How One Chef Trades Pasta For Produce... Some of the Time
Chef Missy Robbins is the chef behind pasta powerhouse, Lilia, in NYC. In her first cookbook, Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner…Life!, she opens up about the health struggles she’s faced having a job that involves eating multiple bowls of her own sought-after pasta a day—and shares the carrot recipe we can't stop making at home.
During much of my cooking career, I never paid attention to eating—it just wasn’t something I was super conscious of. I knew that I was a little overweight. I did work out, but it just wasn’t enough to counter how much I was consuming. I wasn’t a big breakfast eater, so I would get really hungry toward the end of the day and just start grabbing whatever was in the kitchen. When I was executive chef of A Voce, if someone gave me pasta to taste and I liked it, I would just inhale the whole bowl without thinking.
The turning point was when I stepped on the scale and realized I was 198 pounds. I am 5’ 6” and muscular, so I’m definitely not small-boned, but being two pounds away from 200 pounds was not where I wanted to be.
So, when I left A Voce in 2013, one of my big focuses was to get in shape. I started doing pilates, and I felt myself getting stronger, but I wasn’t losing weight, and I still didn’t feel great. In my late 20s and early 30s, I could just cut sugar and carbs and be able to lose weight in three weeks. But my body had changed with age, and that strategy just wasn’t working anymore.
One day, a chef friend recommended I try Weight Watchers. My first response was to say no, because I thought you could only eat Weight Watchers food. But my friend told me it was fun, and that you could cook your own food. So I decided to try it—I said that, if I didn’t lose weight in two weeks, I’d go off of it. I ended up losing five pounds in the first week. I stuck with the program and completely changed my eating habits. I didn’t cut anything out—I was just eating more vegetables and fish. I finally started eating breakfast, which I had never done before. I realized the importance of portion control and balancing your diet.
Then I opened Lilia. It was easy to be on Weight Watchers when I wasn’t working. But, while opening a restaurant, I had to develop new habits: I learned to not taste every single dish that came out of the kitchen, and to trust my team more. It’s hard when you taste a strawberry crostata your pastry chef made, and you want to eat the whole thing. I just have to consciously tell myself, “You can’t do that.” If I am really hungry when I come into the restaurant, I eat vegetables, like these carrots with feta and anchovies. I eat a piece of fish right before service, which makes me not want to pick at food throughout the night. Because I’ve had to calculate the number of Weight Watchers points in everything, I now use half the butter and olive oil in my food at Lilia than I did at A Voce. I have found more creative ways to cook. I am now more excited by cooking vegetables than eating a giant steak, because I’ve realized that, with herbs, acid, chilies, and spices, produce makes an amazing canvas. I get feedback from guests that, when they come here, even if they eat a lot of food, they never feel weighed down and gross. That’s fantastic to hear.
I’m still constantly calculating the number of points of any dish in my head. I know how many points are in a piece of pizza, a glass of wine, or a three-ounce piece of chicken. I am just so much more conscious now. I don’t mindlessly eat. I do pilates and yoga. I’ve even taken up running.
I know that my weight is going to be a lifelong issue for me—that if I don’t control myself, I will get heavy. I’ll never be the kind of person who can eat like a maniac and not gain weight. But I wouldn’t call it a struggle, because I’m so much happier now that I am healthy. I know what I felt like when I was overweight, and all I have to do is look at old pictures of myself to know that I don’t want to look and feel like that ever again.
I’m 46 years old now, and I’m in the best shape of my life, ever.
Carrot Salad with Feta and Anchovies
– As told to Priya Krishna
