 Remember all the fun activities you enjoyed as a child? Summers meant swimming, bike riding, skating, roller blading, baseball, softball, soccer, hide and seek, Four Square, tag, hopscotch, climbing trees, jumping rope, playing on monkey bars, and obstacle courses. I’m sure you can add a few. The magic of childhood meant lots of physical activity without knowing it!
As adults, young and old, we tend to be a sedentary bunch. Take some time today and every day this summer to do something fun, like you did as a child. If you want more serious and structured suggestions, see my previous post. If you want to recapture playing, it’s time to gather your friends, kids or neighbors for Red Rover, Red Light-Green Light, kickball, and other fun, non-competitive games to get physically active. For rainy days, you can also try one of the myriad videos available for kids and families, like the ones featured here. Enjoy these long days and stay healthy!
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 Physical Activity refers to any of your body’s movements that
use energy and involve contraction of skeletal muscles - so, almost any movement. This includes walking, standing up, taking the stairs, doing household chores, and working in the yard. Exercise is a type of physical activity that is planned, structured and repetitive, done to improve or maintain physical fitness. I usually call it intentional, because you typically have to think about it and do it purposefully to improve your fitness in some way. Or to have fun :) Which should you do? Both! If you currently have a sedentary lifestyle, meaning you don’t get much of either, start incorporating Physical Activity into each day. Just a few examples include:
Once you are physically active throughout the day, add Exercise. This means you get your heart rate up for at least 10 minutes and cannot sing (you can talk but not sing when you are exercising at a moderate exertion). At least four times a week, try one of these (and work up to 30 or more minutes as soon as you can):
Why add physical activity and exercise to your life? Research shows they helps with stress management, weight maintenance, sleep quality, digestion, chronic disease management and prevention, slowed bone loss with age, improved flexibility and balance, and even better pain management of arthritis. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans from the Department of Health and Human Resources recommends that healthy adults move more and sit less. Read more of their recommendations here. You got this! P.S. I know, this was way more than 200 words! Thanks for hanging in there :) If there is one thing most people have learned in the past year about their health, it is to not take our immune system for granted. We need to do all we can to help it do its work to fight off illness and infections.
In that spirit, I received so many questions that I decided to put my suggestions into a book, both to provide help in preventing illness and to counteract all the confusing misinformation out there. In Eat to Defeat Viruses: A Nutritionist’s Guide to Strengthening Your Immunity, I lay out the most important things you can do related to your diet, physical activity, stress and self-care… all in a practical, eat to read way that motivates you. Reviewers call it a “must read”. I hope you enjoy it. There is a common phrase among nutrition professionals that “All Foods Fit”. It means you do not have to give up your favorite foods in order to be healthy, lose weight, or manage a chronic illness. I say “Most Foods Fit” because truly, you may have a medical restriction - an allergy, intolerance or illness that necessitates avoiding certain foods, like wheat bread or butter.
If you don’t have a medical restriction, then yes, all foods can fit. This is a cornerstone of intuitive eating, the practice of making peace with food so that it does not control you; rather, you are in control and get to make choices related to what you do and do not want to eat. Here’s how it works. If you like cookies, you eat cookies. If you like tortilla chips, you eat tortilla chips. Because who doesn’t crave what they can’t have? If you tell me that I can’t have chocolate, the one thing I want is chocolate. Why even go there? But it isn’t a free-for-all, either. It is in your best interest, the best interest of your health, to eat a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean proteins, legumes, good fats, and dairy/dairy substitutes. If you eat six cookies for lunch, you won’t leave room for those beneficial food groups. You won’t feel or look well either, if you choose to eat unlimited amounts of processed foods – think constipation, acne, headaches, sluggishness, etc. So, you decide to take care of yourself by choosing a variety of food groups that give you nutrients, including fiber, vitamins and minerals. All Foods Fit means not labeling foods as good or bad - so no patting yourself on the back for eating carrots and no feeling guilty about eating fries - AND this philosophy means loving yourself enough to eat a variety of foods. For example, if you are craving fries, plate up a portion of grilled chicken and fresh fruit along with a small serving of fries. Your body will thank you. Best of health. One of the most common questions I get is a version of “What should I eat at each meal?”. It might sound like “What is a meal?” or “What does a good meal or snack look like?”. If you wonder the same thing, don’t feel guilty or hopeless; years of convenience foods, advertising influences, and grazing have led many people to feel lost when it comes to serving up a healthy meal.
