Samantha and I are in privileged company this week – we’re looking forward to a guest post from Louis Ignarro Ph.D, Nobel Laureate*,  consultant to Herbalife and member of the Herbalife Nutrition Institute Nutrition Advisory Board, in which he’ll describe the impact of a healthy, active lifestyle on heart health.   A healthy diet is, as Dr. Ignarro says, “as good for your heart as it is for your taste buds.” 

I couldn’t have said it better.  But what I often run into with my patients is that it’s one thing to know what to eat – and why (okay, that’s two things…) – but they often get hung up figuring out how to incorporate more healthy foods into their diet.  So let’s take a good look at the key “whats”, “whys” and – more importantly – the “how tos” of a heart healthy diet.

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There are plenty of healthy foods that don’t get the attention they deserve.  Here are five under-appreciated foods that deserve another look.

Why are some foods popular and others aren’t?  I’m not talking about foods that taste better than others, or are more fun to eat –  I get that.  But I do wonder why certain foods are trendy, while others just aren’t eaten all that much.  It’s hard to find a restaurant in Los Angeles these days that doesn’t feature kale salad.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that – kale salad is delicious, and kale is jam-packed with nutrients.  But why is it that certain foods gain superstar status while others – equally healthy and equally delicious – get the short shrift?

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You know what you should be eating because you’ve heard most diet advice before – but you just can’t quite figure out how to apply that diet advice to make it part of your daily eating routine.  Here are some tips to help you put your nutrition knowledge into action.

For those of us in the US, mid-April means one thing – it’s tax time.  Many dread it, and put it off to the last minute – in large part because completing your own tax return is difficult,  it’s  complicated, and just so darned…. well, taxing.  But as tough as it may be, it’s apparently not nearly as hard as figuring out how to eat well… in an online survey¹ of more than 1,000 Americans that was released last year, 52% said that it was harder to figure out “what you should and shouldn’t eat to be healthier” than it is to figure out “how to do your own taxes.”

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When you eat fast, you tend to eat more.  If you always finish your meal before everyone else, here are my top six tips to help you slow your eating habits.

“They call me the vacuum cleaner!” one of my patients told me recently.   He’s been a fast eater his entire life.  “I grew up with six brothers and sisters – so, counting my folks, there were nine of us at the dinner table,” he told me.  “As soon as mom put the food down, we’d all scramble to get our share, and then eat it up as fast as we could – because the fastest eater had the best chance of getting a second helping before it was all gone!”  Even though he no longer has nine people at his dinner table, those old eating habits die hard.  This guy can still demolish a plate of food in seconds flat.

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One key to maintaining a healthy weight is to balance the calories you eat with the calories you burn.  But that’s sometimes easier said than done.

Balancing your calories sounds deceptively simple.  Eat more calories than you burn and you’ll gain weight. Take in fewer calories than you burn and you’ll shed some pounds. Keep your “calories in” and “calories out” about the same, and your weight should stay pretty stable.  So why is it that hardly a week goes by that someone doesn’t complain to me that they’re “exercising like a madman, but not losing any weight” or, “eating like a bird but the scale won’t budge”?  It simply boils down to this: when it comes to counting calories accurately – the ones you eat and the one you spend – there are so many ways it can go wrong.

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Is it a bad habit to snack, eat after dinner, or clean your plate?  Not always. Your bad diet habits might actually be good diet habits! Read on to see my take on a few common diet myths. 

I spend a good part of my day talking to people about their eating habits, which is not just enlightening, it’s entertaining, too.  When someone reveals what they typically eat in a day, I can get a pretty good sense for how nutritious their diet is – but it’s the little ‘asides’ that tell me much, much more.  Oftentimes, as we’re talking, they’ll suddenly say, “I know this is really bad, but I ….,” and then go on to describe their breach of some sort of “dietary commandment”.  So – in my quest to be not just flexible, but to also help them find their own personal sweet spot when it comes to healthy eating – I try to help them see that what they think is a bad habit… might not be so bad after all.

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If you have a muffin top then I bet you want to get rid of it!  Or, you might be asking what on earth is a muffin top? I know I was bewildered the first time I heard the phrase. My friend explained that it is the fat on your back and sides that bulges over your waistband in the same way the top of a muffin overhangs the base.

On hearing of the muffin top phenomenon, my first reaction was ‘I have an instant muffin top remedy’. My friend listened closely, expecting me to share some profound fitness secret that could fix a muffin top in moments, but my answer disappointed her greatly. Apparently this wasn’t the response she had hoped for:

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Happy Valentine’s day!  I know many people are thinking about their romantic heart today but did you also know it’s Heart Health month?  

The story around diet and heart health has been around long enough that you probably know the drill pretty well.  Watch your weight, keep your total fats and saturated fats down, and don’t be too heavy-handed with the salt shaker.  Sprinkle in some soluble fiber – from foods like beans and oatmeal – and you’ve got a pretty good dietary strategy.

