Americans Get a C-Minus for Health… What About You?

According to a recent study on healthy lifestyle choices, researchers give the average American a C-minus when it comes to taking care of yourself.

Researchers looked at changes in health-related habits over the last 18 years, and found that we aren’t doing so great. The five habits they looked at were exercise, fruit and vegetable intake, weight maintenance, smoking, and alcohol consumption.

They found that people are exercising less, eating fewer fruits and vegetables, and gaining weight. In twenty years, the number people who habitually exercise (three times a week or more) fell from 53 percent to 43 percent. The number of people who regularly eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day fell from 42 percent to 26 percent. And the number of people who are obese rose from 28 percent to 36 percent.

Smoking percentages didn’t change much.

The only good news is that healthy drinking habits are on the rise.

Unfortunately what this means for most people is a greater risk of disease and becoming dependent on prescription drugs to function. That’s not good.

Fortunately, just because the nation as a whole gets a C-minus doesn’t mean you can’t get an A-plus. Healthy habits that will extend your life and improve how you feel are actually pretty easy to develop

First, schedule time to exercise or to get out and do something physically demanding. Write time into your schedule at least three times a week and then make in non-negotiable. Stick to it for four weeks and then it’ll become habit.

The same goes with eating more fruits and vegetables. Eat a piece of fruit with breakfast, a serving of veggies with lunch, and another serving of veggies with dinner. Add in a V-8 at snack time and a piece of fruit before bed and you’re there.

Losing weight is tough, but if you adopt these first two habits, you’ll find it becomes easier. In my own goal to lose weight, I found success by not giving up when I didn’t see results in the first four weeks. After four weeks of exercising and eating better, my body seemed to believe I meant it, and now the pounds are coming off pretty steadily.

Living healthy doesn’t have to be painful… in the long run it’s a lot more fun that accepting a C-minus on your health. Now, that’s painful!

Stay well,
Danny Wallace

The Best Ways to Keep Weight Off

Losing weight isn’t easy. Keeping it off can be even tougher. How many times have you lost five or ten pounds only to gain it back two months later? That’s an all too common story for people trying to lose weight.

The key to long-term weight loss is to build healthy habits that help you lose weight, and also help you to keep it off.

New research points to diets rich in healthy fats as a key part of successful long-term weight loss. While diets like the Atkins diet that emphasize reducing carbohydrates help people to lose weight, the South Beach diet and other high-fiber, healthy-fat approaches tend to be better at maintaining weight loss and overall health.

Researchers looked at the Atkins diet, the South Beach diet, and a vegetarian diet to see how they affected people who were already at a healthy weight. The researchers wanted to know more about the health affects of these diets once a person has lost the weight they wish to lose. They found that the Atkins diet, which doesn’t differentiate between different kinds of fats tended to raise unhealthy LDL cholesterol levels.

The South Beach diet, which emphasizes a moderate fat intake, with the focus being on healthy fats like monounsaturated fat and essential fatty acids, continued to reduce LDL cholesterol levels, even in people at a healthy weight.

What this means to you is that what you eat after you lose weight matters. You want to develop healthy eating habits. You want to keep eating lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grains rather than refined grains, and lean proteins even after you’ve shed the pounds. Keeping up your healthy habits will not only help you keep the weight off, it will also help you improve the health of your heart.

Stay well,
Danny Wallace

Your Weight Might be Making Your Legs Twitch

There’s nothing better after a hard day’s work than curling up on the couch with a good book or your favorite TV show to just relax and unwind. So, there’s nothing more frustrating than when restless, twitching legs foil your plans.

Restless legs syndrome affects about one in ten adults. It’s characterized by an almost uncontrollable urge to move your legs. Usually, you’ll feel uncomfortable, like something is itching or pulling deep within your leg muscles. The only way to get relief is to get up and move.

Obviously, when you want to relax or sleep, restless leg syndrome can really get in the way.