A simple way to start is to picture a round plate, ½ filled with vegetables and/or fruit, ¼ filled with a lean protein, and ¼ filled with a complex carbohydrate. We call this the Plate Method because it allows us to visualize a healthy meal using a plate, without counting calories or macros. I love its simplicity as well as its benefits – it gets us a meal full of fiber, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals while leading to fullness and satisfaction. You won’t get these benefits from a bowl of instant ramen noodles or a pastry. Of course, every meal doesn’t have to look like this, but it works well for lunch and dinner. For example…
At risk for diabetes? Learn how the CDC recommends using the plate method for meal planning here. Best of health. Did you know that feelings of hunger and fullness are sharper in children than in adults? That’s because they are less influenced by habit and environmental factors, so they actually listen to their bodies. Eating when you are hungry, and stopping when you are almost full, may be the secret to getting a handle on mindless eating and overeating.
For more information, try using my Hunger and Fullness Scale! Best of health. Welcome back to Just One Thing! After a crazy year, I return to offer my insight for getting back on track - back to taking care of your health by doing just one small thing at a time. Remember, little steps lead to long journeys and little actions lead to big changes.
This month, let’s make a New Year’s Resolution to make health a priority. No more bingeing on sourdough bread, no more day drinking, no more curling up on the couch for hours on end. Once a day, I aim to eat a healthful plant-based meal high in vegetables, and once a day I aim to move for 30 minutes or more. Will you join me? Happy New Year and best of health! P.S. I am also starting a new blog where I get more specific about one specialty area: going gluten-free! 2020 started off like most other years, but quickly became a time of reset. I have deleted my blogs from this time period to focus intentionally and mindfully as I move forward. I hope you are all able to do the same.
Thank you to all of my readers who have kept this site so popular over the past two years! I can't wait to update you when I log back in! Students in New York are learning about food systems and all the effort that goes into getting food items from the farm to their plates. They are also discovering the impacts of food waste, fast food, advertising, and other topics. You can learn more, too: Eating as Part of the Natural World. Just One Thing: Think about how your food is connected to the environment, culture, farmers, ranchers, and other producers.  This Friday is National Cocoa Day! The main ingredient of chocolate, cocoa contains compounds called flavanols, which have many health benefits - including protecting the heart, lowering blood pressure, preventing blood clots, and reducing inflammation throughout the body. They also have been shown to improve thinking skills by helping brain cell connections, as discussed here: Cocoa: a sweet treat for the brain? The benefits of cocoa extend to its food products, including cocoa powder and dark chocolate. Too much butter fat and sugar found in café hot chocolate drinks will outweigh the benefits, so try making your own hot chocolate with dark cocoa powder, skim milk and enough sugar to sweeten but not overwhelm. Just One Thing to do: Enjoy a cup of flavanol-full hot cocoa.  Many clients have told me over the years that they start unhealthy eating habits around Halloween and continue right through December 31. But a new month is always a good opportunity for a fresh start. Use the next few weeks to give your body the food it deserves! First, clean out the refrigerator. Toss your Thanksgiving leftovers – the mashed potatoes and gravy are past their expiration dates, anyway, and any pie or whipped topping lurking in the freezer are better off in the trash. Second, review the food groups. Your body is probably craving vegetables, even if the weather is cold. Use a slow cooker to prepare a chili, stew or soup that is rich in vegetables and beans; these will fill you up, provide hydration and fiber, and satisfy you in a comforting way that cold chips and cookies cannot. Lastly, have fruit visible and easily accessible. Apples and oranges are in season, and frozen fruit that is gently heated makes a great topping for yogurt and oatmeal. Just One Thing to do: Start each meal with a vegetable or make vegetables the focus of your meal with homemade chili, stew or soup.  Wherever you are, whatever the weather, going outside is good for your health. Sunlight and fresh air help manage and prevent anxiety, improve sleep, boost immunity, and stimulate your thinking skills. Adding some physical activity to the mix will burn calories and lift your mood. If it's cold, be sure to bundle up - wear warm socks and sturdy shoes while covering your head, face and hands. Warm or cold, wear sunscreen, sunglasses and a hat. Just One Thing to do: Head outside after lunch to walk around the block and take deep breaths of fresh air.  My recent blog about self-care generated a lot of emails, and I’m so happy to know it was the reminder many of you needed to take care of yourselves. In this crazy time, we need to pay attention to our mental and physical health. Along those lines, I want to continue to encourage nutrition self-care with intuitive eating. This is an approach to food and health that says do not diet, do not deprive yourself, and do not feel guilty about eating. An intuitive eating philosophy says you know your hunger and your fullness signals – or at least you can learn to. This makes it possible to honor your body without outside influences from others, from social media, from the scale, from diets. Do you want to get started eating intuitively? Start by making peace with food – it is supposed to be nourishing, not the enemy. It is ok to eat a variety of foods, and if you stop thinking of a food as forbidden or off limits, you will be less likely to crave it and binge on it. So listen when your body says it is hungry, and just as importantly, listen when it says it is full. The more you practice paying attention to hunger and fullness, the more you will trust your body. For additional steps to take, visit the experts’ 10 Principle of Intuitive Eating here. Just One Thing to do: Use Intuitive Eating to trust your food choices.  