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365 Days of Halloween
Tweet Share on Facebook October 31, 2012 CommentThis past Saturday, I took my 8-year-old to dance class. When the music stopped, and the kids shuffled out, she had an ear-to-ear grin … and a chocolate bar in each hand. The teacher had given them out to the class in honor of the pending arrival of Halloween.
The next day, she brought home a birthday party loot bag where, of course, the "loot" was more candy. A week earlier, one of her school teachers surprised the class with ice cream for being well behaved. And let's not talk about her school's pizza days, ice-cream fundraising, and inclusion of chocolate milk in its milk program.
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How to Handle Halloween Candy Cravings
Tweet Share on Facebook October 30, 2012 CommentHalloween is all about sweets! So it's no surprise that Halloween can trip up even the most conscientious dieter. With Halloween and the end-of-year holidays looming, it's important to determine a strategy for dealing with the temptation of sweets: what to eat, what to bring into the home, and what to serve others.
My philosophy is that all foods can be enjoyed in moderation. But there are special challenges posed by some foods, particularly sweets. Understanding the science behind sweet cravings and overeating can help us eat in a more moderate and healthy way:
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How Your Reflux Medication Affects Your Health
Tweet Share on Facebook October 30, 2012 CommentIt's official: The season of heartburn is upon us, courtesy of overstuffed Thanksgiving bellies, too many drinks at the office holiday party, and indulgent seasonal sweets featuring mint, chocolate, and other triggers of acid reflux. What better time, then, to address how the most common medications used to treat acid reflux can affect your overall health and nutrition?
According to a new analysis in the journal Gastroenterology, acid reflux is the most common gastrointestinal (GI) diagnosis for doctor's visits outside of the hospital, representing almost 9 million such visits in 2009. Since being introduced in the late 1980s, a class of drugs called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) have become the most common medication used to suppress stomach acid production in people with reflux. Name brands of popular PPIs include Nexium, Prilosec (or the generic, Omeprazole), Prevacid, Dexilant, Aciphex and Protonix. Combined, this class of drugs accounts for an estimated $11 billion in U.S. retail sales. Their ubiquity, in fact, has led some experts to question whether these drugs are being over-prescribed. Indeed, patients who start on a PPI tend to stay on it for years, and it's not uncommon for people to stay on one for life.
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NYC Super-Sized Soda Ban: Now in Effect
Tweet Share on Facebook October 30, 2012 CommentThe Barclays Center, the new home of the Nets, recently opened, and the season begins this week. I'm not a huge sports fan, but as a proud Brooklynite, I've been anxiously awaiting the start of the season. The thought of taking my kids to watch an NBA game in my own 'hood is pretty thrilling. And other folks must be pretty excited too, because that first game is sold out. Blame it on Jay-Z.
But get to a game we will—eventually. And as with any special outing, I'm sure we'll indulge in some courtside snacks. While I gave up soda 20 years ago, and we don't keep it in the house, my husband does like to sip the sweet stuff at movies and other events. And yes, he does go for the larger sizes on these occasions, much to my chagrin. But it looks like I won't have to be the regulator when we head to Barclays, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg's soda ban is in effect.
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Myths and Facts: Exercising While Pregnant
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2012 CommentI'm eight months pregnant with my first baby. I can't believe that my life is about to change forever. Overall, I'm excited about the transition to parenthood, and I'm ready to deal with the good, the bad, and the ugly. While I've received some fabulous advice from moms, I've also received some warnings that soon I will start putting myself last.
That news has been a tough pill to swallow because self-care is a major part of my identity. This includes making "me time" for eating well, exercising, and managing stress. I'm mentally committed to preserving that identity while I make room for baby. Throughout my pregnancy, I've followed this guiding principle: "Everything you do for you, you do for the baby inside you." This line of thinking has increased my motivation for self-care, not decreased it.
