Getting Back Into Routine

I don't know about you, but my daily routine has been ransacked over the Holidays. It's great to change things up -- I am not complaining at all. We need a break from the same 'ole, same 'ole. But it's also nice to get back into some semblance of normalcy. Our family did a lot of travelling, which required leaving our home and staying in multiple locations. This includes eating different foods, waking and sleeping at alternate hours as well as having less control over when you can find time to exercise.

For me, it's been a time of new discoveries. When I was at my sister's home in Reading, Pennsylvania, she turned me on to her On Demand exercise videos. She has Comcast Cable, but I remembered that I also have a similar set-up with my AT&T Uverse in Texas. Kathy and I worked out with Jillian Michaels one day and Billy Banks, Jr. another day. It was quite fun! Besides, you may have heard about all the snow the northeast got -- my favorite exercise past time, running, was out of the question so I had to find alternate ways to keep the activity going. In addition to Pennyslvania, we visited the exciting city of New York City. Needless to say, we got a lot of walking in as we explored the lights and adventures all around us. My 2 year old son refused to walk, so I carried him most of the time. Great arm and leg workout! [Check out the picture of me with my family in Time Square!] The foods we got to experience were wonderful. My brother-in-law spoiled us with homemade ravioli and Italian wedding soup one night followed by homemade traditional Italian pizza another night. Desserts included homemade canolis and my sister's famous chocolate cake. Decadent and rich all around!

I know most of you have had a similar situation. You may not have travelled this year, but your Holiday has taken you away from your typical routine. The research shows that the average person may only gain a couple pounds around the Holidays, but the key thing to ensure is that you do not carry those behaviors on throughout the year. Otherwise, those couple pounds could end up translating to 10 more pounds throughout the 2010. Get back into the groove with your healthy lifestyle TODAY. In the January edition of Nutrition Tidbits, there will be many dietitians that will discuss the things they will personally do in their own life to make 2010 the healthiest year yet - including me! I will post a link to that newsletter as soon as it is published. Here's to a Healthy and Happy New Year!

Staying Healthy Through the Holidays

It's amazing how many parties there are in December! But what a fun time to get together with friends and family to remember the reason for the season. But just like you, I need to stay relatively balanced so my healthy lifestyle track doesn't get too far off-kilter. Here are some survival strategies so we can all remember in order to stay on track through the Holiday season:

• Avoid starving yourself in preparation for a party or get together. This is a very common approach, but it is a guaranteed way to take in too many calories. Instead, strategize a plan so you can enjoy calorie-rich foods in moderation.
• Maximize the veggie tray. Most parties do have some lower calorie fare such as vegetable trays and salads. Load your plate with larger portions of these foods to keep your total calories in check.
• Watch those alcohol calories! The average alcoholic drink is around 150 calories, so be mindful of how many you enjoy. Not only do these calories add up, but drinking alcohol decreases inhibitions and could cause you to overeat.
• Contribute the healthier dish. If you need to bring a dish to a potluck party, bring a healthy dish to balance out the higher calorie choices. Most people that have healthy mindsets are very thankful for these type of dishes. This also ensures that you have some low calorie choices to include with the higher calorie foods you plan to eat.
• Be mindful of mindless eating and grazing. Many people tend to eat in the absence of hunger during social situations because the food is simply there. Try and be extra conscious about why you are eating. It sounds obvious, but make sure you only eat when you are hungry and not just because the food is merely there in front of you. Go back to the basics.
• Increase physical activity. Who says time spent with family during the Holidays has to only involve eating and sedentary activities? Be the encourager of your family by suggesting a refreshing morning walk or even an after dinner game of hoops at a local park. Be creatively deliberate about staying active, which is sure to help avoid Holiday weight gain.

Our family is heading to the northeast to celebrate Christmas with friends and extended family members. We will be enjoying many holiday foods of many types. We plan to implement these tips while we travel. There are many trails where we're heading, so my husband and I are looking forward to bundling up and doing some long trail jogs together to maintain our physical activity.

Hope you have a very safe, happy and Healthy Holiday!

Walk On, Brothers and Sisters

I have to make a confession. I am very inefficient in my movements. This is not so good when you have a "to do" list a mile long each day in which you need to have completed in a certain amount of time. How it is good for me is that I am fairly active without having to think about it. Do you know how I know this about myself? It's the pedometer. Yes, a small contraption that you wear on your waist that counts how many steps you take. The national recommendation is 10,000 steps per day (equivalent to 5 miles). On the days that I don't do a formal workout, my count is 11,000-13,000 steps per day. Other than my self-confessed inefficiency, I am also caring for and cleaning up after my 2 young children. So Moms and Dads, this is a great way to "appreciate" cleaning those toys up over and over and over again!

