Good morning from the Big Apple!!! 😎
I must say, New York City is such an amazing city. I really love spending time here. I’m not sure I could live here permanently, but it’s definitely great to visit.
My Sunday started with a 6-mile run through Central Park with Jess, Roni, Kath, and Caronae.
I love running in new cities. It’s always so motivating and I never have trouble getting out of bed for a run when I’m in another city, including yesterday morning when I was dehydrated and a bit hungover. 😕
After our run, I freshened up at the hotel and headed straight to a brunch hosted by SOYJOY in the penthouse at the Le Parker Meridien in Manhattan.
The penthouse had gorgeous views of the city!
The folks at SOYJOY were kind enough to include Mal at the brunch, which was a nice perk for a husband of a blogger! 😉
The SOYJOY brunch was absolutely outstanding. The spread had everything! I actually had a little bit of trouble deciding to put on my plate.
Holy decadent desserts!!!
This might sound crazy, but I passed on the desserts. I wasn’t in the mood for them. Weird? Very.
They were still pretty to look at! 😉
Mal and I worked together to tackle the buffet. He held my plate while I snapped photos and served us from the buffet. Team work at its finest! 😉
I ended up choosing fresh fruit, a raisin-nut roll, roasted potatoes with Tabasco, and an egg white omelette with veggies, cheese, and bacon. All of it was delicious.
During breakfast, we heard talks from some of the country’s top Registered Dietitians and authors, including Cynthia Sass, co-author of The Flat Belly Diet, and Jackie Newgent, author of The Big Green Cookbook, along with fitness and nutrition expert Harley Pasternak, celebrity trainer and author of 5 Factor World Diet. (Harley has trained Lady Gaga!!) It was quite the panel of experts!
All of the talks were great– very interesting and informative. We learned about the benefits of soy and how to snack more strategically.
We learned that whole soy has a ton of evidenced-based benefits as a nutrient-rich, plant-based complete protein source. The benefits include a protective effect against breast cancer, bone health improvement, and reduced menopausal symptoms. With the exception of estrogen-sensitive female cancer survivors (who can still have 3 servings of soy per day according to the American Cancer Association), we all can enjoy as much whole soy as we like. I love soy milk, tofu, and edamame, so this was all good news to me! 😀
With regard to snacking, Cynthia and Jackie shared a number of ideas and tips. Here are my favorites:
- Use snacks as a tie-over in between meals: the golden rule is never let more than 5 hours go by without eating.
- Listen to your body: avoid snacking triggered by “mind hunger” when you’re bored or stressed.
- Aim to keep snacks whole, fresh, and minimally-processed whenever possible.
- Including your favorite foods in a nutritious snack can heighten appeal. This will help you stick to a healthful snack plan, which means foods like pizza and chocolate can be part of your good-for-you snack routine.
- If your activity level is low, aim for a target of about 100 calories per hour between the time you eat your snack and your next meal. For example, a 3 pm snack designed to tie you over until a 7 pm dinner should provide no more than 400 calories.
- If you’re active, your snack must fuel your needs in the hours to come. To energize your activity and recover properly, you should eat snacks that provide about 50% of the number of calories you’ll burn. Eat about half before to fuel your activity and half after to replenish you body’s needs.
Stay tuned. Part II coming soon!
Great job on the run!! 😀
I’ve never gone to NYC, but seeing all these blog photos is making me really want to go more then ever. What a blast! 😀
I love the snack guidelines!! I’m surprised they say 5 hours between food…I’m usually ravenous by 4! Those little chocolate desserts look fabulous, but sometimes foods like that are way prettier than they taste! Hope you have a great Monday!
Ah yes, the husbands don’t usually get in on the perks, eh?
Nice to see that Mal was able to join you!
That brunch looks amazing. So nice of them to include Mal!
I can’t believe you were able to pass on those desserts! They look amazing. 😛 Sounds like it was a pretty informative brunch!
Oh, looks so fun! I still am not a big fan of soy. I know the soy foods industry puts out a lot about it being safe but some non-industry info makes me leery. I’m not a big fan of the taste, so I’m just as happy eating soy-free foods than taking a risk that too much may be harmful.
Beautiful views and food 🙂
I’m glad you wrote that about soy too – I have a lot of whole soy, so it’s good to know I’m not killing myself!
Running in central park is the best, I had a nice 3 mile run there on Saturday! Glad you’re loving NYC!
Wow, everything looks so beautiful! Love the way they cut and displayed the fruit. We really do eat with our eyes first which makes it hard to choose when everything looks so enticing!
Great advice you learned on snacking. I have been trying to incorporate those very things into my lifestyle
i really love the tip about keeping whole, fresh food around for snacking. i tend to crave healthy foods the more i eat them, and i only tend to eat them when it’s convenient. the key is to MAKE them convenient, right?
love the brunch, and i’m so glad mal could join you!
this breakfast looks so refreshing!! yum!
