Beyond the Scale

First, I’m not saying the scale isn’t important, but it’s only one measure of several. Yes it’s The Scale, it’s numbers, yet it’s only one indicator of progress. Your wellness journey is much more than numbers on The Scale.

We’re talking about wellness, and in this, we’re talking about health, and so we’re really talking about thriving. The decision to make positive lifestyle behavior choices, and becoming mindful of those choices isn’t something reflected in your scale’s vocabulary. And while the magic number is important, moving beyond that number to the what, how and why significantly increases your chances of success.

When you only look at the number on the scale to gauge your progress, what happens when you build muscle (which we know weighs more than fat)? What happens if you retain water? What about when you hit that plateau? What about vacation, or special occasions, and sometimes just plain life? These are all very human realities, and they’re all good reasons why The Scale isn’t the only indicator of success.

If you’re making positive lifestyle choices and are becoming more physically active, The Scale might actually report a gain—yet you’ve lost inches and maybe a size. You look better, you feel better, you have more energy, and you feel good about what you are accomplishing. Rest assured, keep going and The Scale will follow your lead.

As an alternative to becoming a slave to The Scale, I suggest you focus on those personal victories that take you toward your goal to lead a healthier lifestyle. Playing with your children, setting a good wellness example for your family, giving away pounds of clothes that no longer fit, dancing into the night, actually chasing the dog, going out to eat and taking half home, discovering a taste for vegetables . . . and the list goes on, and is personal because your list reflects your accomplishments.

So, what are you after that goes even beyond the numbers on The Scale? And, what are you ready to do to get there?

There's a Pill for That . . . Really?

There’s a great difference in weight loss and overall health. For two-thirds of our population, weight loss is important, but how we go about that weight loss is really important. Weight loss without health is not sustainable and is not beneficial. Weight loss itself is an action, and an action that can lead to that elusive overall health—or not. People looking for wellness want to feel good, they don’t want pain, they don’t want to rely on medication to be healthy, they want to like that image in the mirror looking back at them—looking back with pride rather than in judgment. Guess what? The next best, newest, greatest pill won’t address these wide-ranging wellness goals.

And, now there’s a new pill . . . Belviq. It’s the new weight loss drug that suppresses appetite and stimulates metabolism. But here’s the conundrum—our problem is a combination of people eating too much food, and people not eating enough good food. How exactly does a pill solve this puzzle? If it suppresses appetite, how does the pill dictate exactly which food we eat to maintain balanced nutrition?

Now, here’s what the research says: Not even considering the side effects, which are significant, you can expect to lose 5 percent of your body weight in a year—if you weigh 200 pounds, that’s 10 pounds of weight loss, or less than a pound a month. Really? Hmmm . . . there’s always the alternative—portion size, healthier choices and lifestyle behavior choices and changes, without the side effects.

One more thing, the FDA rejected this same drug in 2010. The manufacturer came back this year with new data—new data, not a new drug. 

Here’s a little food for thought that doesn’t come in a pill. 

Does a pill tell you which food to eat? For many of us, won’t an appetite suppressant-type pill just keep us from eating the good food our bodies need in our collective effort to lose weight?  Won’t it (if it even works) create more malnutrition because it won’t even begin to change behavior? 

 Now, if we could only put lifestyle behavior change in a pill . . .

Fat Unplugged . . . Good fat, bad fat

Dietary fat that is. And, contrary to a popular misconception, all fat is not bad. Some oils, nuts, avocados, fatty fish, olives—and more, are found on the USDA’s MyPlate, which replaces the old food pyramid. The guidelines call for the equivalent of 5 to 7 teaspoons of these healthy oils daily. All fat is not bad—but all fat is not the same.

So, in addition to what’s good and bad about dietary fat, what about low-fat and no-fat products?

This gets tricky and it involves pairing, or combining the right compounds found in real food with the right real fats. Example: A recent Purdue study found that fat-free and even low-fat salad dressings actually reduced the absorption of fat-soluble carotenoids—those beneficial compounds that are in that hypothetical salad such as lutein, beta-carotene and lycopene. Pouring the bottled fat-free or low-fat dressing on your salad, rather than creating your own vinaigrette with olive oil and balsamic vinegar results in the double whammy. You lose out on the benefit of the healthy, good fat oil, and lose many of the original nutrients in the salad you just prepared. Sure, there’s a reduction in calories, but also a reduction in nutrients. The answer to this is portion size.

