Watching headlines and what comes into our email inboxes from media sources is a fascinating way to watch trends.  I’m amazed right now with all the chatter about sodium.  It’s everywhere.  It’s the evil nutrient once again.

But what strikes me is why the press and public health officials are obsessed with sodium, when it isn’t the “big issue.” The “big issue” by far is weight.  Many people are overweight or obese.  Kids carrying too much weight for their ages; adults carrying too much weight for good health. 

I wonder if the reason there is so much focus on sodium and not all that much focus on weight is picking on sodium is easier.  A finger can be pointed at food manufacturers and restaurants – it’s their fault that we eat too much salt.

But weight is personal.  It can lead to uncomfortable discussions.  It can make people feel guilty.  Talking about overweight kids is even more touchy, as it suggests parents aren’t doing their jobs.  We are overfeeding and under-exercising our kids.  Every parent wants the best for their kids, and suggesting that we’re doing a poor job of raising them is tricky territory to venture into. 

But weight is the “big issue” in our country today.  We need to have the discussion.  And we need to have it again and again and again.  Even if it’s uncomfortable, we have to step up to the plate and talk about it. 

Visit www.nuval.com to see a system where the calories per gram of food impacts the food’s score.

I know.  It’s December.  The season of office parties and cookie bakes and holiday cocktails.  It is not the time of year that any of us really want to think about losing (or even maintaining) weight.  But I’m asking you to, and here’s why.

Come January 1^st, we all think about healthy behaviors we want to adopt and changes in our lifestyle we want to make.  Of course we do it on that day, after having eating all the cookies we baked, enjoyed all those family meals and holiday parties.  But I would contend that starting now, on December 1^st will help you in the long run.  It will help you avoid overindulging over this next month, and on January 1, you can wake up feeling pretty dang good about yourself.

The National Weight Control Registry  (NWCR) follows 10,000 individuals who have lost an average of 66 pounds and kept it off for 5.5 years.  The NWCR has learned the primary ways these people have kept this weight off:

• 78% eat breakfast every day
• 75% weigh themselves at least one a week
• 62% watch less than 10 hours of television per week
• 90% exercise about an hour a day
• Most continue to follow a low calorie, low fat eating plan

These tips aren’t necessarily just for those who are interested in losing weight, but can work for any of us as we work through the next four weeks of indulgence.  Follow these now, and wake up ahead of the resolution game on January 1^st, 2012.

Visit www.nuval.com to choose nutritious breakfast foods to eat every day.

When I started my career, there were still smoking rooms in workplaces.  But since then, we have seen taxes on cigarette packages, bans on smoking in all public places, increased insurance premiums for smokers, and in some cases, companies that now refuse to hire smokers.  Government intervention, environmental and policy change were all effective in making huge strides in this public health issue.

There is much debate today as to whether the same approach should be taken with food.  Should a “fat tax” be assessed against junk foods?  Should obese individuals be assessed higher insurance premiums?

I read quite a bit on this topic, and understand the rationale.  We have an obesity epidemic in our country, and our behaviors are contributing significantly to this problem.  Obesity and its related disease are burdening our health care industry and national debt.  Individuals don’t appear to be taking responsibility for the issue.

But the issue for me in this argument has always been that cigarette smoking and food are not the same.  You can completely cut cigarettes out of your life.  You can stop cold turkey one day and never go back.  You can never start and live your whole life without ever smoking.

But food is necessary to live.  We need to eat food every day.  Several times a day in fact.

So the real issue is treating food responsibly.  Managing food in order to manage our health, and it gets tricky to understand how government involvement would help us with this task.  Take a fat tax, for example.  What foods would get taxed?  Many entities have tried to suggest soda pop should get taxed.  But then shouldn’t you also tax fruit juices, as they often have the same or more calories per serving and not any nutritional value to mention?  Does chicken at KFC get taxed but not the fried chicken you make at home?

