Unfortunately, the arithmetic is not good. We like to think a Ceasar salad, for example, is healthy because lettuce. If you actually calculate all the calories from the toppings, however, the lettuce ends up being like 50 calories out of 470. The rest is refined fat with sugar and salt and flavoring. Yummy but hard on health.

Unfortunately, we're wired for potency and refined foods give us potency much higher than nature gives by combining sugar, fat and salt. Dressings are notorious for it.

I buy the dressings from Forks Over Knives and take a bottle when we go out to dinner at Sweet Tomatoes:

Ugh, I'm so sorry. I'm sure I would have been diagnosed with ADD as a kid and probably now too, but I think of it as my personality. I hyperfocus on things that interest me and can't focus on what bores me. We had two sons like that and they run SmugMug and Flickr today.

So adding sauces (sour cream, ranch dressing, butter, etc.) is OK—just make sure the focus is on the healthy (whole) vegetables/fruits? Or is it a bad idea to add those flavors/sauces?

Some people will tell you that you can replace sour cream with non-fat yogurt but that’s just bullshit, IMHO. If I’m having a baked potato it’s going to have sour cream AND butter on it. Since doing that on a frequent basis would kill me, I instead roast sweet potatoes/red potatoes/baby creamer potatoes in olive oil, garlic and dried herbs. I don’t miss the sour cream or butter because it would be superfluous to those dishes.

I am not a vegetarian but I do eat at least a couple vegetarian meals a week. I don’t eat ground beef, so to make spaghetti with “fake” meatballs is enjoyable comfort food, especially if you add some red wine to the tomato sauce and serve it all with a side of Texas Toast or garlic bread. Morningstar is a consistently good vegetarian brand—we buy their fake bacon to make BLTs—but there’s plenty of other alternatives to try.

I am also an ex-ranch-o-holic. Think ranch dressing drenching a small bowl of greens. Now, I eat a large bowl of salad (peppery Arugula, baby spinach, green onion, tomatoes, fresh mushrooms, or some variation), a shake or two of Parmesan cheese from the “green can” and a splash of Italian Dressing (the non-creamy version). The flavor is amazing and adding ranch would kill it.

The above is probably not the gold standard of healthy eating, but I like eating strategies that I can stick with over the “eliminate everything tasty because it will kill you” approach.

Thanks for the suggestion. I noticed the peanut thai sauce I used at lunch has 170 calories in 2 T., but when I put some with the cauliflower rice, I realized it was really powerful! I could not have eaten 2 T. of that stuff in one sitting, so I guess that’s good. 😬

I bake a sweet potato instead of a plain potato. Then I’m not tempted to smother it with all that yummy stuff—it’s good all by itself.

Here’s one of my cheats and what I had for dinner. I buy these Amy’s bowls for when there is no time but to throw something in the microwave.

Delicious. Cheap. Healthy. No animals tortured. No planets trashed.

At the end of the book you recommended, there is an appendix that lists recommended packaged foods. Ha! For someone like me who is not particularly interested in food prep, that spoke to me. Heh. Amy’s products appear often on that list.

Dude! I had the Tofu Scramble last night—Amy’s is also my goto meal when I get home late. I usually eat a huge bowl of salad with the meal to feel full after dinner and avoid evening snacking: 340 calories for their typical dinner leaves me a little hungry if that’s all I eat.

That’s my biggest problem, snacking in the evening or waking up hungry in the night, especially if I run late in the day. An Amy’s bowl is not enough for me either but especially when I run.