Decadent Diet Is ‘About Food, Cooked Right and Healthy’
By Brian Hegarty
Devin Alexander, the author of The Most Decadent Diet, has a message she wants to get across about her latest book: It is not a diet cookbook.
“The idea of this book is for food to be fun again,” she said, “because so many people think ‘I’m bad’ or ‘This is bad’ that they spend so much time obsessing. The idea is to make choices and be aware of what you’re eating, spend a little time cooking and have fun with it.”
Alexander wants her readers to find joy in cooking, and know that eating well does not mean sacrificing taste and flavor. And, most importantly, she wants everyone to know that, as someone who has lost 55 pounds and kept it off for 15 years, you no longer have to think about the “D” word. In fact, for Alexander, “diet” is truly a four-letter word.
“I used to go on diets for years,” she said, “and I would decide, ‘OK, I’m going to start on Monday,’ and I would eat everything I thought I would miss between now and Monday, then go on the diet, and the success is inversely proportional to the number of times you go on a diet. You gain so much weight between diets.
The Most Decadent Diet is Alexander’s third book, but it is the one that seems to be closest to her heart.
“I think this book is the most ‘me,’ because I really am this decadent,” she said. “Your first book has to have a gimmick to get on the map. That was Fast Food Fix, and it was something different. That food is a little carby for me. It’s not a diet book and was never a diet book. It’s better versions of a Big Mac and better versions of different things. There are items that are marked ‘Even Better,’ and that’s what I eat. It substitutes different things to make real meals.
“The Biggest Loser Cookbook was tailored to the show and the guidelines the nutritionists wanted,” she continued. “Much of it, stylistically, is mine. It’s definitely The Biggest Loser with a Devin spin, but there are ingredients I wouldn’t use the way they do. This book is 100 percent me. It’s pretty much all pushing the envelope.”
The over-125-recipe cookbook was written with ease in mind, and offers something for everyone.
“The idea is to cook for yourself,” Alexander said. “I know with this generation, people are cooking more. One thing I say is 20 minutes in the kitchen will save you three hours on the treadmill. You literally can forget about the obsessive workouts.”
Readers will also be interested in learning that a lot of the recipes are adapted from recipes her mother made. “It’s been a process over years.” Some are brand new, and were developed over six months spending every day in the kitchen, making sure the recipes are right.
The recipes were also developed with ease in mind.
“The recipes are really easy,” she said. “I mean, for the brownie cups, all you need is a bowl and a whisk. It’s that easy. There’s nothing super-complicated in there. There are stick buns that take a little time, but beyond that, most of it is just really easy.”
And the ease continues to the ingredients that are used.
“A lot of the ingredients are really common,” Alexander said, “like rice and pasta and chicken and all the stuff you need as staples.
“You can even take the book to the grocery store and it tells you what aisles the ingredients are in. Most of the products are shelf-stable, so you can buy chili paste and other supplies on one field trip.”
The “Decadent Diet” is something that Alexander has been working on for quite some time.
Author Devin Alexander, left, is photographed with KIMBooks Site Administrator Laura Figuereo.
“I really started living it, and it transformed from that,” she said. “The idea of the book came about when I did tests for my show on Discovery Health. They asked me at the last minute to come up with three days of meals in an ideal world. I did meatloaf and mashed potatoes on 1,400 calories and my manger said ‘This is your next book.’ The recipes in the book are good enough to serve to your friends. I just put it into a meal plan that I actually use.”
This is also an opportunity for Alexander to get the word out that there is a better way to maintain a healthy lifestyle than some may realize.
“The biggest mistake people make is going on a diet. This is a plan for life,” she stressed.
It’s also important to know that healthy cooking doesn’t necessarily mean cooking food with little taste and flavor.
“The cooking thing, a lot of times people will take a recipe they love, like their mother’s meatloaf that’s made with beef,” she said. “They’ll substitute turkey and say ‘This is terrible,’ but the truth is that the recipe wasn’t developed for turkey. If you’re developing a recipe for turkey, you need to adjust the moisture content. The tastes are different, so you have to compensate. Just doing straight substitutions gets you in trouble, so you think healthy food tastes bad when, in fact, healthy food tastes good if it’s done right.”
