Category Archives: Wellness

Snacking at the office

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Snacks are an important part of a daily diet for most people.

Snacking can keep our energy up so we can better focus and be productive. It also keeps us from becoming over-hungry and subsequently overeating and/or making poor food choices. But if we are eating chips or candy every day at 3pm, we will suffer the consequences (weight gain for one).

I have compiled a list of snacks for eating at the office. Some are suitable only if you have access to a refrigerator. Hope you are inspired and stop visiting that vending machine!

  • Cottage Cheese (w/fruit and/or nuts, or by itself)
  • Yogurt
  • Hard boiled eggs
  • Nut-butters (w/fruit, veggies, crackers)
  • Nuts
  • Cheese (babybel, string cheese, slices) w/whole grain crackers
  • Edamame
  • Turkey (or other deli meat) roll ups
  • Tuna salad, chicken salad, egg salad
  • Jerkey (nitrate free Brands: Krave, PerkyJerky)
  • Veggies:
  • cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, celery, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, sugar snap peas
  • w/hummus
  • Oatmeal (single serving bowls)
  • Soup
  • Whole grain cereal and Milk
  • Hummus and crackers/pita/veggies
  • Fruit
  • Popcorn
  • Chips, salsa and guacamole
  • Bars:
    • Let’s face it, bars are easy and portable. But not always healthy. Here are the guidelines to follow when picking a good bar:
    • 10-15gm protein
    • 5 gm of fiber
    • less than 15 gm of sugar
    • as few ingredients as possible
    • whole food ingredients
    • ex: Luna bars
    • make your own!

For more ideas and recipes visit my pinterest page on eating at the office.

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Love your Body

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In honor of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr, I have a different type of post.

He is the author of one of my favorite quotes: “Darkness can’t drive out darkness only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that”

Well, how many of us hate our bodies? It is not only unfair to your body, it is counterproductive to your goals (assuming your goals are to improve your body in some way).

So, today, and everyday, try to be kinder to yourself. Think of all the ways your body is an amazing machine. Your body serves you every minute of every day. It carries on tremendously important functions without your awareness or effort. It gets you from here to there. It allows you to see, hear, taste, feel. Every single thing you do is done by or with your body. You’d be nothing and nowhere without it. Cherish it.

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Lemon Water, the Best Superfood

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Move over kale (and watercress…), there’s a new superfood in town. Lemon juice in lukewarm water happens to be one of the very best things you can put in your body.

I first learned about this through my research on digestion and gut problems. I was amazed and relieved that there was something I could actually do to help certain tricky gut issues (more on this below).  But I went on to discovered that there are many other benefits to drinking lemon water beside gut health.

Benefits of lukewarm water with lemon juice include:

  • Vitamins and Minerals
    • Lemons have Vitamin C, many B vitamins, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium and Fiber
  • Weight loss and craving control
    • The fiber in lemon is pectin and it has been shown to reduce hunger cravings, possibly helping with weight loss.
  • Bad Breath
    • The acid in lemon helps kill the bacteria in your mouth that cause bad breath.
  • Better younger skin
    • This is possibly a stretch but has been reported. The likely explanation is that the Vitamin C helps with collagen which can keep skin younger, tighter and less wrinkled.
  • While lemon is acidic, it helps keep your body/blood alkaline (at a healthier pH level).
    • Removing uric acid from your joints
    • Reducing inflammation all over the body
    • Preventing UTIs and Kidney stones from forming
  • Caffeine substitute.
    • Warm lemon water in the morning has also been shown to be a stimulant. But a healthier one than dehydrating caffeine!
  • Hydrating.
    • Obviously it is the water, not the lemon per se, that will be hydrating you. But it is still very important and a wonderful benefit of drinking lemon water.
  • Gut health and Digestive Benefits:
    • Helps relieve constipation: warm lemon water in the morning gets things moving along
    • Increases stomach acid. Too little stomach acid comes with a lot of problems. Without it, food doesn’t break down properly so it can’t be digested and absorbed. This can lead to food sensitivities as well as indigestion and malnutrition. Also, we need a certain amount of stomach acid to kill the bad bacteria that enter our system via our food. This isn’t just our best line of defense against food poisoning, it is an essential part of keeping the gut flora in balance.
    • Increases bile production so we can properly digest and absorb fat and fat-soluable vitamins.
    • It loosens biofilms. What? Well, the bad bacteria are very crafty, forming little films around themselves, attaching to our gut lining. This poses an obstacle to antibiotics, good bacteria and other methods of trying to kill them. Lemon juice (or apple cider vinegar) actually helps remove these films so the bad bacteria underneath get exposed and removed from the lining, thereby allowing healing to take place.

Need any more convincing? Even my skeptic husband decided to try it!

