FEED YOUR BODY RIGHT: SUCCESS WITH AN INTERNATIONAL FLAVOR
Three times a day, Alice Layne takes a trip around the world—not in an airplane, but on her plate. Her adventurous approach to eating helped her lose 67 pounds and four sizes within 2 years.
Alice, a 42-year-old New York City resident, didn’t always have a daring palate. Growing up, she feasted on lots of pizza and sugar. “My mother’s idea of a treat was a box of brown sugar cubes, a chocolate bar, or a can of ready-mixed frosting,” she says.
Alice’s unhealthy food choices caught up with her during her teenage years, when she started gaining weight. Her eating habits didn’t improve as she got older, either. A typical day featured a sugary cereal for breakfast, a bulky sandwich for lunch, and dinner in a restaurant, where she’d eat to the point of discomfort.
By her late thirties, despite bouts of yo-yo dieting, Alice had reached 235 pounds. Her waistline wasn’t all that suffered. Her back ached due to her weight, and her self-esteem tumbled.
“My breaking point came when I had to go away for a weekend and I ordered several new outfits for the trip,” she says. “I didn’t try on the clothes before leaving, and when I got to where I was going, I discovered that nothing that I had bought fit.”
Hurting physically and emotionally, Alice knew that she had to slim down. Over the next year and a half, she made a modest effort to improve her eating habits, which led to a 23-pound weight loss:
At that point, she felt that she needed a program with structure, so she joined Weight Watchers. Her group leader introduced her to international foods that made her meals more exciting and healthy.
Alice enticed her tastebuds with ethnic favorites that she found in cookbooks: tabbouleh, a minty wheat salad from the Middle East; couscous, a pebbly pasta from northern Africa; and polenta, a corn-brea’dlike food flavored with roasted red peppers and tomatoes that’s popular in Italy. Along the way, she learned how to cook with the salsas and spices that flavor many ethnic cuisines. “The new tastes transformed my palate,” she says. “Now, when I take even a bite of the some of the foods that I used to eat, I don’t like them.”
Alice had so much fun experimenting with exotic new recipes that she never felt like she was dieting. Yet she lost 44 pounds in less than 6 months, reaching her personal goal weight of 168 in December 1998. And she has held steady ever since.
Alice says that she seldom visits her chiropractor for her aching back anymore. And she feels much stronger emotionally, now that her self-esteem isn’t bogged down by extra weight. “Since I’ve slimmed down, I’ve gotten my hair cut and styled differently,” she says. “Many people don’t even recognize me, which is fun.”
WINNING ACTION
Explore the world via your dinner plate. Some of the healthiest low-fat meals come from other cultures. Tempt your tastebuds with Greek souvlakia (lamb served
on skewers), French ratatouille (a vegetable dish cooked in olive oil), Japanese yakitori (grilled chicken), Thai ginger beef, or Indian mulligatawny (a kind of lentil soup). These are just a few examples of the “world’s fare” that can please your palate without widening your waistline. Consider investing in an ethnic cookbook such as The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, Step-by-Step Indian Cooking, or Steven Raichlen’s Healthy Latin Cooking.
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