Thanksgiving feast

Next week is Thanksgiving...I am sure you have noticed. ;) So, I wanted to pass along a few ideas for next week. The couple of days leading up to Thanksgiving are just as immportant as Thanksgiving Day in regards to what you eat. Tue and Wed try to eat extreme low-fat, low-carb meals. Cut down to 1,000-1,200 calories per day Mon-Wed. Eat 40% protein, 10% carb, and 50% produce (not canned!). This will help clean out your system and boost your metabolism just before the holiday feast. It will also ensure that you are actually hungry when the feast begins. On Thanksgiving Day, try eating a good breakfast at least 6 hours before your feast. Approximately 3 hours later, or half-way between the breakfast and feast, eat a light snack. The best snack would be a small salad with light dressing (or none), an apple, and some water. This is enough to get your stomach juices going, but will save room for extra calories later. Lastly, try to fill your plate without any food touching. My friends all know that I do not like my food to touch. However,there is a good reason other than my finicky preference. If your food is not touching, you have to have less food on your plate overall. So, this will ensure that you choose wisely so that you take the most of what you truly enjoy. If none of your food is touching, you probably have the perfect amount of food. I heard a friend say that your stomach is as big around as your plate. While this may hold some truth, I have seen people fit a lot of food onto a fairly small plate. So, the concept of not letting your food touch was born. I hope these ideas help you maintain self-control while enjoying the holidays! Follow my blog for tips all throughout the holiday season and right into the new year! As always, feel free to comment with questions or other ideas!

Commit to Being Fit

As I spend a week in Haiti with my tichouchou (Sweetheart/husband), I have noticed how odd exercise seems to other cultures. Cultures such as Haiti are active cultures with a lot of manual labor. Here I sit in an air-conditioned tent, writing about physical fitness. My husband has ventured out on a run twice since we arrived, and I hope to join him Saturday. We have been doing a lot of walking. We heard from the locals and the missionaries here that Haitians find running a strange task. They do not understand the concept of exercise. Perhaps if we could create an active lifestyle for ourselves, we would not have to do the mundane task of running ___ miles. While some of us enjoy running and live for the thrill of the improved time or longer distance, others hate it. I fall somewhere in the middle. As I wrote last time, I mentioned that we have to develop a schedule to stay fit. We have to include exercise in our schedule throughout the holidays. Nobody likes to get on the scale in January and realize they now have even more weight to lose. So, make this year different. Set your mind to it now! Choose to be different than the average American. You do not have to be a health nut, just health conscious. By exercising regularly throughout the holidays, you will feel more energetic, be less likely to end up sick, and avoid gaining weight. So, commit to being fit! Make your resolution now instead of after you have created a problem. By doing this, you can be a step ahead of everyone else in January...your New Year's Resolution can be something worthwhile since you will be healthier anyway. When you commit, make sure you have an accountability partner...someone who can exercise with you (whether in the same state or not). For a while my sister and I ran "together"...she in one state and me in another. When we finished our run we would let each other know how far we had gone and how quickly we finished. Our goal was to run a 10K together. Make a goal like that with a friend or family member, and the excuse to see each other will help motivate you! As always, comment with feedback or questions. Thanks for checking in!

Staying Fit through the Holidays

I realize a lot of time has passed and I neglected this blog...here goes again! I will be attempting to post 3-5 times per week. I want to pick up where I left off last year: holidays and food. I have a few ideas to help you stay fit through the holidays: 1. Add something new to your Thanksgiving traditions this year. Discuss it as a family/couple/friends and agree on one thing: exercise! So, this does not mean you have to go out and run or do anything you hate. My personal favorite is to get everyone outside and play football. That is probably some of the most fun as a group, and you burn a lot of calories in the process! Maybe your family can go for a hike, or play some active WII games. Just make sure you add something to your Thanksgiving celebration that will start a new tradition leading to fitness. 2. Plan exercise into your calendar now. We all know how busy the holidays get. If you do not write it into your calendar now, you may not exercise before New Years...and the we are back to Resolutions we do not keep. So, write it down...right now...go ahead ;) Please reply with your ideas for a fitness tradition for Thanksgiving! I would love to hear them! Ann - your nutrition consultant

Holiday Weight Loss Hype

Every year thousands of people make a New Year's Resolution to lose weight and eat healthier, along with exercising more. What if you did not need that resolution each year? What if, instead, you learned a habit of a healthy lifestyle that prevented unwanted weight gain. I understand that some weight gain is caused by medications, but for most of us (including myself), our weight gain is simply from bad habits.

I would like to offer a few tips for the holiday season that might help you (and me) to avoid that unwanted weight gain.

1. Drink 16 oz. of water before each meal. Start about 30 minutes before the meal, ensuring you do this before any gathering or dining out. This will help avoid the pitfall of mistaking thirst for hunger.

2. Carry an apple with you everywhere you go. The holidays are a busy time of year, and we find ourselves grabbing food at a fast-food joint or eating a candy bar to sustain us until our next meal or break. Eating an apple is a much better option. Apples are filling because of the amount of nutrients and fiber in them. They take a while to digest, so it should sustain you for an hour or more. They are also sweet, so they will help with those sugar cravings. This will help curb your appetite, allowing you to avoid those extra calories.

