, olive oil, and eggs. In Japan, vegetables are often served as a side dish with breakfast. Fava beans dressed with lemon and olive oil are served all over Cairo as a common breakfast food.

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As a registered dietitian, "Step away from the kitchen" isn't something I like to say often. Actually, I prefer for people to be in their kitchens, preparing lots and lots of healthy meals and snacks. But the truth is, many people are eating way too much after dinner. Maybe it's because they're bored, stressed from work, lonely, or simply do it out of habit. Either way, too many calories are being consumed, and the result is weight gain.

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