5 Healthy Tips for Your Best Holiday Season Yet!

Keep your healthy habits through the holidays

'Tis the season for overeating and inactivity, but it doesn't have to be. You've worked hard all year to change unhealthy habits and now it's time to run the gauntlet of holiday parties and coworkers bringing cookies and treats to work. If you can make it through the holidays unscathed while practicing your healthy habits, you are truly a new person. Here are five tips to keep you focused on having a happy and healthy holiday season.

1. Be positive. Positive emotion is necessary for behavior change. To flourish, we should exhibit three positive emotions for every negative emotion. Flourishing is like navigating a sail boat. Negative emotion is your rudder and positive emotion is the sail that soars high into the air. Your sail should be three times as high as your rudder to keep you on course. Of course, you need both a sail and a rudder to navigate. The trick is to have enough positive emotion to balance the negative. We typically focus too much on negative feelings, so lighten up and be positive. You can track your emotions at positivityratio.com. Emotions change daily, so track yours often. It might help you focus a little more on the positive aspects of your life.

2. Catch up on your ZZZ's. During the holidays, most people overstuff their days and weekends with activity and short change sleep. Adequate sleep is vital for health. Lack of sleep is a risk factor for diabetes, heart disease, obesity, accidents and it lowers your immunity. You may have to resist the urge to be a party animal, but getting enough sleep will ensure that you enjoy your celebrations to the fullest. Allow at least one day a week to catch up on your sleep. You might have to delegate some holiday shopping or cooking, leave a party early once in a while, and resist the urge to stay up late watching TV, playing video games, etc.

3. Keep moving. The best way to avoid weight gain over the holidays is to move daily. Face it, we are made to move and without movement we couldn't survive. Preserve your regular exercise routines as much as possible. If you notice that you can't exercise as much as you used to, wear a pedometer and track your activity as daily steps. The goal is to log at least 10,000 steps a day which is equivalent to walking about five miles. I did this last year between Thanksgiving and New Year's. It was a great way to keep moving. When I noticed that I was short of my goal, I would take the dogs for another walk (god for the dogs as well as me) or take an extra lap in the mall while shopping. Taking a walk after a larger meal is also helpful. The artery clogging effects of one high fat meal can literally be visualized. Fortunately, so can the health promoting effects of one bout of activity. So get up after your meal and take a walk!

4. Maintain your weight. Most people only gain about one pound over the holidays, but that one pound hangs around long after the holidays are over and is often joined by more pounds the next year, and the next, and the next... Setting your sights on weight loss may be too difficult at this time. The goal should be to maintain what you've already lost. You have to measure this somehow. I encourage my clients to weigh themselves daily. You will notice small changes in your weight that you can equate to your eating and exercise habits. If you notice a weight increase in one day, examine what you ate earlier. If you ate a meal in a restaurant, chances are the meal was excessive in calories, fat, and sodium. You can make corrections in your eating and activity and work to bring your weight back to where it was. If you don't measure, you won't know to correct. Before you know it that one pound will be sitting on your hips or mid-section and will be hard to lose.

5. Be thankful.  There is so much flurry around the holidays that is is easy to forget what they are about. Enjoy the time that you are allowed to be with your family, friends, colleagues and coworkers. Humans are social beings and having a supportive community around us is one of the best ways that I can think of to be happy and healthy. We bring the burden of the season upon ourselves. It is within our power to lighten that burden with humor, love, kindness, thoughtfulness, friendship and thankfulness.

I wish you the best holiday season yet!

Do Your Food Values Make You an Elitist or an Oddball?



 I can't help but feel a little odd!

