Shopping at the farmers market is one of my most rewarding healthstyle habits

Now that you all have your copies of Foodist I’m sure you’re itching to get started upgrading your healthstyle, and I want to help.

This week I’ve partnered with the habit-building app Lift, which is available on iOS as well as your web browser (if you join the Foodist group), to help you get started building healthy habits.

Once you join Lift head over and follow me. I have all sorts of fun habits I try to cultivate including trying new foods, eating something green, walking 10,000 steps a day, and shopping at the farmers market. Feel free to participate in any or all of these, and add your own if you want. Keeping track makes it much easier to stick to your goals.

I’ve also created a special Foodist group of habits in the Lift app for those following the Foodist healthstyle recalibration (Chapter 9). The recalibration requires eliminating sugar, wheat, dairy and alcohol for 2-8 weeks in order to to help restore insulin sensitivity and troubleshoot other food-related health issues. In the book I recommend the recalibration for people with more than 20 pounds to lose who may be metabolically compromised (insulin resistant) or suspect they have food sensitivities.

Although the recalibration is not required for foodists, it can be really useful for those who have had trouble losing weight in the past. If you choose to participate, you’ll be sent a short survey so we can see how the recalibration is affecting you.

Either way I hope you join me on Lift, it’s a great resource for building a better healthstyle. If you add any interesting new habits, feel free to mention them in the comments so other people can check them out and join in.

Post your hardcover copy of #foodist (w/hashtag) on Instagram now thru 5/14 for chance to win a personalized copy!

Foodist is finally released into the wild.

Every word I’ve ever written here at Summer Tomato has led up to this book. It’s what people have been asking for since I first started writing, a step-by-step guide to losing weight without the pain and suffering that comes with dieting.

Foodist is about more than what to eat and what not to eat. It’ll teach you why it’s not only OK to embrace the foods you love, but why enjoying what you eat is absolutely necessary for success. It provides you all the tools, tips and knowledge you need to start making changes in your healthstyle today, and how to ensure that the efforts you put in now will last a lifetime.

After reading Foodist, you’ll never need to diet again.

Spread the Word, Get Some Love

Since Foodist is my first book, media attention has been limited. That means I need your help getting the word out.

If you have a blog, Facebook account, Twitter account or even a few friends or family members you think may be interested, please consider mentioning Foodist. Drop a comment below with a link or tweet at me (@summertomato) and I’ll happily retweet your post.

If you are near a bookstore, please go in and buy a copy or ten. For some reason bookstore sales count more than online sales. Lame, I know, but bookstores are still nice places to spend time and I don’t mind supporting them. If the store doesn’t carry Foodist or doesn’t have many copies, please ask them to order more.

If you have a few more seconds to spare, please head over to Amazon and leave a review. These reviews are incredibly helpful for people considering buying the book.

INSTAGRAM COMPETITION: If you have an Instagram account you can enter to win a personalized signed copy of Foodist directly from me. Take a fun picture with your hardcover copy and post it using the hashtag #foodist on Instagram between now and May 14. Two winners will be selected.

Thank you for time and support and for helping spread the word that there’s more to life than dieting. Your support means the world to me. 

Photo by Humphrey King

Weight loss is tricky business. Obviously what you eat has a huge impact on your health and body weight. But anyone who has ever tried to modify their diet for the sake of losing weight knows it isn’t so simple.

Most of us understand intuitively that broccoli is healthier than cookies. We can talk about sugar, fat, gluten and antioxidants all day, but that doesn’t change the fact that cookies taste good and you still want to eat them. Any weight loss plan that simply tells you what to eat and neglects why you make the choices you make is unlikely to help you in the long run.

Nutrition knowledge is important, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. The real secret is understanding your behaviors and motivations at their roots, and using this information to have a meaningful impact on your health. In this sense, good health starts in your brain, not on your plate.

The first thing you need to understand is that we don’t have as much control over our food decisions as most of us assume. We tend to believe that we can call on willpower anytime we wish and use it to order a salad instead of a burger, and if we fail to do so it is our own fault. However, self-control is not something we can simply turn on or off, and as a result the process of decision making––particularly when it comes to food––is much more complex.

Approximately 20 percent of the calories we expend daily are used by our brains. Because brain activity is so costly, things like self-control and decision making cannot be relied on indefinitely. As a result, willpower is a limited resource.

Like a muscle, willpower becomes fatigued when exercised too frequently. All the decisions you make throughout the day deplete your willpower, and when you start running out of steam your ability to choose healthy food over more convenient food rapidly diminishes.