This is a HUGE thing I stress in my consulting practice when counseling weight loss clients. DO NOT FORGET ABOUT YOUR ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING. We count our calories and we make sure we're exercising regularly, but we don't remember the POWER of the rest of your day. In one of my public speaking presentations, I have this slide with a picture of a 24 Hour Fitness - I believe it's in California. There is an escalator right in front of it along with stairs adjacent to the escalator. A person sat outside of that 24 Hour Fitness watching people go in and out. Would you believe that in one entire business day, not ONE person went up those stairs?? Yep, they all opted for the escalator!! This proves the point that we are so compartmentalized in our activity. Only when I "officially working out" will I maximize the burn. Do you think your body knows when you are at 24 Hour Fitness versus moving boxes out of a closet or mopping the floor? Instead of analyzing which burns more, my point is that we all need to remember that our bodies are made to move everyday. Re-think all of your to do items as opportunities to move your body. Limit your screen time like television and recreational computer time to 2 hours per day so you can allow yourself to do other activities that require movement.

How much do you move your body each day? If you are in a job that requires excessive sitting in front of the computer, you may need to be one of those that need to be more conscious about the other hours of your day. Get a pedometer and wear it everyday for 7 days. Take those total steps and divide them by 7 to get your "baseline" steps per day. If you are way off of the 10,000 step mark, make your own realistic goal to increase your average steps per day - maybe by 200 or 500 steps.

Invest in a good, solid pedometer. There are many cheap ones on the market that count 10 steps when you...sneeze! The University of Tennessee found specific pedometers performed the most accurately. The Kenz Lifecorder, Yamax Digi-Walkers SW-200 and SW-701, New Lifestyles NL-2000, and the Sportline 330 ranked among the best. If you want to get more technical, you can consider getting an activity monitor. It looks like a pedometer, but it actually figures the intensity of your movement and will come up with a calorie expenditure number when provided with specific information about yourself. At my practice, we carry the Lifecorder PLUS and many of my clients love the detailed information it provides in order to increase their fitness and calorie burn levels.

The America On The Move website lists 100 ways to add 2,000 steps to your day. Check it out here. I gotta go, I'm gonna go vaccuum. Yippee!

Reinvigorating the Exercise

I love running. It's something I can do to get away from everything and just totally zone out with my iPod on. Back in my single days, I lived in Valley Ranch where I would get up at 4:30 a.m. every morning and jog 5-7 miles several times per week. It wasn't something that I saw as something I "had" to do to stay healthy; it was something I looked forward to doing. Only runners understand the addiction. It's like adrenalin is your drug, and I had to get my fix.

Flash forward to today, some 11 years later and I am married, a business owner and a mother of a 5 and 2 year old. Things have changed! Don't get me wrong, I still love running. But life is constantly getting in the way of my running and other workout efforts. And I will be honest - the love has waned due to my daily "to do" lists; the responsibilities of life like caring for my husband and children, helping others in the health arena and managing our household. The single life afforded me endless amount of time to care for myself. [Did I mention that I would go to bed between 8-8:30 p.m. for the 4:30 a.m. workouts??!] Now, time for myself is a luxury, and my workouts have become something I have to be consciously purposeful in doing. I teach this stuff, and yet I deal with the same struggles of prioritizing workouts. I know firsthand the endless amount of energy I get from regular workouts and how that gives me the boost I need to maximize my life's efforts. I know I sleep deeper, I feel more optimistic about things and my mind works better when I workout. Our bodies were made to move. But yet I still struggle to get out the door sometimes!

What about you? I know many can identify because I see it everyday in the clients that I coach. What helps me is to decide in advance which days of the week that I will workout - the key is being very realistic to what I really think I can accomplish - and then do it just like it was a task on my list. Do this, and don't let yourself decide based on how you "feel" [except for illness]. That's where so many people go wrong. Just do it! Have you ever regretted a workout? Me neither. The other thing I can suggest to do is to maximize your activities of daily living. If you look at people around you that naturally manage their weight well, they are probably active just in their daily tasks. Your body doesn't know the difference between a brisk walk outside and you vacuuming the house. They both raise your heart rate for an extended period of time and both provide the cardiovascular benefit. [Maybe this will help you think of housecleaning differently now!] Minimize sedentary activites and maximize movement - even in your activities of daily living. This will help in-between your workouts. My next blog will be a discussion about pedometers. Do you have one? Which one is best? I will share my thoughts on that next time. Here's to getting ALL of our bodies moving!! Set those personal goals for yourself today.

No Food Police!

Well, thank God there is no food police out there to dictate what you should and shouldn't eat for Thanksgiving! For the first time, our extended family was unavailable to celebrate with us on the actual day, so my husband, Jeff, and I decided to do something unique. We had a Mexican feast! I come from a long line of traditions being of Italian decendant, and we even honored the word "tradition" especially when it came to eating and food. Every Thanksgiving of my life entails eating a traditional turkey-like meal with all the fixings. So this was quite fun to deviate from tradition and eat something completely different. Jeff and I had a really good time cooking together. We balanced the calories by choosing low-fat cheeses, low-fat sour cream for our enchilada sauce and skinless chicken breast. The chips we ate with our Mexican meal were baked and the beans were naturally fat-free. Overall, it was a pretty balanced meal and was even enjoyed by our 2 young children.

