diet

Wednesday bubble: one drink makes you smaller…

Posted by Liz on Mar 10, 2010 in diet, weight gain | 6 comments

Can one drink make you smaller? According to a study that appears in this week’s Archives of Internal Medicine, light to moderate amounts of alcohol may help you gain less weight. Sounds too good to be true, right?

Intuition tells me that drinking alcohol can lead to weight gain because you end up taking in more calories than you burn (as well as the fact that those calories are carbohydrates). However, in over 19,000 women (aged 39 and older) with a normal body mass index (i.e. 18.5 to 25), women who reported not drinking any alcohol had the most weight gain over approximately 13 years. What’s more, women who reported drinking about 40 grams of alcohol daily were less likely to become overweight or obese. Women drinking less than 30 grams a day had a 30% lower risk of becoming overweight or obese than women who did not drink at all. In this study, the link between alcohol intake and overweight or obesity was seen for red or white wine, beer or liquor. The strongest association was seen for red wine.

In a separate analysis, the researchers also observed an association between declines in the amount of weight, increases in alcohol intake and older age. Comparatively, the magnitude of the weight gain was smaller in older versus younger women!

Importantly, the results seen in the study remained even after researchers made adjustments for lifestyle, clinical and dietary factors such as physical activity, the presence of chronic disease and consumption of other beverages (e.g. coffee, soft drinks, tea).

Granted, 40 grams is about 1.4 ounces or about half of a normal 5 ounce glass of wine. That may not meet the craving for a glass of wine. However, perhaps the larger take-away message is that a little wine can go a long way towards staving off weight gain. My RD friends might disagree but it’s an interesting ponder.

What do you think? Can one drink (or a half a drink) make you smaller?

Trans fats are not your friend

Posted by Liz on Mar 1, 2010 in diet, heart disease, stroke | 5 comments

Do you want to live well past menopause? One way to do it is to cut out the trans fats (or partially hydrogenated oils) now!

Trans fats are found mostly in fried (e.g. french fries, donuts) and processed foods (e.g. pastries,  pizza dough, cookies, crackers). In the body, trans fats significantly raise LDL cholesterol levels and lower HDL cholesterol levels (read: raise bad fats, lower good fats). And since we already know that elevated cholesterol right around menopause is a major factor in heart disease in women, it makes sense that the stroke risk might also come into play.

In a study  presented last week at the American Stroke Association International Stroke Conference 2010, researchers analyzed data culled from 87,230 women who had participated in the Women’s Health Initiative and followed for about 8 years. After adjusting for possible factors that might influence results (e.g.s age, race, smoking, physical activity, alcohol, body mass index, hormone therapy, diabetes, aspirin use, fruits, vegetables and dietary fiber intake) they found that women who ate the most total fat had a 40% increased risk for ischemic stroke. Women who ate trans fat in particular, had a 30% increased risk for ischemic stroke. (Ischemic stroke is caused by blocked blood vessels in or leading to the brain.) So, how much fat were these women eating? Women who reported eating the most fat averaged about 86 grams of total fat and 7 grams of trans fat daily (compared to 26 grams and 1 gram, respectively, in women who ate the least).

It seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? Cut down on the fats and processed food and increase the healthy stuff. In the supermarket, stick to the store periphery where fruits, vegetables and all the good stuff can be found. Read the label…often.

Truly, trans fat is not your friend.

Stirring the pot: a conversation with author/chef Mollie Katzen on food, women and aging

Posted by Liz on Feb 8, 2010 in diet, menopause | 14 comments

Just about anyone who’s interested in cooking and whose formative years took place in the late 60s and 70s knows these names:  Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen. Personally, both of these volumes occupied prominent places on my bookshelves for years. That is, until worn from overuse and stained with food and memories, I reluctantly let them go.

So, what do cooking and midlife and menopause have to do with each other? And what type of insights can chef and author Mollie Katzen lend to the conversation?