 Sometimes I can't help feeling odd, a little eccentric and different from most people. I'm consumed with passion for being a dietitian and spreading the message of how much better life can be when we eat healthy foods responsibly, exercise regularly and get adequate sleep each night. I think about food all the time. It's not odd to think about what you do in your profession, even when you're not working. I feel odd because of the blank stares I get when I tell people I'm vegetarian. I feel odd when there is nothing for me to order in a restaurant except a salad or processed veggie burgers. I feel odd when I won't let the server in a restaurant refill my children's beverages, except with water. I feel odd because I suggest that people cook more meals at home using fresh ingredients rather than serving Tyson chicken tenders. I feel odd because I won't eat the foods that many other Americans will eat. Does that make me an elitist? Am I perceived as thinking that I'm better than others because I won't eat fast food? The truth is I'm not an elitist and I've been known on occasion to buy fast food for my children, albeit the smallest meal and beverage that I can buy. But feeling odd because of my food values is a feeling that I can't seem shake.

This feeling of being odd became overwhelming when my thirteen year old daughter asked me to buy a birthday present for a friend. As we drove to Wegmans, my daughter told me that she wanted to buy her friend's favorite chocolate which happened to be Hershey's. I recently wrote a blog post on my views about Hershey's and have banned Hershey products from my house in lieu of fair trade and organic chocolate (elitist?). I apologized to my daughter that we would not be buying her friend's favorite chocolate. As a thirteen year old will do, she pushed back exclaiming that four bars of chocolate wouldn't make a difference to the world. An argument ensued and ended with my retort that she was asking me to be a hypocrite. We entered the store and proceeded to buy several bars of fair trade and organic chocolate. I went home feeling the burden of my values. I disappointed my daughter and felt like I didn't "fit in" in a world where trading commodities and making money was more important than human life, protecting the environment, or any other value that is different from popular opinions.

Even though the pendulum of popular belief with respect to food is swinging in my direction, I still feel the burden of my beliefs heavy on my shoulders. In a world where the majority of adults are overweight and greater numbers of children are becoming overweight and obese, I'm hopeful that the choices I make in small measure will influence others, who in turn will influence even more people. But then I wonder...am I a food fascist (sic)?

I asked my daughter if she told her friend that I wouldn't allow her to buy Hershey's chocolate. She did and her friend enjoyed the fair trade chocolate that she gave him. I felt a little vindicated when she told me that another friend replied, "Oh yeah, I know about Hershey's. They stink!" Perhaps I'm not that odd after all.

Hungry? The Quest for a Healthy Body Image

Hungry by Crystal Renn discusses how a young woman working in the modeling industry develops an eating disorder under the pressure to be thin to get work and how she conquers it through her own will and determination. Renn tells the story of her transformation from an unhappy, hungry and unsuccessful model to the successful, internationally acclaimed, confident and happy plus-sized model she is today. Renn serves as an inspiration for size acceptance to women everywhere.

There are many campaigns promoting healthy body image from the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty to Fat Talk Free Week, a campaign to promote the end of body-centric comments which can have a negative impact on body image and possibly lead to eating disorders. With the fashion industry, it seems that changing the focus from thin to healthy is an uphill battle.

I interviewed professional model and registered dietitian, Maye Musk, MS, RD, about the modeling industry and how she navigates her role as both a model and a nutritionist. Musk's comments are candid and humorous. She states that health and the health of  models are not truly important to the fashion industry. Clothes are made in one size and the models must fit into these clothes. Somewhere along the line someone decided that clothes look better on smaller models. Musk defines these finer boned models as "freaks of nature." This is her humorous way of stating that very few women naturally have the body type to wear the clothes that are being designed. "The clothes are made for skinny 12 year old boys,"  she says. To get a chance to model these clothes, young models starve themselves. "You can see the muscle wasting on the arms and thighs. The models are truly emaciated."

In her nutrition practice, Musk counsels ballet dancers, actors and models, many of whom are trying to obtain this unrealistic ideal. She counsels them on the value of good nutrition and how beauty relates to it. She states that "general good health provides the energy to model." That energy in turn translates the model's movements into a beautiful work of art. The movement of a healthy model in clothing has the power to captivate, so that even a still photo is dynamic. To model, Musk claims, one needs to look fabulous. The amount of fat doesn't matter.

