Eat Well, Live Well

If changing eating habits were easy, everyone would be fit and healthy. One key to making lasting improvements is to make changes in stages. Start with something simple and stick to it for a week. After your family has mastered one change, add another.


Some Ideas to Get You Started

• Eat breakfast.


• Substitute water for one sugary drink each day.


• Eat one to two more fruits or vegetables each day.


• Plan a healthy snack for each day of the week.


• Switch to a low-fat version of a favorite food.


• Plan three meals and two snacks every day.


• Plan a home-cooked meal, which usually has fewer calories, more reasonable portions and costs less than typical meals eaten at restaurants.

Set the Example

Parents play a big role in guiding their children’s eating habits by the examples they set, the foods they make available in the home and the mealtime experiences they create for their families.

Offer healthy snacks such as fruit, low-fat cottage cheese or yogurt, frozen juice bars, applesauce, celery or apples and peanut butter, raw vegetables, graham crackers, fig bars or whole wheat crackers and low-fat cheese. Large portions mean too many calories. A snack for a typical adult may be a container of yogurt, but for a preschooler, two or three tablespoons of yogurt is about right.

Make Eating an Enjoyable Activity for the Whole Family

Family meals can be a time to monitor what children are eating and reconnect with each other. Involve children in food preparation and clean-up, and sit down with children when they eat. The idea is to build healthy lifelong eating habits.

Some healthy eating tips include the following:

• Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables – half your plate at each meal should be vegetables or fruit.


• Beware of sweetened drinks – sodas and sports drinks are high in calories. Keep in mind that too much juice can also quickly add calories to a child’s diet.


• Choose food sensibly when eating out.

Healthy Food Tips When Eating Out

• Ask if you don’t know what is in a dish or the serving size.


• Eat the same portion size you would at home.


• Ask for sauces, gravy and dressings on the side – or avoid them altogether.


• Order foods that are not breaded or fried.


• Order fruit for dessert.


• Ask for substitutions: A vegetable instead of fries, or for the high-fat food to be left off the plate.


• Ask for low-calorie versions of food. Vinegar and oil or a squeeze of lemon is better than high-fat dressings or sauces.

Did You Know...?

Americans eat an average of 4.2 commercially prepared meals each week. Processed foods are likely to be higher in calories, fat, and salt and lower in fiber than meals prepared at home.

Protein

PROTEIN

The word protein originates from the idea that proteins are central to life and the first nutrient. Vitamins – vita meaning life and amin meaning protein – got their name from the misconception that amino acids, the building blocks of protein, were the essential components for maintaining life.

Proteins are found in animals and plants, but the mixture of amino acids – the building blocks of the protein found from different sources – varies. As a result, there are 21 common amino acids consisting of 12 nonessential and nine essential amino acids. Essential amino acids are those that cannot be synthesized from other amino acids, but must be consumed in the diet. The usual way that nonessential amino acids are formed is by metabolism of other amino acids. All amino acids have a basic structure of an alpha-amino nitrogen and carboxylic acid.

Maintaining the amounts of protein in muscles and organs is essential to life and is the main objective of the adaptation to starvation. In fact, loss of more than 50 percent of body protein is incompatible with life. The protein is stored in organs and there is no labile compartment.

The Importance of Protein

There is evidence that modestly increasing the proportion of protein in the diet, while controlling total calorie intake, may:

• Improve body composition.


• Facilitate fat loss.


• Improve body weight maintenance after weight loss.

Fat Retention 

Mankind is very well adapted to malnutrition and starvation, and this adaptation is reflected both in the way the body stores energy and how it uses these stores of energy when food intake is reduced or eliminated altogether. In the average 70 kg (154 lbs) man:

• The largest store of calories is in the form of fat in adipose tissue with approximately 135,000 calories* stored in 13.5 kg (30 lbs) of adipose tissue.

*A dietary calorie is 1,000 calories or a kcal, but for simplicity will simply be noted as calories. You may also see dietary calories capitalized as “Calories.”

This storage compartment can be greatly expanded with long-term overnutrition in obese individuals.