Lemon water can benefit anyone. But for those with digestive problems (or a tendency for kidney stones), it is a miracle drug. I should mention one possible side effect-the acid can be hard on your tooth enamel.  To ensure no damage-you could drink it through a straw! There are also special toothpastes to use to strengthen your enamel. Another very effective trick is to rinse your mouth out with water (or better yet water with baking soda) after drinking your tall glass of lemon water. Important: do not brush your teeth for a half hour after drinking the lemon water. Rinse with water and then wait. This is due to the acid making your enamel soft. The toothbrush and paste can be rough on the soft enamel.

The best way to get all these benefits is to squeeze lemon into warm water, drink it first thing in the morning and not eat for 15 minutes. The way to maximize all the digestive benefits is to do this before each meal. The way to maximize most of the other benefits too is to do this throughout the day!

A half of a lemon a day is recommended if you weigh less than 150 pounds, a whole lemon if you are over 150 pounds.

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3 Tips to Transform your Health in 2015

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There are many ways to improve your diet. But I think I have narrowed it down to the most important.

1. Decrease your sugar (to as low as possible)

Sugar isn’t just empty calories (tons of calories without any healthful nutrients), it’s down right dangerous.

  • Sugar is half fructose, half glucose. Fructose goes to your liver and glucose goes to your blood stream.
  • Too much fructose, and your liver gets overloaded and packs it into fat and sends it straight to your belly.
  • Heavy loads of glucose causes an insulin spike to be released and if there is more glucose than your body can use at that time, it also goes into your fat cells, and then you’re hungry again. Too much of that and you can not only gain weight, but become insulin resistant.
  • Sugar also doesn’t lead to satiety. So you can get a lot of calories and not feel full (leading to more eating and more calories)
  • And it is addictive. Ever heard of sugar cravings?
  • Sugar feeds the unhealthful bacteria and yeast in your gut
  • (Any one of these topics is big enough for it’s own post, forgive my brevity)

Decreasing your sugar, any amount you can, will improve your health and weight. Period.

2. Decrease your consumption of processed food.

A lot like number 1, processed food gives you a lot of bad and not a lot of good.

  • Processed food has a lot of sugar (see above). They add it in so you will like and buy the product.
  • Processed food has a lot of unhealthful fats.
  • Processed food has unhealthy levels of salt.
  • The trifecta of salt, fat and sugar is very intentional, to get you to love and overeat and re-buy the product.
  • Processed food is missing important nutrients.

3. Eat tons of fruits and vegetables.

Besides being whole real food, loaded with vitamins and minerals, they are the only thing that the research shows unequivocally is GOOD for you.

Here’s to a healthy 2015! Thanks for reading.

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Vitamin D, the wonder nutrient

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Vitamin D has always been unique. It is not just a vitamin, it is a hormone: a cholesterol substance in skin cells is converted to Vitamin D when exposed to sunlight. Therefore, it does not need to be eaten like all other nutrients. It can be made from sunlight. The amount of sunlight needed depends on the individual (skin color, age) and the time of day and time of year, and the location (near the equator or far).

Alas, if we are wearing sunscreen, those UV rays don’t get through and we do not make Vitamin D. In this case we need to eat it-from fortified milk, eggs and some fish. But the sources are not abundant. Sunlight is absolutely the best way to get Vitamin D.

Why is this such a wonder nutrient?

  • It helps your body absorb calcium from the GI tract and also regulate blood calcium and make sure enough gets into your bones.
  • It ensures normal development of some cells, in turn reducing cancer risk in those cells.
  • Vitamin D deficiency is a major risk factor in at least 17 varieties of cancer
  • Vitamin D might be the key in treating Seasonal Affective Disorder (we always thought sunlight was…and it is but because of this nutrient)
  • Sunlight lessens inflammation in the body. Inflammation leads to all diseases including heart disease.
  • Blood pressure: those exposed to more sunlight have lower average blood pressure than those who aren’t.
  • Vitamin D seems to help immune function and lower the risk of autoimmune diseases.

So get about 10 minutes a day of sun exposure before putting on your sunscreen.

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Is sunscreen harmful?

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You know the guidelines. Wear sunscreen, any time you are in the sun, for any amount of time. Wear hats and long sleeves. These advisories were for people living in high UV index areas-like near the equator. But in North America, where the sun isn’t so strong, it isn’t necessary, and may even be harmful.

Two recent studies from Sweden indicate that perhaps sunscreen is doing more harm than good. Women (30,000), in one study, were followed over 20 years. Women who avoided the sun had two times the risk of early death than women who received normal sun exposure. In the other study, sun exposure was associated with reduced cardiovascular death.

It is important to note, that these studies were observational. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. There were certainly variables that weren’t controlled for: such as diet!

But Vitamin D could be the answer. Sunscreen protects the skin from sun rays and therefore we don’t make the Vitamin D from the sun. This Vitamin has been associated with lower cancer risk, lower inflammation, less depression…the list goes on.

For a long time, as a dietitian, I have struggled with the Vitamin D vs Sunscreen debate. My answer has always been:

  • put sunscreen on your face
  • put sunscreen on areas that will get a lot of exposure (like shoulders)
  • leave arms and legs alone-get your Vitamin D there.

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