Eating a Healthy Diet VS Exercise

I have been getting the question lately, which is more important - making healthy food choices or exercising vigorously everyday? There is not an easy answer to this question. Exercise keeps our hearts and blood vessels in good shape, improves the blood flow to our vital organs and helps us use the foods we eat more efficiently. And, exercise doesn't have to be vigorous to be helpful. Even walking or light housework is good for us.

If you eat a diet that is high in added sugar (juice, milk shakes, pop, baked goods), along with a lot of saturated fat from cold cuts, processed meats and hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, you are clogging your blood vessels, causing inflammation that can increase your blood pressure, cause joint pain and probably cause your pancreas to become overworked and cause blood sugars to rise. Exercise can't fix these things.

My response to the question is this: You are what you eat. Find a way to eat foods that are healthy most of the time. Don't stress your body by eating foods that interfere with it's ability to do its job of keeping you alive and alert. Keeping your blood sugars lower and your blood vessels open will keep your mind sharp, your vision better, your circulation better and will give you more energy to enjoy life.

So, the moral of the story is; if you can't or don't have time to exercise, eating a healthy diet is still very beneficial to your health. Eating a healthy diet can make a difference in how you feel all by itself!

TV, Sleep and Eating Out – Who Knew?

I just read about an interesting study that looked at preventing obesity in children. The 3 characteristics they looked at were the amount of sleep the children got, whether they sat down with their family at home and ate dinner and how much television that they watched. They found that in the families that regularly ate dinner at home together, where the children got 10 hours of sleep and spent less than 2 hours per day watching television (videos, dvds etc) the children were 40% less likely to be overweight.

I have read other studies that have found that adults who eat out more than 3 times per week, watch more than 2 hours of television per day and don’t get enough sleep are more likely to be overweight.

So why is television a culprit? One reason is that when you watch TV your metabolism slows down – more so than if you read a book. Your body goes into a semi-comatose state where your energy requirements drop and your metabolism slows down. Another reason is that there are so many commercials for food that we are driven to eat more! (Interestingly, the foods they are trying to sell us are often highly processed or contain lots of added sugar which we are trying to avoid).

What does sleep have to do with your weight? There are many studies that show that adults need to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. A recent study compared a group of nurses who slept less than 6 hours a night to those sleeping more. The nurses who slept less than 6 hours a night were overweight. Surprisingly, the overweight nurses were significantly more active than their normal-weight peers. The overweight nurses took an average of 13,896 steps per day, compared to 11,292 for normal-weight nurses. The overweight nurses also burned nearly 1,000 more calories per day on average than their normal-weight peers.

The moral of the story is having some weights or a balance ball on hand to play with while watching TV will help us keep moving. Going for a walk after dinner - helps our bodies use the calories better and may improve sleep quality at night. And you might want to consider taking the TV out of your bedroom.

Eat Real Foods

Eating Healthy isn’t about losing weight(although that can be a good side effect). Eating healthy is about taking the time to eat real foods! Our bodies know how to process real foods. Real foods give us better feed back when we are full - and they keep us full longer. Real foods in combination don't make our blood sugars go up too quickly. It is important to plan ahead and have real whole foods as they come from the earth: fresh vegetables, fruits, beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, herbs and spices and lean meats on hand to cook with and to eat when you are hungry. When we are rushed - which is often the case - being prepared makes it so much easier to grab real food on your way out the door.

The more naturally BRIGHT colors in the foods that we eat, the better! Foods that can sit packaged on a shelf for a long time without spoiling are not likely healthy foods- and unless artificial color has been added, are pretty white or colorless. In processed foods, most or all of the healthy oils in the grains have been removed for stability, the fiber has been removed and there are often preservatives and additives to keep it fresh. Try to eat a rainbow of foods every day.

Breakfast is an important meal to eat every day. It should be eaten within an hour and one-half of getting up. Breakfast should be made up of a mix of carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Eating a good breakfast helps prevent food cravings later in the day. Make sure that you are getting fiber in your breakfast. 5 to 10gm of fiber is ideal for breakfast. Also, try to avoid added sugar. One way cereal eaters can do this, is by dividing the number of grams of fiber in their cereal into the number of grams of carbohydrate. If the result is 7 or less the cereal does not have too much added sugar and is probably a good choice. For example if there is 25 gm of carbohydrate and 5 gm of fiber the result is 5 so that it is good choice for a cereal.

Where to Start: How Much Should I Eat?

Do you wonder how much you should eat? Eating until you were full used to work when you were younger and before food became so processed. Recent studies have shown that in a world of quick to eat - shelf stable food, eating until you feel full no longer keeps you from eating more calories than your body needs. The extra salt, sugar and fat found in many foods we eat today interfere with our feeling full! Just for fun, take a few days and write down everything that you eat and drink. Click here for a printable food journal page. Choose at least 1 weekend day and 1 week day because diets vary on weekdays and weekend days. Use the food labels on the side of the packages of what you are eating to determine the number of servings you are eating or the grams/ounces and the number of calories for the amount you are eating. Click here to go to the FDA's website that explains how to understand and use the nutrition labels. (The DV values they refer to are OK for some diets and not OK for others so don't rely too heavily on them). If there is not a nutrition label, you can get this information on the internet at http://www.nutritiondata.com/ (you don't have to register or log in) or you can buy a calorie book or get one at the library. (You can also do this online at Sparkpeople.com -they make you do a free registration to access their information - or at Nutrition Data .)

Now that you know how many calories you are eating each day the question is are you eating too much or too little? The first step to finding this out should be to determine how many calories your body needs to function well based on how much you currently weight and how active you are. I have found a great website where you can get this information. Visit Ask the Dietitian Website at http://www.dietitian.com/calcbody.php fill in the questions it asks and put their Healthy Body Calculator to work for you. (If you don’t have a computer or don’t know how to use the internet, we can help you fill this information out at Kemper Drug). You will be provided with a printout of the total number of calories that you should be eating along with essential nutrients. This is important to know so that you make sure you are getting these nutrients during the day.

Be Healthy in 2010!

I recently heard the statistic that 50% of the medications that we dispense from our pharmacy treat diseases or illnesses that are a result of how people take care of themselves. My goal in starting this blog is to help our patients, and friends focus on the importance of taking care of their bodies and minds.

In Minnesota we have a lot of snow and cold. We are prepared for when it snows. We have shovels to clear our driveways and sidewalks. We have snow tires on our cars and good treads on our boots. We have warm clothes to keep our body heat in. We are practicing snow risk prevention. We don't want to deal with the hassle of sliding into the snowbank and risking injury to our cars or ourselves. We don't like feeling cold so we do something to prevent having to feel the worst of it.

Lets apply this being prepared approach to your health! We can help you use some tried and true prevention techniques to keep you healthier this winter.

• We are currently offering H1N1 and Seasonal Flu shots at Kemper Drug because we want our patients to stay healthy this winter.
• We can meet with you to discuss your medications and make sure that you are reaching your treatment goals.
• We can also sit down and discuss what the impact of making lifestyle changes can have on the numbers and types of medications you need to take and on your health in general.

Here is to a great 2010 together!
Wendy Simenson R.Ph