The Skinny

            If you're wondering about me, I am "The Skinny Critic..." My name is Brittany Bassett and I am the food editor of Elegant Living Magazine as well as the Los Angeles Yelp Community Manager (meaning I throw parties for yelpers, write a weekly newsletter, and handling marketing parternships).

I love food, wine and all things related. I also love staying in shape and being skinny. Kate Moss said, "No food tastes as good as skinny feels." I don't know if I agree with that entirely, as I've tasted some pretty incredible things. But the point is, there is always another meal to eat, something new and wonderful to try. Never feel like "this is my last chance! I have to eat all the pizza now because I will never have pizza this good again, ever!" Chances are you will have a better pizza at some point in time, so eat until just before you are full (it takes 20 min for your stomach to tell your mind) and enjoy that you didn't stuff your face.

    It's also all about exercise and moderation. I am very conscious about what I put into my body and how those foods make me feel.  I always eat breakfast because it is the most important meal of the day.  I usually opt for a smoothie, egg whites, fruit, yogurt or oatmeal.  Lunch is either a salad, smoothie or soup.  I like to keep it light in the middle of the day and heavy lunches slow me down.  If I have a heavy lunch I want to crawl in bed and pull the covers over my head for a few hours, so I usually save the big meals for dinner. 

  I love dinners.  I love 3 hour dinners with 10 courses.  I also love the random Thai place down the street where dinner costs less than $10 and the food is authentic and spicy.  I do try to keep it pretty healthy - usually for dinner I opt for seafood.  I love sushi and fresh fish.  I do have a good steak about once a week and once a week I'll get pasta or pizza. 

   I'm also very ingredient conscious.  I'm not obsessive about it, but I really appreciate local, sustainable ingredients and seek them out whenever possible.  It's great that local farmer's markets are sprouting up left and right and people are gaining easier access to healthier foods.  Stores like Whole Foods make buying organic easy in terms of availability but a bit tough on the wallet.  Organic fruits and vegetables taste so much better that I do buy organic whenever possible for my produce. Meat on the other hand is a different story-particularly beef. Grass fed organic beef is chewy and frankly not very tasty. I'll take a corn fed filet any day over it's grass fed counter-part.

    I do love my sweets. I always have dessert.  And sometimes I over do it.  I buy a grocery store cake-you know the ones with the thick sweet frosting and the moist cake...yumm.  The problem with buying the whole cake is that then I have the whole cake in my house for like 3 days or however long it takes me to devour it.   But other nights I am shall we say "healthier" and opt for a scoop of gelato. We have some ridiculously good gelato in the Los Angeles area that I will fill you in on in another post.  I also have an addiction to cupcakes.  Not just any cupcakes of course but what I would consider couture cupcakes.  We also have some quite delectable cupcake spots in Los Angeles that I will also fill you in on.  

    But the message here or the "skinny" rather, is that to stay skinny definitely takes work. It's not as simple as having a good metabolism.  I do some form of continuous cardio for at least 45 minutes per day- EVERY DAY! That's seven days a week.   Again I don't eat that much during the day usually and if you don't stuff your face during the day you can eat pretty much whatever you want for dinner.   Of course there are exceptions but overall my big meals are dinner and dessert.  And yes dessert is pretty much my fourth meal of the day. I figure if I eat really healthy during all other times, a dessert a day won't hurt me...


Yours truly,

The Skinny Critic

SkinnyCritic@gmail.com

Comments

[Fred]

Great blog!

[Adam Rubenstein]

Thanks for visiting VivaLAfoodies yesterday at the international wine festival. The event was a blast!