To date, it’s unclear what causes restless legs syndrome, but a new study suggests that your weight might have something to do with it.

Researchers discovered that people who are obese are more likely to have restless legs syndrome by up to 42%. When divided into quintiles people with the largest waists (meaning the most belly fat) are more than one and half times as likely to have RLS as those with the smallest waists.

If you have RLS and you’re overweight, this is actually good news. It means that there’s something you can do about your restless legs.

Losing weight isn’t easy, but it is possible, especially if you have a good plan in place. The most important thing to understand is that weight loss is a long-term process involving lots of small choices each day. Here are some tips:
1) Exercise is a key part of a good weight loss plan. Try to be moderately active most days. That means going for a walk or shooting some hoops or playing a little Frisbee in the park. Don’t think of this as exercise—think of it as becoming more active.
2) Vigorous exercise is also important, but you don’t have to do that much to get a good result. Twenty to thirty minutes three days a week will do the trick. Try jogging, cycling, or playing a serious pick-up basketball game.
3) Portion control is another key strategy for weight loss. When you sit down to eat, don’t pile up your plate. Take half servings of everything. Take small bites and chew them thoroughly. Once you’ve finished what’s on your plate, wait ten minutes before deciding if you need seconds. This gives your brain a chance to catch up with your stomach, and you might discover you’re not actually hungry for more.
4) If you’re plagued with poor snacking habits, I suggest you get a small cooler. In the morning, fill it with healthy snacks like string cheese, hardboiled eggs, fruits, sliced veggies, and whole-grain crackers. When you want a snack, go to the cooler, not the cupboard.
5) Finally, drink more water. Did you know that many of the “hunger” signals your body sends are actually thirst signals? If you drink a big glass of water when you first feel hungry, you might find your desire to snack is curbed.

Weight loss is a worthy goal and it can have a positive impact on your health in so many ways, including providing relief from restless leg syndrome.

Stay well,
Heather Robwell

Hope on the Weight Loss Horizon

Many people struggle with weight loss. They exercise an hour or more a day. They watch what they eat. They do everything they’re supposed to, but the stubborn pounds just won’t burn off. Maybe you’ve shared this frustration.

Fortunately, the medical community is gaining a better understanding of the fat burning process within your body. Someday—even someday soon—researchers hope they’ll be able to switch on your body’s natural fat-burning process making it so you can lose weight with much less effort.

Here’s how it will work. In recent studies, scientists have found that when cells begin to burn fat, they send signals to the brain. The brain sends signals back through the sympathetic nervous system telling cells to start burning more fat, to keep burning fat, or to stop. Researchers are hoping that they can access this part of the nervous system to trigger greater fat burning in the body.

This solution is a while out yet, but it could be a promising treatment for people struggling with obesity. In the meantime, if weight loss is on your mind, here are two ways you can helps your body shed more pounds.

The first is to up your non-exercise activity. Basically this means to be more active in your daily routines rather than just saving all your activity for exercise. Put on some music and tap your feet at your desk. Jog up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Take regular stretch breaks. Walk that memo to your boss rather than emailing it. Choose the farthest parking space from the store. Embrace household chores and do-it-yourself projects.

There are a million ways you can up your non-exercise activity and doing so will help step up your metabolism. You’ll also burn more calories without feeling like you’re working to burn more calories. It’s an easy, effective way to enhance your weight loss plan.

Another thing that can help is a conjugated linolenic acid supplement. CLA helps your body to burn fat and build muscle—that means not only will you look slimmer, you’ll be more toned, too.

Weight loss is good health goal for many people. But it can be frustrating. Try these two strategies to help you reach your goals without so much struggle.

Stay well,
Heather Robwell

Stop Drinking Empty Calories

You head out to work in the morning, and grab a café latte on the way. At lunch, you slurp down a soda. Maybe you knock back another soda to help you over your mid-afternoon slump. And then in the evening, you enjoy a glass of wine with dinner. Maybe even another beverage before you head off to bed.

