People, not Patients

The medical profession has a tough task in trying to combat obesity. It’s not simple. It’s costly and it’s frustrating.

As a nutritionist, I’m personally frustrated. We need to be more creative in our approach. We need to champion smart people and organizations to work with people (not patients) to move in the right direction. We need to listen more. Talk less. We also need to work as teams. Straightforward communication is key.

Recently a client shared a handout of directions from his new doctor about what he NEEDED TO DO to lose weight. It was a list of high calorie foods to be avoided at all costs. Or he’d fail.

The list was a slash and burn of foods, many of them nutrient-dense and real foods that any trained nutrition professional would include in daily in a sound weight loss plan. It also included one line about how it was ok to have artificial sweeteners (really?, that’s not even food, but go ahead, have all you want).

It was a typed list, New Times Roman font, totally uninspiring and didactic, like the kind of handout you get for a colonoscopy prep. Everyone gets the same one. You either succeed or fail. Follow the list. FOLLOW THE LIST. See you in six months.

Here’s the thing that really gets me. This client has been doing incredibly well with his weight loss and lifestyle goals. We’ve been working together weekly through video sessions. We check in about what’s going well and what’s not. We set goals, together, but mostly he does the goal setting and I give him advice to balance it all out. We talk about a new food to try each week. Real food. Real cooking. Recipes. Walking. Shooting a few hoops. Doing things he enjoys. Things he’s never done before. Things he never thought he could do before.

Did the doctor ask him about that? Did he ask him about his success? How he felt? No, just treated him as another number and handed him the paper of what he must do.

This simple piece of paper just reduced 11 months of our hard work to a second guess. So, yeah, I’m frustrated.

We can do better. We must do better. Let’s get back to listening more and fostering real relationships, inspiring ones. That’s how we’ll make changes that last a lifetime.

“I Know What To Do, I Just Don’t Do It”

We talk about prevention and lifestyle change, but what does it actually entail?

Prevention means eating healthfully, exercising, getting quality sleep, decreasing stress, enjoying meaningful relationships and managing finances. These all deserve a slice of the wellness pie and are known to be cost-effective strategies for reducing our chances of getting chronic disease or the progression of these burdensome conditions. We know this much.

Our healthcare system can’t support the sickcare model any longer. It’s time to stop talking about prevention. We need to do something. Something large scale, innovative and sustainable. And, we need to do it right now. (more…)

To cleanse or not to cleanse

Hyped as a means to remove harmful pollutants from the body and lose weight, cleanse and detox diets are all the rage. But despite their popularity, research has revealed that cleansing – especially via restricting intake and fasting – brings about unwanted side effects and weight re-gain after restoring a normal diet. These cleanses can be relatively healthy if approached cautiously, such as simply incorporating more fruits and vegetables into the diet. On the other hand, they can be darn right dangerous. Always bear in mind that most cleanses are dreamed up by individuals lacking nutrition credentials – and therefore should be reviewed carefully before trying.

Here are a few things to think about with cleansing:

• Excess energy intake – juice is a high caloric drink often incorporating much more fruit and vegetables than one could consume in whole form.
• Liquid meals cause lazy guts. Our gastrointestinal tract needs solid foods including those with fiber and protein to stay healthy and maintain integrity.
• Decreased satiety, liquid meals take longer for you to feel full causing cravings earlier, not to mention irritability from blood sugar spikes and falls.
• Our bodies remove toxins; it’s how we’ve survived for thousands of years. So there’s really not much of an incentive to detox via dieting.

The bottom line: There is no evidence that any of these “cleanse” diets enhance the bodies own detox mechanisms. Concentrate on fueling your body right, hydrating appropriately with low-sugar drinks, getting good sleep, and staying active. Take a moment to appreciate the remarkable way the body protects and cleanses itself safely and naturally, without any help from the outside.

By Liz Schneider, guest blogger and nutritionist

Eating for beauty

The best compliment I’ve received is that I have great skin. I was actually taken a back given that I have freckles and a long clash with acne. But I’ll take what I can get. After years of trying every cream, lotion, pill on the market I stopped focusing on the things I put on top of my skin and instead focused on what I was putting into my body. Maybe I just grew out of the acne, but I’m eating healthier than ever before and my skin has never looked better. My tip is to try and eat antioxidant and anti-inflammatory rich foods every day, simply put: eat your fruits and veggies.

