NEWSKatie Lee Honors Meatless Mondays
Aug. 8 2011, Published 12:00 p.m. ET
We won't catch celebrity chef Katie Lee dining on chicken or beef today.
“Every Monday, I abstain from meat,” she tells me. “I eat a pretty plant-based diet anyway, which stems from meatless Monday - just giving it up that one day a week. When I started reading about the environmental impact that it had to give up meat for one day a week - it’s so incredible what just one day can do. And for your health, and it’s a way of resetting your week. It’s a good way to start off on a Monday, eating healthy - and it made me want to less and less meat. The less I ate it, the less I wanted it.”
Avoiding meat makes the Groundswell author, 29, feel better.
“There’s a lightness that comes with it,” she says. “I feel fresh and I love vegetables, and I think that when you’re eating all these fruits and veggies that it gives you so much energy. And we have this misconception that you can only get protein if you’re eating meat every meal, and that’s not true. There are so many protein alternatives like the tempe that I have for lunch. It’s delicious. It’s fermented soybean. Soy protein is great for a woman, and for men, too. I like incorporating different things in my diet that way.”
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Still, she doesn’t see herself becoming a vegetarian.
“I indulge – I like a cheeseburger every now and then, but for the most part, my diet is plant-based,” she says. “I don’t think I could ever be a strict vegetarian. I actually used to be a vegetarian in high school and college. But I can’t ever make a promise that I’m never going to have meat again. I eat it when I want it, and when I know the way that it was raised. If I cook with meat, I’m always sure to buy organic and I live in the Hamptons, so I’m lucky that we have chicken farms out here, so if I’m going to make chicken, I go to the farm and buy it. People should always look in their grocery stores for organic meat when they’re going to eat it.”
Katie learned her best diet tip from her grandma.
“Fiber is so important,” she says. “I try to eat a lot of fiber, so that it keeps you full longer. My grandma told me a long time ago that when you look at your plate, make 70 percent of it vegetables and the other 30 percent protein and carbs. And that helps, because you can fill up on as many vegetables as you want.”
Pick up the OK! on newsstands now to get Katie’s Diet Confessions. The cover line is “Inside Kim’s Bridal Shower.” And check out her novel, Groundswell, which is out now.