Now, I'm the last one to discourage you from having a glass of wine in the evening—in most cases, that's good for you. But all those other drinks add up.

In fact, according to a survey conducted through John Hopkins University, most adults get 300 calories a day from soft drinks and coffee beverages. That's almost 15% of your daily recommended calories… and most people don't really count the calories they drink.

Three hundred calories a day may not sound like much, but consider this. Cutting out 300 calories a day could help you lose as much as two and half pounds a month… that's 30 pounds in a year, just from cutting out soda and drinking traditional black coffee instead of lattes and mochas.

You'll also improve your overall health. Most of those liquid calories don't deliver much in the way of actual nutrition. If you reach for an orange instead of a soda or a V8 juice instead of fancy coffee, you'll get an additional benefit—more vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

It's a simple change that can make a big difference. Give it a try!

Stay well,
Heather Robwell

Curb Holiday Weight

Whether you're a man or a woman, middle-aged or in your seventies, active or sedentary, the holiday season is the time when you are most likely to put on a few extra pounds. Most people go into the holidays with the best intentions about keeping any new weight off, but it only takes overeating at one holiday party to undo your will power for the rest of the season.

Fortunately, you can employ a few simple tactics to keep that from happening and to stay at your current weight.

Practice Good Portion Control: Big portions are one of the big causes of holiday weight gain. Think about the typical Thanksgiving dinner—there's about triple the number of side dishes that go with a usual dinner. And there's dessert.

Even if you take normal sized portions of all the sides, you'll still have a super-sized dinner. So, start out with just a bite or two of everything. And then savor each and every bite. With such small portions, you can go back for seconds of your favorite dishes guilt-free.

A Holiday Party Game Plan: I love holiday parties. The food is yummy, the drinks are good, and the atmosphere is festive. However, with all the bite-sized goodies, it's hard to keep track of how much is enough. So, here's what you do. Scout out the fare first. Some of it will be healthy—fruits and vegetables or whole-wheat crackers and cheese—and some will be rich and indulgent.

Go ahead and indulge in two or three of the best-looking options. Then stick with the healthier choices.

The same goes with all those tasty cocktails. Have one or two of your favorite, and then enjoy soda water with a twist of lemon.

Nip Emotional Eating in the Bud: During the holidays, even men give into emotional eating. You feel a little lonely or nostalgic and next thing you know you just downed twelve homemade chocolate chip cookies. The way to beat emotional eating is to have plan in place. Whenever you find yourself looking for a snack even though you're not really hungry, stop and do something else—a preplanned activity for just these moments. You might do ten jumping jacks or drink a big glass of water or sit down to play a game of solitaire. Just a little something to break your normal response to the eating urge.

Be a Bit More Active: Get out and get moving. It's so easy in the winter to curl up in front of the TV or with a good book, and that's fine. But before you do, go for a walk.

Try to find some fun activities to do on the weekend that will get you moving, too. You could surprise your spouse and go dancing or if the weather's nice you could go for a hike or shoot around of golf.

Nobody plans to put on weight during the holidays, but it happens more often than we care to admit. Use these four tactics to keep the weight off without sacrificing all the good things about the holidays.

Stay well,
Meghan Krohn

Don't Overlook the Importance of Breakfast

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day." How many times have you heard that? Here's the thing, though. It's true.

Breakfast does a lot of good things for your body. It jumpstarts your metabolism, which means you'll burn more calories during the day. It helps to control cravings later on in the day so you're less susceptible to junk food snack attacks. It also helps to control blood pressure and fasting blood sugar.

Of course, what you eat matters. If you scarf down a doughnut and a café latte, you don't do your body any favors. If you eat whole grains paired up with some fruit or good lean protein paired up with vegetables—or some combination of good wholesome foods—you'll be doing your body a very good turn.

When it comes to breakfast, even a small breakfast—a piece of fruit and a slice of cheese—is better than nothing. But it turns out that a big breakfast might be the key to losing weight more easily.