Studies from Cornell University have demonstrated that when participants are given the choice between a salad with low-fat dressing and a vinaigrette dressing, they choose the low-fat dressing thinking it’s better for them, and then eat twice as much (overfed and undernourished). And, there’s more . . .

When you buy a low-fat or fat-free product, compare the list of ingredients on the label to that same product in its original state. Conventional wisdom says that if you can’t pronounce it and don’t know what it is or does, you don’t want it in your food. An added caveat—those lower or non-fat products are usually higher in sodium and sugar.

Fear of fat? What about paying close attention to calorie count, portion size, dietary recommendations and requirements, and the nutritional content of real food? 

Just a Little Better

It sounds so easy. “I’ll do just a little bit better.”  But, just a little better, in reality, can be a lot better. It can mean all the difference in getting enough sleep, eating more fruits and vegetables, consuming fewer calories, fewer sweets, fewer refined carbs, less alcohol. The list goes on.

For many of us, our daily decisions revolve around our work, our children and families, how we choose to and need to spend our time, what we are able to afford,  how we prepare our meals (or if we prepare our meals) . . . you get the idea. And, the idea is, that wherever we  are along the continuum, we can all do just a little better.

If you have two soft drinks a day, have just one (and then do better still). Do the same for your children. If you have dessert at every meal, try limiting it to once a week, or on special occasions. If you have sugar-laden breakfast cereals (because, after-all, that’s what your kids see on television), switch to a whole grain cereal topped with berries or a banana. If you don’t have time for 20 minutes of moderate physical activity every day, try for three times a week—maybe a family walk after dinner rather than half an hour of TV.

Even with time, financial and work constraints, we can all find ways to make even the smallest improvements in our lifestyle behavior choices. By adopting a just a little better attitude, you not only do better, you set a better example, and your children learn by that example.

 

Keep in mind too, that just a little better isn’t just anything—it might just be everything.

Digging in the Dirt

This morning's harvest

I love digging in the dirt. It’s about as down to earth as you can get. The fenced garden walls crawl with morning glories and other flowering vines, and they are beautiful in the early morning light.  The gorgeous heirloom tomatoes, leafy greens, cucumbers, eggplant, varieties of squash, okra, beans, potatoes, onions, peppers, herbs, carrots, radishes, beets, daikon and more, assure us we will eat well. It’s hard to feel the ever-present daily stresses when digging, tending and nurturing.

But, then there’s the work.  And, the work to maintain our garden paradise means aching shoulders and backs, a lot of mud, blisters, broken fingernails, and time. It’s a lot of work. But, then there’s the harvest (yea!). And, then there’s the more.

You can’t have a harvest without the digging, planting, watering, thinning, weeding, and ongoing care. It takes constant attention and tending. It becomes a part of your day. You can’t ignore the weeds, the bugs and grubs (yuck),  the watering demands, or the ongoing day-to-day attention required to produce a fruitful garden. It starts as a collection of tender shoots, demanding attention, and you can’t pay attention part time or only when it’s convenient. If you only tended your garden on Tuesday and Saturday, it would wilt in the hot sun. It wouldn’t thrive and it wouldn’t yield the benefits you were after. If you ignored the weeds, they would overtake your harvest, and at the same time consume and steal the nutrients from the soil. 

But . . . at the same time, you can’t overindulge your garden. You can’t over-feed, over-water, or over-plant. There’s a balance that must be maintained for your garden’s health and productivity, not just this year, but for the years to come. A garden is, in its own way, a kind of wealth—and health. It’s a living thing. And, with all we put into it, the payback comes in multiples.

So, digging in to wellness . . . Can you hope to achieve your wellness goals with only a few hours of attention each week? Most likely “not.”  You have to plan ahead and you have to do first things first. You dig, you plant, you nurture, and then you are able to reap the benefits of your effort.  Believe it, your wellness is also a kind of wealth. And, it demands your attention.

Do you have a plan to grow your wellness? Sure, it’s a stretch, but think of your body as your garden. You don’t want to underfeed it, and you shouldn’t overfeed it, and you can’t ignore it.  You already know that  too much takes its toll, as does too little. Only with too much, you are working in reverse to achieve your goals. Too much, just as too little, means your garden won’t thrive.