Ironically, increasing your blood sugar can help restore willpower to some extent. But finding a healthy way to raise blood sugar in a state of depleted willpower can pose quite the dilemma. Tired brains find it much easier to just grab a cookie.

The way our brains cope with the willpower conundrum is to automate as much of our decision making as possible. It does this by creating habits. Habits are specific behaviors that occur in response to a trigger or cue. They are also always associated with some kind of reward, which in turn reinforces and strengthens the trigger.

For example, a buzz in your pocket is a cue to reach down, grab your phone, pull it out and glance at the screen. The information you see causes a bit of dopamine to be released in the reward center of your brain. We humans love novelty, which is why most of us have a reflexive response to checking our mobile devices when we receive a notification. This is how habits are born.

Once established, habits occur automatically without expending any willpower or mental effort. Scientists have estimated that up to 90 percent of our daily food decisions occur as a result of habits. This saves our brain energy for more difficult decisions where habits cannot be used.

How can this knowledge help us lose weight?

For one thing, it shows that willpower is not particularly reliable as a means to achieve lasting weight loss, and we’re better off spending our efforts creating healthy habits.

It also teaches us that any habit we wish to develop needs to impart a meaningful reward in order for it to stick. You can probably guess that some vague promise of future thinness is not sufficient––the reward for any habit needs to be immediate and tangible.

This means that in order to achieve long-term weight control you need to find healthy foods you actually enjoy eating, physical activities you like doing, and spend your time making these as convenient and accessible as possible.

Fabulous news, right?

Using willpower for restrictive dieting is difficult and incredibly unpleasant. We can all let out a collective sigh of relief that it doesn’t actually work. To achieve true success in health and weight loss, we’re better off quitting diets altogether and focusing on building healthy habits we enjoy.

Try starting with something as simple as breakfast. Warm muesli with a splash of almond milk and cinnamon only takes two minutes to prepare and is absolutely delicious. Invest in a pedometer and challenge yourself to reach 10,000 steps a day. Setting and achieving an attainable goal is a very powerful reward, and is one of the reasons so many people love videogames.

Since our brains are easily overwhelmed, don’t try to develop too many habits at once. Work on just two or three habits at a time, and build from there. Habits take anywhere from two weeks to six months to take root, but on average about two months. Start with the easiest ones and work your way up. Once you’ve built enough good habits, your health will take care of itself.

To learn how to stop dieting, build healthy habits, and make life awesome check out my new book Foodist.

Ruby Chard

Baa is an Ossetian, born in Turkey and currently living in Austria. Vacationing in Istanbul, she checks out markets to hunt down delicious greens. A software developer with a soft spot for academic research in that field, an avid knitter (baahar.etsy.com) and reader, she makes time to cook meals with real food and advocates a lifestyle of moderation so that you can enjoy the foods you love longer. You can also find her on Pinterest and Twitter.

Farmers Market Update: Istanbul

by Baa

District Market Kücükyali

Istanbul. An overly satiated city of 13 million. There are several ways fresh and local produce finds its way to us in this chaotic but wonderful city: weekly markets in each district, produce shops on almost every street, and finally street vendors who walk around with their carts and shout. You can hear them from afar, with their intriguing calls, because they distort the words to make their call sound… better? harmonious? Beside the occasional riddle as to what they are actually selling, they provide people with top-notch service. You can lower down a basket from your window with the money, shout your order and get your goods without even leaving your apartment.

The district markets are traditionally built every week in some designated streets of the district. Sellers come the night before and start building up their stands. In the morning, you find the streets transformed into a tent labyrinth of produce and all kinds of goods, from clothing to toys and kitchenware.

Even though most of the sellers at district markets are re-sellers, you can always find some people who bring in the produce from their garden or small farm. Especially, their dainty parsley and mint smell and taste delicious. It makes you want to start grazing right there.

Dainty Parsley and Other Herbs

Recently, organic labeled food became a trend here and several markets emerged. The ecologic market that we specially frequent to buy our weekly greens for breakfast, has a few locations spread over Istanbul. The market in Şişli takes place outdoors, under a designated roofed-area every Saturday. Beside the stands that sell produce, there are also several food stands where women make traditional pastries (gözleme) filled with cheese and spinach or parsley. In Turkey, there is always a tea vendor nearby. So, get a gözleme and some black tea and enjoy a nice lunch out.

Ecologic Market in Sisli

Spinach is always high on my to-buy list. It is amazing how much the taste can differ compared to the bland, frozen spinach I have to buy in Austria. These crisp, small spinach leaves can be easily eaten raw, ideal to put into a salad.