The modeling industry has adopted the minimum healthy Body Mass Index (BMI) for its models which is 18.5 kg/m2. BMI is a mathematical equation and is defined as weight in kilograms divided by height in meters squared. Despite this, Renn was encouraged to maintain a weight of 95 pounds on her 5'9" frame, a BMI of 14 kg/m2. Renn's body revolted from her abusive eating and exercise habits and she began to gain weight despite them. Her metabolism downshifted so much that she could gain weight while still eating very little. The outcome for many women in this situation is death, but for Renn, her ambition is what I believed saved her. Her desire to live and succeed were strong and she took plus-sized modeling by storm.

Thanks to the efforts of Renn, plus-sized modeling is taking on a new status, but it still has a long way to go. I find it ludicrous that "plus-sized" is defined as anything sized 8 or greater. The average American woman is a size 14. That's the world of fashion and Musk doesn't foresee it changing very much any time soon. American women walk a fine line between overweight and health. Many of us are overweight and do not engage in healthy eating and exercise habits. It doesn't help that we have an unrealistic ideal to be compared with. As a health practitioner I would not define Renn as overweight. I'm hopeful that her efforts will encourage American women to be the best and healthiest that they can be.

A Quickie in the Kitchen

I love to cook, but lately I haven't had much time for cooking. This bothers me to no end because food and healthy eating are my profession. Apparently, I need to listen to some of my own advice. We can all benefit from some quick suggestions for getting a healthy meal on the table. Here are some tips that help me to prepare healthy meals for my family in a hurry.

1. Plan Ahead: This means actually thinking about what you can make for the week.

• Find Recipes: I usually go to my favorite healthy eating website, Eating Well. There are many wonderful recipes here that can be made in less than an hour. This can be necessary if you're coming home after a long day. You can search for new, quick, healthy and delicious recipes to add to your grocery list or you can search for recipes with ingredients that you have on hand. I recently found a recipe for Spiced Eggplant-Lentil Salad when I searched for recipes using eggplant. Yes, I still have to go to the store for some fresh ingredients, but I'll be using up the eggplant that has been sitting in my refrigerator for the past week.
• Three Meal Rule: I usually plan to cook three new meals a week. This way I'm not overwhelmed by planning a whole week of meals. I make extra to have as another meal or to take leftovers for lunch. You can recycle leftover food and create new meals. Leftover meats and vegetables can be used to make casseroles, stir-fries, salads, stews and soups.
• Make a Grocery List: Part of the planning process is making a list. This helps you get through the store faster and can minimize less healthy impulse purchases.

2. Stock Your Pantry and Refrigerator/Freezer: Buy healthy staple foods that make it easy to prepare a quick meal. These are foods that you may eat more regularly and that you can use in recipes such as:

• Healthy breakfast cereals
• Low fat dairy and dairy substitutes (fortified soy, rice and almond milk and cheeses)
• Low fat and low sodium lunch meats
• Lean meats and meat substitutes
• 100% whole wheat bread
• Fresh and frozen fruits
• Fresh and frozen vegetables
• Canned tomato products
• Canned beans (legumes)
• Brown rice (quick cooking varieties are available)
• Whole wheat pasta
• Herbs and spices
• Olive and canola oil
• Vinegars
• Sauces (Many of these are high in sugar and sodium and should be used sparingly to enhance the flavor of meals. Some of my all time favorite sauces come from the Texas-based company D.L. Jardine's)
• Broths (chicken, beef, vegetable and no-chicken broth, which is a vegetarian broth that has a chicken broth flavor)

3. Shop: To make quick and healthy meals you need to have healthy foods on hand. This means that you have to go to the food market. I'm not as well organized as one of my nutrition mentors who only needs to shop once a month (now that's a well stocked kitchen!). I usually plan one large shopping trip a week (usually on a weekend or in the evening when the number of shoppers is less) and another smaller trip mid-week. A good rule to follow for mid-week shopping is to get only the things that you really need such as some fresh produce and milk. If I have to shop for more items after work, typically we'll be eating grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. I don't have time to shop and cook after work.