This "food police" thought process reminds me of when I meet with many of my clients that skip breakfast daily. They do so simply because they don't like traditional breakfast food. In the U.S., we have regulations on food safety and labeling guidelines on food labels, but we don't have a regulatory agency that tells us that you must eat what the majority of people consider as breakfast food when it's breakfast, and you must eat traditional lunch and dinner food. This sounds silly when we actually think about it, but what crazy food rules do you find yourself obeying without realizing it? Think about it because it may be keeping you from meeting a healthy lifestyle goal. If one of your goals is to eat breakfast on a daily basis and you don't like the traditional breakfast fare, grab something you will eat. It may be a tuna sandwich and a salad or maybe even some of last night's dinner. Great! The bigger goal is to aim for choosing a variety of nutrient-rich foods as much as possible, and keeping your calories spaced throughout the day. This provides much flexibility. Hey, this gives me an idea for tonight's dinner....spinach and tomato omelette, anyone??

Not Worth It In My Calorie Budget

Yesterday I went to see the movie New Moon. Great movie! But I found myself wishing there were some food options other than movie theatre popcorn, nachos and hot dogs. I went to see the 10:10 a.m. showing and I was getting hungry. My Kashi granola bar snack on the way didn't seem to be carrying me until lunch time. The truth is that I really don't like the taste of the foods offered, so they weren't worth my calorie budget. The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) did nutrition analyses on movie popcorn and found that, depending on size, it costed people anywhere from 1/4 to a full day's worth of a person's calorie budget! Now, I like to stay away from food scare tactics in general, but when it comes to calorie balance you need to think about it. Since I do not like the extra greasy taste of movie theatre popcorn anyway, this was an easy decision for me. Fortunately for me, I was able to get some lunch afterwards so I wasn't hungry for long. Is movie theatre popcorn worth it to you? Then plan accordingly. The problem is that people don't often think this way throughout the day and at end of the week, they've considerably overspent their calories. When it comes to movie popcorn, it's a tradition for them. They go to the movie, and they get their popcorn and favorite drink and even maybe some movie candy. It's what they've done for years and it is part of the fabric of their movie experience. It's not even that the movie food they get is that tasty to them!Be careful making these "traditional" decisions over and over in your life. They may just be contributing to your caloric excess.

I like to think about eating plans not unlike a financial plans. In your financial plan, you have line items that are necessary for you to live on and there are also items - if allowable in the calorie budget- that you purchase that are considered "splurges." If you live an active life with regular physical activity and movement within your activities of daily living, your budget may be larger with more allowance for those splurges. But all in all, your financial plan should be balanced so that you don't send yourself into financial ruin. Every personal eating plan allows each person a specific amount of calories that the body needs to live off of, and if you choose to spend more calories than your body needs then you get into debt that manifests in weight gain. Maybe this is an interesting concept that will help you along your healthy lifestyle adventure. Think about it and make changes where necessary. Here's to balanced eating budgets!

Mad Debating over Flavored Milk!

Wow, the debate is fierce! I mentioned in my first blog post that I recently did an interview with the San Antonio Express-News on the topic of flavored milks. Should kids drink it or avoid it? Well, the story ran in Sunday's edition and can be viewed at mysanantonio.com. You'll find it very interesting to see a specific comment after the article on a quote that was specifically from me. What I told the reporter is that we agree with the ADA Total Diet Approach Position Paper where there are no "good" or "bad" foods. We look at eating patterns rather than one single food. The USDA's Food Guide Pyramid allows for a small amount of discretionary calories (an avg of 12-16% of total calories) in a person's diet. This allows for flexibility in an individual's eating patterns to allow for some added sugars and at the same time, the ability to achieve all vitamins and minerals through a well rounded diet. I stressed that we encourage nutrient-rich eating overall and by that I mean getting the most 'bang' for your calorie buck. If a child drinks milk with added sugars, the parent needs to figure that into their daily eating pattern. In my practice, I am very concerned about calcium and Vitamin D intakes among children and adolescents, so we need to allow for some flexibility in order to achieve their needs. Balance and moderation is the key.

The problem with my quote is that it was not expanded upon like I did above, and they may not have given enough information for the angered reader. People, we have got to have a moderate approach to food if we are going to be successful in our individual lives and the lives of our families! Truth be told, I do not typically serve flavored milk at my home. My children drink white milk happily, and it's the drink of choice at most of our meals. However, my kindergarten daughter reports that she chooses strawberry milk when she purchases her meals at school about 2-3 times per week (other days she brings her lunch with white milk to drink). This helps in naturally balancing out her discretionary calories. I am happy to report that she also tells me that she often eats the vegetables that are served to her as well! Again, it goes back to modeling good eating behaviors and serving a variety of foods in the home. When your child is free to choose on their own, most likely it will be much like the foods that they are used to eating at their home. So, chill out...with some white, chocolate or strawberry milk. Just keep it balanced.