Seasons by the Sea: Accentuate the Positive

Today is New Year’s Eve and perhaps some of you are starting off the year with a firm commitment to lose weight, exercise more, stop drinking diet sodas, or quit smoking. The list goes on and on of all the things we should be doing more, or less, of.

Here are the facts about New Year’s resolutions: You are most likely going to fall off of the paleo/Atkins/Dukan diet-fad-of-the-month club wagon within six weeks. If you try to go it alone, you are also likely to cheat, because no one is watching. You have nothing but your nagging conscience to beat you up for your miserable failure and weakness of willpower as you scarf down that cheap Chinese food or 7-Eleven doughnut side-carred with a Big Gulp. Gosh, this is starting to sound autobiographical, but I swear to you, I’ve never had a Big Gulp. The rest is true. . . .

If you do fail momentarily at your diet, don’t be discouraged and give up; forgive yourself and just start over the next day. This really works. And if you commit to an exercise plan, do it with a friend. You are less likely to quit when you have a buddy to say, “C’mon, we gotta do this together. That rerun of ‘Beverly Hills Housewives’ can wait.”

Here is the most boring and true sentence you will read in this column, courtesy of Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University: “The basic principles of healthful eating are simple and easy to follow: Vary unprocessed foods. Don’t overeat.” It’s boring because everybody knows this already, but they don’t want to hear it. Kind of like you don’t want to hear “You shouldn’t go out with that sexy, motorcycle-riding, unemployed hellion,’ ” but you do because he is exciting and different. You know you’d be better off with the grounded fella who’s nice to you, but that’s boring. This is the reason why new and clever diets are so “successful” and sell a lot of books.

Take the paleo diet, ranked in last place out of 35 by U.S. News and World Report, by the way. The premise is that the paleolithic era’s hunter-gatherers of 10,000 years ago ate wild game, nuts, and berries, not processed salt and sugar-laden foods. Well, duh, McDonald’s didn’t exist until 1955! But a diet that nixes all dairy, legumes (low fat protein-packed, fiber-full), beans, lentils, and peanuts, grains, including wheat, corn, oats, and rice, quinoa, and starchy tubers, as in phytochemical-rich potatoes and beta-carotine-packed sweet potatoes, is just nonsense.

Those cavemen and cave ladies lived to about 30 and had different digestive systems than ours. So if you want to just lose weight, then incorporate the paleo diet’s best aspects, like the emphasis on whole foods. I’m not even going to address the Atkins diet, because any diet that recommends coating your meat with crumbled pork rinds instead of breadcrumbs is, well, just another motorcycle-riding hellion trying to show you a good time. This diet was also ranked at the bottom of U.S. News and World Report’s survey.

The number-one diet continues to be the DASH diet. (DASH stands for dietary approaches to stop hypertension.) It’s not a fad. It’s not exciting. It’s simply a common-sense approach, nutritionally complete, safe, and helps control or prevent diabetes and supports heart health. The Mediterranean diet is not far behind with its emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and healthy fats like olive oil.

Another helpful trick is to set positive goals, not negative ones. In other words, it’s easier and you’re more likely to succeed if you plan on a positive activity rather than attempt to stop a bad one. A positive goal is something you want to do, and this is easier than saying, “I gotta stop this or that.”

I have a very forgiving mirror in my bathroom. It seems to tell me, “You look great, you look fine,” when in fact the scale tells another story entirely. When I stayed at a hotel in New York City recently, that mirror said, “Good God! Where did that flabalanche come from?! You are a fright!” So as soon as I got home, I started exercising more and eating a more balanced diet. I lost five pounds and I tell myself I only need to lose five more, although in all honesty it could be more. Baby steps. Positive little goals.

As our rounds of boozy, fat-laden parties throughout the holidays progressed, I prudently picked through the stew that had an oil slick as big as the Exxon Valdez spill, had just a few bites of the sour cherry pie from Harbor Market, ignored the cheese platter, and made a vegetable soup to carry us lightly through the rest of the weekend. But I also made and enjoyed eggs Benedict on Christmas morning. Teeny, tiny baby steps.

I corralled some friends into joining me for a swim at Gurney’s this week as I have had a book of tickets languishing in my drawer for a year. Positive, fun goal! I’m pretty sure I have kick-started my New Year’s resolution, but time will tell.

If you love to cook, as I do, treat yourself to some new cookbooks that will inspire you to try new things. I have found that all of the books produced by Sami Tamini and Yotam Ottolenghi (“Plenty,” “Jerusalem,” “Ottolenghi,” and more) have the kind of recipes I love. Full of vegetables, whole grains, intense spices, yogurt, and garlic, they are savory and original. My son gave me “Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes” and within 10 minutes we had spicy celery salad and Japanese restaurant-style carrot ginger dressing.

There is also a groovy new kitchen gadget that is all the rage called a spiralizer. You can get one for around $20 or as much as $150, depending on how much you care about keeping your fingertips. This contraptions shreds vegetables and fruits into curly strands, so you can substitute zucchini or other squash for pasta in many dishes, and make pretty curlicue salads out of pumpkin and many more ingredients. Whatever “in-spiralizes” you.

So treat yourself; don’t deprive or deny yourself. Buy some cookbooks, take a long walk, and you’ll be on your way to a better, new you year. Good luck, and I apologize for that last sentence being all Oprah-y, but it’s true.

Click here for recipes.