Lightening up: 7 fun Asheville chefs join weight-loss challenge, offer tips to healthier eating
It's an obvious choice for Tres Hundertmark, of The Lobster Trap, to embark on the Lighten Up 4 Life weight-loss challenge with his fellow members of the Asheville Independent Restaurant Association, he said.
"We are all sort of individually responsible for several of the pounds that each of us carry," he said with a rich belly laugh."We all eat at each other's places and drink at each other's places."
Michel Baudouin, of Bouchon French Bistro; Dustin Vanderbunt, of ED Boudreaux's Bayou Bar-B-Que; Sandy Waldrop, of Grovewood Café; Craig Peters, of City Bakery; Dwight Butner, of Vincenzo's Ristorante & Bistro; and Anthony Cerrato, of Fiore's Ristorante Toscana, join Hundertmark on two yet-to-be-determined weight-loss teams of three and four members.
Love of food an obstacle
The group of chefs and restaurateurs may easily represent the team with most obvious obstacles to losing weight in the Mission Hospitals-sponsored challenge: Their love of food results in their paycheck. Restaurant hours are stressful, often stretching into the night and leave little time for exercise.
And who really can trust a skinny chef?
But Hundertmark's problem is simple.
"I just want to try everything," he said.
Waldrop, a pastry chef, said the best way to lose weight is to do it with friends.
It helps to "have someone else screaming at me if I'm not doing what I am supposed to," she said with another laugh - a frequent outburst when this group gets together.
There are some things, however, that they said they could never resist.
For Cerrato, it's cheese, he said.
Butner said not only can he not resist good food, he has no plans to give up anything.
Tempting food surround chefs all the time, he said. However, chefs also "have more information about what to do more than anyone else" because of their deep knowledge of food, Butner said.
The keys are portion control and calorie counting, but "I think if a dish calls for butter, you can use butter," he said.
Healthy tips
Here are some of their tips to eating healthier:
Eat less bread and avoid liquid calories from soda and alcohol. But if you can't avoid a drink with dinner, have wine instead of that high-calorie mug of beer.
Try substituting low-fat ingredients in your rich recipes. Use cottage cheese instead of ricotta cheese in lasagna; reach for the applesauce instead of butter for baked goods. If you have more than three ingredients in a recipe, your taste buds won't be able to tell that you are eating light.
Eat more grilled or roasted proteins. They are a lower-calorie approach to leaving the table satisfied. Peel off roasted chicken skin and rub it with herbs, for example.
Don't eat late at night and take the time to sit down for a meal instead of snacking on whatever is around when your tummy grumbles.
When you start planning a meal, go to the produce section in the grocery first to make sure you get in your important vegetables. Always eat fresh ingredients.
by Carol Motsinger
cmotsinger@CITIZEN-TIMES.com
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