Then there’s the genetic component of obesity, with experts suggesting that our genetic make-up contributes to about 30% of obesity.  Should the individual be penalized for their family history?

It’s a complicated issue, with many sides to it, which will continue to be debated until the health crisis in our country changes.

Visit www.nuval.com to see a system that can help you take personal responsibility to manage your food choices and manage your health.

Weighing In – Stress Eating

I have a brother-in-law undergoing treatment for cancer.  I am in the midst of a master bathroom remodel.  My 9-year-old bulldog Diesel was recently diagnosed with a heart valve defect, and I now have a cardiac patient in my house.  It’s May, when every teacher at Jack’s school tries to cram in one more major project in addition to all the band concerts and end-of-year programs.

Needless to say, my stress level is a bit high these days.

I don’t know about you, but when stressed, I waver between being too sick to my stomach to eat to eating any form of junk food that is in my house.  Unless it goes on for days and weeks, the former isn’t really detrimental to my health.  But the later, again if left unchecked, definitely can negatively impact my health.

So what to do?

One of the biggest helps I’ve found to manage stress eating is actually borrowed from the Alcoholics Anonymous program.  It’s the acronym HALT, which stands for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. The point is to identify the real emotion and deal with that instead of using food as the answer for all stress.  If you’re Angry, find a support person to talk to, journal, or exercise it away.  Lonely, find a friend to hit a comedy movie, go to lunch with coworkers, ask your spouse for a hug. Tired, sleep, read a book. And finally, if you’re Hungry, eat. I’ve found that dealing with the feeling I have is the only help, and that food doesn’t feed the real craving all these emotions bring.

How do you manage stress eating?

Visit www.nuval.com to find the healthiest foods to help you manage through stressful times.

I’ve been thinking a lot about chewing lately.  I know, it sounds weird, but it’s true.  I think the reason I’ve been thinking about chewing a lot lately is that in general we don’t think about chewing often enough.

The human body is an amazing vessel.  The varying parts are connected in ways we don’t often think about, and this is definitely true of chewing.  The process of chewing food, and as a part of this, slowing down the process of eating, connects to our stomachs and our brains, where the satiety (think feeling full) center is located.

Think about apple juice vs. a whole apple.  You don’t feel nearly as full after you drink ½ cup of apple juice as you do when you eat an apple.  Part of the reason is chewing.  With juice, you never chew.  But with the apple, the food form forces extensive chewing.  The simple act of chewing the apple sends signals to your brain.  Additionally, the time it takes to chew gives your whole mouth the experience with the apple – the texture of it, the flavor of it, the temperature of the apple.  All this sensory stimulation to your mouth also affects your satiety center.  Then there’s the fact that chewing slows down the eating process, and the time it takes to consume a snack or a meal.  This impacts sensors in your stomach, which also send messages to your brain.  A slower eating process makes you feel full sooner, leading you to consume less food and fewer calories overall. 

The bottom line?  Chewing food well and choosing foods that require more chewing are key parts of weight maintenance.  Some research by the Wrigley Science Institute even suggests that chewing sugar free gum may help stop cravings.  So the next time you’re hungry, focus on chewing and see the difference it can make.

Visit www.nuval.com to chew on foods with higher overall nutrition quality, another component of managing weight.

A colleague asked an interesting question – has the fashion and cultural trend towards looser fitting clothes contributed to the skyrocketing rates of overweight people in our country?

I don’t know the answer, don’t know of research specifically related to this topic, but find it an interesting point.  Rarely anymore does anyone tuck in a shirt.  Leggings are back in style (but now called jeggings) and elastic waist sweatpants or sports pants are commonplace.  Companies have moved to “business casual” policies and people in general dress up less frequently.  Dress clothes have historically tended to be more fitted, so it’s logical that as we’ve gone more casual, everyone is wearing less fitted clothing.  Shari Steinbach, a dietitian for Meijer grocery stores, told me this morning that her husband found “flex waist” khaki pants on a recent shopping trip, designed to give you that extra inch of room when you need it. 