Antioxidant rich foods are those that contain:

• Vitamin A aka beta-carotene, the orange/red pigment that gives carrots and squash their color, can also give your skin a healthy glow as the pigments accumulate under the skin’s surface.
• Vitamin C and E are often paired together as they help protect against cellular damage in our bodies including skin. In fact a vitamin c deficiency usually manifests with dry, scaly skin and bleeding gums – a testament of vitamin c’s influence of tissue health.
• Selenium is a mineral found in the earth, and thus many foods contain it including seafood, meat, and plants. Depending on soil conditions, the same food grown in different soils can contain varying amounts of selenium. One Brazil nut is usually all you need for a days worth of this antioxidant.
• Zinc – although not really considered an antioxidant, zinc is essential for the proper functioning of the antioxidant pathways in the body.

Anti-inflammatory rich foods are those that contain:

• Healthy fats like those found in ground flax and fatty fish. A soft fluid-like membrane (made up of the fat you eat) protects all of your trillion cells, so you can imagine they are extremely important for skin structure. In the omega-6-fat laden society we live in, it is hard to obtain omega-3 fats, which research has shown to decrease inflammation in the body. A great goal is to incorporate fish into your meals twice a week.

Tips for eating clean

• Go slow. Especially if you are not use to regularly eating whole foods. Try adding one fruit or veggie at a time. Pay close attention to your body. There is such a thing as too much fiber!
• Drink more water. Fiber requires lots of hydration to pass through your gut comfortably and efficiently. Extra water is good for your skin too. Everyone’s hydration needs vary, but generally 6-12 glasses per day will do the trick.

I hope this inspired you to eat your fruits and veggies if not for anything else, for a glowing complexion!

Did you know? Acne is a disease of western civilization. It does not exist in certain countries like Paraguay and New Guinea. As expected, these cultures eat very clean diets excluding processed and refined foods…

Need help finding healthy foods containing antioxidants? Check out this website at www.WHFoods.org

PS – you don’t need to take supplements for great skin. Eat the food, the whole food, and nothing but the food! It’s how nature intending us to get our vitamins and minerals.

By: Liz Schneider, guest blogger

Couponing for real food.

Have you noticed the coupon craze sweeping the nation? Food companies seem to be encouraging coupon savings more and more. But the coupons offered often highlight processed foods. It’s tough to eat healthy on a budget – here’s some tips to help you out.

• Collect coupons online. Food companies love to offer coupons, thinking you will try their product and buy it again. Look for the “offers” button on their website, most refresh every month.
• Know your store’s coupon policy. In some stores you may be able to use multiple coupons on one item, re-use your coupons over and over again, or use expired coupons.
• Look out for sales items that you have a coupon for already, this equals double savings. This works very well with Whole Foods, which provides in-store coupon booklets and online printable coupons.

Couponing not for you? Here are some tips for getting the best deal without all the clipping.

• Compare unit prices to get the absolute best deal. For example, a bag of chopped broccoli is marked up to $3/lb compared to a head of broccoli for $1.50/lb.
• Take a minute to look for super savings before shopping. There’s usually a weekly special – stock up and freeze excess for later.
• Discover new dry goods at the bulk section of the store like coconut granola, Turkish dates, and red lentils. These items are priced very low and the best part is that you can control the quantity you purchase!
• Buy the grocery store’s brand. More often than not, the store brand contains the same exact ingredients and is even cheaper than a specialty brand on sale.

Want sustainable meats and seafood, organic produce, and specialty foods? You’re in luck. Shopping at natural food stores will usually give lower prices on these items compared to conventional grocery stores. Check out their flyers for even more savings like The Whole Deal coupon booklet offered in Whole Foods stores.

Happy and healthy shopping!

By Liz Schneider

Eating Numbers, Not Food

I urged my friend Elias to share his thoughts on some recent frustrations about eating healthfully. We had a gritty discussion about eating FOOD again.

Here’s his take:

My Feelings on Food Statistics

I have always considered myself to be generally health conscious. I have some bad habits, but my good ones balance them out. Luckily, my body tends to agree with me. This system of checks and balances with a dash of chance has gotten me through life without any serious issues that can be traced back to my lifestyle choices. However, I am turning 29 in a couple weeks and I feel my luck is running out. My father had trouble staying fit around my age. He has only recently gotten back on track by making significant changes to his diet and activity levels. I want to start now.

