Kelly O'Connell, RD

Today’s post addresses my parents generation, the Baby Boomers. In about a year the Baby Boomers will begin turning 65 years of age and this is a peak age when our lean body mass starts to deplete. What does this mean? Our moms and pops need to pump some iron and drink some protein shakes! Sounds comical but true in a sense.

I compare their need to fuel properly the same way I fuel myself in my mid-20s as I train for an upcoming race. I need to eat right to make sure I am providing the right nutrition for my body to maintain lean body mass and so I can prevent injuries and even sick days. Also, for clarification, lean body mass is more than muscle. It includes all tissues in our body’s minus fat. Furthermore, maintaining lean body mass is so important because there are many negative implications that can occur if it is lost. The impacted circumstances go beyond frail bones/broken hips and research is diving deep into this topic.

Today, the New York Times wrote a fabulous article on the issue, which they termed the loss of lean body mass as sarcopenia. I highly recommend reading it. If you choose to or not, I encourage you start caring for your parents (and yourselves) before they start losing lean body mass. This can be observed by seeing a loss in strength, an inability to open a pickle jar, and/or walking a slower pace. Taking preventive action can be a very cost-saving benefit and two habits you can start doing today and encourage your parents to so is exercise weekly (and definitely include weights) and eat the right diet. Make sure your parents are eating high quality proteins (meat, eggs, and more), eating produce and taking supplements where needed.

Cheers to you and good health! Have a healthy and fit day!

Less Polyphenols In Bottled Tea Beverages Than In Brewed Tea

The first measurements of healthful antioxidant levels in commercial bottled tea beverages has concluded that health-conscious consumers may not be getting what they pay for: healthful doses of those antioxidants, or “poylphenols,” that may ward off a range of diseases.

Scientists reported at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) that many of the increasingly popular beverages included in their study, beverages that account for $1 billion in annual sales in the United States alone, contain fewer polyphenols than a single cup of home-brewed green or black tea. Some contain such small amounts that consumers would have to drink 20 bottles to get the polyphenols present in one cup of tea.

“Consumers understand very well the concept of the health benefits from drinking tea or consuming other tea products,” said Shiming Li, Ph.D., who reported on the new study with Professor Chi-Tang Ho and his colleagues. “However, there is a huge gap between the perception that tea consumption is healthy and the actual amount of the healthful nutrients – polyphenols – found in bottled tea beverages. Our analysis of tea beverages found that the polyphenol content is extremely low.”

Li pointed out that in addition to the low polyphenol content, bottled commercial tea contains other substances, including large amounts of sugar and the accompanying calories that health-conscious consumers may be trying to avoid. He is an analytical and natural product chemist at WellGen, Inc., a biotechnology company in North Brunswick, N.J., that discovers and develops medical foods for patients with diseases, including a proprietary black tea product that will be marketed for its anti-inflammatory benefits, which are due in part to a high polyphenol content.

Li and colleagues measured the level of polyphenols – a group of natural antioxidants linked to anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, and anti-diabetic properties – of six brands of tea purchased from supermarkets. Half of them contained what Li characterized as “virtually no” antioxidants. The rest had small amounts of polyphenols that Li said probably would carry little health benefit, especially when considering the high sugar intake from tea beverages.

“Someone would have to drink bottle after bottle of these teas in some cases to receive health benefits,” he said. “I was surprised at the low polyphenol content. I didn’t expect it to be at such a low level.”

The six teas Li analyzed contained 81, 43, 40, 13, 4, and 3 milligrams (mg.) of polyphenols per 16-ounce bottle. One average cup of home-brewed green or black tea, which costs only a few cents, contains 50-150 mg. of polyphenols.

After water, tea is the world’s most widely consumed beverage. Tea sales in the United States have quadrupled since 1990 and now total about $7 billion annually. The major reason: Scientific evidence that the polyphenols and other antioxidants in tea may reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, and other afflictions.

Li said that some manufacturers do list polyphenol content on the bottle label. But the amounts may be incorrect because there are no industry or government standards or guidelines for measuring and listing the polyphenolic compounds in a given product. A regular tea bag, for example, weighs about 2.2 grams and could contain as much as 175 mg. of polyphenols, Li said. But polyphenols degrade and disappear as the tea bag is steeped in hot water. The polyphenol content also may vary as manufacturers change their processes, including the quantity and quality of tea used to prepare a batch and the tea brewing time.