4. Learn How to Use a Knife/Food Processor: One of my jobs in my family as a kid was making salads. I dutifully cut vegetables using a paring knife as my mother instructed me. This was a chore and took longer than I wanted. I hated being asked to make a salad. It wasn't until I worked for a caterer in college that I learned how to correctly use a knife. What a difference choosing and using the correct knife makes! Cutting vegetables quickly and efficiently can actually be fun! This is probably the most important skill for cooking (remember to keep your knives sharp!). Food processors are also available for quickly cutting up vegetables. I tend to only use mine if I have a lot to chop as cleaning it is sometimes a bigger chore than chopping. And if you are really in a rush, you can use bagged chopped vegetables. It's always good to have options!

5. Utilize Your Kitchen Helpers: My mother was clearly doing this when she would ask me to make salads. Your kitchen helpers can set the table, wash dishes, and stir the pot for you. A great principle to follow is anyone who eats should help with meal preparation and clean up (thanks goes to one of my dietitian colleagues for suggesting this).

6. Clean as You Cook: My husband actually helped me learn this. His job in his family was clean up. Clean up is so much easier when you clean as you go. While I'm waiting for something to cook, I'll wash a few dishes. I'm a much happier cook when my cooking space is uncluttered and clean.

7. Minimize Distractions: When you're tired after a long day, distractions can make you lose your momentum and the next thing you know you'll be ordering out for pizza. Don't sit down at the computer, don't turn on the television and don't pour yourself a drink until you have a head start on your meal. You may need to delegate other household tasks to the denizens who share the house with you.

8. Experiment: Try making up your own recipes. With practice you will figure out flavor combinations that you enjoy. You'll be surprised at some of the great meals you come up with. You'll also make a few duds, but don't worry, you won't poison anyone. I've had the experience of not liking some of my own creations, but my family seems to eat them anyway, and sometimes they like them even when I don't. I've probably instilled enough guilt in them to simply appreciate the fact that I am cooking for them. I think I'd appreciate an underwhelming meal if someone prepared it for me too.

9. Lighten Up: Sometimes it's OK to eat grilled cheese. You can make a healthy meal using all kinds of shortcuts as long as you balance it with fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

10. Enjoy: Sometimes we need little reminders about how to make quick work of meal preparation so that we can have more time to enjoy other things in life. Who knows, maybe you'll even be able to enjoy the process of meal preparation more, which will make you a happier person overall. Hopefully, you'll free up time to enjoy the other rooms of your house too.

A World of Oats

Guest blog post by Laura Williams

Oats are a gluten-free cereal grain and are the third leading cereal crop produced in the United States (after wheat and corn) and the fourth most important crop worldwide. They were once considered a weed, but are now a popular staple of the British Isles like Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The grain was introduced into the Americas in 1602 by a sea captain who planted them in one of the islands off the coast of Massachusetts. Today, nearly half of the world's oat crop--more than 4 billion bushels a year--is grown in the United States and Canada. Oat kernels look very much like wheat in structure with an outer covering of bran, which protects the starchy endosperm and the germ that sits at the bottom of the grain. Whole grain oats contain seven B vitamins, vitamin E, and nine minerals, including iron, magnesium, selenium, manganese, phosphorous and calcium. Oats are very high in protein, containing about twice the protein of wheat or corn. But the most important nutritional advantages of oats are the soluble fiber and the GLA (gamma linoleic acid), an essential fatty acid. The soluble fiber is what gives oatmeal its gummy texture; it also has many beneficial effects on health. Regular use of oats in the diet can be helpful for managing several medical conditions. They have been shown to help control blood sugar levels, which is beneficial for people with both type 1 and 2 diabetes; to reduce cholesterol levels, which may help prevent heart disease; and to reduce plaque build up in the arteries which may help prevent atherosclerosis.