The National Institutes of Health designates November as National Diabetes Month, and this year its focus is on the link between diabetes and cardiovascular disease (see information here and the image below) because individuals with diabetes are likely to have heart disease or stroke. In addition to encouraging you to see your doctor for an updated exam and lab work, I like to highlight the good news: Did you know diabetes can be managed to prevent complications? Increasing your physical activity just a little bit, making just a few healthful food changes, and monitoring your blood sugar can make a huge difference. I know sometimes people get overwhelmed thinking about the “should’s” of diabetes management: I should exercise, I should go on a diet, I should skip holiday dinners. But it doesn’t have to be that hard. If you have type 1 diabetes, talk to your doctor and dietitian about balancing your insulin, food and activity with your lifestyle to maintain your blood sugar. If you have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, determine if you need to lose weight. Just a 5% weight loss can reduce your blood sugar and your cardiovascular disease markers; that means losing 10 pounds if you weigh 200 pounds. To me, that is certainly more reasonable and realistic than thinking about needing to lose 20, 30 or even 40 pounds. If you do need to lose weight, add a 30 minute walk daily along with smaller portion sizes at every meal and snack. Those, too, are reasonable and realistic changes! Just One Thing To Do: Instead of being overwhelmed, focus on small, reasonable lifestyle changes to feel better and prevent complications.  I recently enjoyed dinner with friends, and we all agreed it ended with the perfect Fall dessert: cooked apples with a scoop of natural vanilla ice cream. What made this dessert special was its simplicity, not to mention how easy it was to prepare and how great it smelled and tasted. I simply cored and chopped up 6 medium size granny smith apples, placed them in a slow cooker with about 1 inch of water, added generous sprinkles of cinnamon and a cinnamon stick, and left them to simmer. I tasted occasionally, and ended up adding a tablespoon of brown sugar and a pinch of pumpkin pie spice about halfway through their six-hour cooking time. When guests arrived, the house smelled amazing and when it was time for dessert, there was no prep required. Best of all, the health benefits of apples are numerous. They contain fiber, potassium, vitamin C and antioxidants – read more here! Pears can also be cooked in a slow cooker just like apples, and they share important traits for preventing digestive problems, outlined here. Just One Thing to do: Enjoy apples and pears fresh or cooked for their wonderful flavor and health benefits.  Self-Care is a trending topic, and I am a fan. Until recently, I never took the time to prioritize my own needs – I’m sure you’ve been there, either going to school, nurturing your career, helping partners and friends, raising children, caring for aging parents, volunteering, you name it. But self-care can help you do all of those things better. It is essentially taking care of your needs so that you can stay healthy both physically and mentally, with enough energy to live your best life. There are many ways to incorporate self-care into your day to manage stress and stay fit: taking a daily walk, getting enough sleep, doing meditation or yoga, optimizing your work environment, journaling, scheduling a massage or mani-pedi, connecting with nature, and feeding your spiritual self with prayer, gratitude or inspirational quotes. And most importantly, there is what I call “Nutrition Self-Care”. Do you feel your best when you skip breakfast, snack on donuts at work, and eat fast food for lunch? What about if you overindulge in late night beer, chocolate, or chips? None of those are off limits, and I am not advocating counting calories or macros. Instead, I’m thinking how much better you will feel if you…
You have to own your health. Diets won’t do. Deprivation won’t do. Your body deserves good food, and it is the ultimate self-care to make it a priority. Just One Thing: Make time for “Nutrition Self-Care” by fueling your body with good, wholesome foods you love.  I love sweets as much as anyone, and I don’t hesitate to enjoy a couple pieces of chocolate or a chewy sugar cookie on occasion. But what if I want dessert Every. Single. Day? A daily intake of sugar and fat is not great for my blood cholesterol, triglycerides, or glucose levels, not to mention the extra empty calories. So I opt for desserts that have a nutritional benefit as well as a treat for my taste buds. These usually include something with fruit, vegetables, nuts, and/or whole grains. This time of year, I love zucchini bread and pumpkin bread. Find a recipe from your favorite cookbook, website or friend, and make a few healthful substitutions, like these:
I am often asked for recipes but honestly, I prefer to teach you to make these substitutions so you can turn any recipe into a nutrition rockstar. If you need a place to start, I like Cooking Light and Eating Well (click to link) Then, remember to keep your portions reasonable by listening to when your stomach says it is almost full. Just One Thing to do: Enjoy fall vegetables like zucchini and pumpkin by baking them into a healthful recipe!  Exactly one year ago, I encouraged readers to think twice before jumping on the Keto bandwagon (http://www.melissawdowik.com/blog/keto-what). Now, a new statement from the National Lipid Association Nutrition and Lifestyle Task Force weighs the pros and cons of low carbohydrate and very low carbohydrate diets, including a ketogenic diet. Not surprisingly, their thorough review of the literature led them to conclude that these diets do not offer benefits for weight loss above other calorie-limited intakes - in their words, there is not one macronutrient distribution that is superior for weight loss or for the management of Type 2 diabetes. There is some evidence that a very low carbohydrate diet helps with appetite control, improve triglycerides, and reduce medication use for type 2 diabetes, but by two years, there were no differences in these markers. In addition, there are potential negative side effects from low intakes of fiber and complex carb foods, such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains. Key Take-Aways:
Just One Thing: Treat yourself to a well-proven recipe for weight loss and maintenance that includes eating less, moving more, and getting social support to continue these positive behaviors!  Meatless Monday is not just a great idea, it’s a global movement! In collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, Meatless Monday is an effort to decrease meat consumption for our health and our planet’s health. If you are a meat eater, going just one day a week without meat, especially red meat and processed meat, is not a big sacrifice but has big benefits for you: better heart health, lower risk of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes, healthier kidneys, and improved weight management, not to mention saving money. Eating less meat is also good for the earth: reduced use of resources (including the land and water needed to raise meat) and reduced pollution (including methane gas emissions and waste products). Meatless options are plentiful; try these plant-based foods that provide protein and other nutrients:
Check out these recipes and additional resources from the Meatless Monday website, plus read about the Meat Free Monday movement started by Paul McCartney and even more recipes here. 😊 Just One Thing to do: Enjoy Meatless Mondays for a healthier you and a healthier planet!  I have been waiting months for the sound of crunching leaves under my sneakers 😊. Every Fall, I get a renewed burst of energy for exercise, since it means I can take it outside. Why should you exercise if you aren’t as excited as I am? The benefits of physical activity are numerous:
Check out more benefits from the Mayo Clinic here and remember, it does not have to be boring, strict or painful - just walking or playing are great. Find tips for making fitness fun for the whole family here. Just One Thing to do: Get outside to move a bit and make fitness fun!  I love football season, whether I’m outside playing catch or watching a game, or inside cheering on my team from the sofa. Usually watching games means snacking on fun, tasty foods and drinks. The occasional nachos and hot dogs are fine, but if you find yourself in this ritual once or twice a week, consider some more nutritious options. For beverages, have a variety of options available, including beer, light beer, alcohol with light mixers, and sparkling water. A good rule is to drink a cup of water between servings of alcohol. For hearty snacks, make pulled chicken barbecue on mini buns, turkey chili, or French dip sandwiches. For somewhat lighter fare, try chicken nachos, hummus and pita bread, or bean dip with corn tortillas. I love these sweet potato skins. Have a variety of fruits and vegetables on platters for easy munching, along with big bowls of light popcorn. Check out these links for colorful, nutritious recipes from Cooking Light and Eating Well. Just One Thing to do: Enjoy football snacking with a variety of healthful foods and drinks.   I did not coin the term “portion distortion” but I wish I had; it calls attention to our changing views and social norms about what is considered a normal amount of food to eat at one sitting.
You may have heard that restaurant portions are enough for two people, but they have actually grown large enough that one serving would be the right amount for three people. That means we need to save 2/3 to take home with us or share the meal three ways. For example, a burger at Applebee’s or TGI Friday’s can give you enough calories, fat, and sodium for more than half your day’s needs (or your whole day’s worth if you are inactive and over 60). Even if you do not eat out often, the portion distortion of restaurants have a carry-over effect, in that now people expect portions at home to be similarly large. Dinner plates have gotten larger, too, making it difficult to judge how much to serve ourselves. To reset your visual image of portion sizes, compare approximately 1 serving of each of these to the item listed: Vegetables: baseball Beans and legumes: computer mouse Meat, poultry and fish: the palm of your hands or a deck of cards Fruit: tennis ball Cheese: wine cork Peanut butter: golf ball Grains: baseball or hockey puck Check out other good visual tools here and here. Just One Thing to do: Enjoy food, real food, good food. Just don’t go overboard on portion sizes. Today we celebrate the 125th anniversary of Labor Day, a holiday honoring the American worker. Being an American worker, I am keeping my blog easy by recommending previous posts and publications! Fortunately, this information does not go out of date. If you are grilling or picnicking today, as many of us are, consider limiting processed meat (read more) and enjoying smaller beef portions (read more) as well as eating alternatives such as plant based burgers (read more). Also, be sure to follow safe grilling guidelines (read more). Lastly, don’t forget to include a variety of fruits and vegetables recommended by the DASH diet for health and longevity (newspaper article). Just One Thing to do: Have a wonderful Labor Day and happy eating!  |
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