There are approximately 54,000 calories stored as protein both in muscle and organs, such as the heart and liver. Only half of these calories can be mobilized for energy, since depletion below 50 percent of total protein stores is incompatible with life. In addition to being an energy source, protein plays a functional role in many organs, including the liver, and depletion is associated with impaired immunity to infection. In fact, the most common cause of death in an epidemic of starvation is typically simple bacterial pneumonia. Conservation of protein is an adaptation tightly linked to survival during acute starvation.

Meal Replacement Shakes and Weight Maintenance

Studies show that meal replacement shakes are a viable way to maintain weight, as recognized by the European Food Safety Authority, and that increasing the protein to about 30 percent of resting metabolic rate, as estimated by bioelectrical impedance, leads to greater loss of fat with retention of lean body mass. 

How to burn calories AFTER you work out

If you’re exercising to burn calories then you’ll love the idea of continued fat-burning after a workout.

Let me introduce you to EPOC – Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption – this is the process that burns through extra calories as a result of your exercise session.  Many people focus on the calories they burn during a workout but your body continues to burn calories long after you leave the gym.

Regular readers will know there are plenty of reasons to love exercise, but if you’re looking to burn fat then thinking about EPOC can keep you motivated during a session.  The equation is simple; the harder you work out, the more energy your body needs to recover and that means you’re burning more calories.

It’s easier to approach a workout when you know what you want to achieve and a basic knowledge of your body lets you understand how best to reach your goals.  Different training methods will give you different results.  If you want to burn fat then you need to tailor your workout in a different way than if you want to build flexibility, for example.
If you want to benefit from EPOC fat burning then you need to put the effort in first.   Much as all of us would love to blast through calories while sitting at our desks – I’m sorry to say that just isn’t going to happen. And, one of the reasons you may not of heard of EPOC before is because only certain types of exercise trigger it.

Your body burns calories when it is recovering and a hard and fast session will require more recovery than a softer, less intense workout.  Recovery is the catch all term for all the processes your body implements after a workout such as; replenishing energy supplies, sending new glycogen to your muscles, converting lactic acid back into pyruvic acid, etc. This internal process requires fuel and your body’s preferred fuel choice is your stored excess fat.

What type of exercise gives the most EPOC fat burning benefits?
Your body needs to recover after all types of exercise but you really need anaerobic and aerobic exercise to benefit from EPOC.  You will need to tune into your body to understand what is most effective for you but these are my five favorite exercise types that promote EPOC fat burning.
1.   HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training)
HIIT is known to burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time; the intense nature of this workout will have your body recovering throughout the day.
2.    Spinning
A good static cycling class provides an aerobic zone workout combined with spurts of fast anaerobic work. Spinning classes are low impact and you can control the intensity of your personal workout
3.   Weight Training
Lifting weights and strength training puts stress on your muscles, especially when lifting to gain muscle using slow and controlled movements. Your body will require energy to repair itself after a hard weights session.
4.   Sprinting
A typical sprinting session is anaerobic and high in intensity. This is (obviously) my all-time favorite session for feeling the after burn.
5.   Aerobics class
An intense dance class or step class that is moderate in intensity but high in impact and lasts for about an hour will burn a lot of calories during the class and will help you burn through even more calories once you’re back at home. Try and find a class that involves jumping, kicking, and anything that makes you lift both feet off the ground.  

***

With so many workout options, try to include a high intensity session a few times a week. Make sure you plan rest days and, as always, listen to your own body.  It’s fine to push yourself but never go to the point of pain.
I stand by my philosophy that slow and steady wins the race when it comes to getting fit and healthy, but if you’re looking to burn excess calories than you can use EPOC to your advantage.  And, now that you know about EPOC calorie burning, you’ll be able to rest easy after your gym session knowing that your body is still burning  through extra fat stores!

Written by Samantha Clayton.

How to cut fat but keep taste in your favorite recipes

Small changes to your recipes can lead to big calorie cuts.  A few ingredient swaps can make home-cooked dishes so much healthier.

Now that the holidays are solidly behind us, the reality of those New Year’s promises we made to ourselves are starting to settle in.  Many of us start out the New Year with big plans for big changes…which is why all this month we’re focusing on the ‘little things’.  That’s because small steps – taken together – can add up to big results, and are often easier to handle than huge sweeping changes that can be unsettling. In the last post, I made some suggestions for small changes you can make at the grocery store – that is, after all, where the path to healthy eating begins.  But now that you’ve brought your healthy ingredients into the house, you want to make sure to keep them that way when it’s time to cook. And with just a few small changes, you can make every dish you prepare at home a little bit better for you.

