Healthy Eating for Thanksgiving

As you know, being healthy isn’t just about exercising. After all, you’re only as good on the outside for what you’re putting on the inside. With the holiday season upon us, and on the eve of a day of feasting, I want to share some tips with you so that it can be a truly joyous, celebratory season, not one filled with guilt and over-indulgences.

First of all, put aside the anxiety and stress of eating. First of all, you won’t have any fun, and the stress of worrying about food causes your body to go into fat storage mode – the exact opposite of what you really want to accomplish. Let’s take Thanksgiving as an example. If you wait until the one big meal to eat, you’re doing yourself and body a disservice. Your body will go into famine mode, and when it’s time to eat, you’ll more likely overeat. When that happens, your body, since it was in famine mode, grabs all those calories and turns them straight to fat.

 Start first by changing your mindset. Instead of worrying about what you’re going to eat, be grateful first that you have a wonderful event to go to where there will be wonderful food. That’s better for your metabolism.

Another great thing for your metabolism is to keep it fueled throughout the day. So on Thanksgiving morning, have a healthy breakfast. It doesn’t have to be huge (nor should it be!), but healthy. Fruits, whole grains and a protein are great options for that. Then throughout the day until the big meal, have small protein snacks. Examples of that are jerky, or a hard-boiled egg, or hummus with vegetables. Eat lots of vegetables, but especially protein, and especially animal protein, which is the most easily absorbed. This will keep your blood sugar stable and your muscles will have fuel to store any extra sugars (like the pie for dessert) as glycogen instead of fat. That way your body is getting more and more excited for the big event and will be more able to use the food properly and convert it the way it should rather than just turn it immediately into fat. You’ll be hungry but not famished, and this will help the fat-burning hormones in your body to be primed and ready to handle the delicious food that’s been prepared.

This is a holiday of giving thanks and of feeling gratitude. Don’t put a shadow on the day by feeling guilty for over-eating. If you’re like me, you’re feeling blessed and have a lot of reasons to give thanks. Above all, enjoy the day, count your blessings, and enjoy your food!

New Beginnings

I don't know about you, but spring seems like a time of new beginnings. Blossoms are beginning to show on trees, the birds are becoming more visible as they prepare for building nests, green is showing in more places, and many people feel the need for spring cleaning. In some ways, spring is more of a starting point than New Year's. There's a clean energy to it that you don't find on January 1 as you lie in bed contemplating the next year. Maybe you're one of those people who fell off the exercise new year's resolution wagon a week after making that resolution. Buddha said, "No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again."

Thinking about losing weight in terms of "diet" and "exercise" may sound intimidating and unpleasant. No wonder you gave up on that resolution! Use this new season to start fresh. It doesn't have to be a huge step, but many tiny ones in the right direction will set you on the path you've been trying to find. Here are some ideas to get you started:

We live in an instant-gratification society where if we don't see immediate results we get frustrated and think that it doesn't work. Sadly, our health and living a healthy lifestyle is one thing that is not instant. It does take a lifetime of work. Even the word "lifestyle" should be a clue -- it's not about just losing a little bit of weight -- it's about getting to a healthy weight and maintaining that weight. So in our digital world of instant knowledge and tweets, if you want to change your lifestyle, the formula is the same it's always been -- eating right and being active.

Eating right (NOT dieting!!!!) can be as simple as making a few simple changes to what you eat.

* Eat more fruit. Add it to your cereal, your salads or even your dinners.
* Sneak in more veggies. Add them wherever you can--a tomato on your sandwich, peppers on your pizza, or extra veggies in your pasta sauce. Keep pre-cut or canned/frozen veggies ready for quick snacks.
* Switch your salad dressing. If you eat full-fat dressing, switch to something lighter and you'll automatically eat less calories.
* Eat low-fat or fat-free dairy. Switching to skim milk or fat free yogurt is another simple way to eat less calories without having to change too much in your diet.
* Make some substitutes. Look through your cabinets or fridge and pick 3 foods you eat every day. Write down the nutritional content and, the next time you're at the store, find lower-calorie substitutes for just those 3 items.
* Drink more water. Chances are, you're dehydrating yourself and you don't even know it! Having enough water on a daily basis can help you lose weight by assisting in the fat break-down cycle, help reduce headaches, makes you smarter (your brain is mostly made up of water, thus drinking water helps you think better, be more alert and more concentrate), regulates your body temperature which will help you exercise more efficiently, relieves fatigue, helps reduce cancer risk, and may even make you happier because your body is getting what it needs!
* You can use the new Food Guide Pyramid to determine how many calories you need and what food groups you should focus on.
* Log your food intake. That Food Guide Pyramid website will also help you in logging your food and caloric intake for the day. Sometimes we're just now aware of how much we're actually eating until we write it down and make ourselves be aware of it.
* Stop eating fast food! 'Nuff said.

Get moving! If you're not ready for a structured program, start small. Every little bit counts and it all adds up to burning more calories.