I originally approached Mollie in search of nutrition advice for women going through midlife and menopause. Although I realize that she isn’t a dietician or a nutritionist, as someone who’s immersed herself in food for decades, she seemed quite capable  to lend a perspective. But as our conversation took hold and we found our rhythm, I realized that the focus had shifted: what I ended up with was a mini-instruction manual, not only for eating healthy but also for forming and maintaining positive relationships with food and with ourselves.

A champion of “keep it healthy,” Mollie entered the scene when cookbooks were largely geared towards the typical American meat and potato diet.  When the Moosewood Cookbook first hit the shelves, “there was barely even a cookbook section in the bookstore, let alone, a ‘healthy eating’ or  ‘vegetarian’ section,” explains Mollie.  Yet, she is not what many of us classify as “vegetarian,” and  although she  primarily skews the dinner plate towards greens and veggies, she consistently includes small amounts of animal protein.  “My diet in my 30s and 40s could have been classified as practically vegan,” she says, “even if I wasn’t orthodox about it.” (At that time, she was also keen on a low-fat diet, which, coupled with the lack of ample amounts of protein, spelled trouble.) “It was almost ‘remorse cuisine;’ I’d eat this way and by mid-afternoon I’d almost be fainting, depleted, irritable. I had no focus. I found that I wasn’t functioning and would wonder what was wrong with me because I thought I was eating the purest diet on the planet. I felt like I was falling apart.”

If you are familiar with the earlier editions of Mollie’s books, they concentrate heavily on whole grains and legumes. However, age has paved a path for a significant alteration in what she eats.  Emphasizing that the amount of bulgar and beans she’d have to eat to obtain the amount of protein that she needs for her blood sugar to stay stable could easily translate into an extra 50 pounds, Mollie says that she has changed her diet to include grass-fed animal protein and raw milk cheese, milk and butter.

What about aging and diet? “I think that women get really frustrated,” she says, pointing out that as we age, even if we change nothing about our lifestyles, e.g., if our lifestyle is reasonable, we are of fairly normal weight, exercise moderately and eat pretty well, we still gain weight. “Our bodies become an inefficient machine and our metabolisms slow,” she says, adding that one of the most consistent things she’s observed amongst her friends is the “oh my god, what happened to my body” moment. The ‘I’m minding my business, doing the same things I’ve always done and all of a sudden, I’ve got this spare tire, I’ve got the fat” epiphany. Sound familiar?!

Although challenging, the answer to this common dilemma is fairly intuitive. And while we’d love to fool ourselves into believing that declining hormones are the primary culprits, they aren’t. Rather a decline in physical activity and lack of dietary restraint are the key players.  Mollie agrees that while women can’t do a whole lot about the fat redistribution, the “one thing [they] need in order to keep the [weight gain] at bay is to keep muscles toned as possible with resistance exercise and also, eat less.” New flash! This actually works; Mollie reports that she currently weighs the same as she did in her 20’s!

Of course, what works for one woman might not be exactly what works for another. We all need to forge our dietary paths and strategies that work for both our individual metabolism and our bodies.

“Health is trial and error,” Mollie explains. “So much of it shows up in how you feel a few hours later. For example, do you feel sleepy after you’ve eaten? Do you feel sluggish or irritable later in the day? Do you have trouble sleeping at night? For me, these were all symptoms of what was going on when I was eating almost no fat or protein.” Much in line with health and nutrition experts, Molllie’s strategy has been to reduce her daily caloric intake while at the same time increasing the percent of calories in her diet that are fat. “I get a good 30% of my calories from nuts, olive oil, avocado and fatty fish.” And when she snacks, its the good fats that she reaches for: “avocados and nuts, especially walnuts. When I am hungry, I have a handful of almonds. I just think that for people as they get older, they should lose the pretzels and eat almonds or guacamole or something with good fat in it.”

We also need to slow down. Bet you’ve heard that before! Mollie says that the most radical transformation we can make with food isn’t so much changing what we eat but how we eat it. Her advice? “Don’t even pick up the fork for the first minute that the food is served. Breathe deeply, look at it, admire it, thank the cook, be grateful. Then pick up your fork, take a few bites and put your fork down. Swallow your food. Women simply don’t have the metabolic ability to do a good job with all that food.”