Different forms of oats:

• Oat groats: This is the whole oat grain, with only the outer hull removed. Oat groats are extremely nutritious, but they need to be soaked and cooked a long time. Oat groats are usually processed into one of the other forms below.

• Steel-cut oats: Produced by running groats through steel cutters, chopping the groats into smaller pieces and creating a chewy texture. Steel-cut oats still contain the whole grain and oat bran, and are also very nutritious.

• Rolled oats or old-fashioned oats: Steaming groats and then flattening them with a roller makes rolled oats.

• Quick-cooking oats: Steaming and flattening steel-cut oats makes quick-cooking oats.

• Instant oatmeal: Produced by rolling more thinly and steaming longer or partially cooking the oats. Instant oatmeal will also have salt, sugar, and in some cases artificial sweeteners added to it.



You can also grind rolled oats yourself to make oat flour.



Oats can be included in the diet in the form of oatmeal, cold cereals, baked products, granola bars, etc. Any way you include oats in your diet, you will still receive their beneficial effects.

Some recipes to try using oats include:



Muesli

Ingredients:

2 cups oats (quick or old fashioned, uncooked)

2 cups apple juice or apricot nectar

1-1/2 cups sliced fresh fruit (any combination of banana, peaches, nectarines or strawberries)

8 oz vanilla low-fat yogurt

2 T chopped nuts* (optional)

1 T ground flax seeds* (optional)



Preparation: Combine all ingredients except nuts and fruit; mix well.

Cover; refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.

Serve cold; add fruit and sprinkle with nuts, if desired. Refrigerate in airtight container up to 4 days

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Ingredients:

3 cups old fashioned oats

1 cup flour

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

1 cup honey or maple syrup

¾ cup softened butter

½ tsp vanilla

1 egg

½ cup raisins


Preparation: Preheat oven to 375 F. lightly coat cookie sheet with vegetable oil. Combine dry ingredients and mix well. Mix honey/syrup, butter, and vanilla until smooth. Add egg. Blend in dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Stir in raisins. Place rounded spoonfuls of blended ingredients onto cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Makes 50 cookies.


I made three batches of these cookies each using a different sweetener (1 each with honey, maple syrup, and sugar) and would definitely recommend using maple syrup.

Laura is a senior at Syracuse University majoring in dietetics and minoring in hospitality management. She hopes to become a Registered Dietitian. Laura has a passion for cooking and baking.

Diabetes From a Personal Point of View

The dates of some experiences can be imprinted on one’s memory for a long time. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the day that my son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 8 years of age. He had been excessively thirsty for a few days, and was drinking a lot of water. A couple days prior to his diagnosis, I remember him coming home from school and telling me in amazement that he went to the bathroom twenty times that day! My husband and I scoured the internet looking for any other explanation than the one that we knew was most obvious. In medicine, they have a saying: If you hear hoof beats it’s probably a horse, not a zebra. This means that what is most obvious is most likely. In our case it was a horse, type 1 diabetes.




When I was a nutrition student learning about diabetes, I struggled to get my mind around all that was necessary to manage the disease. Diet, medication and physical activity are all very important in controlling diabetes, and none of it is simple. I am still learning how complex diabetes management is every day. My son is now a 15 year old athlete. He has risen to the challenges of diabetes better than many adults would have. He knows how important physical activity is for his blood sugar management, and after trying several different sports he found a sport that he loves, rowing. Diabetics used to be discouraged from participating in sports because of the risk of low blood sugar. Now, we view physical activity and athletics as an important part of keeping a diabetic person healthy throughout life. The advent of the insulin pump has allowed us to fine tune the delivery of insulin such that athletics is not considered as dangerous as it used to be.



