May 5, 2008 by admin.

According to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the “Sensing” preference knows how to stay in the here-and-now.  In contrast, the “iNtuitive” preference is interested in “what might be” and so has a harder time staying in the present moment.  Yet, behaviors that help you lose weight must take place in the “now”.  Every time you postpone doing something now, let’s say exercising, the likelihood of it taking place later is slim.  Be honest with yourself.  How many times have you promised yourself I’ll get to it later and it never happens.

 If you have Sensing in your personality type, you have a better chance of doing something now than later.  Making eating decisions is a “now” experience.  How many times have you heard someone say “I’ll start my diet on Monday morning.”  You were probably talking with someone who has iNtuition in their type name.  It’s putting off until tomorrow what you know you should do today.

Maybe the best thing you can do for yourself is find out what your type is, what its strengths are and how it can challenge you.  Visit my website at www.advantagediets.com and check out what personality typing is all about.  You’ll find it fascinating and you’ll probably find, after determining your own type, how you start trying to guess what the type is of your friends and family.  Personality type is great for understanding people better.

Posted in Personality Typing based on MBTI | 1 Comment »

February 13, 2008 by admin.

To healthcare professionals:

We ask our clients and patients to eat more healthfully, reducing their fat and sugar intake, and increasing their intake of fiber by eating grains, fruits and vegetables.  Is that really the whole message of healthy eating?  If so, why are we getting the backlash of such books as “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan and “The Gospel of Food” by Barry Glassner?

Are we too “nutrient-focused,” telling people to eat more tomatoes because of the lycopene in it or eat more spinach because of the iron?  And with this focus, have we taken the joy and pleasure out of eating as Glassner proposes in his book?  Do you think if our message was to have pleasure in the eating process that we would have even more obesity in our country?  Obesity has increased under our watch.  What is the healthcare industry doing wrong?

Are we actually being too negative when we tell people what not to eat?  Being told the negative of something gets one to focus that much more on it.  Maybe we’re fostering food obsessions by pointing out what shouldn’t be done. 

Many studies today pull out particular nutrients of interest to study and then draw conclusions from the results.  We then stray away from the concept of whole foods and emphasize the concept of individual nutrients.  In so doing, we encourage people to take supplements of individual nutrients instead of just seeing the value of eating a variety of foods.  Do consumers lack confidence that our food supply can provide us with all we need?

I wonder if we’re presenting the consumer with too much information.  Do consumers have to know what happens to individual nutrients in the body (e.g., saturated fat can lead to the production of plaque)?  Or would we get more followers if we just talked about good food choices and not give the reason why they’re good for you?   In some ways, we’ve opened pandora’s box by giving some information but not all of it.  Most consumers couldn’t absorb all the information we in the heatlhcare industry know about physiology, metabolism, etc.   I think we’ve created a population becoming obsessed with individual nutrients and forgetting the big picture.  While the food guide pyramid provides a list of good foods, it also tells us what to avoid.  And even with the government’s efforts, it seems that there is still a large portion of the population that is in the dark about what healthy eating is all about.

So, if you were to create the “big picture” of healthy eating, what would it look like and how would you market it to the general population?

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February 11, 2008 by admin.

I’ll bet that your first response would be “food that is low in fat, low in calories, low in sugar, and high in fiber.”  But I’ll also bet that you never thought about whether the food you’re referring to is tasty.  Many Americans equate the concept of healthy foods with foods that they think they SHOULD eat rather than with foods that they WANT to eat.  Often eating those “should” foods is followed by eating “want” foods so, in the end, more food has been consumed than necessary.

Are your “want” foods really unhealthy?  To answer that you need to decide in your own mind whether low-fat, low-calorie, low-sugar, low-fiber, etc. foods are as unhealthy as you’ve been led to believe?  If eating them causes you to to “overcompensate” by eating foods with just the opposite profile - high in fat, sugar, and calories - now that’s unhealthy.

Maybe we need to move away from the concept of “legal” foods and think more in terms of what our bodies need for us to run at optimal efficiency.  If eating sugar-laden foods makes you feel that you need to take an afternoon nap, I’d say those aren’t healthy foods.   If eating very salty foods makes you feel bloated, you need to ask yourself why you would treat yourself in such a way that makes you feel you’re not living at the best level of health.  If you’re overweight and find climbing stairs makes you feel winded, whatever you’ve been eating that contributed to your weight gain is obviously not good for you.

