Gazpacho Mondays...

I’ve been in Spain for a little over a month now, and I’m puzzled by one thing. Actually, I’m puzzled by many things, but for the purposes of this entry, let’s just say one. How do the Spanish, and particularly Spanish women, stay so skinny? They drink café con leche, beer and wine. They eat lots of bread and pastries. They use tons of olive oil on EVERYTHING. They even fry their potato chips in it and use it to make their sandwich bread. Not only do Spaniards embrace alcohol, carbs, and sugar, but they do it at an alarming frequency and late into the night. Most restauranst in Madrid don’t even open for dinner until 8 or 9pm, at the earliest. Their eating practices fly in the face of nearly all the conventional wisdom we hear in America about nutrition. Yet they are skinny, and we are fat! Why is this?

Though Spaniards do many things on the American Nutritionist’s “No-No” list, they also do a lot of things right. They eat lots of little meals throughout the day and they love their seafood. When you are surrounded by as much water as Spain is, I suppose that’s a given. They drink a lot of heart healthy red wine, much of which is made right here in Spain. They also restrict most of their fats to healthy ones, like olives, olive oil and almonds. On all the Spanish cooking shows I’ve seen, I have never seen them use one ounce of butter. They understand the importance of protein in their diet, and they use a lot of lean cuts of meat, like their specialty hams. Spain has a love affair with gazpacho. They sell it in milk carton packaging right in the refrigerated food section so it’s ready to go at a moment’s notice, and it IS good! Even Husband and Eleven love it! They also love to eat fresh fruits and vegetables. They seem to avoid some of the nutritional pitfalls of the US as well. The Spanish don’t seem to use much of the cheap sweetener, high fructose corn syrup, in their packaged foods. I’ve noticed something else as well. They are conscious of their portion size. I went to McDonalds here and they still use the “old” small, medium and large sizes. All their packaging is tall, slender, and smaller, while ours is shorter, stockier, and bigger. I think it actually affects their state of mind. Their packaging is long and lithe and so are they. They seem to want to get most quality for their euro whereas we seem to focus on getting the most quantity for our dollar.

I have a few pounds I’d like to shed, so I have decided to incorporate a little of the Spanish food philosophy into my diet and see what happens. That’s where Gazpacho Monday comes in. I once read a book called “100 Ways to Simplify Your Life.” One of the tips in this book was to do a juice/fruit fast on Mondays. Weekends tend to be a time when people splurge, so Monday is a great day to take it down a notch and detox, so to speak. Diets like the Zone promote the idea that proteins, fats, and carbs all have a place in a healthy diet. I also know that small changes can make a big difference over time. Drawing on all these ideas, I came up with a little meal plan I’ve called “Gazpacho Mondays.”

On my first Gazpacho Monday, this is what I ate:

8am- 4oz of Gazpacho
9:30am-Café con leche, ½ apple, a little Spanish ham
11:30am-a small handful of almonds
2pm-10oz of Gazpacho, some Spanish ham, and 10 olives
4pm-a small handful of almonds
6pm-10oz of Gazpacho, some Spanish ham, 10 olives, sautéed zucchini and onions
8pm-a small handful of almonds, 4 oz of gazpacho

I also drank water and diet coke throughout the day.

Will this work? I don’t know, but it sure was delicious and I never felt hungry. I’ll keep you posted. Hasta luego…