“Polyphenols are bitter and astringent, but to target as many consumers as they can, manufacturers want to keep the bitterness and astringency at a minimum,” Li explained. “The simplest way is to add less tea, which makes the tea polyphenol content low but tastes smoother and sweeter.”

Li used a standard laboratory technique, termed high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), to make what he described as the first measurements of polyphenols in bottled tea beverages. He hopes the research will encourage similar use of HPLC by manufacturers and others to provide consumers with better nutritional information.

Source:
Michael Bernstein
American Chemical Society

Have you ever noticed that Jill, Sally or Sue dropped 10 pounds “so easily” for her wedding? It was not the Bridezilla in her that made it happen, but it was simply the concept of focusing in on what she wanted. Like Jill, Sally, Sue or whomever, I too want to feel great on my wedding day. This is my plan:

1. Run three days a week in a tube top so I don’t get tan lines

2. Eat strict meals

3. I hope you don’t believe any of the above

In reality my plan is to just focus in on what I want and without a doubt I am not sacrificing my health and cutting calories too closely to get there. I am going to just make sure that I don’t splurge at times I’d normally like to, eat consistently throughout the day, fit in exercise when I can and to try not to stress.

If you are trying to weigh in at your goal weight if you are getting married or not, zero in on exactly what you want and really want it. Have your desire match up with your motivation and you’ll be surprised as to where that will get you.

The best asset to a bride is her appearance of happiness, right?!

Have a healthy and fit day!

A year ago I would have never of guessed that I’d be where I am today. I moved from Chicago to Ohio for a long sought after job I’d been admiring since my beginning years of college. Shortly after I started my new gig, my boyfriend rings me and asks, “I have an opportunity to move to Australia for work, would you go?”

Now what would you say to that?!

Two months later we were on an annual trip in Las Vegas and my boyfriend quickly turned into a fiance. I am shining with happiness with a lot going on!

As things turn out, my fiance and I are communicating over video chat while he is in Australia and I am in Ohio for only a few more months till I make the move myself.

In the meantime, I plan to blog a little more and key in on how to get buff before the day I am a bride, along with excelling at work, learning all I can, training for a half marathon (October 17th!), enjoying the holidays and holiday shopping at home, planning our wedding, helping with my brothers wedding, supporting my eldest brother and wife as they plan for their baby and gosh darn enjoying life!

Never did I think I’d be where I am today but I’d like to think I am living life to the fullest. Are you?

Have a healthy and fit day!

For some women, weight control is more important than sex, according to a new poll of 1,001 people.
About half of women say they would rather go without sex for the summer than gain 10 pounds. A fourth of men feel the same way.

More people say they would rather shed 10 to 20 pounds during the summer than get promoted at work.

Of course, weight loss would make them feel sexier. About 66% of people say they need to lose weight to feel sexier than they currently do. It would take a loss of an average 23 pounds to feel hotter.

“What this shows is that people are highly motivated to not gain weight,” says Bruce Daggy, vice president of research and development for Nutrisystem. “They recognize what it will do to their feeling of well-being and fitness.”

Another poll conducted a few years ago for Fitness magazine found more than half of Americans say they’d rather lose their jobs than get fat.

Other findings from the Nutrisystem poll, conducted by Kelton Research for the diet company:

•Three-quarters of both men and women would have been willing to give up something — such as watching TV, shopping, using a cellphone or computer for the summer — for a flat tummy.

•Almost half say they don’t diet because they don’t want to give up their favorite foods.

•About a third don’t want the inconvenience of dieting, and a quarter don’t want to deal with the stress.

•Half of dieters have tried to lose weight within the past two years.

•A third have tried over the past year.

•About half say that you have to start planning in the winter (January through March) to get your body in shape for summer.

•Participants in the survey attemped to diet an average of 13 times in their lifetime — women, 16 times; men, 8.

By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY

Germs living in the gut may cause higher rates of allergies, chronic stomach upsets and even obesity among children living in rich countries, researchers reported.

They compared intestinal bacteria between children in Europe and the West African country of Burkina Faso, and found enough differences to help explain disparities in disease and obesity.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may support the development of probiotic products to help keep humans leaner and healthier, the researchers said.

“Our results suggest that diet has a dominant role over other possible variables such as ethnicity, sanitation, hygiene, geography and climate in shaping the gut microbiota,” Paolo Lionetti, of Italy’s University of Florence, and colleagues wrote. “We can hypothesize that the reduction in richness we observe in EU compared with Burkina Faso children could indicate how the consumption of sugar, animal fat and calorie-dense foods in industrialized countries is rapidly limiting the adaptive potential of the microbiota.”

