Sexy Marinara Sauce

If there's one thing the Italians have right, it's the combo of food and sex. When you do it right, the process of cooking (and eating) is a sensual experience. Give it a try and make this recipe for two!

You'll need:

One pound of fresh, local tomatoes

One small can of organic tomato paste (optional to make a thicker sauce)

A splash of olive oil

Garlic

Port Wine

Fresh chopped Oregano

Fresh chopped Basil

Fresh chopped Rosemary (optional)

Fresh parmesan cheese, grated

You'll notice there are no measurements here. That's because you need to taste it as you go! Start small with seasoning and add more to taste.

1. Put on your very favorite playlist and WALK yourself to the farmer's market to get all of your ingredients fresh. Fresher really does taste better, and there is no better start to a fabulous meal than a lovely walk. No rush, you're not expected to break a sweat or anything in this process.
2. Peel and seed your tomatoes. This is easy-- just scald them in a pot of boiling water for about a minute and then use tongs to drop them into a bowl of ice water. You can peel the skins right off with your fingertips. Then quarter your tomatoes and just squeeze the seeds and water out. No need to be a perfectionist here.
3. Heat a splash of olive oil in a sauce pan. While it heats, chop your garlic. Be sure to smash it with the flat of the knife first before you chop to release the oils and get all the flavor. Sautee the garlic for a minute or two. Chop up your tomatoes while you wait.
4. Pour yourself a glass of port wine. Pour a splash of it into the sauce pan and stir it to deglaze. Then quickly add the chopped tomatoes to the pan and stir. Keep the rest of the wine for yourself.
5. Add the tomato paste, basil, oregano, and rosemary. Stir. Bring to a boil and then cook on low for an hour, stirring periodically. You'll have less mess if you leave a lid halfway on the pot. Keep tasting and adding herbs until you've got it just right. Your better half should begin hovering around the kitchen around this time, due to the lovely smell.
6. Serve over two ounces of pasta and three ounces of meat. For those of us who tried the "measure everything" diet, here is the opportunity to use your pasta measures and food scales! (I personally loved this over sauteed portobello mushrooms and chicken parmesan.) Top with a light dusting of fresh grated parmesan cheese (fresh grated REALLY makes all the difference) and serve with a salad and a glass of wine.

Follow this meal with a leisurely stroll or some other relaxing exercise of your choosing. I'm sure you'll come up with something if you use your imagination. ;)

You Are What You Eat

Does the above statement mean you are fast, cheap, and easy (or greasy)? If so, you are not alone. Reports indicate that only 14% of Americans are eating the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables. And we're not even going to go into the fact that french fries make up 46% of vegetable intake among children. Into that mix, add 200 pounds of worthless white flour, 160 pounds of refined sugar, and three pounds of salt, and it's no wonder we eat nearly 2700 calories a day!

And the worst part? It isn't really all that GOOD.

If I was to seek out the country with the greatest food in the world, France and Italy would be at the top of most people's lists. Nobody would EVER accuse the French or Italian diet of being restrictive. And yet, these countries average a caloric intake of 2100 and 2200 calories, respectively. How do they do it?

In most of Europe, meals are events and food is something to be savored and appreciated. It's about quality and enjoyment, not quantity and speed. They spend 15-17% of their personal budgets on food, vs. our 12%. They average 7-10 ounces of wine a day vs. our 19 ounces of soda. And of course, fast food is right out. Sure, I saw more than one McDonald's when I lived in Germany for three years, but the role of fast food was very different from here. It was a novelty and a fad, and even there, the food was much smaller and much healthier.

So if you're tired of being fast, cheap, and greasy, why not take a note from the Italians? If you are what you eat, Hedonism is all about being fresh, rich, and satisfying.

What Your Nutritionist Would Tell You

The formula for weight management is easy: calories consumed - calories burned = net gain or loss.

Like it or not, there is no way to get around it. Even if you eat all of your calories in the form of grapefruit and cabbage soup, even if you use that ab roller every day, even if you never eat another carb again, there is no magic bullet. If you consume more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. Conversely, if you consume less calories than you burn, you will lose.

(What Your Nutritionist Won't Tell You...)

That said, there is a little more you want to keep in mind to improve the efficiency of the weight loss process. Many people catch on to the weight management formula and run straight for whatever restrictive diet they can find. They drastically reduce by eating only a few hundred calories a day, or by eating all one food.

Yes, you could theoretically drastically reduce your caloric intake and starve yourself thin, but that has some ugly side effects. Many experts believe that extreme weight-loss cycles actually CAUSE weight gain, because your metabolism is preparing for potential famine. That fact is contested and is still being studied, but the fact that fad diets are unhealthy is pretty much universally agreed upon. Extreme reduction in your caloric intake leaves your body running in survival mode, meaning it shuts down all nonessential processes. In addition to wreaking havoc on your metabolism, it also destroys your energy levels, makes you irritable, and depletes your lean muscle mass. No point in being skinny if you'll also be a tired, cranky bit of flab. Not to mention, starvation diets are hard to maintain for long-term weight loss and as such, often result in the yo-yo effect.