 On the other hand, let’s take the individuals who aren’t overweight, seem to have plenty of energy no matter what they need to accomplish during the day,  and don’t find themselves fixating on food, what do you think they would say about their diet?  I bet they’d say that they don’t live to eat but eat to live.  I’ll also bet that they eat “closer to the land”, meaning the foods they eat are less processed and more as nature intended them to be.  For example, natural peanut butter is simply ground peanuts with nothing added.  It’s high in fat but so what.  You’re not sitting down to eat the whole jar (I hope!).  Dried fruits can be very sweet.  They’re high in natural sugar but so what.  There’s just so much you can eat of them before the palate will tire of the flavor and at least you’re getting nutrients along with the sugar.

Maybe the answer to what is healthy eating is eating that which will do you no harm and, at best, that which will improve your health.  Think about what you’re eating in terms of what good it can do for you.  Drink milk or eat cheese because they’re good sources of calcium.  Eat fish because it’s a good source of those healthy omega-3 oils.  Eat whole fiber foods because of the beneficial fiber they contain.  Eat fruits and vegetables since they’re like eating your multi-vitamins instead of relying on pills.  I could go on, but you get the idea.  The best advice I can give is eat in terms of what you want to eat and not in terms of what you shouldn’t eat.  Focusing on the negative (”you can’t eat that”) makes you lose focus on what is good for you.  You and I both know that when I say something like that doesn’t give you the go-ahead to eat anything and everything without thought.  But don’t obsess either.  A large part of healthy eating is enjoying what you eat and who you eat it with.

If you’re interested in learning more, consider reading Barry Glassner’s “Gospel of Food.”  It will make you sit up and question the choices you’re making.  Everything you do is a decision.  And if you feel you need help with making those decisions, consider reading “Is Your Personality Type Making You Fat?”.  Visit www.advantagediets.com for more information.

I’d love to hear from you as to what you think healthy eating is.

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February 4, 2008 by admin.

There was an interesting article in theFeburary 2008 issue of Tufts University Health and Nutrition Letter called “What does the latest research on weight mean to you?”  The article reviewed a study done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute that concluded ”overweight people are actually less likely to die from a wide range of causes.”  Note the word “overweight”.  To classify people as either normal weight, overweight, or obese, the BMI or Body Mass Index is most often used, a number that comes from inserting your height and weight into an equation.  (If you want to know your BMI, go to: http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/fitness/multimedia.jhtml?multimediaId=/templatedata/fitness/multimedia/data/1129756657157.xml&ordersrc=msn2bodymassindex_cgy&cobrandId=ww5&s_kwcid=TC-935-1066821554-e-24318059.  In the left-hand column at the top is a BMI calculator.  The BMI for “Normal weight” is 18.5 to 2.5, “Overweight” is a BMI of 25 to 30 and “Obese” is a BMI greater than 30.

It seems that obesity is associated with an increased risk of cancers (colon, kidney, breast, esophagus and pancreas), yet a decreased risk for lung cancer.  But being overweight made one at a slightly reduced risk from most cancers.  The results are not an invitation to get fat.  One still needs to eat right, be active and not smoke.

The conclusions being drawn are that maybe the definitions of “ideal weight” need to be reconsidered.  And that maybe having some reserves on board (meaning a little extra weight) would be beneficial to withstand an adverse situation.  It also has been bandied about that BMI may not be the best measurement of risk.  Since the BMI doesn’t consider fat stores or fitness, two very important parameters in cardiovascular health, public health recommendations may have to focus more on waist-to-hip measurement, as well as fitness.  For a waist-to-hip measurement, divide the size of your waist by the size of your hips.  Anything over 0.85 for women and 0.9 for men is considered “apple-shaped” and a higher risk for heart disease.  Anything less means you’re shaped more like a “pear”.

The researchers of the study warn that the results aren’t meant to encourage people to eat whatever they want.  But most people know intuitively that what they’re eating is either good for them or not.  No one questions that fried food can’t be passed off as health food.  Be careful, though - just because manufacturers put words on the package that imply healthy doesn’t mean the food is healthy.  If you visit my website at www.advantagediets.com you can learn more about what makes for a healthy way of eating.

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January 29, 2008 by admin.

There was an article in a recent issue of “Nutrition Action Health-letter” called “Surprise! Ten Myths That Can Trip You Up.”  As I share what I read with you in the next several blogs, think about whether you’re carrying around these myths, some of which are just downright unhealthy to believe.