* Turn off the TV. Once a week, turn off the TV and do something a little more physical with your family. Play games, take a walk...almost anything will be more active than sitting on the couch.
* Walk more. Look for small ways to walk more. When you get the mail, take a walk around the block, take the dog for an extra outing each day or walk on your treadmill for 5 minutes before getting ready for work.
* Do some chores. Shoveling snow, working in the garden, raking leaves, sweeping the floor...these kinds of activities may not be 'vigorous' exercise, but they can keep you moving while getting your house in order.
* Pace while you talk. When you're on the phone, pace around or even do some cleaning while gabbing. This is a great way to stay moving while doing something you enjoy.
* Be aware. Make a list of all the physical activities you do on a typical day. If you find that the bulk of your time is spent sitting, make another list of all the ways you could move more--getting up each hour to stretch or walk, walk the stairs at work, etc.

My first step to adopting a life-long healthy lifestyle was to start running. I was fairly overweight, so that wasn't an easy thing for me to do, at least not after the first time. But I felt better each time I did it -- I was not only accomplishing a goal for myself of trying to get back to the athletic, younger version of myself, but that activity made me want to eat healthier also. It was definitely a circle, but not a vicious one. Being more active made me want to eat better, and eating better made me better able to be more active.

Remember -- it's about a healthy lifestyle, not a temporary fix. When it comes to your health, the good variety should never be temporary!

Now, what are you doing at your computer? Go take a walk and eat an apple!

SMART Goals

Ugh. Did the title of that post make you not even want to read any further?

That word has some ugly connotations, most often associated with "failure," right?

The time most people make the most goals is for New Year's. Only we call them "resolutions." Then on January 5th when the holidays are over, the bills are due, the decorations taken down, kids are back in school and we return to work, what's left? Broken resolutions ... either because we didn't have time, or we set unrealistic expectations.

Here are some ideas on making SMART goals without it seeming like a fright fest at Halloween.
S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Attainable
R = Realistic
T = Time-bound

Be specific in your goal. If for example your goal is weight loss, don't simply say you want to lose weight. Say exactly how much you want to lose. That goes along with making it measurable. Don't make it an amount that's so much it seems insurmountable, and give yourself a time goal to do it in.

Compare these two statements:
"I'm gonna eat healthier so I can lose some weight."
versus
"I will lose 10 pounds by the end of February. I will do this by making healthier food choices, throwing out the junk food and buying fruits and veggies instead, exercising a minimum of three times a week and holding myself accountable to a friend."

Which person will lose the weight she wants to?

Goals are awesome to document because it gives you something to work towards. The scary part about saying them out loud is that we all know there's a potential for not achieving them as we'd like to, and then we equate that with failure. It's only failure if you give up.

To keep trying is to keep achieving.

A setback does not equal failure and is not an excuse to give up. It just means you get another chance.

Making It Fun

We all know we're supposed to exercise. And sometimes that's exactly what makes it the easiest thing to put off -- the fact that it's a "have to" not a "get to." When something is an obligation, it's easy to put more fun and enjoyable priorities in front of them.

So let's change our cumulative mindset. If being more active (call it exercising if that term doesn't turn you off) would be easier to do by having more fun doing it, how can you turn it into a fun experience?

Spring is here -- maybe you could take a walk in your neighborhood...not for the exercise aspect, but to enjoy seeing the new plant life, blossoms, active animals -- whatever would bring you joy in that walk.

We can't all build a gigantic piano on stairs:



...but if you know taking the stairs vs. the escalator will give you more activity that day, then find a way to make taking the stairs fun. Sing your favorite song while you walk up them and smile while you're doing it! People will want to know what you're singing and laughing about and it will become contagious!

Find a friend to do SOMETHING with -- play frisbee, go to the gym, whatever! If it's someone you like being with, you're twice as likely to have fun.

Play -- a word from the previous paragraph. Playing isn't exercise, right? It's just fun. Find something you like doing and do it some more.

Go to the gym -- if you can't find a friend who wants to go on a walk with you, make a new friend at a group exercise class at your local gym.

Make yourself a new playlist on your iPod or whatever music player you use. If you use songs you love the time will pass more quickly.

What works for you?

When 2% Equals 38%

One of the most important things you can do when you're trying to watch what you eat is to know how to read food labels. The most shocking example I can think of for this is 2% milk.

The common perception is that when you buy 2% milk in the store, it means the milk you are getting only has 2% fat in it. That's because the pretty pictures on the front look something like this:



What a savvy consumer needs to do, rather than be taken in by the marketing information on the front, is to turn the product around and read and interpret the information on the nutritional label.

Let's take a look at the actual label for 2% milk.


The percentages down the right side mean how much of your daily intake you're getting from one serving. Those percentages are based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet. If you are actually trying to lose weight, you probably need less than 2,000 calories per day, so that's the first thing to be aware of.

The key things to look for here are calories and fat from calories. The rest of it is simple math. Divide the "calories from fat" amount by total calories: 45 / 120 = 37.5%.

And there you have it. The total fat in 2% milk is actually 37.5% of its total calories. That formula works for any food product.

No, the milk board is not lying when they say that 2& milk is lower fat. It IS lower fat than whole milk.

But that fat content is much much higher than 1% or skim milk. Skim milk really IS fat free, as its label will attest. It has 80 calories, none of which come from fat.

You should have three servings of dairy (skim or low-fat) products (three cups) per day. Milk and dairy products provide an easy source of calcium. Obviously if you're lactose intolerant or something similar you need to seek another easy source of calcium. So get your dairy, but be wise about it. Read the label!