Food heals. As women, our love-hate relationship with food is complex. We not only use food as fuel, but also to feed our emotions. Or on the flipside, we deprive ourselves in ways that are counterintuitive and sometimes, downright unhealthy.

“This sounds so obvious,” says Mollie, “but I really want people to turn towards cooking and not away from it. To me, the more hands-on and proactive we are about food and cooking, the more we heal whatever issues or concepts we have around food. I’ve actually seen people healing their relationship with food by diving into it.” Make food one of your favorite hobbies. She suggests that rather instead of shunning away from the grocery store run, step back and make it a trip to pick up something beautiful to be celebrated. “Diving into a more positive, deliberate relationship with food gives you something nice to do,” she adds.

What are the take-away messages?

• Tailor it uniquely: keep it healthy.. for you.
• Move towards healthier choices and use food in a healing, more positive manner.
• Embrace yourself with beautiful food, whether it’s a perfect tomato from the Farmer’s Market or some kick-ass, green-as-grass guacamole.
• Take it slow, and breathe.

Wise words, from a wise woman who knows her way around a kitchen or two.

p.s. Mollie has shared two of her favorite recipes. Check them out, try them out and please, comment and show some love!

About Mollie:

Mollie Katzen, with over 6 million books in print, is listed by the New York Times as one of the best-selling cookbook authors of all time. A 2007 inductee into the prestigious James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame, and largely credited with moving healthful vegetarian food from the “fringe” to the center of the American dinner plate, Ms. Katzen has been named by Health Magazine as one of “The Five Women Who Changed the Way We Eat.”

In addition she is a charter member of the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and an inaugural honoree of the Natural Health Hall of Fame. An award-winning illustrator and designer as well as best-selling cookbook author and popular public speaker, Mollie Katzen is best known as the creator of the groundbreaking classics Moosewood Cookbook, and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Her other books include the award-winning children’s cookbook trilogy, Pretend Soup,Honest Pretzels, and Salad People; Vegetable Heaven (winner of the International Cookbook Reveu Best in Category award); Sunlight Café; Eat, Drink, & Weigh Less (with Walter Willett, MD of Harvard), and the best-selling The Vegetable Dishes I Can’t Live Without.

Extreme makeover

Posted by Liz on Sep 28, 2009 in diet, exercise | 3 comments

Great news for women in menopause: it appears that vigorous physical exercise can turn back the clock, at least as far as physical capacity and weight loss ability goes!

Findings from two studies, one published this past July in the Journal of Applied Physiology, and the other this September, in  Metabolism – Clinical and Experimental, show for the first time that despite age-related deceases in hormone levels, lean body mass and aerobic capacity, training can achieve the same health benefits that women 16 years younger might experience.

In both studies, researchers looked at the effects of cycling (on a stationary bike) for an hour, five days a week at 65% of maximum lung capacity in 10 sedentary but otherwise healthy postmenopausal women.

(FYI: The term ‘lung capacity’ refers to the maximum amount of air that a person’s lungs can hold after the greatest possible inspiratory effort. When you exhale, the amount of air left in your lungs is known as ‘residual volume.’ This can be affected by age, aerobic capacity and a host of other factors. After the age of 30, the capacity to use and consume oxygen drops by about 1% per year)

In the first, they found that all study participants increased their body’s capacity to consume and use oxygen (known as VO2max) by as much as 16%. At the same time, resting heart rate decreased an average of 4 beats per minute. By the study’s end, blood pressure had also dropped substantially and  heart capacity during exercise increased. What’s more, study participants were able to burn fat more efficiently — by about 10%, without relying on carbohydrates. (A primary reason why weight loss can be difficult for women with specific dietary changes is that unlike men, blood sugar (glucose)  levels (usually derived from stored carbohydrates) remain stable during exercise and metabolism quickly returns to normal after. So despite vigorous training, weight may remain the same.  This is even more true for women going through menopause, as fluctuating hormone levels affect metabolism and the ability to clear glucose from the blood.)