Steps to a recipe makeover
When it comes to recipe makeovers, a good place to start is with your “go-to” foods – those dishes that you make over and over again.  If you transform a recipe for a dish that you eat every week, the calories you cut out can really make a difference in the long run.
The first step in the makeover is to look over the list of ingredients, and see if you can make some healthy swaps to reduce fat and calories, or to boost the nutritional value.  Would plain yogurt work in your dish instead of sour cream?  Would ground turkey work just as well as ground beef?  Could you add more fiber by using brown rice instead of white? Could you sneak some fruit into a salad or side dish?  Using substitute ingredients that provide nearly the same taste is an easy way to reduce a hefty calorie count.
Next, look at the amounts of some of the ingredients to see if you can change them to make the dish healthier.  If a recipe calls for frying, could you sauté or stir-fry instead to reduce the fat? Can you use less salt or sugar? Could you double the vegetables called for?  You’d be surprised at how many calories you can save with just a few changes.
Don’t “wrong a right”
One caution, though – don’t be fooled into thinking that by starting with very low calorie ingredients, it means you have extra calories to “play with” when you cook.  I run into this with my clients all the time.  They’ll start with healthy, low calorie ingredients like fish and veggies, and then rack up huge amounts of calories once they start cooking.  They’ll fry instead of grill, they’ll sauce instead of steam, and by the time they’re finished, they may as well have eaten a cheeseburger.
Ingredient swaps and tips for healthier dishes
Here are some of my best tips for cutting down on fat and calories when you cook, and also how you can make your dishes healthier by using more whole grains, or adding vegetables and fruits to your dishes.  I’ve also put together a table of swaps you can try for some common ingredients that can help you lighten up your favorite recipes.  Have fun experimenting, and don’t be surprised if you end up liking the healthier version even better!

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  Add diced vegetables to soups, chili, meat loaf, casseroles, tuna or chicken salad and pasta sauce to reduce overall calories and boost nutrition.


• 
  Season steamed vegetables with lemon, vinegar, herbs, garlic, onion and spices rather than relying on butter or sauces.


• 
  Add fruits to salad for a change.  Try fresh orange or tangerine sections, apples or kiwi.  Use deep green leafy vegetables instead of iceberg lettuce for more nutrition.


• 
  Frozen vegetables and fruits are just as nutritious and fresh, may be less expensive, and allow you to eat foods that might not be available all year.  For example, loose-leaf frozen spinach or chopped vegetables can easily be added to soups and stews.


• 
  You can thicken soups without added butter, flour or cream.  Place some of the broth and vegetables in the blender and then stir back into the soup.  Or, make your own ‘cream’ soups by cooking vegetables with broth, onions, garlic and seasoning – then puree it all in the blender with a little evaporated nonfat milk or soft tofu for a delicious creamy soup.


• 
  Try different mustards and vinegars for seasoning salads and veggies without fat.


• 
  Double the recipe for dishes that freeze well, such as soups, stews, and casseroles.  That way, when you’re tired and don’t want to cook, you can pull something healthy from the freezer rather than pulling into the drive-through.

Try these simple recipe swaps:

If the recipe calls for…		Use this substitute ingredient…
Ground beef		Ground turkey or chicken breast, plant-based substitutes like soy ground round			Spray pan with pan spray before browning;  drain any fat from pan after browning.Soy ground round is already cooked
Butter or margarine for baking		Applesauce; baby food prunes or carrots; mashed banana or avocado			You will need to experiment, but you can usually replace 1/2 or more of the fat in the recipe with one of the substitutions.  This cuts fat, and boosts nutrition!
Butter to sauté vegetables		Pan spray; broth, wine, vegetable juice			Spray pan with pan spray;  sauté in wine, broth or vegetable juice.  Cover pan to ‘sweat’ vegetables
Cheese		Reduced fat cheese			Use reduced fat cheese, and reduce the total amount in the recipe
Eggs in baking		Egg whites or egg substitutes			Egg substitutes are 99% egg white;  you can also use 2 egg whites to replace one whole egg in baking
Mayonnaise		Nonfat mayonnaise			Or use mustard, avocado or hummus instead
Nuts		Reduce by half			Toast lightly in a dry skillet to enhance flavor
White rice or regular pasta		Brown rice or whole grain pasta			Try other whole grains, too, like quinoa, millet, buckwheat
Sour cream, cream cheese, cottage cheese, cream		Use nonfat versions;  evaporated nonfat milk in place of cream			Plain nonfat yogurt is a great substitute for sour cream

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD.