The study builds on a body of evidence that human health relies heavily on the trillions of microorganisms living in and on our bodies. Only a fraction cause disease directly — many more help digest food, affect other bacteria and may influence hundreds of biological functions.

Recent studies have found that certain bacteria cause inflammation that can affect appetite as well as inflammatory bowel conditions like Crohn’s disease and colitis.

Lionetti’s team studied the DNA of the gut bacteria of children in Burkina Faso, who are breast-fed up to age 2 and eat a diet likely similar to that of Stone Age humans, with little meat. The Western diet, in contrast, is heavy in meat, processed grains, sugar and fat.

The researchers found that the African children had many bacteria to break down fiber, but the European children lacked those microbes. The ratios were similar to those found in studies comparing the gut bacteria of lean people to obese people.

This bacterial balance could even be causing obesity, the researchers said.

— Maggie Fox, Reuters

Are you a snacker or a snack avoider? Once upon a time, I snacked very little and only found a daily nibble around 3PM, but now a days, snacks are my weapon to weight loss.   

Since I joined Corporate America and traveled through my mid twenties, which is when our metabolisms begin to slow down, I added a few unwanted pounds. With the combination of stress and desk-work it was too easy to gain weight. And, eating the same things I did years ago and eating at the same times, was not helping to halt any weight gain nor spark weight loss.

As a dietitian, I have been too stubborn to ask for help and therefore, I’ve turned myself into nothing other than a small experiment. I have not fallen for any extreme fad diets but I have attempted eating purely paleo (which is an energy boosting meal plan for me) and I’ve tried eating all low glycemic (which has helped with my modulation of insulin). But, my weight hadn’t budge. From the intro of this blog post the answer to my problem has been snacks.

I’ve combined a low-glycemic, paleo diet with zeroing in on when I am eating to get my numbers on the scale to move in the right direction. Now, you can find some sort of nutrient-dense snacks in my hand every mid-morning and mid-afternoon. I plan out my snacks every day so I don’t feel famished by meal time. Some snacks I regularly consume are listed below.

Laughing Cow Swiss Cheese with 5 Mary’s Gone Black Pepper Crackers and a small serving of carrots and celery
Greek yogurt with 1/2 cup of fresh blueberries
Carb Control, diabetic-friendly Dannon yogurt with mixed in Puffins cereal
Frozen raspberries w/ melted chocolate chips
Mixed nuts
Fresh fruit with a string cheese

What do you usually snack on?

The article I’ve posted today was written by one of my favorite speakers, David Katz. In the least he is a walking inspiration who has unmeasurable passion for health. Enjoy his provided information and have a healhty and fit day!

By David Katz, M.D.
 
We are what we eat. We’ve all heard it, but most of us probably don’t quite believe it. After all, you’ve had french fries and didn’t sprout french fry antennae. So we’re not really what we eat … are we?

We are. It’s every bit as true as it is hard to see. Just as our homes are made from lumber without looking like trees, our bodies are made from the nutrients we extract from foods without resembling those foods. The nutritional content of what we eat determines the composition of our cell membranes, bone marrow, blood, and hormones. Consider that the average adult loses roughly 300 billion cells to old age every day and must replace them. Our bodies are literally manufactured out of the food we consume.

That’s why what we put in them is of utmost importance — and why “clean food” is an urgent priority and “junk” food is neither cute nor innocuous. In short, our bodies are only as clean as the food we feed them.

What difference does that make? Nothing less than this: Our forks — and our feet — are the master levers of medical destiny. Let me explain.

Before 1993, a list of the leading causes of death in the United States included heart disease, cancer, and stroke. But in that year, J. Michael McGinnis, MD, and William Foege, MD, changed this paradigm when they published “Actual Causes of Death in the United States” in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which looked at the causes of these diseases.

They concluded that fully half the annual deaths — roughly a million — were premature and could’ve been postponed by modifying behaviors, including smoking, diet and exercise, alcohol consumption, use of firearms, sexual behavior, motor vehicle crashes, and illicit drug use. Smoking and poor eating and exercise habits alone accounted for 700,000 premature deaths in 1990.

In 2004, a group of scientists at the CDC revisited this issue in JAMA and came to the same conclusion. This time, however, the toll from eating badly had gone up, due to obesity and diabetes.

