Author: shared

¡Hola, Guapa!, English

Avoiding the Thin Trap: A Letter From De Las Mías Founder

shared

A letter from De Las Mías founder Ana Consuelo Matiella

Late the other night, I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to turn on Netflix. Since I craved laughter, I found a list of Mexican comedians and I clicked on Ricardo O’Farrill. Funny! Laugh-out-loud funny. When he got to making fun of Jews I sat up straight on my bed and said, “Uh-oh.” His Jewish joke, the one I heard, wasn’t terribly offensive. If I recall, it was making fun of the Hebrew pronunciation of Spanish. Okay, I said, I can live with that. Laughter is a stress-reliever so I kept watching. Lots of cussing and swearing, but, hey, that can be funny, right? I’m from the state of Sonora. I can swear you under the table. I have cousins who cannot speak if they can’t say something related to the word chingar. O’Farrill sounded like he was quoting out of a dictionary called El Chingonario, which I happen to have on my shelf right now. A gift from another cousin…this one from Magdalena, Sonora. So I kept watching. I was giggling away when he got to the “fat chick” jokes. “Ha-ha!” the audience laughed. They laughed at the gorda jokes, the ones about how the gordas jiggled when they danced at the nightclub, and how funny it was that the gordas, because they were fat, weren’t going to get to have sex after the party. Quoting the Chingonario, I whispered an insult to his mother, and logged off. O’Farrill, funny guy that he is, it took me back to my childhood and the memory of all the fat jokes I had to endure as a big, chubby girl growing up in Nogales, Arizona. It took me back to my mother, and the picture I have of her wearing the tight black skirt and form-fitting matching sweater. She’s leaning like Ava Gardner against the rustic wall of our TV room, smoking a cigarette. So sexy, my mama. I remember helping her out of her girdle at night after she and my dad got home from the parties. It was flesh-colored pink and it had metal stays. My mama was never fat. She never had to hear gorda jokes aimed at her. She was beautiful and, above all, thin. She had this expression she used when she wanted to communicate that a woman was doing well. If she ran into someone at the market and recounted it to my tia, she would say something like, “I ran into Chalita at the store.” My aunt would say, “And how is she these days?” And my mom would answer, “Oh she’s fine, and above all, thin.” That was the final clincher. Sobre Todo Delgada.

Worried About Being Thin? Here’s a Cautionary Tale.

My mom was born in 1932 and came into adult womanhood in Mexico during World War II; she had stories of rationed silk stockings that she treasured like precious jewels. She was a fashion plate. She cared so much about what she looked like that she suffered from it. She was beautiful and stylish and, above all, thin. She was also bulimic. She was on prescription diet pills that at the time were called “Black Beauties.” My mom had an eating disorder and it stemmed from her deepest desire to be thin, because that meant she had worth. She and O’Farrill were on the same wavelength, except that she wouldn’t have laughed at his jokes. She would have been embarrassed that O’Farrill might have been making fun of her daughter, even as she was feeding her steak and no carbs. Like O’Farrill, my mom wanted her girls to be thin. Having a chunky daughter did not sit well with her. She tried to put me on various diets. She knew a thing or two about the no-carb diet. Thanks to Vanidades magazine, Atkins was a household word at our house in 1965. Looking back, I believe the doctor was treating her binging-and-purging—her bulimia—with Biphetamine, rationalizing that if she weren’t hungry, she wouldn’t binge. But when the Biphetamines made her jittery, he gave her Valium. She was a classic case for the times: while my mom might have benefitted from a good therapist, she was simply given pills to solve her problems. But she was never fat, and for my mom, that was, above all, the most important thing. So, one day when I was about 15 and she saw that my clothes were getting too tight, she said, “Ya no comas pan.” No more bread and tortillas for me. This was my first weight-loss diet: Breakfast: a hard-boiled egg and what she called “diet bread.” (This tasted a bit like cardboard.) Lunch: I was supposed to take carrots and celery but I discovered tortilla chips and Coke at the Charrito’s stand at the high school. (The Charrito was a blind guy who sold junk food to kids out of his makeshift cargo bike. He was ahead of his time.) Dinner: A steak and a salad. No oil. Just vinegar. A pear or an apple for dessert. Look it wasn’t a terrible diet, okay? I get it. She wanted me to be attractive and Sobre Todo Delgada and she was trying her best to be a good mom and protect me from fat jokes and bad outfits. I get it, but early on I also got this message: A woman is worth more when she’s thin.

Focus on a Healthy Body, Not a Thin Body

I am 65 years old now and have tried many more diets. As a health educator, I have made great strides. I switched from being on a diet to learning to eat in a healthy way. It took years of hard work for me to realize that my self-worth, confidence, power and self-esteem are not determined by how thin or fat my body is. You might think that the problem I faced 50 years ago has gone away, and that we have evolved from thinking that a woman’s self-worth is based how much she weighs. Alas, it is still with us! This distorted and cruel way of defining self-worth for women is still here. O’Farrill, a modern Mexican man, gets laughs because people still laugh at jokes about gordas. And there is something wrong with that. I founded De Las Mías because I want Latinas to be healthy, powerful and confident. And yes, of course, I want us to express our cariño, our beauty and our femininity. We believe that we can learn to love, nurture and take care of ourselves and our bodies without becoming overly focused on thinness. De Las Mias is about being healthy and adopting new behaviors that will result in a healthier life. I don’t want you to be Sobre Todo Delgada, I want you to be ¡Sobre Todo Healthy and Powerful! Focus on being healthy—avoid worrying about being thin. Learn to love yourself and your body. You are beautiful the way you are, comadre.