Similar findings were also seen in the second study; not only were women able to consume and use oxygen more significantly, but their ability to metabolize glucose improved by 35%, without any changes in dietary habits.

Overall, these study findings suggest that “older” women can improve and make significant changes in their cardiovascular and metabolic capacities, often to the same extent as women substantially younger, without having to go on extreme diets! The researchers say that these results are also encouraging in terms of increasing overall energy levels and keeping risk for disease in check.

Granted, the training regimens that the study participants undertook were quite strenuous and required a commitment, both in terms of time and exercise frequency. Nevertheless, the researchers believe that even less strenuous exercise could likely produce some degree of benefit.

So, do you need an extreme makeover to realize better health? Not really! Just a bit of inspiration and some kick-ass music to keep you going at the gym. Nice to know that great benefits can be achieved without starving ourselves!

Wednesday Bubble – a little inspiration: Big dietary changes one small step at a time. A guest post by Miz Fit

Posted by Liz on Sep 2, 2009 in diet, Inspiration | 3 comments

I’ve been wanting to share a few inspirational thoughts about fitness and healthy eating for some time now. So I thought that there was no better person to do that than my Twitter friend MizFit.

Miz Who?!! MizFit, creator of MizFit Online, whose philosophy reads as follows:

To embrace and love whom you already are.

To be wholly comfortable in your own skin.

To realize that, by virtue of BEING, you are enough.

To be unapologetically yourselves.

I truly admire this woman and know that you will enjoy her post. Show her some love!

This post is all about you.

The collective you.

The greater you who fill my in-box (which I adore) with your questions about health, fitness, tattoos and more.

Recently I’ve been receiving variations on this question a *bunch*:

I’m ready to change my eating habits and don’t want to do a diet (I’ve done WW before and Jenny Craig and South Beach).  I want to try and eat intuitively which I know you do. What can I do starting now?  Please don’t tell me to read a book 🙂 I’m so busy.  What’s the first step in your opinion?

I chose this email because it said “in your opinion.” My apologies to the rest of the emailers but it saved me the dizclaimer yammer. Another reason I chose this email is because of the ‘what can I do starting now’piece.

We all know how easy it is to do the “starting Monday I shall” or “on the first of the month I will…” & yet we all know (in our hearts. where it counts.) that it really is all about starting right.this.moment.

So I give you what I did.

When I finally decided the time had come to shed my freshwoman forty I followed about six steps & they’re the same kind of thing I still do on a daily basis. When I finally decided the time had come to shed my freshwoman forty I had no acronym with which to remember it all.

I give you an acronym to use. STARTING TODAY:

Mini-meals. I’m a believer in spreading the calories through out the day. For the most part none of my meals are bigger than any other (I do often eat more at breakfast out of hunger. Intuitively.)  Beyond the fact I think this helps me stay lean—-it definitely helps my blood sugar levels stay even & I have far more energy.

Intuitive eating. Start this one today – slowly Listen to what your body is saying. Pay attention to how you feel after eating certain foods.  JOURNAL.  For me this isn’t journaling *caloric intake* but feelings.  Noting how, when I crave sweets, it’s mainly AFTER I’ve had a high processed carbohydrate meal. That sort of thing.  Perhaps you begin by not even CHANGING your foods—just logging your body’s reaction to them.

Zero HARD & FAST RULES. Again, this is just what has always work for me. I’m a rebel. Make a rule that I can not have or do something & it is immediately the ONLY THING I THINK ABOUT.

Fiber, Fiber, Fiber. At this point I think we all know why (want more info? still unclear? desire a list of fiberfoods? please to let me know in the comments.)—be sure you both KNOW and are acting on it.

Invest in YOU. For me this takes the form of spending lots of money on quality foods & less money on (quality) clothing.  I love me some sushi grade tuna. I’m happy with clothing from Goodwill-type places. For some this may be an investment in a personal trainer.  For others, in a gym membership. I have more than a few non-wealthy friends who invested in cooking lessons in their homes so that they could learn a handful of easy healthy meals.