Single food diets are also dangerous, and not just because they rely on drastic caloric reductions. Single food diets (the grapefruit diet, cabbage soup diet, Atkins) are a fast track to malnutrition. (And before the tidal wave of Atkins fan hate mail comes in, YES I'VE TRIED IT!) Restricting your dietary sources to only a few food types results in your body not receiving the vitamins, minerals, and nutrients it needs. Low-fat diets tend to be short on Omega-3 fatty acids and protein. High-protein diets tend to be short on fiber and vitamins. The grapefruit diet is short on... everything. Let's face facts here. The grapefruit diet will give you diarrhea, the Atkins diet will make you constipated, and no-fat or no-sugar diets will frankly make you more than a little psycho.

Ultimately, your body is a primed energy conserving machine. And in biological terms, energy = fat. Thousands of generations of evolution have made the human body very good at what it does. The only way to succeed here is to trick your body into believing that there is no reason to store up fat.

For health AND success, you have to follow a few simple rules:

1. Burn more calories than you consume.
2. Eat a variety of foods with a variety of nutrients.
3. Eat at regular intervals throughout the day.
4. Aim for a weight-loss of only a pound or two a week.

So Why Not Just Be Fat?

I can hear the argument already: If dieting is so impossible, why not just be fat? Isn't that what hedonism is all about?

The short answer is no. Hedonism is not synonymous with gluttony. Hedonism is about the pursuit of pleasure, and being fat is not FUN. For that matter, neither are most of the activities that result in overweight. Think about it for a minute. Do you really enjoy that greasy fast food burrito purchased through the drive-through on lunch break? Does your mouth actually water at the thought of that monster-size soda? Do you relish the feeling of accomplishment that comes from chasing down every last bland french fry on your plate, and then spending the night in front of the TV staring blankly at "Dancing with the Stars?" Do these things make you smile, make you feel more alive?

Of course not. Given the choice, almost anyone would rather savor a glass of wine and a plate of chicken parmesan, followed by an evening of dancing. And even here, overindulgence is not fun. Too much wine and pasta will make you too sluggish and queasy to dance, to say nothing of the following morning. The pleasure of it all lies in the balance.

Balance is equally important in the area of exercise. In this country, exercise tends to fall into one of two camps: 1) What exercise?; or 2) I spend three hours on the stationary bike every weekend to work off this week's cheesecake quota. Truthfully, the average person strives for category two a few times a year and then falls off the wagon. And why not? It's a miserable cycle.

Think long and hard about the things you enjoy doing. I'm willing to bet all of them are verbs, and only one or two involve the words "watching" and "sitting." When asked to list the things that bring them joy, most people would include walking, hiking, biking, swimming, playing with children, painting, gardening, cooking, fishing, dancing, and skiing. And yet, according to AC Nielson Co., the average American spends 4 hours a day watching TV. That's over 50% of a full-time employee's leisure time spent watching the boob tube! Just about any activity you name will use more energy than watching TV, and be much more fun to boot.

When you really look at the idea, there's just no comparison. Drive-through burrito vs. Blackened Bleu Chicken Salad? Chicken hands down. Hours of mindless TV vs. taking your kids to the playground? No contest. By pursuing real enjoyment and pleasure, I lost 43 pounds and found myself. It's not about losing weight, it's about having fun doing it.

Why Diets Don't Work

he·don·ism (hdn-zm) n.

Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.

di·et ¹ (dt) n.

A regulated selection of foods, as for medical reasons or cosmetic weight loss.

Our culture usually holds that Hedonism is bad, that sensual pursuits are frivolous and sinful, and the pursuit of pleasure is to be frowned upon. Dieting, on the other hand, is good. Restraint, self-denial, and restriction are to be admired (and of course emulated if you have any sense). We praise those who eat a restrictive diet and punish themselves with grueling hours in the gym, marveling at their "pride" and "commitment." Some of us may even try it for ourselves, entering into that endless cycle of weighing counting and logging and measuring and suffering. We try it for a while and then we fall off the wagon and feel like failures when we eat a piece of cheesecake or skip the gym one day or hit a plateau and stop losing. Most people feel that failure and give up until the next time they can muster the courage to try. Others are more stubborn, and will subject themselves to this self-abuse cycle a few more times before giving up.

No matter how strong the willpower, the results are very nearly always the same. Eventually, we get tired and give up. We quit because it's hard work and it's not fun and the positive aspect of it is very far away. The long-term health benefits are distant, but that piece of cheesecake is right here, right now. There comes a point in every traditional or fad diet where the drive to "succeed" is outstripped by our bodies' cries for nutrients and we lose the energy to continue. We just get to that point where we can't stand the deprivation any longer.

And then we quit.

And every time we quit, we learn a few things about ourselves. We learn that we're quitters, that we're just doomed to be fat, that there's no point anyway, or that we're losers. We learn that fitness is something for those other people we see on TV, and every single time we enter into this cycle, those messages get reinforced.

After doing this myself for a long time, I came to a realization: I will never, ever diet again.

Why?

Because it DOESN'T WORK!