 

5 ways to eliminate treadmill boredom

Think about running on a treadmill… Are you filled with warm thoughts about competing against yourself or even catching up on a show as you jog?  Or does your blood run cold as you imagine time slowing down and your run beginning to feel like a self-inflicted punishment?

When it comes to running on a treadmill, it’s very rare that someone thinks it’s just okay – the response is usually that people either love it or hate it!  But with colder weather and the sun setting earlier, for many people there is only one option and that’s to get on the human hamster wheel or risk freezing outside.

In northern climates, the winter months are famous for making us gain holiday pounds, so let me share with you a few tips to help you spice up your treadmill routine and prevent you from hanging up your running shoes until the spring.

1. Vary your terrain by adjusting the gradient

If you are fortunate enough to be using a newer treadmill where you can adjust the gradient then have fun creating a challenging outdoor trail run.

Whether you fancy running up a steep mountain or creating rolling hills, it’s easy to break up the monotony of a flat course by simply pressing the incline button. I love hill running and enjoy the challenge of increasing the gradient every 60 seconds. An added bonus about being in control of thegradient is that if the hill feels too steep just take it down a notch.  Now you can’t do that when you’re running outside!

2. Plan your music in advance

Music is known for being a great motivator, especially when it comes to exercising and sports performance.

The joy of modern technology is that you can create entire playlists of all of your favorites. Spend time going through your music collection and pick out songs that make you smile.  Find that one song that makes you want to dance because it will be perfect motivation for you to turn up the speed and run a little faster. I have been known for putting my motivational song on repeat and running so fast that the treadmill is shaking.

3. Interval training is best to avoid boredom

This is a matter of preference but running or walking at the exact same speed for the entire time is just not an option for me.

Interval training has so many added benefits because, not only does it stop you from getting bored, it can help you to push yourself to burn more calories in less time. A great way to interval train is to run at a 7/10 difficulty level for 45 seconds then walk or jog at a 3/10 difficulty for 30 seconds. Training in this way for 30- 45 minutes can improve your cardiovascular fitness and endurance.

4. Enjoy the funky functions

If you want to do a steady state run without adjusting you gradient and speed, then take your mind off your run by playing with the treadmill functions.

Many newer treadmills are equipped with heart rate monitors and calorie burn counters and it’s fun to set yourself mini challenges with these!  Try and keep your heart rate within your target range and guess how many calories you will burn every two minutes. Or you can pick one of the pre-designed running plans and let your mind puzzle over one of the challenges in your life.  It’s better to think through a thorny problem while running than when you’re trying to sleep.

5. Break up your run

Set a few goals before you start your run and then don’t be afraid of breking it up into manageable chunks. Don’t just get on the treadmill without a goal because chances are you will step off sooner if you don’t have a plan. If your goal is to run five miles but you get bored after two miles, then make a consciencechoice to take a break.  That way you can keep your commitment to do all five miles – you’ll just break up your run and refocus along the way… So, get off and do some light resistance work or abdominal crunches then get back on. The important thing is to get back on.

 Many gyms also offer classes led by an instructor that incorporate both running and weight training. The group atmosphere is fun and can help motivate you.

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Stay on track

The benefit of training on a treadmill is that you can precisely monitor your distance and time without the variables of rough terrain and inclement weather slowing you down.  Remember to only ever go at a pace that feels right for you.  It’s tempting to push yourself too hard if the person next to you is really pounding out the miles, but you won’t be helping anybody if you push yourself too quickly.  It’s always better to err on the side of caution and stay injury free, after all that person on the next treadmill could be an ex professional sprinter like me!All in all, a treadmill is a wonderful tool to use to keep your health and fitness goals on track.  