¡Hola, Comadres!, ¡Hola, Guapa!, ¡Hola, Madrina!, English, Healthy Body, Healthy Comadres

Find a Physical Activity That Brings You Joy

shared

Physical activity keeps our hearts fit and pumping oxygen, our muscles strong and our joints healthy. The only way to do this is to move. You don’t have to be a superstar athlete to reap the benefits. Finding a physical activity that brings you joy means taking the “work” out of workout. Here’s a story from our resident fitness coach, Madrina Yoli, that will inspire you to move.

Why We Need to Be Active

I remember when my mom was turning 50 and going through the changes. She came home and told me, “Mija, the doctor said I had to start an exercise program. ¡Ay Dios! I can’t do all you do! I will die!” I was just finishing my degree in exercise physiology and was eager to help her. So I started by explaining to her the reason why we need to be active and how it will help her body. “Mami, you do not need to run a marathon or be a weightlifter to be healthy. You can do things like walk to the store instead of drive. Do some stretching while you watch TV, or maybe we can get you a stationary bike. We could even plant a garden with flowers and vegetables in the backyard and working on it will be part of your exercise.” She said, “I’m ready to start!” I said, “Okay! I will be your exercise comadre—it’s best if you have a training buddy.” We started by writing down her goals for the week in a workout journal. I showed her, “See, here are all of your goals for each day, and here you write down when you complete them in order to keep track of your progress.” I taught her that we needed to start slow in order to let her ligaments and tendons grow stronger to avoid injuries. After that, we started to work on the heart and I reminded her the only way to work out the heart is through aerobic exercise. All you need to do is increase your heart rate. Our ultimate goal was 150 minutes of aerobic exercise per week, so we started out with three 30-minute sessions per week and picked her favorite exercises: dancing and walking. “Later on, Mami,ˮ I said, “we can get you some resistance bands and begin to work on some strength training, but for now, just remember one important thing.” “What’s that, Mija?” “Have fun!” After 12 weeks, we could see a big difference. Find a physical activity that brings you joy and you will see a difference too.

¡Hola, Guapa!, Edición No. 1: Getting Started, English, Healthy Comadres

Starting a Healthy Lifestyle is Easier Than You Think

shared

We are pleased to welcome you to Edición No. 1 of the De Las Mías online revista! Each edición features articles and recipes to inspire and inform you to start a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

Start a healthy lifestyle. Go from thinking to doing.

Here are articles that will help you move into action:

Moderation is the key to a balanced life. We know from our own experience—and the experiences from our comadres—starting a healthy lifestyle is easier than you think.

Ready for a healthy, balanced lifestyle?

Ready to get started? Click here for the next article.

Healthy Mexican Food, Recipes, Spanish

Sofrito para Caldos

shared

The Simple Sofrito is a powerful flavor ambassador.  One of the very first things that my mother taught me about cooking is to always start with a sofrito.  She said that my food would always be delicious if I started whatever I was doing with this magic concoction.  It seems like every Latino family has their own version of sofrito. My sister always adds a little fresh garlic, carrots and celery. My Ecuadoran consuegra calls it “Refrito,” and hers includes garlic, onion and achiote.  In Spain, the sofrito involves garlic and red pepper.

In our family, it meant chile, tomate y cebolla – a saute of green chile, onion and tomato in a bit of olive oil.  You start with the sofrito and then you add your meat, eggs, or frijoles de la olla. So, the take away here is that almost all Spanish, Mexican and Latin American cooks use some kind of sofrito.

The De Las Mías sofrito is very simple and packs a good punch with ancho chile.  Find the recipe in the De Las Mías Recipe collection. Use it as a base for soup or whatever other guisado you embark on.

I’m a very simple cook but people always love my food.  I don’t have a lot of fancy cooking stuff and most of my pots look like they made it out of a war zone, but I always start with a sofrito, and I think that’s why I cook sabroso.

Sometimes if we haven’t had a chance to cook dinner, I will stop by the market and get one of those chickens that are already roasted.  I remove the skin and chop it up for taquitos. I always start with the simple sofrito I learned from my mom. The chicken just tastes better and you can forget that you bought it in a plastic container and that it’s slammed in sodium. (Poquito de todo, remember?)

I heat up my corn tortillas with a tiniest amount of butter on the comal.  Add the chopped chicken that I sauteed with my sofrito. Top it off with shredded cabbage, cilantro, green onion and a squeeze of lime.  Add your salsa as the final step, and eat it when the news comes on.

Try this and let me know how it goes.  Nothing fancy! Just good and healthy. And it’ll take you home.