1.  It’s okay for older people to be overweight.  While it’s a lovely thought that as we get older we can become heavier, which takes some of the onus off of us for maintaining our healthy high school weight, it isn’t a good idea.  There are just too many diseases that occur in overweight people - heart disease, diabetes, some cancers.  Not only that, as we get older we lose muscle mass.  So, even if you’re at your high school weight, I’ll bet that you had more muscle back then.  So, as we get older, it’s more about how much muscle we’re losing.  That’s why a body composition analysis is such a valuable measurement as compared to just weighing yourself.  When you see how much less muscle you have, you’ll begin to understand that as we get older, maintaining that mass is what we should be measuring.

2.  High-fructose corn syrup is worse for you than ordinary sugar.  This isn’t so.  That’s because high-fructose corn syrup is 50% fructose and 50% glucose, the same mix you find in ordinary sugar.  Your body’s reaction to it is no different.  The impact on blood sugar, insulin, ghrelin (a hormone that stimulates appetite), and leptin (a hormone that curbs appetite) are the same.  So what’s the bottom line?  Limit your intake of both products made with high-fructose corn syrup as well as ordinary sugar.  Just remember that both supply empty calories.  Fingers are being pointed at high-fructose corn syrup because it is one of the major sweeteners in soda and because people drink far too many, they’re getting for too many empty calories.  Studies have shown that people don’t compensate later in the day for all the calories they drank in sodas.

3.  If your “bad” cholesterol is low, your risk of heart disease is low.  You may be proud of the fact that your LDL-cholesterol (the lethal variety) is low, but that doesn’t mean that you’re free from any risks of heart disease.  As we age, LDL, triglycerides and blood pressure can go up.  Often, the high triglyceride or low HDL or a combination of both may be setting you up for heart disease.  It’s interesting that it isn’t the triglyceride itself that’s the problem.  It’s the protein carrier for triglycerides (also called VLDL or very-low-density lipoproteins) that clog arteries.  A triglyceride level of 150 or more means you’re at risk for the metabolic syndrome that increases your risk for diabetes and heart disease.  Having an HDL-cholesterol (the healthy variety) of less than 40 in men or 50 in women sets you up for metabolic syndrome.  Take your numbers seriously.  Always ask your doctor for a copy of your blood test records so you can be in charge of keeping track of how you’re doing.

You might want to visit my website at www.advantagediets.com and check out ways to eat healthier.

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January 28, 2008 by admin.

It’s February 3rd, and you’re hosting a solid 20+ mob of friends, family and football-possessed fans … people looking for food & beverages and waiting for the big-screen HD kick-off of the year.  What should you prepare to keep your guests’ gullets full and focused on the game?  Here are some healthy cooking ideas for your quickly approaching “Giants vs Patriots soirée”.

Make your own samies
Rather than purchasing 6” long Italian subs packed with calories, saturated fat and sodium, give your guests the option to make their own sandwich.  Serve a platter of lean cold cuts, fresh veggies, sides of light/low-fat spreads (don’t say they’re light and the men will never know), wheat bread, buns and pitas.  The more toppings the better.  They’re easy to prepare and your guests will be impressed — chopped onions, sliced tomatoes, pickles, lettuce, carrots, sun dried tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, sprouts, cucumber slices, radishes and artichoke hearts. 

Break out the Foreman Grill
A Foreman-like grill is a major plus to help cut out extra grease, oils and fats, or you can bake your meats.  Experiment with different types of proteins such as tuna, chicken or shrimp.  If you can’t break away from the hot dogs and hamburgers, no problem — use low-fat hot dogs and turkey burgers (even veggie burgers taste fantastic these days). -  Replacing your regular beef hot dog with a low fat beef hot dog will save 110 calories, 12 grams of fat, 4.2 grams of saturated fat and 83 grams of sodium-  You gain about 3 grams of fiber by replacing white buns with whole wheat buns  Addicted to nachos? Join the club….Beware: An order of nachos rakes in 1570 calories!  That’s a waistline disaster, not to mention 78% of your caloric daily value (DV). the entire order has 115 grams of fat (177% DV), 58 grams of saturated fat (290% DV), and almost 3,000 grams of sodium (124% DV).   

Make your own nachos!  
Brown lean ground turkey in a skillet; then spread over a plate of baked tortilla chips.  Top your dish with chopped jalapeño peppers, tomatoes, onions, olives and a can of fat-free refried beans. Throw (or, bam!) some low-fat shredded cheddar cheese on top, then set out sides of low-fat sour cream and salsa.  You will save more than just a few calories!   

