weight loss

This may be a tangent (sorry) -- but I never said you couldn't eat pizza! In fact, I make my own now, and it's every bit as good as the brick oven pizzas you can get at the fancy pizzarias. Here's how it's done... I make my own dough: (simple...mix together: 1 part warm water, 3 parts flour, 1 cake yeast), knead and let it rise for 45 min to an hour, divide it in three and use 1/3 rolled very thin (@ 1/8th inch). You can freeze the other two portions and use them later. I then place the rolled dough on a pizza paddle that is well-dusted with cornmeal, top it and bake in a pre-heated oven (hot - 475-500 degrees) for 8-10 minutes on a pizza stone. For toppings, I recommend using a lot less cheese than what you might be used to using. Use a flavorful cheese, and a smaller amount. If you use mozzarella, try a very light sprinkling just as the "glue" to hold the other toppings in place. Recently, I copied (and modified slightly) Wolfgang Puck's BBQ chicken pizza...I used some spicy BBQ sauce, thinly sliced tomatoes, sliced grilled marinated chicken, a very light sprinkling of coursely chopped red onion, a small amount of mozzarella to hold it together, and some crumbled Israeli sheep milk feta for some extra flavor. After it came out of the oven, I sprinkled some coursely chopped fresh cilantro leaves over the top. It was awesome! I ask, why would anyone eat Dominoes pizza when they could easily make their own. Back to the main point: diets are restrictive. I didn't go on a diet. Instead, I really got into food, and learned how to prepare food the way the top gourmet chefs prepare it -- with as many seasonal, fresh ingredients as possible. I spent a little time watching the cable television food network, where the whole world has access to some of the best teachers: Sara Moulton, Bobby Flay, Jamie Oliver, Kathleen Daelemans, Emeril Lagasse, Rocco DiSpirito, etc., etc. When you do it right, you can routinely prepare great meals that are less than 500 calories (watch those portion sizes, though), cost just a few bucks, and go together in 15 minutes or less (pizza dough takes longer, but with advance prep, it goes together quickly). People still ask me how I dropped the weight, and I have started to tell them it was eating gourmet food in the proper amounts and swimming every day. So, anyway, my apologies for turning the USMS Discussion Forum into the Cooking Thin Fan Forum from www.foodtv.com -- and for rambling on and on about food -- but I hope people know they can enjoy themselves and really enjoy food without feeling restricted when trying to lose weight. Exercise is the non-negotiable part of the formula -- and to go back to the original premise of this thread -- swimming is an excellent form of exercise and you can lose weight doing it. As you forum readers can probably tell, weight loss has become a very important issue for me during the last couple years. This year, I have been sharing parts of my story in SWIM Magazine, with the hope that I can help others. If I can do it, you can, too! Bill

This may be a tangent (sorry) -- but I never said you couldn't eat pizza! In fact, I make my own now, and it's every bit as good as the brick oven pizzas you can get at the fancy pizzarias. Here's how it's done... I make my own dough: (simple...mix together: 1 part warm water, 3 parts flour, 1 cake yeast), knead and let it rise for 45 min to an hour, divide it in three and use 1/3 rolled very thin (@ 1/8th inch). You can freeze the other two portions and use them later. I then place the rolled dough on a pizza paddle that is well-dusted with cornmeal, top it and bake in a pre-heated oven (hot - 475-500 degrees) for 8-10 minutes on a pizza stone. For toppings, I recommend using a lot less cheese than what you might be used to using. Use a flavorful cheese, and a smaller amount. If you use mozzarella, try a very light sprinkling just as the "glue" to hold the other toppings in place. Recently, I copied (and modified slightly) Wolfgang Puck's BBQ chicken pizza...I used some spicy BBQ sauce, thinly sliced tomatoes, sliced grilled marinated chicken, a very light sprinkling of coursely chopped red onion, a small amount of mozzarella to hold it together, and some crumbled Israeli sheep milk feta for some extra flavor. After it came out of the oven, I sprinkled some coursely chopped fresh cilantro leaves over the top. It was awesome! I ask, why would anyone eat Dominoes pizza when they could easily make their own. Back to the main point: diets are restrictive. I didn't go on a diet. Instead, I really got into food, and learned how to prepare food the way the top gourmet chefs prepare it -- with as many seasonal, fresh ingredients as possible. I spent a little time watching the cable television food network, where the whole world has access to some of the best teachers: Sara Moulton, Bobby Flay, Jamie Oliver, Kathleen Daelemans, Emeril Lagasse, Rocco DiSpirito, etc., etc. When you do it right, you can routinely prepare great meals that are less than 500 calories (watch those portion sizes, though), cost just a few bucks, and go together in 15 minutes or less (pizza dough takes longer, but with advance prep, it goes together quickly). People still ask me how I dropped the weight, and I have started to tell them it was eating gourmet food in the proper amounts and swimming every day. So, anyway, my apologies for turning the USMS Discussion Forum into the Cooking Thin Fan Forum from www.foodtv.com -- and for rambling on and on about food -- but I hope people know they can enjoy themselves and really enjoy food without feeling restricted when trying to lose weight. Exercise is the non-negotiable part of the formula -- and to go back to the original premise of this thread -- swimming is an excellent form of exercise and you can lose weight doing it. As you forum readers can probably tell, weight loss has become a very important issue for me during the last couple years. This year, I have been sharing parts of my story in SWIM Magazine, with the hope that I can help others. If I can do it, you can, too! Bill