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How to Start (or Revive) a Faith-Based Garden
Tweet Share on Facebook October 29, 2012 Comment"For I was hungry and you gave me food." No, I'm not talking about those chocolate chip cookies in the company break room, although they certainly taste divine when you need them most (Monday afternoons, around 3 p.m., come to mind). I'm talking about the growing movement to create gardens for those in need at places of worship.
These gardens aren't only used to provide physical nourishment. It's important to remember the many ways that people today are hungry—they are hungry for human connections, for knowledge that has skipped generations, for communing with nature, and for feeling needed. Many, perhaps even you, are hungry to de-stress after a long week at work, and they find solace and satisfaction in creating something tangible and good like a faith-based garden. I've heard it said that planting a seed is the ultimate act of faith. With so many unknowns in today's business economy, why not take this leap of faith and dig in where you worship? Here's how:
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Diet, Diabetes, and Doubt: Is Preventive Medicine Lost in Space?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 26, 2012 CommentA large federal trial, looking at lifestyle—diet and exercise—for the treatment of diabetes was just terminated because, after 11 years, it wasn't working as intended. The Look AHEAD study was stopped early because it was not reducing the rate of heart attack and stroke in the intervention group relative to the control. The termination was reported in a press release by the National Institutes of Health, and picked up by mainstream media. The findings suggest that diet and exercise are not effective for reducing the cardiovascular complications of diabetes.
And so, AHEAD, or at least the media coverage of it, is inviting us to look back, and doubt what we thought we knew about diet as the best medicine we've got—for diabetes, at least. We thought we knew that lifestyle was among the most powerful determinants of health outcomes. We thought we knew that diet and exercise together could prevent heart attacks in high-risk people. Participants in the AHEAD intervention lost 8 percent of their body weight by the end of the first year of the trial and were still down 5 percent from their baseline weight at the four-year mark. We thought we knew that diet, exercise, and weight management like this exerted important influences on the course of diabetes. Now, the AHEAD findings suggest we were wrong. Right? Not so fast.
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The Fat Talk Free Pledge
Tweet Share on Facebook October 26, 2012 CommentI remember 9th grade dance class like it was yesterday: I would take my awkward, leotard-clad body into class and try to avoid my image in the wall-to-wall mirrors for the entire hour. I also remember one particular girl from that class who spent the hour watching herself—dreamily—in those mirrors. She loved her body. Her curvy, imperfect, slightly overweight body. While the rest of the class would bond over talk of fat thighs and diets, she would simply enjoy the movement of dance class and avoid the destructive conversations around her. To me, she was the epitome of comfortable in her own skin. Back then, I just assumed she was hard-wired that way—lucky girl! But I've since realized that she knew a secret most girls her age (not to mention, many grown women) hadn't figured out: She avoided fat talk.
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Do You Have Fat Clothes?
Tweet Share on Facebook October 25, 2012 CommentHow many of you have a closet filled with clothing of varying sizes? There may be a size 4 hanging in there from when you got married or those honeymoon shorts you hope to someday fit back into. Next to those might be the 6s and 8s that you wore for many years … before the kids came, that is. And next to those, the 10s, 12s, and 14s, just longing to be worn.
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How to Find Your Ohm...
Tweet Share on Facebook October 25, 2012 CommentMy love affair with yoga started about 13 years ago. At the time I was fiercely committed to cardio workouts and weight lifting—I loved spinning classes, boxing classes (in an actual ring), indoor rock climbing, and boot camp. My mother, who thought I needed to slow down a bit, wanted me to try yoga, which she'd been practicing since the 1970s. Since "mom always knows best," I decided to give it a try, gradually weaning myself off of my gym classes and weight lifting until yoga became my exclusive exercise routine. I've never looked back.
"Yoga is a union within ourselves and then with ourselves [and] the world around us. It is the joining of the breath, body, and mind," says Ashley Dorr, who teaches at the Shala, a Manhattan yoga studio that I frequent. Personally, I started yoga to try a different type of exercise. I wasn't really thinking about the mind, breath, and body connection. But as the years have passed, I have found this connection fascinating. During my practice, I think less about my busy schedule and more about what my body is capable of doing.
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