Fittest Loser contestants learn to choose healthy fare
When is "rice" not actually made of rice?
The four Fittest Loser contestants found the answer to this riddle when they attended a demonstration of healthy cooking at the food sciences lab of Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire. In addition, the contestants learned about healthy restaurant-ordering at the Savory Salads restaurant in Arlington Heights.
The lesson from these two excursions was that when you cook a fancy dinner at home or even go out to a restaurant, you don't have to check your health at the door.
Batch preparation
The contestants are following a nutrition plan called "Push Start Your Metabolism," developed by Push Fitness of Schaumburg. This low-carb, low-sugar, fat-friendly and protein-friendly way of eating can be time-consuming to live by, in part because it involves eating five full meals a day. So, the lesson at Stevenson High centers around how to cut that time drain by preparing a large batch of foods that can be stored in a plastic bag in the refrigerator, then used for several meals.
The kitchen-like classroom is supervised by family and consumer science teacher Sara Lohrmann, who by no coincidence happens to be the sister-in-law of Push Fitness owner Josh Steckler. But Lohrmann turns over control of the day's after-school meeting to 20 of her teenage students. They are members of Stevenson's Food Revolution Club, which was started last year, inspired by the TV series "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution." And their cooking lesson for the Fittest Losers is their club project for this week.
"Knowing that time is an issue right now, the students will teach the concept of batch preparation," Lohrmann says. "For example, you can cut up all your vegetables in the morning and be ready to put them into meals later."
What they cook and cut up and wash in those batches is healthy fare. For example, the diet plan frowns on eating much rice, or any other kind of starch. So at one table four students are teaching the Fittest Loser folks one at a time how to make riceless rice - something called Cauliflower Rice. It looks and even tastes somewhat like the real thing, but is composed of grated cauliflower plus 15 other tasty ingredients, such as eggs, avocado oil, scallions, garlic, peas, carrots, coconut oil and rice vinegar.
Student Jules Bergman patiently shows a contestant how to smash garlic cloves with the side of a knife. Clubmate Harsh Thakkar explains how "the original recipe calls for four to five tablespoons of soy sauce. But we found a healthier alternative, organic coconut oil."
The recipe yields more than two pounds of the cauliflower-based faux rice - enough to fill a large Ziploc bag and supply side dishes for perhaps a half-dozen meals.
The main dish being prepared for the contestants is salmon - wild-caught, of course - layered with green beans and asparagus and coated with a "basil pesto" mixture made from 14 ingredient, including basil, pine nuts, olive oil (extra-virgin), grape tomatoes and lemon juice. Students Megan Embree and Sam Achetto show how to mix the pesto blend in an electric mixer, then wrap up all the ingredients in aluminum foil and heat it in an oven.
At other tables, Food Revolution Clubbers show the visitors how to make a "crustless quiche" for the next day's breakfast using cage-free, organic eggs, spinach, red bell peppers, parsley, onions and broccoli, among other stuff. Yet others demonstrate making a kind of hummus and veggies based on chickpeas, tahini, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, etc.
Eating out
Three days later, the contestants gather at Savory Salads in Arlington Heights for a lesson from Steckler on how to order healthful food in a restaurant.
"Remember always to think about 'Where do we get our carbs, where do we get our fats, where do we get our protein," Steckler tells the contestants, listing the three kinds of food Push Fitness recommends be present in every meal.
In most restaurants the challenge for a restaurant-goer would be to stay away from french fries and pop and ice cream. But looking over this eatery's menu of salad-oriented fare, Steckler observes that the toughest part might be finding the protein element. He recommends adding chicken shreds to their salads. Bacon is offered too, but "if something has too much sodium, it's not as healthy," he notes.
"Since chicken is a very lean meat, we need to add a fat," Steckler adds. "So let's look at the salad dressing, or at avocados, olives and nuts."
Almost everyone in the little group ends up ordering some variety of the Spinach & Kale Salad, which includes baby spinach, kale, red onion, mushrooms, shaved parmesan cheese (some fat here), hard-boiled egg (some protein there), tomatoes and maple Dijon vinaigrette dressing.
Taking the lessons home
James "J.D." DeBouver said the resulting salad was pretty similar to what he would eat at home while on the 12-week Fittest Loser Challenge. "But I wouldn't put eggs or kale in it."
DeBouver, a 33-year-old Army combat veteran from Schaumburg, said he used to fall far short of the five-times-a-day eating protocol as he works each day as a federal OSHA inspector. "I would have breakfast and then not eat again until 6 at night. I wasn't eating that much. But I wasn't doing my body any favors either" because his body "was starting to hoard what I was eating" and turn it into human fat.
"Five meals a day is tough," DeBouver said. "I usually forget my afternoon snack because that falls just when I get off work. You have life to do."
"It's hard to do five meals a day when you work," agreed contestant Penny Brown, a 37-year-old Navy veteran from Fox Lake who works as a school lunch lady.
Worse, Brown said, her husband and young children are not on the same diet, "so I'll end up taking them to McDonald's or something on my way home" where she can make the healthier food for herself.
Contestant Tony Wiszowaty, a 68-year-old Marine Corps vet from Schaumburg, said he goes out of his way to follow the Push Start plan even while working as a Realtor. "Even if I'm not hungry, I know it's important for my metabolism to eat five times a day," he said. "So I force myself to eat."
The final contestant, 60-year-old Air Force vet Russ Page of Antioch, said his effort has been made much easier by having a wife who's also following the Push Start eating plan and applies the same kind of effort and imagination to its foods that the Stevenson High kids did.
"We cut out carbs and glutens - wheat and pasta - in January, before the challenge began, and it made a difference," Page said. "My wife, Diane, is an imaginative cook. She does things with vegetables that make you not miss what you have cut out. She makes baked brussels sprouts and baked cauliflower and salads with a lot of ingredients, such as coconut oil, that make them interesting."
Page said he and Diane end up consuming much of their "fat" food group items in the form of nuts. And for extra protein to flesh out five meals a day they sometimes use a commercial but organic protein powder made from plants or the "whey" part of milk.
As they work to improve their health and possibly win the contest, Page said, "I remember how during our supermarket tour Josh Steckler said to work at this so that at the end, you can say you haven't left anything on the table."
And for Page that inspires a bit of humor. "When Josh said that, I thought to myself, 'That's what has gotten us here (to this overweight condition) - that we didn't leave anything on the table!"
By the numbers
James DeBouver
Army
Age: 33
Height: 5'9"
Starting weight: 264
Current weight: 242
Weight lost this week: 5 lbs.
Total weight lost: 22 lbs.
Penny Brown
Navy
Age: 37
Height: 5'8"
Starting weight: 227
Current weight: 211
Weight lost this week: 1 lb.
Total weight lost: 16 lbs.
Russell Page
Air Force
Age: 60
Height: 5'10"
Starting weight: 250
Current weight: 228
Weight lost this week: 5 lbs.
Total weight lost: 22 lbs.
Tony Wiszowaty
Marine
Age: 68
Height: 5'9"
Starting weight: 247
Current weight: 225
Weight lost this week: 4 lbs.
Total weight lost: 22 lbs.