My sense is that wearing loose fitting clothes most days of the week does make it more difficult to monitor weight and know if something is fitting tighter than it used to.  Long gone are the days of corsets, which made you feel every pound you gained.

It’s an interesting and compelling idea to use tailored, fitted clothes as a weight management strategy.  Why not find that pair of tailored pants that fit perfectly at a healthy weight, and keep them in your closet no matter if they’re still in style.  Put them on once a week just to make sure they still fit how you expect them to.

Visit www.nuval.com for high scoring, nutrient dense foods that can help you fit into those pants for years to come.

This past weekend, my family was at the local Menards store looking for garage storage options.  Walking through a home improvement store like Menards, you expect to see flooring options, a paint section, stacks of lumber.  But are you expecting to see rows of shelves stocked with food?

Well that’s exactly what we saw during our Menards shopping trip.

It raises the point that food is everywhere in our culture.  The station where I get gas offers “2 hot dogs for $1.00.”  Walgreens has gallons of milk for $1.88.  Furniture stores offer coffee, hot chocolate and cookies.    We wonder how we’ve become an overweight society, but don’t think through the pervasiveness of food in our culture.

Having worked for five years at Target, I understand why all these companies want to sell food.  Groceries are something we need for everyday living.  So people will shop stores more frequently if they have food.  You may only hit the home improvement store once every couple of months, but if you know they may potentially have good deals on food, will you stop in once a week?  And while you’re there, the odds are you might buy some non-food products.  That’s the goal of the store.

But it puts a lot of pressure on us to have the will power to continually say “no.”

What we all really need is skill power, behaviors that give our will power a break.  Here are some of my ideas for building skills to manage the fact that food is everywhere and not going away anytime soon:

• Make a family rule that you only buy food at certain stores.  This then pre-empts nagging kids asking for candy and you from grabbing a fancy coffee every time you stop at the gas station.
• Change your driving patterns.  I have three fast food restaurants less than a half-mile from my house.  But I choose to take a different route and not drive by them.  Out of sight, out of mind.
• Stay focused on the task at hand and what’s on “the list.”  At the home improvement store, I was looking for garage storage options, not food.  So I bought garage storage, not food.

What ideas do you have for building skill power against the plethora of food in our everyday living?

Visit www.nuval.com to understand the overall nutrition quality of all the food options out there.

Whether you’re a fantasy football addict,  a scrapbooker or a Human Resource Professional, there’s something to be said for documentation.  In fantasy football, it’s who’s scoring the points, who has the most yards and deciding which players to activate each week.  Scrapbookers document their family histories, great trips, or their children’s childhoods.  HR professionals document just about everything.

When it comes to managing weight, documentation is one of the top success factors.  Life is busy, and food and exercise get fit into the rest.  So it can be hard to have a real sense of what you’re eating, the times of day you struggle with, or where exercise might fit in.  Knowing that you’re going to write it down also forces you to take a step back and think about what you’re going to eat before you eat it.  Documenting your weight over time (whether it’s once a week or once a month), can help you see pounds that slowly add on over time.

Here are some suggestions on how you might start documenting your health habits:

• For three days (choose at least one weekend day), write down everything you eat and drink.  Then sit down and take a look at it.  Did you get in 5-9 servings of fruits and vegetables a day?  Is eating out at lunch the break down for you?  Do you sit down at 9 pm to wind down and find yourself snacking?  Or are you living off of basketball gym or hockey rink concession stands on the weekends?  Take a look at where improvements can be made in your overall eating habits.  Set goals, such as always having a fruit or vegetable at breakfast or only eating lunch out once a week.  While you may not choose to document your eating habits on an ongoing basis, just this exercise can make you see where there might be areas for improvement.
• If you are looking to lose weight, tracking on an ongoing basis can definitely be the habit that leads you to success.  Look online for food tracking tools, or make up one of your own.  It can be as simple as adding it to your calendar or jotting it as notes on your iPad or phone.  Set goals for your eating habits, and track how well you do.  People can get discouraged if they have a celebration dinner out or a big event where they over-indulge.  But still write it down.  Overtime, you’ll be able to notice patterns in what you’re eating. 
• Meal planning can be another way of documenting.  If you think through and write down what you’re having for dinner all this week, you’re more likely to make sure it includes healthy options.  As you’ve got it all planned, you’re more likely to stick to the plan.
• For most people, their weight doesn’t jump up dramatically in two months.  Most often, we put on 2-5 pounds a year, and then suddenly realize we need bigger sizes of clothes.  For this reason, documenting your weight is a good idea.  Even if you write it down once a month, over time you’ll be able to manage the number to ensure it stays in a healthy range. 
• Tracking activity can be an activity for the whole family.  It can be set up as a challenge – can mom and dad exercise as much as the kids (and trust me this can be hard to do, with gym class and kids’ sports!)?  Can the family walk enough miles to get to Disney World?

Whatever you’re preferred method, documenting can make a big difference in managing weight.

Visit www.nuval.com if you want to include your food scores in your documenting.

It’s January, that time of year when everyone becomes more health conscious, and many of us start setting weight loss goals.  Whether it’s the rebound from the holiday cookies and New Year’s parties, or the thought of getting into a swim suit over spring break, weight loss is the topic of the month.

But soon, much of this intense focus on weight management will fade.  I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer here, but it is the reality of New Year’s resolutions.  Many of us stick to the goal for a few weeks, then revert to our old habits.

The issue, though, is that weight management is a huge issue in our country.  As a part of my job, I do a lot of presentations, and below is a slide I often show.  In a nutshell, in a very short time – just 20 years – our nation has become obese. 

Because of the importance of this issue, my new year’s resolution is to blog about weight management once every week, giving tips for maintaining or getting to a healthy weight, talking about kids and weight, providing my professional opinion on news items related to weight management – weighing in on this important topic, so to speak.  It’s a topic that touches all our lives, and one that definitely warrants this level of “ink.”  So starting next week, watch for the new segment “Weighing In.”

Visit www.nuval.com to discover high scoring foods that can help you manage your weight.

I am outraged at the Washington Post  article that crossed my desk last week.  It’s been a week, and I’m still outraged. 

The article highlighted the fact that in the new and improved Weight Watchers point system, fruit is now zero points, meaning it is a “free food.”  Apparently, there are some health professionals who believe this is not a good idea.  They’re suggesting that fruit doesn’t pack enough of a nutrition punch for the calories and sugar it contains.  They’re also saying that people trying to lose weight need fewer carbohydrates, not more.

But here’s my issue.  The article says that fruit doesn’t pack enough nutrition punch.  Compare to WHAT?!  Candy bars?  100 calorie pack cookies?  Trail mix?  Yogurts (most of which are sugar sweetened)?  In all seriousness, the only food category I can think of that is more nutrient dense and low in calories is vegetables.  And yes, as a dietitian, I would say that vegetables are a better choice than fruits.  But seriously, people aren’t often choosing between fruits and vegetables; they’re choosing between fruits and candy bars or 100 calorie packs or trail mix or yogurt, none of which are a better nutrition choice than fruit.

Now on to the carbohydrate issue.  I agree that in the U.S. we have become overconsumers of carbs.  But it isn’t in the form of fruit.  As the data indicates and as I’ve addressed previously in this blog, we’re getting it from regular pop, doughnuts, muffins, pasta and breads made with white, refined flour – all of which pack very little nutrition punch when put up against fruit.

So the bottom line?  Weight Watchers is right.  Eat whole fruits.  Count them as zero points.  Choose them instead of the plethora of other snacks and side dishes that have far less nutrition quality. 

Visit www.nuval.com to use a system that understands the value of fruits in overall eating habits, ranking them as one of the highest scoring food categories.