Which leads me to…

Tried & trues. Always have a few meals which you know you enjoy, which are healthy, & which are easily prepared in your arsenal. I tend to have the T & T’s already prepared and waiting in the fridge for those moments I’m too tired to cook. Other people prefer just to have ingredients on hand. Whatever *you* decide, I’m a firm believer in the fact that these T & T’s help to set us up for food success.

That’s me, People.

What I did starting out (sadly sans-acronym. I love me some acronyms) and, what I do today.

When I’m feeling completely scattered, out of my element and CRAZED I figure if I can stick to these six things Ill re-find my groove in no time.

Now you.

What would you tell the emailers who ask:

What’s the one thing I can do, starting today, to clean up/change my eating habits?

Hit us all up in the comments.

About Miz Fit (AKA Carla Birnberg)...Carla Birnberg is an award-winning author and fitness expert. A onetime personal trainer, she owned a boutique training studio, Head2Heel, in Chapel Hill, N.C. Carla also competes in both bodybuilding and fitness including a third place finish in the 2001 NPC House of Pain bodybuilding show. Her writing can be seen on Yahoo!Shine, in the Atkins Nutritional monthly newsletter, Experience Life Magazine, Austin Monthly Magazine and as a monthly health column in Good Life Magazine.

Carla is also the author of the book, The Whole Megillah: Miztvahs, Matzo Balls & Everything in Between (Bluegrass Publishing, May 2007) Carla’s blog, MizFitOnline, has been selected to serve as part of Oprah’s Virtual Digital Blogging Network and is ranked by Austin Monthly Magazine as one of the top 3 health blogs in the city.

Wednesday bubble: flava flavonoid

Posted by Liz on Jun 24, 2009 in diet | 5 comments

With the acai berry craze hitting its peak, I thought it was high time to devote a post to flavonoids (compounds found in plants, fruits and beverages that have been shown to have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties) — namely, those found in berries.

Yes, berries, This sounded a bit preposterous until I dug a bit deeper and located a current review in Maturitas, suggesting that berry flavonoids might be important for long-term health in menopausal women. However, researchers still can’t define the most important details, for example:

• berry type
• preparation
• regimen

The amount of berry flavonoid that becomes available and used by the body after eating also varies by individual make up and by the different types of flavonoids.

All of these factors are critical to designing a strategy that will yield the maximum health benefit. Nevertheless, evidence from clinical studies suggests the following:

• The addition of berries to the diet can reduce the risk of heart disease by halting the inflammatory process, eliminating free radicals (which can harm the structure of cells), decreasing blood pressure, inhibiting the gathering of platelets (which can lead to clogged arteries) and increasing high density lipoproteins (HDL, good cholesterol)/ reducing low-density lipoproteins (LDL, bad cholesterol). Data points to cranberry juice, wild blueberries, bilberries, blackcurrant or strawberry puree, and chokeberry or raspberry juices.

• Cancer prevention. Note that this has been controversial since increased consumption of dietary fruits and vegetables and not just berries, have been shown to impact certain cancers such as esophogeal cancer. In the small studies that the researchers cite, cranberry juice and freeze dried black raspberry have been shown to control signaling that promotes the proliferation of cancer cells.

• Age-related declines in motor skills, learning and memory impairment, specifically, those linked to a decline in the body’s ability to fight circulating free oxygen radicals that can damage cells. Evidence for these benefits are primarily derived from animal and not human studies, and concentrate on strawberries, blueberries and cranberries.

The researchers caution that it’s impossible to define how much of a single berry or combination of berries might help in disease prevention. Hence, it’s too early to make any definitive claims about berry consumption. However, they do emphasize that to date, research supports the importance of berries as part of a healthy, balanced diet for menopausal women.

Personally, I love berries and health benefits or not, I plan to eat as much of them as I can get my hands on this summer.