Hydration is key
Many game-day gatherings include alcohol — a diuretic which can lead to dehydration.  Make sure to have plenty of water on hand. Guests drinking alcohol should alternate with a nutrient-packed, hydrating beverage.  A great option is VitaminWater.  Intensify your spread with bottles of VitaminWater that coordinate with team colors (15 VitaminWater varieties to choose from), the nutrients will help with Monday’s trip back to the reality of work-land.  Don’t forget, many times people mistake hunger for thirst, so before digging in, first, hydrate.   

Let traditional buffalo wings fly the coop! 
Five pieces of traditionally prepared buffalo wings can contain over 500 calories, 28 grams of fat and over 2.000 mg of sodium.  Try making your own “wings” using skinless chicken or turkey breast, cut into strips, dip in hot sauce and coat with breadcrumbs.  Then bake, don’t fry.  You can make your own bread crumbs using crushed whole grain fiber rich cereal.  Then add some baked chips to the mixture for an added crunch.  For an oh-so-delicious creamy ranch dip…swap the regular dressing for low-fat and you’ll save 80 calories and 10 grams of fat per 2 tablespoons.  

Makeover Mom’s chili
Chili is easy to reduce in fat— use ground turkey, fiber packed beans, chopped onions, hot-spices and top with low-fat cheese.  

Potato skins anyone?
Simple: scoop ‘em out (as much as you can before they get floppy) then bake ‘em up. Top with salsa, low-fat cheddar cheese and pieces of grilled turkey bacon (or bacon bits).  

Chip and pretzel options
Swap out traditional fried options for baked chips and look for “no salt” pretzels.   These are easy switches that will save loads of calories.  Dessert anyone?
Whip up a batch of low-fat brownies.  Use store bought brownie mix and substitute the oil with apple sauce.  These will make delicious, moist brownies with a fraction of the fat.  Provide light Cool Whip and plenty of fresh fruit such as apples, pears, peaches and berries for a healthy, tasty brownie topping.  

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January 22, 2008 by admin.

Okay, it’s a new year, a clean slate.  Let’s get with it.  Let’s make those New Year Resolutions happen.  The #1 resolution people always make is to lose weight.  Didn’t you make that resolution last year?  And the results?

Your goal of losing weight is a good one.  It’s the way you’ve tried to achieve your goal in the past that’s the problem.  I’ll bet you picked out the most “in” diet and figured if those people touting the diet were successful, why sholdn’t it work for you.  The reason “they” were successful was that they were approaching weight loss in a way that was comfortable for their personality type.  What if your personality type is different from theirs?  With 16 possible types based on the world-renowned Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, you may not be the same type as those successful losers. 

What you need is to learn what works for your type.  When you’ve found that out, you’ll realize that the right approach for you is NOT going on a diet but learning healthy new lifestyle habits to last you forever.

If you’re curious what your personality type is, visit www.advantagediets.com and read about type.  Then consider getting the book “Is Your Personality Type Making You Fat?”  It may be all you need to finally be on your way to fulfilling that New Year’s Resolution after all.

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January 21, 2008 by admin.

2008 stands to be an exciting year for new food trends.  I believe that people are going to begin to appreciate that what they eat can be very much related to how healthy and well they feel.  In the past we were told what we were having to give up for the food to be considered healthy.  For example, what does a label with the words, “low fat”, mean to you?  Many view it as telling them eating fat is a no-no, that it’s bad for you.  Yet, not all fats are created equal.  The monounsaturated fat that you find in olive oil, for example, is a very healthy fat and good for you. 

The problem with foods that tout what they’re missing is it sets up a “deprivation mentality”.  Compare that to foods that tell you how good they are for you.  Food manufacturers are beginning to realize that we don’t want to sacrifice to be healthy.  So, in 2008 watch for more products that tell you why they are good for you.  Foods will be marketed in regards to their “functional” properties.  Take for example Activia Yogurt.  It states on the label that it “Helps naturally regulate your digestive system.”  Then there is Cheerios telling us we can lower our cholesterol by eating the cereal.

People are more apt to gravitate towards foods that have a positive implication for eating them rather than being told what they’ll be missing if they eat them.  Unfortunately, with that thinking, food manufacturers are probably going to add nutrients to foods just so they can tout them as beneficial for one reason or another.  Yet, if there is enough of an added ingredient to provide some decent level of beneficial results, especially with an ingredient that people often don’t get enough of, then maybe there is a place for those foods.  Take Total cereal, for example.  General Mills fortifies the cereal with a day’s allowance for many vitamins and minerals.  My suggestion to you is to be sure that the food being “enriched” is a healthy food to begin with.  Taking candy and adding vitamins to it is not the same as taking a high-fiber cereal, which starts out as a healthy option, and adding vitamins and minerals to be sure you’re getting your day’s allowance for these nutrients.