3. Choose desserts wisely. Desserts seem to be the downfall of most people. We simply "cannot" say no to so many delicious desserts. So, make a gameplan before you head out. Decide how much is okay. Take a small plate for dessert that will not allow you to over-eat. Aim for elegance in dining - this does not refer to where you dine, but how you dine. It is not elegant to eat a large plate full of desserts. It is elegant to eat one small dessert and enjoy every bite.

4. Don't prepare more food than is necessary. The trend for Thanksgiving and Christmas is to prepare feasts that would feed 30 people. Instead of preparing more food than is humanly possible for your group to finish, prepare only what you need. Choose a few healthy options to prepare extra of so that you can have your appreciated leftovers. Overall, scale down the amount of each food that you make. Remember to eat only what you need.

By following these tips, you can help curb that holiday weight gain and start the New Year one step ahead.

More tips to come!

I love to help you become healthier! Reply with questions, and if I cannot answer them, I will find someone who can!

Evolution and Our Food

I find it odd when people bring up current food issues and evolution. For example, in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, he discusses that we feed animals food they were never evolved to eat (p. 10). Honestly, I have never believed evolution held any bearing, and comments like these show the folly in this theory. If a cow evolved to eat grass, and we are concerned about the corn it is now fed, we must not think evolution exists. If evolution is what shaped the cow and gave it all of the stomachs needed to digest the grass it eats, why would we think evolution can't help it adjust now? Surely survival of the fittest has shown that cows are a superior animal to the bison. So surely they will adapt and evolve as we run out of grass to feed them. They will simply begin to morph and new cows will be born that are designed to eat corn. Right? Yet, this is not the implication when we read or hear about this current food dilemma. In fact, humans are becoming increasingly allergic to corn, the main ingredient in processed foods.

So you see, we must decide if we agree that evolution is true, or if it is false. If evolution is true, then we have no food concerns because animals and people will adjust and evolve to be able to eat what is more readily available. However, if evolution is not true (which I hold to), then we have some real concerns. The rising epidemic of obesity, food allergies and intolerances, and nutrient poor foods will continue to be more of a problem as long as we continue turning our heads and ignoring it. While most people understand that whole foods are best for us to eat, junk food continues to be the most profitable food industry, second only perhaps to fast food. Truly, the epidemic exists. There is a great concern in America. We have a higher incidence of obesity and diabetes than ever before, especially in children, but our government continues to support their people. We continue to allow this to go on, showing manufacturers that we will happily eat their junk. How much longer will this go ? Will we stand on the side of evolution, assuming that it will get better, or will we stand up and demand whole, nutrient dense, healthy foods?

Finally Done!

I have finished my nutrition science degree, and I am thrilled to be finished! I am ready to jump in and start helping people. I have started some nutrition and diet counseling for some friends so they can be healthier. I hope to share information regularly on here as well. Hopefully you will find it helpful as well!

I love to help you become healthier! Reply with questions, and if I cannot answer them, I will find someone who can!

Wheat and "white wheat" bread - Are they comparable?

I love to help you become healthier! Reply with questions, and if I cannot answer them, I will find someone who can!

I have been very skeptical of the new "white wheat" bread. Honestly, I believed it was a scam. I was convinced that marketers were trying to make naive people buy something that had no more nutritional value than white bread. So, I have never purchased it. However, in a class I am currently enrolled in, the question came up: Is white wheat bread as nutritious as wheat bread? So, our professor did some research and this is what she found:

"After a little research on white wheat bread, I am pleasantly surprised by my findings. I am including resources that I found particularly helpful at the end of this post.

As we discussed in a previous post, white regular white bread is made with refined grains, which go through a rigorous process that strips out particular (healthful) parts of the grain. But, white whole-wheat bread, just like regular whole-wheat bread, is made with the whole grain.

The differences in the type of grain that is used. White whole-wheat bread is made with an "albino" variety of wheat, which is obviously lighter in color and has a sweeter flavor. Pretty cool, eh?! According to Katherine Zeratsky, an RD that answers questions on the Mayo Clinic website, when it comes to grocery shopping and reading those Nutrition Labels, look for bread products that list the "whole" grains as the first ingredient (whole wheat or white whole wheat). Zeratsky says, "If the label doesn't say "whole" first, it isn't a whole-grain product."

Also important, according to my reading from the Wheat Foods Council, regular whole wheat and white whole wheat are nutritionally equivalent! I think this is a great option for families with children who don't care for the taste of (red grain) whole wheat bread."

Happy grocery shopping, everyone. :-)

References:
Weise, E. USATODAY.com Website. 2005. Health and Behavior: "White Wheat: Best thing since..."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-16-white-wheat_x.htm.

Zeratsky, K. MayoClinic.com Website. 2008. Nutrition and Healthy Eating Q and A. "White whole-wheat bread: is it nutritious?" http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/whole-wheat-bread/AN01512.

"Grains of truth about white wheat." 2010. Wheat Foods Council. http://www.wheatfoods.org/Link.asp?IdS=00080B-8B7D4D0&Url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ewheatfoods%2Eorg%2F%5FFileLibrary%2FProduct%2F43%2FWhite%2520Wheat%2Epdf.


Special reference to Professor Sara Police. Thank you to my Professor for her research, and clarifying this for us all!