This week, I began tracking my food consumption and activity level with an app that my father and sister use to assist them in their pursuit of a sustained healthy lifestyle. I have been surprised about how quickly I have adopted it and look forward to the challenge of making it a part of my daily life. I am usually quite a skeptical fellow when it comes to changing my lifestyle. Naturally in the process of eating it all up, I found a few bones I have to pick with all of this “healthy” stuff. I will start with my Number 1 problem: Numbers.

I know it will get better. I have taken the first step by becoming aware of the numbers. I know I will eventually start to see the patterns. Even though I see them on every package I peel back to eat something, I have never really needed to know anything about these poly-mono-saturated-globulites before I started tracking my food consumption. Suddenly, I feel as if I am sitting in a high schooler’s desk failing a biology midterm, when I was just trying to make my life better. Yesterday while rushing to work, I caught myself in the precarious setting of a pizza shop trying to translate menu items into nutrition facts. My app was right there to tell me that it was the worst meal I have had since I started tracking. I know there is a big step missing there.

This morning, I, wanting to make up for my horrible consumption yesterday, concocted another joyful mixture of fruits and veggies in my wonderful and new tradition of My Morning Smoothie. My smoothie is very important to me because it was the first thing I saw as a portal to good health. I can pack in fruits, nutrients, and a even few veggies into one quick and easy, just-about-to-run-out-the-door meal. I have gotten very good at making a wide variety of smoothies over the past seven months. My bowels sing the praises of the increase in fiber and starting my day with a liquid meal kickstarted my day’s hydration. As you can deduce from what I have said so far, I haven’t had one all week and I was very excited to receive all the praise bound to be coming at me from my app once I logged all of the ingredients.

Halfway through humming through my purple solution, just as the level was getting well below the picture on my glass of Spock saying “Live Long and Prosper” (yes, I have gone that far with my love for my smoothie); my app shows me that I am already creeping over my limit for sugar today. What’s worse is that I could stop now, waste the smoothie, and not make that red number get bigger. There is not a lot that I have learned so far by using this app, but one thing is abundantly clear: I eat too much sugar. I thought that abstaining from soda would get me off the hook. It appears that story was too sweet to be true.

Nearly in tears over the betrayal coming from that slosh in Spock’s vessel, I texted Tara with a screenshot of the ingredients and nutrition facts. She identified the 2 cups of pulp-packed orange juice as the main culprit. I have added the extra pulp OJ to reach that perfect fluffy smoothie texture you usually only get with ice cream smoothies (the pulp teams up with the nearly green and frozen banana I put in there). Once the dust settled and I stopped thinking this was another earthy-crunchy conspiracy to drain all the joy from food, something became very clear. We discovered that I had begun eating numbers and stopped eating food.

Despite my stress-fully revealing experience this morning, I look forward to the makeup blending that will be happening tomorrow morning. By Tara’s recommendation, I am going back to using coconut milk as the primary liquid ingredient. After we talked about how the orange in the juice is not the problem (the problem is the sugar manufacturers add to make it marketable to Americans), I had the idea of adding a fresh orange to the smoothie. I am also going to go for a bike ride to make up for my sugary transgressions. Most importantly, I am going to be looking out for moments when the numbers about my food count more than the infinite rewards I will reap from a healthy lifestyle.

By Elias Bouquillon, guest blogger and Tara’s friend that will eat fruit & not drink it from now on.

Stressful times call for healthful eating

In this crazy westernized world we live in, stress abounds us at every corner. Some handle it better than others. Some handle it by using food as a way to cope. If those foods are unhealthy, our bodies end up taking the grunt. Eventually stress catches up on us, many times in the form of chronic disease brought about from years of slow accumulation of damage. As I write this post I am faced with an impending stressful situation myself – cramming for an upcoming exam, the single exam that cumulates my entire education. No pressure, right?

I’m learning to deal with the life’s pressures by focusing my energy towards health and wellness. I try to fuel my body and mind with the best foods possible. While studying, I directly feel the power of a wholesome meal in terms of longer attention span and focused concentration. I love food and cooking, so it is natural for me to use it to deal with stress. For example, instead of gobbling down packaged snacks (which adds guilt-stress) I choose to prepare a fresh meal, taking time and letting my mind wonder as I chop, stir, and mix up the ingredients. I use everyday cooking as therapy to release and reflect.