Researchers recently found that because of the way your body works, it actually does best on a big meal in the morning. Your brain especially needs a good boost of energy to start the day—if you don't give it this in the form of food then it will rob energy from you by burning muscle mass.

Making sure your body has the energy it needs translates to weight loss. Obese patients were assigned to eat a normal-sized, low-carb, high-protein breakfast or a large-sized breakfast (1240 calories) over the course of eight months. Those who ate the bigger breakfast lost 40 pounds during the study compared with 9 pounds of weight loss averaged by the other group.

That's an impressive difference.

If you would like to lose weight, give this a try. Eat a very large breakfast including a glass of milk, two slices of whole grain toast, a serving of lean meat, and two slices of cheese. Follow it up with an ounce of chocolate.

During the rest of the day eat small portions. Eat slowly, and stop when you feel satisfied, but before you feel full. Doing this will make sure that your brain has all the energy it needs during the day, it will increase your metabolism, and you'll feel more energetic and less prone to cravings.

Stay well,
Meghan Krohn

Careless Dieting Might Make You Sick

People all over the country—both men and women—try to lose weight fast by eating less. It's true that to drop pounds you have to burn more calories than you take in. Eating less and exercising more can help you accomplish this. But, when it comes to eating less, you don't want to overdo it.

Researchers have found that if you cut your daily calorie intake by 30% or more, you may be damaging your immune system. For example if you eat 2500 calories a day and you reduce you calories to 1750 a day, you might be doing some unexpected harm.

Technically 1750 calories a day is safe. It won't drop your energy levels or cause you to starve. But the sudden drop in calories might make you more prone to illness. The cells in your immune system that "remember" how to fight off diseases are called B cells. A 30% reduction in calories causes a dramatic decline in B cell numbers. That mean that bugs you'd normally be able to fight off might gain a hold and you might spend more time being sick.

So, if you want to lose weight, what should you do?

Instead of dramatically reducing your caloric intake all at once, consider scaling back gradually, giving your body time to adjust to fewer calories before making further reductions.

For example, if you eat 2500 calories a day, start with a 10% reduction. Eat like that for a few weeks and then try to reduce a little more. This method has other advantages, too. By taking it in small steps, you'll be more likely to build good habits and stick with your new eating plan. And that means you'll have a better chance of permanently losing weight rather than gaining it back a few months later like most people do.

Stay well,
Danny Wallace

No Matter How You Dress it Up Junk Food is Still Junk Food

Americans do love their snack foods. On they other hand, more and more people are concerned with healthy eating. These two conflicting interests make for some interesting snack foods showing up on the grocery store shelves these days.

Recently, many food companies have launched brands of "healthier" snack foods designed to boost your fruit and vegetable intake. It sounds like a good thing, but...

Once upon a time the buzz was low-sodium, so you found a whole host of "lower-in-sodium" snack foods. Then it was sugar—sugar was the single ingredient undermining good health… and so food manufacturers launched whole lines of low-sugar and sugar-free foods. Then there was fat and you couldn't turn around in the grocery store without being confronted by a low fat label.

Well, now the buzz is about fruits and vegetables. So snack food manufactures are powdering produce and baking it into foods.

This new trend is much like the previous ones—it gives you an excuse to eat more junk food. No matter how you dress them up, these high-calorie, low-nutrient snacks can quickly derail your fitness, weight, and health goals.

The bottom line is that you don't need junk food. It's much better to get your fruits and vegetables from actual fruits and vegetables… not from a chip or a cracker.

I'm not saying your should never have junk food. By all means, indulge now and again. But when you do, choose something you actually want to eat, something you'll really enjoy. Savor it. And then get back to your healthy eating habits.


Stay well,
Meghan Krohn

Are Beverages Making You Fat?

Obesity is a serious problem in this country. About one in three people are obese. Obesity raises the risk of many diseases and undermines quality of life. Naturally poor eating habits play a role in becoming obese, but you aren't just what you eat… you're what you drink, too.