Then, last summer, CDC scientists published a paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine analyzing records of more than 23,000 German adults enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition study (EPIC) and investigated four behaviors: Are you eating well? Are you a healthy weight? Are you physically active? Do you smoke?

Those with four good answers (eating well, body mass index below 30, active, not smoking), compared with those with four bad answers (not eating well, BMI above 30, not active, and smoking), were 80 percent less likely to have any major chronic disease. (Imagine if a pill could reduce our risk of dying prematurely from any cause by 80 percent!)

You have doubtless heard of nature (genes) versus nurture (environment) — but this shows that lifestyle is so powerful, we can use it to nurture nature, or influence our genes. Various studies have shown this, but Dean Ornish, MD, and his colleagues have produced the most compelling results. Assigning men with prostate cancer to a “clean living” intervention that included a wholesome, plant-based diet; regular physical activity; and stress management, they demonstrated a marked reduction in the activity of genes that can promote prostate cancer growth and a significant increase in the genes that are able to control it.

That’s the power and promise in clean eating, so it helps to know what it means. Is it organic? Not necessarily. Food can be organic without being nutritious — think organic gummy bears — or nutritious without being organic, such as conventionally grown broccoli. Organic is a good thing, but it’s not a summary measure of “clean.”

Clean foods are minimally processed and as direct from nature as possible. They’re whole and free of additives, colorings, flavorings, sweeteners, and hormones. I particularly like foods with one-word ingredients, such as spinach, blueberries, almonds, salmon, and lentils. The longer the ingredient list, the more room there is for manufacturing mischief — additions of chemicals, sugar, salt, harmful oils, and unneeded calories — and the more likely it is that you should step away from the package so no one gets hurt!

There’s also strong evidence that, as a rule, the closer to nature you eat, the fewer calories it will take for you to feel satisfied. The reason? Processed foods often have low amounts of fiber and water; a high ratio of calories to nutrients; and a mix of tastes from added sugar, salt, and flavoring that overly stimulates the appetite center in the hypothalamus. Clean foods are the opposite: lots of fiber and fluid, a high ratio of nutrients to calories, and free of added flavors — all of which send signals of satiety to your brain before you consume too many calories. As an example, think of how many raw almonds you eat before stopping, then compare that to honey roasted almonds — that sugary coating spurs you to eat more. By eating clean, you can control your weight permanently without feeling deprived or hungry or having constant cravings.

So, let’s sum up the importance of eating clean. Our bodies are replacing billions of cells every day — and using the foods we consume as the source of building materials. Eating well is part of the formula that can reduce our risk of any major chronic disease by 80 percent and reach into our innermost selves to improve the health of our very genes.

I recall my mother admonishing me, as a child, to clean my plate because there were starving kids in China. These days, China, like us, has epidemic obesity. Forget about cleaning your plate — focus instead on choosing clean foods to put on it in the first place. You know what’s at stake: life itself, the liberty that comes with good health, and the likelihood of happiness.

Copyright© 2010 Rodale Inc.All rights reserved.

On my way out the door this morning I breezed over an article that addressed the rise in obesity along with the rise in weight gain in college. Many moons ago, I was a precollege advisor, and incoming freshman often asked, “Do you really gain weight/Freshman 15.” And as a dietitian and a college student at the time my answer was consistently, “No. Not if you “plan” on it.”

To gain weight you have to be making choices that cause the gain. I definately understand how easy it is to make the slightest changes in my lifestyle to add a few pounbds here and there. My point of this story is as a society, obesity needs to be confronted and not just accepted. We are American, we are all trying to get ahead and that leaves little to no time to be an extreme athlete or organic gardener. BUT we can all “plan” out time to take care of ourselves and our loved ones.

I ask you today, to start with one small change. Let it be an additional glass of water or an added walk to your lunch hour. With each small change, comes small successes, and it’s okay to slip up every now and then. We are human. Just be sure to steer back on track in the end.

Cheers to good health and have a healthy and fit day!

Do you have a poor man’s concoction of some sort? My brother has a pretty good one – instead of ordering up a Bud Light Lime, he’ll get the draft beer with a side of limes. Not only does he save maybe a penny but I think it would taste better.

Yet, my poor man’s creation is gluten free PBJ! It doesn’t turn out the traditional sandwich becuase it’s not made with the dense gluten free bread (never been a fan). Instead, I whip up some gluten free Old Fashion oatmeal and stir in a healthy tablespoon of gooey natural peanut butter and a hand full of organic raisins. Try it! You’ll be hooked!

Have a healthy and fit day!