“Organic” and “locally grown” foods are going to occupy much more shelf-space than before.  As we become a more conscious nation of the effect we have on the world around us, we’ll appreciate that eating locally grown foods saves on gasoline to transport it, along with the emissions put out by transporting foods long distances.  We’ll become a society of “localvores.” “Organically grown” foods will become more attractive as fear grips our nation regarding the safety of the food we eat.  A couple of more mad-cow outbreaks or avian bird flu and people will only trust the food they grow themselves or locally grown where they may even know the growers.

I believe people are going to gravitate more to cooking their own meals so they know better what they’re eating.  With that thought in mind, we’ll probably see more foods cut up and ready for us to assemble.  We already have quite a plethora of cut up vegetables and fruits, along with cooked chicken  and meat strips.  The average person will no longer see him- or herself as a cook but an assembler.  No matter what you call yourself, cooking will save you money and make you feel more confidant in the foods you choose to eat.  Food manufacturers will help out by providing more ready-to-cook foods to make you feel you had a hand in the making of dinner.  It reminds me of the Betty Crocker story where the company decided that they’d put all the necessary ingredients in their cake mix, only requiring the cook to add water.  It wasn’t well received because women believed that it wasn’t “homemade” without their adding the eggs and oil.  So take heed, foods manufacturers, leave a little something for the cook to add so some pride can be taken with the cooking process.

I’m looking forward to people being more confident in their food choices.  With food manufacturers touting health benefits (in most cases, health benefits sanctioned by the FDA), consumers should move toward healthier foods naturally rather than viewed in terms of what they’re giving up.  Keep it local and you can feel you have more control over what you eat.

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December 10, 2007 by admin.

I read an article in the December 2007 issue of Wired magazine called “Getting a Grip”.  It was about the attempts scientists are making to create robots that can simulate human movement and activity.  But these are special robots.  They don’t just do repetitive movements such as you would see in a factory.  We’re talking here about robots that can respond to their environment.  When asked to retrieve an object, it will be programmed to such an extent that it not only recognizes what object has been requested of it to retrieve, but also have the ability to lift and hold the object as we would with our hands.  It will actually have to “think” and, as a child, through trial and error, learn what works and what doesn’t work.

So, y0u may be wondering what this has to do with kids.  As Gregory Mone shared in his article “Babies don’t just wander around alone, picking up strange objects and trying to figure out how they move…. Babies rely heavily on others to show them what to handle and how to handle it.”  It’s that dependency that eventually turns into independence.  Why are parents expecting their children to eat a healthy diet and exercise regularly if they, the parents, don’t act as good role models?  Nine times out of ten, if you see an overweight child, one or both of his or her parents are overweight.

Modeling is where parents set a good example for their children to follow.  One of the first places that should take place is at the kitchen table.  Family meals where healthy food choices are served shows children what their parents think are good for them.  It’s not a matter of forcing a child to eat all the food on his plate.  It’s a time for a child to see how much his or her parents serve themselves, whether they eat their meal at a relaxed and slow-pace, if they’re willing to leave something on the plate when they have reached that satisfied level, and so on.  Children are very good at doing what others do.  You know, ”monkey see, monkey do.”  Take advantage of that characteristic and all of you will be the healthier for it.

The same approach is being used by scientists to train their robots.  They give the robot a task to accomplish, first showing it how the task should be done.  The robot continues to do the task until it is done successfully.  It now knows what works and what doesn’t.   Think about teaching your children what it means to live healthfully as you would teach a robot.  Give them something to emulate.

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June 1, 2007 by admin.

If having blueberries, grapes, cocoa and tea helps me improve my memory, count me in. 

Researcher, Henriette van Praag, and her colleagues at the Salk Institute found that these foods contain a compound called epicatechin, a type of flavonol.  Eating a healthy amount of these along with exercise could possibly reduce the effects of such diseaeses as Alzheimer’s or other cognitive disorders related to aging.

Considering that flavonols also improve cardiovascular function and increase blood flow to the brain, it’s a no-brainer to eat them.  With blueberries soon to be available for the summer and grapes already in the markets, have a handful a day.  Make a pot of tea, put it in a thermos so it’s available to you throughout the day.  And treat yourself to an ounce of dark chocolate for dessert at dinner and you may be able to be as sharp in 25 years as you are today.

It wouldn’t hurt to do a crossword puzzle or try sudoku.  Anything that you do that keeps your brain challenged will keep it more youthful.  It’s no different than with exercise.  The old saying that goes, “use it or lose it” is very true here.

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