Since my son has been diagnosed with diabetes on March 16, 2004 he has had several seizures related to low blood sugar, all of them occurring during sleep. He’s always recovered relatively quickly from them, and was alert enough to drink juice to bring his blood sugar back up. His most recent seizure on July 7, 2010 was different. By now, my other children are well versed in their brother’s diabetes management. My 13 year old daughter has helped me administer juice to her brother and witnessed the multiple daily finger pricks to check blood sugar and injections of insulin. On this warm day in July, she frantically called us at work to let us know that our son was having a seizure. I left for home grateful that she would be there to give him juice. While I was en route she tested his blood sugar and administered glucagon, a quick acting sugar to help raise blood sugar in unresponsive diabetics. When I arrived the situation had not improved. Another injection of glucagon failed to bring him around. I was relieved when my husband, a physician, arrived home to help, but nothing that we did brought our son back to his normal mental status. We called 911.



I’m happy to say that my son has made a full recovery and the only lasing effect from this day was his inability to train athletically for about a week due to headaches from a lumbar puncture that was part of his hospital evaluation. We replay the events leading up to this day and try to figure out what contributed to it. I never expected my son to have a seizure that we couldn’t bring him out of. I now wonder if we should have been better prepared to understand how different the needs of a diabetic athlete are compare to other athletes and other non-athlete diabetics. I’ve since learned that to correct for a low blood sugar, a diabetic athlete can require twice as much carbohydrate as a non-athlete diabetic. I’ve also learned that dehydration can impact a diabetic athlete differently than a non-diabetic athlete. I never wanted to understand as much about diabetes as I do now. My experiences with my son have motivated me to learn as much as I can about this disease to help him and other diabetics, athlete and non-athlete alike, to take control of their lives!

No Free Refills!

I'm often asked by people if they can eat all they want of a certain food. Perhaps vegetables or fruit? What about diet soda? You're not going to like what I have to say, but there are no free refills when it comes to healthy eating. In fact the notion of "free refills" perpetuates mindless eating. There is and should be a limit to what we consume. By eating all that we want, we tend to overeat (think about the last time you ate at a buffet). Shouldn't we stop and evaluate our level of hunger before eating more?

Hara hachi bu is an Okinawan expression that means eat until you are 80% full. This was traditionally practiced by the Okinawans who were among some of the longest lived people on the earth. Their diet consisted mostly of  vegetables, whole grains, fruits, legumes including soy foods, fish and very little amounts of meat. Sadly, younger generations of Okinawans may not live as long as their elders because they seem to prefer a more western diet, with a nice helping of western diseases to boot.

As a 15 year old athlete, my son has a healthy appetite. I'm fortunate that he likes most foods and with a dietitian for a mother, he gets more than his fair share of vegetables, whole grains and legumes. He often desires second or third helpings. I'll ask him if he's still hungry before digging in a second time. His reply has often been, "well, I'm not full." I don't believe that fullness should be the gauge that we have had enough to eat, but rather absence of hunger. Fullness is the gauge that we have overeaten. This is food for thought in a world of overabundance. It takes real discipline to practice hara hachi bu when we are being bombarded by food advertisements that make us want to eat more with excessive portion sizes on every street corner. A mere 100-200 hundred calories a day extra can prevent us from obtaining weight loss, and over time promote weight gain. It's something to think about when you want to eat more because something tastes good, but you are no longer hungry.

To those who question why we shouldn't eat as many vegetables as we want, after all they are low in calories; I say sure, eat plenty of vegetables. Most people don't eat enough. But no food should be eaten unchecked. A recent article in the New York Times told of an 88-year-old woman who developed life threatening hypothyroidism from eating two to three pounds of raw bok choy daily for several months. She believed that it would help control her diabetes. Instead it suppressed her thyroid. This is an extreme example, but it shows that you can get too much of a good thing.

My challenge to you, try practicing hara hachi bu for a week. Be mindful about the food that you eat and stop eating when you are no longer hungry, but not full.