All good advice, to be sure.  After all, a high-fat diet can put weight on you, saturated fats can bump up your blood cholesterol levels, and too much salt can drive up blood pressure – all of which can increase your risk for heart disease.  But there are a couple of other pieces to the heart health puzzle that are getting more attention these days – a fatty acid “balancing act”, and a little molecule called nitric oxide.

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An occasional indulgence isn’t really cheating – especially if you’ve planned for it.

Cheating – on your taxes, on a test, on your partner – is just plain wrong.  And chances are, even if you were to consider cheating, you probably wouldn’t ask for permission from your accountant or your teacher…or your mate.  So why are people always asking me if it’s “okay to cheat” on their diet?  Does it feel “good” to be “bad”? Do they want to place the blame on my shoulders if their cheating doesn’t lead to weight loss?  Or are they simply saying, “I just can’t be this strict with myself every single day – I need a break!”

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January is all about resolutions and “turning over a new leaf”.  So all this month, we’re talking about the big nutritional benefits you can get from making just a few small changes.  Now let’s take a look at ways you can start to eat less without leaving your tummy grumbling.

We started with little adjustments you can make when you’re buying food, and in the last post I suggested some ways in which you could make changes in the way you prepare your foods to shave calories and make them healthier.  You might already be reaping some benefits if you’ve been trying to make these changes – and you may even be thinking that there isn’t a whole lot more tweaking you can do.  Maybe you haven’t given it much thought, but a little fine-tuning in the way your foods are served can also affect your food intake, too.

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Make your daily staples as healthy as you can.  Small changes in the foods you buy and eat every day can add up to big rewards.

The holidays are over, and we’re all getting back to our routines – which means it’s time to get serious about those New Year’s resolutions you’ve made.  If “eating better” is something you plan to do this year, now is the time to think about how you’re going to go about it – before you slip back into your old eating habits.  Rather than adopting a complete dietary overhaul (a complete “out with the old, in with the new” approach rarely works), your best bet is to begin by working on several small steps you can take to improve your everyday eating habits.  And your first steps should take you directly to the grocery store, since that’s where healthy eating really begins.

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New Year’s resolutions – don’t make promises you can’t keep. This year make a few small changes in your eating habits that can yield big results instead.

Do you remember the New Year’s resolutions you made last year? Let me guess…. if you’re like most people, you probably vowed to eat better, get more exercise – and maybe floss more often. So, looking back, how did it go? Did you accomplish all you set out to do? Or, did you start the year out strong – then fall back on your old patterns, so that you’re making the same resolutions again this year? This may surprise you, but I think that’s okay – and here’s why. If you make the decision every January to shape up, it says that taking better care of yourself is important to you. If it weren’t important, you wouldn’t keep working at it. And just because you make the same promises to yourself every year, it doesn’t necessarily mean you didn’t accomplish anything last year.
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Want to change your diet behavior? Break through these diet barriers first! Getting out of your usual comfortable routine is hard and the first step is figuring out why you’re resisting change in the first place.

When my son turned 5 years old, we had an “inside-out, upside down, backwards” birthday party for him.  We handed his friends their goodie bags and waved goodbye as soon as they arrived at the house, and we ate cake and ice cream before the pizza.  The parents had a lot of laughs, but the kids were totally bewildered – in no small part, I’m sure, because we were also wearing our underwear over our clothes.  So why am I telling you this?  Because sometimes when I’m talking to clients about the lifestyle changes they need to work on, I see that same bewilderment – as if I’m suddenly turning their world inside-out, upside down and backwards.  Why is change so hard for some people?

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You only need small amounts of fat to be healthy.

Years ago, I had a client who was truly ‘fat phobic’.  If she could detect any trace of fat in her food, she’d reject it.  She’d dissect a piece of roast chicken into tiny pieces, teasing out any specks of fat she could find between the muscle fibers, and she dressed her salads with straight lemon juice – never a drop of oil.  She did this primarily as a weight control strategy – she was a tiny woman and intended to stay that way – but she’d also heard that people need to eat fat.  So she was worried.  Was being this finicky about fat bad for her health? And – more importantly – did she really need fat in her diet at all?

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The best diet is the one that works best with your lifestyle, your budget, your food preferences and how much effort you’re willing to give.

One of the more entertaining aspects of my work is that whenever I meet a new weight loss client, I never know where the conversation will lead.  Usually, I’ll start by getting some history – I want to know what’s the most and the least they’ve ever weighed, what motivates them to eat better and get into shape, and also what’s worked for them in the past and what hasn’t – that sort of thing.  From there, I can start to get a sense for how much effort each particular patient is willing to put forth, and what their expectations are.  And then we come up with a plan. But I can’t just tell someone what they need to do – I need to help them figure out how they’re going to do it, too.  And we work together to figure out what’s going to work best for them.

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