Luscious Spinach

Artichokes are in season now and are especially promoted for liver health. They are a bit expensive though, 2.5 USD a piece. The bigger ones are being holed out by the sellers and sold in plastic bags filled with lemon+water to preserve the color. Most people cook them topped with peas, cubed carrots and potatoes. When I am too lazy to cook them, I eat them simply raw. The smaller ones are better purchased and cooked whole.

Artichokes

Kale and chard are in season too. Turkish people buy kale mostly to make sarma, where a minced meat or vegetarian filling is wrapped up with these leaves. As a lazy cook, I would consider making that dish only for guests or on special occasions. For everyday use, it is enough for me to chop them up and cook with some olive oil, or sometimes to use it as a pastry filling (börek) together with cheese.

Kale and Chard

Unfortunately, summer fruits are not out yet. I cannot wait to see the market in full bloom and color when they do. However, it is time for unripe plums. Delicious, green, sour, juicy plums that Turks love to eat with salt. I love them as they are. At least the first mulberries are out to bring some more color into the market.

Plums and Mulberries

This week I also discovered these sorrel leaves (Kuzukulağı) that taste like lemon. Together with ramps that taste like garlic, they go in every salad I make now.

Sorrel

Here you can find a lot more than fresh produce. Beside the usual suspects like olives, cheese and eggs there are also several stands with honey, molasses and tahini.

Honey, Molasses and Tahini

I am planning to explore more of the markets around here. Turkey is full of herbs and vegetables that grow in the wild and come out only once a year––for the people who know to look for them, of course. Every market seems to have another thing to be discovered. Exciting times!

What did you find at the farmers market this week?

If you’d like to share your local farmers market with Summer Tomato readers, here are the guidelines. 

For The Love of Food

Welcome to Friday’s For The Love of Food, Summer Tomato’s weekly link roundup.

PLEASE NOTE: This is the last day to get a free Fitbit, Mercado bag, phone calls with me, an invite to the Foodist launch party, and other great prizes. Pre-order Foodist today!

This week we learn why we shouldn’t trust food labels, how economic woes can improve health, and the tastiest ways to travel without resorting to airplane food.

Want to see all my favorite links? (There’s lots more). Be sure to follow me on on Delicious. I also share links on Twitter @summertomato,  Google+ and the Summer Tomato Facebook page. I’m very active on all these sites and would love to connect with you. (And yes, I took that pepper heart pic myself).

Links of the week

• Jedi Mind Tricks: How to Get Loved Ones to Lose Weight <<This is the most personal story I’ve ever shared about my family’s health and weight loss journey. My dad was one of the lucky ones. I hope it inspires you. Thanks to Tim Ferriss for allowing me to share the extensive excerpt from Foodist with his audience.
  
• The 10 Biggest Food Label Lies <<Food labels are intended to confuse you. Here’s some tips on how to decipher them (including some from me). (Women’s Day)
• A Potential Way to Eat Eggs Without Dying <<BS of the week. Call me crazy, but it seems a bit irresponsible to publicly recommend an unproven supplement to fix a problem with a food that has never been shown to promote heart disease in free living humans. Grrrr. (The Atlantic)
• Betting on Behavior Change <<I’m a big fan of anything that helps build healthy habits. Here’s some great tips from the Nutrition Diva.
• How Cubans’ Health Improved When Their Economy Collapsed <<When the Soviet Union stopped supporting Cuba with cheap petroleum, they were forced to return to the fields, eat more natural foods and be more active. Their rates of disease plummeted, despite their poverty. Fascinating, huh? (The Atlantic)
• Contaminated ground turkey found in 21 states: report <<In case you hadn’t heard, you may want to skip the industrial turkey burgers for awhile. (Medline)
• Children on Track for a Heart Attack <<This makes me so sad. Being a kid is hard enough, now they’re having to deal with grown up problems like stiffening arteries as well. Parents, please take this to heart. (Wall Street Journal)
• Of course you’re stressed. Just look at you. <<Chronic stress makes you look older. Just one more reason to practice mindfulness and other activities that reduce stress. (LA Times)
• RECIPES AND TIPS FOR HEALTHY TRAVEL <<Frequent travel is one of the biggest barriers to good health for some people. Here’s some lovely recipes and tips to avoid the toxic (and gross) airplane food. (My New Roots)
• How to Cook Morels <<Few foods exemplify the beauty of seasonal cooking like morel mushrooms. They’re delightful and simple to prepare, and I’ve even known some self-proclaimed mushroom haters that have found them delicious. (Ruhlman)
• Triangulation 101: Darya Rose <<I made a visit to TWiT studios this week and chatted with Leo Laporte about Foodist. It’s the most info that’s ever been shared about the content of my new book. Give it a watch when you get a chance.