A better choice would be using better types of meat, the author said.
“I usually use the leanest cuts of meat for the recipes,” Alexander said. “There’s even pork sausage in the book that’s the leanest cut of pork, and it’s leaner than any chicken or turkey sausage that I’ve ever seen on the market. I season it properly and use egg substitute and breadcrumbs to create the mouth feel and texture of the whole-fat sausage. It’s a little ‘mad scientist’ thing that I do.”
Alexander knows that if one wants to live a healthy lifestyle, eating out in a healthy manner also has to be taken into consideration.
“I can skip the chocolate cake (when I go out) because when I go home, I can make one that’s so much less fat and calories,” she said. “Another time, if you’re at a birthday party and they’re having cake and you want some, go ahead and have a little bit. You’re not going to go home and say ‘Oh my God, I just had a little cake so I have to start my diet over.’”
When one thinks of a “most decadent diet,” there’s a worry that some people will just get the wrong idea.
“When people see the title of the book they think it’s either some crazy fad diet or they think I’m saving full-fat food, and you can only have two bites,” she said.
Alexander, center, is shown with her mother, left, and Figuereo
Alexander, who joined us over lunch along with her mother, spoke of her mother’s ability to have “two bites” of potato chips, and how that doesn’t necessarily apply to many others.
“I don’t do the two-bite thing. You can’t have trough of food, with immense amounts of food you could be eating for three meals. Beyond that, I think a lot of it is the ingredients.
“When you go to a restaurant, they put so much external fat and calories. All women are programmed to think they need salads, but there are so many ingredients that you need to add to salad to make them taste good. Fat-free dressings usually don’t taste good. I chop the ingredients really finely, so you get all the flavor combinations.”
Alexander also had a simple suggestion for people who are eating out: “Ask them to make the food with no oil,” she said. This will reduce calories from your meal.
Alexander got her start working as a writer in Men’s Health, writing a column on healthy diet and foods. However, she’s quick to stress that, along with the healthy dining featured in her book, that there’s nothing wrong with getting some additional advice as well.
“I’m not a nutritionist,” she said, “so I think people should go to a nutritionist so they can be told how much they should eat for their body, or go to mypyramid.gov, the Web site for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, so that you know how many fruits and vegetables you should be eating.
“The idea is that you eat your fruits, you eat your vegetables, and I think every other bite should be something really decadent, something you enjoy, not something you’re choking down.”
What it comes down to for Alexander is that healthy eating should be something that emphasizes enjoyment and ease.
“When you stop putting emphasis on what you can’t have and instead put it on what you can have, it just makes the whole thing so much easier and doable,” she said.
Alexander stressed that the recipes can be put together by anyone with just a little bit of time.
“People are busy,” she said. “With just a little time in the kitchen, you can make a lot of meals for yourself for the week. Like on a Sunday, you could make a mini meat loaf and then make meat loaf sandwiches for lunch for the next day. There are a couple London broils that you can make on Sunday and then eat during the week, or slice as deli meat. If you, twice a week, cook all your food, you’ll save a lot of time.”
As someone who’s been on the road a lot promoting her book, she also offers some good advice for businesspeople who spend a lot of time traveling.
“Any time you have during the day, you can take that extra time and find a way to be productive,” she said.
Alexander said she use time in airports to walk around and get exercise. “Take the stairs more often or park your car a little further away from where you’re going. When you’re in a hotel room, some sit-ups, push-ups and a couple squats here and there never killed anyone,” she said.
“Business travel is hard now, but if you tell most hotels, they’ll give you a refrigerator for your room for medication or whatever,” she continued. “Well, food is my medication. If I’m going to be somewhere for three days, I’ll grocery shop and buy the food there. I carry sweet teas, so if I get a sweet craving at night, I’ll have the tea in my room.”
Alexander was quick to provide some more advice for the business traveler. “I always have a sweet something and a salty something with me, so if I get that craving, I have something to take care of it. You can get simple stuff at a grocery store anywhere. They featured that on The Biggest Loser. Go to a farmer’s market and you get to experience the culture and you’ll find some great stuff.”
There was one point that Alexander was quick to stress again, however.
“It isn’t about diets,” she said. “It’s about food, cooked right and healthy.”