You need to be active. You need to be attentive. You need to be deliberate. You need to be moderate and you need to be mindful. Your body needs to be a part of the process. Your body needs fuel, the right amount in the right proportion supplied by you, just as your garden needs nutrients supplied through feeding – the right amount at the right time. 

Whether you have a garden or not, you are a gardener . . . 

 

Are you giving your body the nutrients it needs? Are you giving it too much food? Are you giving it the attention it needs? Are you on the right track for bountiful wellness?

The Information Diet

There’s a new book out, “The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption.”  While it focuses on our information overload, I had to think, “WOW,” look at the parallels. The book talks about conscious consumption. Well . . .

If we stop to think about it, it becomes pretty obvious that healthy information consumption habits are about a lot more than just productivity and efficiency. It turns out even information consumption impacts our personal health, as well as the health of society. And, in the same way too much junk food can lead to obesity, junk information can actually lead to new forms of ignorance—call it cluelessness. 

The Information Diet provides a framework for consuming information in a healthy way, by showing you what to look for, what to avoid, and how to be selective. Hmmm . . . this sounds familiar. We can say the exact same thing about making healthy nutritional choices. After all, we know we are, at least in part, products of the food we eat. We are also products of the information we consume. This leads to the question of fault.

Is it the food’s fault that we eat too much? Is it the information’s fault that we have information overload? Maybe what we’re really suffering from is information malnutrition or information overconsumption. And,  it has all kinds of physiological and psychological effects on us. Hmmm . . . just like our nutritional choices. We may be eating too many empty calories, as well as too many empty mental calories. 

Here’s an interesting statistic. The average person spends more than 11 hours out of every 24 hours in a state of constant information consumption.  It seems that while we’ve grown obese on sugar, fat, sodas and junk food—at the same time we’ve become gluttons for tweets, texts, emails, instant messages, RSS feeds, downloads, YouTube videos, and FB status updates.

And it all comes back to the choices we make. It comes back to being mindful of those choices.

Guess what happens if we concentrate on cutting the low-quality information calories, as well as the low-quality nutritional calories?

Jumping the Chasm

It’s true. You can’t leap a chasm in two jumps. So, take a big breath, get a running start and go for it. But, if your big leap is the wrong thing, then what? Do you turn around mid-air? Make a different choice?  On the other hand, maybe you simply need to find a bridge. Maybe you want to just hedge your bets. Whether through one big leap or across a bridge, when find yourself on the other side of the chasm, what comes next?  Shift the conversation to wellness . . .

Creating a healthy lifestyle through behavior change will for most of us require a combination of a flying leap over a chasm and then completing the journey by walking across bridges. Both serve a purpose. First you need to make the big decision to move forward. This might mean making a dramatic change, or several major changes at one time. But, once that big decision is made, you’ll find that most of the time, the way to create positive lifestyle behavior change is the more non-dramatic decision to start and keep walking across the bridge, one step at a time until you get to the other side. 

And, where behavior change and wellness are concerned, without the bridges, you’ll find it’s not a chasm you jump once to get to the other side—you have to make that jump again and again, over and over. Along the way, it’s easy to encounter wellness fatigue. Now, if you’re crossing the bridge, you will find it to be every bit as life-altering as jumping across the chasm (perhaps not as dramatic). You end up in the same place, and one step at a time is sustainable, allowing for some course correction along the way.

Believe it or not, the decision to leap the chasm is often the easier decision. You decide. You jump. The decision to walk across the bridge requires a number of steps. You may get distracted, find yourself off-course, or simply change your mind and turn around. But, you can always turn back around and keep going until you reach the other side. If you think about it, most decisions are bridge decisions. You get from here to there by taking steps, the basic process through which we achieve the goals we set. 

When changing lifestyle behaviors, there’s a goal, a start, and there’s a finish. Simply comparing the flying leap decision with the crossing the bridge decision is similar to wanting instant results, for a process that takes time. Each of us knows who we are better than anyone else. We know what we will do, and we also know what we won’t do. We probably also know whether we’re jumpers or steppers, or more likely, a little of each.  

It’s up to each of us to decide how to ultimately get “to the other side”—the question is, are you ready to start the journey?