Thank you for some really great snacking tips! i’m horrible about snacking!
One thing I need to work on is avoiding “mind hunger” – such a tough one! Good tips!
Great tips for snacking! The hardest part for me is trying to keep fresh snacks at my desk at work… sometimes i forget to plan ahead!
I love the 100 calories per hour rule. I’m definitely going to remember that. Thanks for sharing, as always!!
Snacking when bored is abig issue for me… as if snacking as procrastination from PhD work! NYC is an amazing city… but I bet you miss a certain little pug of yours 🙂
Thanks for the recap of the SOYJOY brunch and presentation. Looks very cool!
NYC is definitely an amazing city. I’ve been here for 6 years, and I can easily see staying for quite a bit longer. My fiance and I were planning to move to Tampa (his hometown) this summer, but couldn’t quite bear the thought of leaving yet. We will someday, but for now, we’re very happy to be Manhattanites 😉
Thanks for that advice! I really like the “100 calories per hour” … that’s easy enough to remember. I’ve been having such a problem with bored/mindless nibbling, so this post was just what I needed.
thanks for the great tips…very helpful
That breakfast looks amazing! What a delicious spread of food! Glad you had a great trip. I do love NY!
Brunch looks amazing! I wouldn’t have been able to decide either 😉
Wei-Wei
that picture of you and mal is great!
i just want to say that i agree that whole soy can be good for some people, it’s not only cancer survivors that should be wary about its use. soy is highly allergenic and difficult to digest, so if you have stomach problems, IBS, sensitive digestion, etc. soy can be a huge problem. it made me seriously miserable for a long time until i cut it out of my diet!
thanks for the great tips Tina! NYC brunch is really my main reason for living here 🙂
Great snacking tips! I’ve always wondered how many calories was appropriate for a snack. 🙂
That food looks amazing! Those little desserts are too cute!
So nice that Mal could go with you! And I love the 100 cal/hour tip – that makes alot of sense!
Just catching up from the weekend…everything looks amazing!! Glad you’re having so much fun in NYC. I am completely jealous! 🙂
Great snacking tips, especially the 100 calorie one, interesting!
I’m not a big fan of soy for myself but everything in moderation {we do, however, feed tofu to our dairy cows on a daily basis}. Your brunch looked delicious and glad Mal was able to join you, what fun!
Awesome tips! I love soy too.
Great tips, Tina! I’m a huge snacker and it’s great to know there’s a place for healthy snacks.
@ Lauren- Yay for staying in NYC longer! Tampa is so much more dull.
@Tina- you could probably stay if it weren’t for your close connection to fam in Beantown- remember there’s plenty of nice places to live outside NYC proper…
I’m referring to the boroughs!
I am so bummed I missed all of the BlogHer fun! But I am holding out for BlogHer Food and Foodbuzz festival! Looks like a fabulous weekend.
I eat every 3 hrs and have only been doing 200 cal snacks or less. This is a great rule that i will adopt!
@Tracey @ I’m Not Superhuman:
I feel the same way, partially from working for a couple of soy products companies and from eating it regularly for so many years as a vegan and vegetarian. I think it’s all about people learning whats right for their bodies, and soy is definitely not a healthy food for me to eat on a regular basis- I eat tofu now and then, but I don’t think it’s particulary good for anything, I just like it. If I eat it all the time instead of protein sources like fish, chicken or beef, I start getting sick- it’s just too cooling for me. Soy is extremely cheap, like corn, and that has a lot to do with it’s presence and heavy marketing.
I like the snacking/meal tips. I try to follow those as much as possible- usually eating every 2 hours if I can. They help keep your metabolism and energy levels up..plus you get to eat all the time. Win-win 😉
Oh the breakfast buffet. I am impressed at your self control. 🙂 That’s usually where I lose it!!
Love the snacking tips. I, too, tend to snack when bored. Yesterday, in the Boyfriend’s truck all day, I snacked practically nonstop. Ugh. Back to a sensible, healthy eating plan today.
All those snacking tips were great!! Good job on running with that hangover. You did better than I would have, haha.
You clarified that ‘whole’ soy is healthy….. is there some sort of ‘non-whole’ soy that should be avoided??
Where I work we share a building with SOYJOY! We always smell the deliciousness cooking next door…. sometimes they even bring over some free samples 😉
How sweet of them to include Mal in the brunch! I don’t know how you passed up that fruit tart…Mmm I’m drooling here! 🙂
i’ve never had soyjoy before. why didn’t they have it crumbled over everything at the brunch? 😉
Thanks for sharing the tips! 🙂
I hope you have fun in New York!!! I’m so jealous! And I just started drinking soy milk and love it!
Our Soy Joy paragraphs sound remarkably similar!
@Ananda: Keep a lookout for a video on CNC! I asked the same exact question to one of SOYJOY’s RDs.