Because everyone is different, here are some other ways to reduce the stress in your life:

• exercise
• journaling
• meditation
• praying
• deep breathing
• healthy cooking
• music
• art

Foods to soothe the mind, packed with antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals!

• whole grains
• fresh fruit like oranges or berries
• dark leafy greens
• fatty fish like salmon
• nuts and seeds
• chamomile tea
• spices like turmeric
• dark chocolate

So the next time you feel out of control, take a deep breath and grab a wholesome snack.

By Liz Schneider, guest blogger.

Review of the FitBit One

The FitBit One is a wearable fitness tracker that I’ve been using for about a month now and I love it. The FitBit One measures and tracks your daily calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, stairs climbed, and even your sleep activity.

Reasons why I love the FitBit One:

• The small and sleek design. The FitBit is tiny and comes in a nice silicone case that can be clipped to clothing like jeans, sneakers, or even a bra.
• Long lasting charge. Even though the FitBit is worn all day long (and all night if tracking sleep) it only needs to be charged every week or two. It charges fast too (within a couple hours) via USB connection to your computer.
• All you have to do is wear it. FitBit connects via Bluetooth and uploads your usage data automatically to your own FitBit dashboard. Your data can be accessed online, on your smartphone, or even fitness apps like MyFitnessPal.
• Easy user interface. The FitBit dashboard produces straightforward charts and graphs to help you visualize patterns of your activity throughout the day and sleep throughout the night. You can also track food intake to compare energy in vs. energy out.
• Competing against family and friends. My family has FitBit and we are all connected online, each week we see who is “winning”. This sparks the competitive side in almost anyone.
• Way more than just a pedometer. I’ve never really thought twice about my sleep patterns but now I do. The FitBit One comes with a small soft wristband you can wear to bed. It measures the duration of your sleep, number of times you rustle, and how many times you were awakened. You can even program a silent alarm that gently vibrates to wake you up so your partner can stay sleeping.
• FitBit motivates. Digital messages pop up every so often like “Move It” or “Rock on” to encourage you to keep active. Also, a small digital flower grows according to your activity level. Nice touch.

It appears that the developers of the FitBit have thought of it all. FitBit One is a smart, sophisticated, and powerful little gadget. I love learning about my own fitness level and challenging myself and family to move more. With many other personal fitness trackers on the market these days, like Nike Fuel Band and JawBone Up – I am perfectly happy with my FitBit.

By Liz Schneider

Embrace the Freak Out

I just received a panicked email from a great friend and client, preparing for his first half marathon. I’ll share his email below and offer my response.

Whether the freak out is for a sporting event or a life event, inviting those crazy thoughts of doubt to occupy some valuable space may prove beneficial.

Dear Tara,
Please tell me everything’s going to be OK.  I feel unbelievably
nervous about the race this weekend, and I’m just freaking out!

Did I prepare enough?  What if I run tonight?  Will I finish?

I know I shouldn’t let these concerns overwhelm me.  But, I feel the
way I feel; I can’t help it.

Thanks for any words of wisdom you can share.

Yours,
R

My response:

Dear R,
Go ahead, embrace the freak out. This is new territory for you so it is totally normal to feel completely out of sorts. If you weren’t feeling this way, it would be concerning.

Ok, now on to some thoughts:

• Believe. Yes, you are ready. You’ve prepared smartly & methodically. You put in the work. It’s time.
• Affirm. Race-day nerves (and pre-race week nerves) are part of the journey. Remind yourself that you’re ready. Daily verbal affirmations are your best friend this week. Say them out loud.
• Organize. Have a plan for race day. Know when you’ll wake up and when and where you’ll have breakfast. Know what socks you’ll wear. Set a back up alarm. Bring your favorite peanut butter brand along with you. Drive by the race start the day before and scout out the parking situation. Being organized can help settle your nerves.
• Visualize. Pretend that this another training run but in a fresh location. Familiarize yourself with the out-of-town course from the website or reviews.
• Distract. During the race, distract yourself by counting ‘stuff’. I count running skirts during fall and summer races. Maybe you can count running tights that aren’t black or the number of people that have the same running shoes as you. Or, count the number of people you pass. You’ll be surprised how it will help the miles tick away.
• Savor. It doesn’t matter how long it takes. Crossing the finish line will last forever in your mind.

Let me know your thoughts. Use this freak out to your advantage. When it doubt, take the deepest possible breath. You’ll be just fine.

Have fun!
Tara

What strategies and tips work for you during times of freak out? Please share.