But personally, I always think that mixing up your routine can be useful and I enjoy both indoor and outdoor running. As they say, ‘a change is as good as a break’ so, if you become bored of your treadmill then make a change and head outdoors.   The wind in your hair and pavement under your feet might be just the thing to remind you why you love running.  And feeling the rain and the wind might be the thing to reawaken your devotion to the treadmill.

Written by Samantha Clayton

How to make your New Year's resolutions that last all year

New Year’s resolutions – don’t make promises you can’t keep. This year make a few small changes in your eating habits that can yield big results instead.

Do you remember the New Year’s resolutions you made last year? Let me guess…. if you’re like most people, you probably vowed to eat better, get more exercise – and maybe floss more often. So, looking back, how did it go? Did you accomplish all you set out to do? Or, did you start the year out strong – then fall back on your old patterns, so that you’re making the same resolutions again this year? This may surprise you, but I think that’s okay – and here’s why. If you make the decision every January to shape up, it says that taking better care of yourself is important to you. If it weren’t important, you wouldn’t keep working at it. And just because you make the same promises to yourself every year, it doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t accomplish anything last year.

Any improvement is good
Maybe you didn’t exercise as much as you planned, or ate as carefully as you intended. But if you’re still doing better now than you were the year before, maybe it’s because you managed to chip away at a few bad habits. And that’s great – because the little changes to the way you do things every single day can really add up. And, you can continue to build on these small successes this New Year.
Don’t do too much at once
It’s great to be ambitious, but if you try to tackle too many changes at once, you could be setting yourself up for defeat. Making resolutions is the easy part – making them stick is what’s hard, because you’re having to do things differently. It takes time to undo a bad habit, which is why repetition is so important. But it’s a lot easier to repeat a small, relatively easy task than one that seems positively Herculean. And, you have to figure out what’s getting in the way of your progress, and figure out how to move these obstacles out of your way.
Let’s say you don’t floss your teeth as often as you should. What’s getting in your way? And what steps can you take to make sure you’ll do it regularly? It’s not really a time issue – it only takes a couple of minutes. But you need to make sure you have the floss in the house. You need to make sure you see the floss whenever you brush your teeth. You need a mirror, so you can see what you’re doing.
So, maybe you decide that rather than tossing the dental floss in the back of the medicine cabinet where it gets lost in a jumble of half-used toiletries, you’ll instead make a little ‘dental kit’ for yourself – one that includes your toothbrush, your toothpaste, your floss, and maybe a little dental mirror. With everything conveniently in one place, it’s more likely that every time you pull out your ‘kit’, you’ll not just brush – you’ll wind up flossing, too.
Move obstacles out of your way
Same thing goes with your eating habits – you have to figure out why you’re not doing what you plan to do, and how you can make it easier. It’s easy to say you’re going to eat more fruits and vegetables, but it’s hard to do if you don’t keep them in the house. But that’s not enough. Once you’ve got them in the house, you have to make it easier to eat them. So maybe you make sure to keep a stash of fruit in the freezer to add to protein shakes, or you keep a bowl of fruit on your kitchen counter to remind you that fruit makes a great snack, or you keep some cut up veggies handy in the refrigerator where you’ll see them every time you open the door looking for something to munch on.
But make sure that whatever changes you plan to make are things you know you can really do. If you’ve never brought your lunch to work, it’s unlikely you’ll suddenly start doing it every day. So set a reasonable goal, and make it specific – not “I’m going to bring my lunch to work more often”, but “I’m going to bring my lunch to work twice a week”. That way, at the end of the week it’s easy to determine if you’ve met your goal or not.
Small changes do add up
And just because the changes are small, doesn’t mean they don’t add up. If that twice weekly homemade lunch has 300 fewer calories than your usual lunch from a restaurant, that’s a savings of over 31,000 calories in a year, which could translate into a loss of 9 pounds. If you grab a piece of fruit instead of a bowl of ice cream every night after dinner, you could drop another 10 pounds by next January…from just that one small change.
January is a good time to think about changes you want to make but don’t think your New Year’s resolutions need to be dramatic to make a difference.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing about how the small changes you make can add up – changes in the way you shop, prepare and serve your food, and changes in the way you approach menus and restaurant dining. I’ll give you my best tips for making changes that will last – and hope you’ll share your best ones with me, too.

Written by Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD.