Tracy Anderson is Totally Not Kidding: Part 2

Tracy Anderson considers the meal plan her third component, but for me, it gets priority because it requires the most time and attention. And also, because it’s food!

Sunday night I spent about an hour and fifteen minutes in the kitchen, preparing breakfast, lunch, and a snack for Monday. Breakfast was a cup of strawberries and mint with a tiny bit of agave syrup. Lunch was vegetable minestrone. Snack was chocolate chestnut pudding. And they were all FANTASTIC. Really delicious, and not just because I was really hungry. I was, admittedly, a little hungry all day. Tracy Anderson says you can have larger portions if you need them, but I didn’t get to the point where I felt like I needed it. I didn’t feel light-headed or cranky like I do when I’m “starving”. I actually had really good energy all day, at least until after I cooked dinner (halibut and asparagus) and then had to make all the food for the next day. By then I was pretty tired. Also, I will admit to “cheating” by eating about 5 grapes around dinnertime, but I don’t even feel bad about it, since IT WAS 5 GRAPES.

The cooking takes a pretty significant amount of time. I think preparing the meals might be the toughest part of this whole “method” and might have the highest risk of breaking me. (Cooking is not exactly a relaxing experience for me, since I have about 2 sq ft of counter space.) It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just time consuming, with a lot of ingredients. It probably took me a little over two hours last night to make dinner, plus breakfast, lunch and snack for today. I’m used to making lunches and dinners, but breakfast is usually simple stuff like cereal, toast, or yogurt and snacks are whatever I can scrounge up. Making breakfasts and snacks with multiple ingredients is kind of a pain, but at least they’ve been really tasty.

Breakfast today is turkey, avocado, and tomato wrapped in lettuce leaves, with a side of wilted spinach. It’s 10am and I haven’t eaten it yet, because I DON’T WANT TURKEY FOR BREAKFAST!!! I’m getting pretty hungry though, so I’m going to have to eat it soon. Luckily, most of the scheduled breakfasts going forward are omelets or fruit. Lunch today is a spinach salad with a hard boiled egg, and today’s snack is another salad (which they call a “relish”) made of cucumber, edamame and mint.

Aside from turkey for breakfast, there is one thing that doesn’t make any sense to me. The same-protein-on-the-same-day thing. Tonight, Tracy wants me to serve steamed turkey for dinner. (I am subbing in chicken, which the recipe says is okay.) Tomorrow’s lunch is a salmon and endive salad, followed by Orange Glazed Salmon for dinner. Who wants to eat salmon twice in one day? Thursday is Chicken Protein Soup for lunch and Grilled Chicken for dinner. I might switch those around, because I really don’t see any nutritional reason to have only fish one day and only chicken the next. I thought maybe it was for efficient grocery shopping, but if she really cared about efficiency, she wouldn’t have us using 1/8 of an avocado one day and then no avocado for a week.

Another thing that bothers me is that the recipes tell you the portion size, but don’t tell you how many portions the recipe makes. Occasionally it will say “recipe makes one serving” but not always. For example, when I was making wilted spinach last night for today’s “breakfast”. I thought four cups of spinach would be enough to make two servings, but it only made one. My husband is (willingly!) doing this diet with me, so I had to do it twice. That’s just ANNOYING! Why can’t it say how many portions it makes, like every other recipe in the world?! Also, the portion sizes are given in ounces, so you should have a food scale. (I also use mine to weigh stuff for postage.)

I have, at this point, eaten my turkey roll-ups for breakfast, and they were really good, if not exactly breakfast-y. I haven’t eaten the side of wilted spinach yet. I might just have it later as a snack. (Mmm!)

Something that really helps with this diet, or any diet, is tea. I’ve been having a cup of green tea in the morning,which I always do anyway, and I’m also having a cup in the afternoon. (Before 2pm, because I suck at sleeping.) Green tea is full of antioxidants, and is also good for boosting metabolism. Caffeine is an appetite suppressant and helps burn calories. (If we’re doing this, we’re DOING THIS!) But don’t overdo it with the caffeine or you’ll get all jittery and anxious. I’m basically having an extra cup of green tea a day to make it easier to skip my usual snacks. We’ve been making pitchers of iced jasmine green tea, which is really great in the afternoon. After dinner last night, we had peppermint tea. Basically, the mint tea is relaxing and makes you not think about dessert so much.

Again, the food is all really good, and to get great results we’re going to have to put in the effort. It doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to complain about it a little bit! It does seem like a good plan though, despite it's flaws. One thing I really like is that she only uses “real” food and doesn’t rely on artificial sweeteners like some other diets (I’m talkin’ to YOU, South Beach.) And her recipes are really delicious. It’s a lot of work to make the food, but at least it tastes really good when you are done. My husband actually asked if she was a trained chef. She’s not, but she worked with one for this book.

There is obviously a lot to say about Tracy Anderson and her “Method” so I’m going to write one more post in this series tomorrow and tell you about the very important exercise component.