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 »

Last week, I was interviewed by one of our local news channels about a ‘new’ strategy for weight loss. The idea goes a little bit beyond “thinking your way thin” – which focuses on behavior change when it comes to food choice – to something more like, “believing your way thin”. It’s basically an attitude adjustment. If you tell yourself – and believe – that you’re already a healthy, active person who eats well, then you’re much more likely to behave like one. And those healthy behaviors should, in turn, lead you closer to your goal. Read more »

Last week, a friend was telling me that he’d eaten a huge serving of a delicious end-of-the-summer watermelon the evening before. Afterwards, he got to thinking – did he overdo it? Can you, in fact, eat too much of what’s good for you? Read more »

Most of the time, I would never argue with someone who wanted to eat as well as possible.  After all, part of a dietitian’s job is to encourage people to eat healthy foods and to help them find ways to nudge their current eating habits in the right direction.   But sometimes I run across people who carry proper nutrition to the extreme; they have an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy food. Read more »

Food commercials on television push us to eat more than our recommended daily intake of salt, fat, sugar and calories.

Watching television can really be dangerous to your health. And it’s not just because we sit for so long – although that’s certainly part of the problem. A recent study revealed just how bad a diet could be if it were based entirely on foods advertised on television (and yes, there are people who actually eat like this). Read more »

If you’ve spent any time in the yogurt section of your local supermarket lately, you might see more and more products that highlight their “live active cultures” – a nice way of saying that the yogurt is full of bacteria. Read more »