Researchers recently reviewed a series of national surveys taken over the years since 1965. They found that the number of calories that Americans consume in liquid form has doubled. Unfortunately, calories from solid food haven't fallen in response. Many Americans get 25% of their calories from beverages, which is just staggering.

Calories from drinks don't satisfy your hunger, so they have almost no impact on how much you eat. More liquid calories means more overall calories and that means you either have to exercise more or you will gain weight.

If you're trying to lose weight and find that it just seems impossible, take a closer look at what you drink. It might make all the difference. Here are just a few suggestions for cutting beverage calories:
• Don't drink soda. They original varieties are packed with high fructose corn syrup, which makes them high in calories. The diet varieties are lower in calories, but the chemical sweeteners aren't good for you.
• Drink more water. Beverages of all kinds work to satisfy your thirst. What your body really wants when it's thirsty is water.
• Tea (especially green tea) is a great addition or alternative to water as long as you don't load it up with sugar.
• Pay attention to the serving size. When you do indulge in a high-calorie beverage, don't go for the super, big gulp. Choose an eight or twelve ounce size instead.
• Juice is fine in moderation. One hundred percent fruit juices do provide vitamins and nutrients, but they lack bulk and fiber. Anything more than one or two servings a day adds calories without giving you any additional benefits.

You can instantly and easily cut calories by making smarter drink choices. This can help you to lose weight faster and easier, and it can help you keep those pounds off.

Happy Holidays!
Danny Wallace

Belly Fat Worse Than Other Body Fat

There are different ways to be overweight. Some people pack the pounds on all over. Some people find that they tend to store fat in their hips and thighs. Still others have a problem with weight sticking around their middle.

It turns out that this last form of weight gain is hardest on your health. When younger people in their 20s and 30s begin packing pounds around the middle, they also begin building plaque in their arteries. Fifteen or twenty years later they have full-blown heart disease.

Researchers have found a strong correlation between belly fat and hardening arteries. The researchers compared several ways of measuring weight. They looked at the body mass index, simple weight statistics and the waist-to-hip ratio.

The winner as a predictor of heart disease is the waist-to-hip ratio. If your waist is growing to be larger than your hips, it's important for you to take note that your risk of heart disease is also on the climb.

Fortunately, you aren't helpless. There are many things you can do to begin toning your tummy... and even small improvements in your level of abdominal fat will lower your heart disease risks.

Here are two steps to get you started.

First, go for a walk each day. Take your time. Move at a pace that is comfortable. But keep walking until you've gone a mile. You'll find it gets easier and easier.

Second, don't eat everything on your plate. Dish up your meals as you normally would and then either leave a few bites of everything or put a little back before you start eating. (Hint: Buy smaller plates--they're an enormous help when it comes to reducing portions.)

These two steps will start you on your way toward less body fat--especially around your middle.

Danny Wallace

The Low-Fat Diet Disaster

The Low-Fat Diet Disaster

Nearly two thirds of Americans are overweight. Half of those who are overweight are obese. And half of those who are obese have come to view their weight as normal.

There is something wrong in the American diet. Actually, there are a lot of things wrong with the American diet, but I'm going to highlight the role a specific hormone today.

The hormone is leptin. I'm not surprised if you've never heard of it, but expect to hear a lot about it in coming years. Scientists have known for a long time that leptin plays a key role in your feelings of hunger and fullness. When you eat, it triggers the release of leptin in your body, which helps you to decide when to stop eating.

What researchers have only just discovered is that chronically low levels of leptin cause your brain to fixate on food, in some cases all the time. People with chronically low levels of leptin tend to always have a sense of appetite, whether they are hungry or full. They become chronic eaters.

So, what causes low leptin levels? A low-fat diet.

That's right. More evidence that the low-fat diet craze is actually making us fat.


Eat healthy,

Heather Robwell