Even though I’m a dietitian, my clients frequently ask me about exercise as part of their weight loss plan. Since managing weight effectively depends on calorie balance, it makes sense that we talk about not only diet (calories in), but exercise (calories out), too.  Most simply want to know how much…or, sometimes, how little…exercise they need to do in order to lose weight, or to keep off weight that they’ve already lost. So here are some of the key things I tell them about exercise and body weight: Read more »

 Did your New Year’s resolutions include a vow to “eat right”?  Many of us make that promise to ourselves in January, but by about March we find our old eating habits sneaking back up on us. Maybe you tried to tackle too much – or maybe you hadn’t really thought about what ‘eating right’ really means.  Eating right involves more than just  making the right food choices – it’s also about eating the right foods at the right time.  So here are seven tips to help you to ‘eat right.’ Read more »

It’s a leap year – so you have one extra day this year that you can use to focus on your health. What will you do on that extra day to be healthier? Ride a bike? Take a long walk? Eat an extra serving of fruits or vegetables? Share your thoughts!

I would bet that it’s rare the person who can stand naked in front of the mirror and not identify a trouble spot or two.  Most of us stand there pinching, prodding and wishing that those extra bits of fat – whether on the belly, the behind or the back – would just disappear.  I thought the myth of spot-reducing had been pretty well busted by now, but I still get asked all the time if there are any special diet or exercise tricks that will target specific pockets of body fat. 

The answer is – in a word – no.  Your body parts don’t ‘own’ the fat that cover them.  When a regular walking regimen leads to weight loss, you lose weight all over – not just in your legs.  Performing hundreds of pushups or situps a day might eventually uncover a toned chest or six-pack abs – but it isn’t because you’ve burned off only the fat on your chest or your belly.  It’s because you’ve increased your calorie burn – and reduced your body fat from nearly top to toe.  Read more »

Whenever I travel, I do my best to spend a little time checking out the local foods. I’ll poke around on the internet and look at menus – and usually find something intriguing. Not long ago, we were far up the California coast, and I found a menu for a vegetarian restaurant serving a six-course “sea vegetable dinner” featuring sea palm, nori, dulse and wakame – all forms of seaweed. I have to confess that we settled for something a bit less adventurous, but it did get me wondering why we don’t see more sea vegetables on menus – at least here on the coast where it’s ‘ripe for the picking’. Read more »

Most of my clients know the healthy eating drill pretty well – keep your fats down, eat plenty of fruits and veggies, make most of your grains “whole” and focus on low fat protein. But many of them have adopted some eating habits that they truly believe are healthy – and I have to spend some time trying to convince them otherwise. These eating habits sound like they’re healthy – but they really end up being less so when they’re put into practice. Are your eating habits as healthy as you think they are? Read more »

One of my long-standing patients has lost 150 pounds. Now, before you start thinking, “Wow – that’s a lot of weight” or “Gee – I wonder how she did that?”, let me just say that she didn’t lose it all at once. In fact, she’s lost the same 30 pounds five times now. She’s a classic “yo-yo dieter” – her weight goes up and down, but rarely stays in one place for long. It’s long been recognized that people are more likely to yo-yo when they adopt weight loss regimens that are too strict to stick with over the long haul. Once a dietary slip turns into a fall, old habits resume, weight goes back up and the cycle starts all over again. Read more »

If you’ve read any reports about how a struggling economy can affect your health, most of them are pretty negative.  What’s usually mentioned is that when money is tight, people spend less on pricier foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, they cancel gym memberships, or they may turn to high calorie comfort foods or drink more alcohol. And if they dine out at all, it’s more likely to be less expensive – and usually less healthy – fast food.  So it got me to thinking, are there some lessons we can learn about how to save money and still be healthy? Read more »

You can always tell when it’s the start of a New Year.  Everywhere you turn – newspapers, magazines, radio, television or the internet – there’s another article about how to shape up.

I’ve already had visits from several patients who are ready to ‘turn over a new leaf’ for the New Year, but what I often find is this – with this flood of diet and fitness information coming at them, many of my patients have more questions than solutions.  Should they go vegetarian? Stay away from fruit?  Not eat after 5 pm?  Throw away the salt shaker?  The list goes on and on.  So today, I’m turning to you – what nutrition questions are on your mind?  Let me know what you’re wondering about …and check back here in the upcoming weeks to find the answers.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted my top 10 resolutions for a healthier 2012 (read post).   Maybe you’re already doing many of the things on the list – in which case your list of resolutions will look a little different from mine.  But as you’re thinking about your own health and fitness goals for the upcoming year, I’d like to add a few words of encouragement – with some thoughts on how you can make promises to yourself that you can actually keep. Read more »