Jill's Blog
Since 2007, Jill has been sharing health and weight loss tips and tricks here on her blog.
She also writes about nutrition for chronic illness at NutritionWithJill.com and about nutrition for gut health at the LDN Research Trust.
Since 2007, Jill has been sharing health and weight loss tips and tricks here on her blog.
She also writes about nutrition for chronic illness at NutritionWithJill.com and about nutrition for gut health at the LDN Research Trust.
This week's tip is for everyone who has been eating the same few healthy foods for weeks on end. You know who you are. Maybe it's oatmeal with blueberries every day for breakfast, kale salad for lunch or almonds for every snack. First of all, kudos for such a healthy habit!
Indeed, research shows that LESS variety helps improve self-control and also cements habits faster, because the repetition quickly puts behavior on auto-pilot. It's also convenient. Many nutrition experts suggest limiting variety when starting a new routine.
BUT, your health needs variety in the long run. Even the healthiest eating day will leave you deficient in some nutrients if you repeat it long enough.
So here's a way to get the best of both worlds: Stick with your routine, but replace each go-to food with a "sibling food." A sibling food is one in the same food group, adjacent at the grocery store, and ideally a different color of plant food, to maximize variety of phytonutrients. Buy a different set of siblings every week, and change up your combinations so that the different nutrients can synergize. Recent research is suggesting that this is more valuable than previously thought.
So now your morning oatmeal with blueberries and flax alternates with hot rice cereal with raspberries and coconut flakes, then quinoa with peach slices and chopped pecans, then millet with mango chunks and slivered almonds, and on and on. It's like Geranimals for mealtime. You open up your choices just a tad, without having to make any major decisions...because, in nutrition, more decisions usually means worse decisions.
Of course, if you have the energy to be even more creative and diverse, go for it. But for those busy souls who want to improve variety but minimize food decisions, this approach can be the best of both worlds.
"Fitspiration" describes images designed to motivate us to make healthier lifestyle choices. It usually features fit, attractive people looking like they're having the time of their lives while exercising, eating salad, or engaging in other healthy habits. In some ways, it works. One recent study found that Fitspiration made women want to exercise more.
However, the study also found a dark side. Fitspiration images also triggered women to feel
By contrast, women who instead looked at travel photos felt more inspired to travel, but did not feel worse about their bodies or appearance. Men were not tested.
The authors of the study suggested that the harm of Fitspiration may outweigh the benefits, and suggest limiting exposure.
Interestingly, research on motivation and achievement also suggests that it is counterproductive to look at photos of a "dream body" when trying to lose weight or get fit.
So you might try avoiding Fitspiration this summer and see if it makes you happier. If you want to read more, you can find the study in the journal Body Image (2015; 15, 61-67).
Here's a great new finding from the Cornell Food Lab (the folks who bring us all the best practical nuggets about our eating habits):
Imagine this experiment:
A female volunteer is made to wait for 10 minutes in a kitchen stocked with cookies, carrot sticks, and crackers. She is either first primed to reflect on a time when she felt "in control" or felt "out of control." Additionally, the kitchen is either made to look messy and chaotic, or else clean and orderly. 98 women total were put through these various conditions. Want to guess what happened?.
When in the messy kitchen...
The women ate twice as many cookies.
Women primed to feel "out of control" ate more than those primed to feel "in control." One average, they ate 100 calories more.
Whoa! That all took place in just 10 minutes--that could add up fast!
Luckily, there is an easy fix: Tidy up your kitchen! ...especially when stressed or feeling out of control.
You can read the full article here: http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/discoveries/clean-kitchens-cut-calories
Heads Up!
Don't eat any frozen fruits or veggies until you consult this list and make sure you aren't eating foods possibly tainted with listeria (and if you checked recently, check again, because the recall was expanded):
http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ucm498841.htm
Dozens of brands are involved, including:
Listeria can be fatal, so please spread the word.
While the golden rule of eating -- "everything in moderation" -- is often a great policy, there are a few times when it can backfire.
Moderation doesn't work for:
Food allergies or Celiac disease.
Food addictions.
Justifying bad habits.
These instances prove that even moderation should be practiced in moderation. Hmmm...are we proving or disproving the rule now? I'm not sure, but have a good week!
Hello!
If you are like me, preparing your taxes makes you want to groan, pull out your hair, then drown your frustration in a glass of wine. Not so healthy.
But tax time also provides an opportunity to boost health for the coming year.
It's a great time to evaluate whether your spending habits might be tweaked for better health. For example:
If you spent less money on eating out, how much more could you spend on more exciting healthy groceries, like fresh seafood, exotic fresh fruits, fancy mushrooms, etc.?
Could you get a spa treatment every month (or week!) for the cost of your bar bills?
If you took healthier & cheaper vacations (e.g., biking or hiking trips), would that fund a bunch of massages or yoga classes? Or a membership at a nicer gym?
If you have a refund coming, how about spending it on something healthy, like dance lessons or a new bike?
If you need to cut spending, how about staying in Friday nights, playing music, cooking healthy and trading foot massages? (Giving massage has almost as many benefits as receiving, so it's a double bonus.)
Should you find cheaper hobbies, like hiking and biking or recreational sports? Should you bike to work?
Finally, don't forget the fantastic finding of happiness researchers at Harvard. They report that adding a daily 30-minute walk OR joining a fun hobby club can boost happiness as much as a $50,000 salary raise. That's gotta be worth a try, right?!
Hope your tax season goes smoothly!
Jill & Amy
If you are getting tired of conventional veggie form factors, here are our favorite ways to make them feel like special treats:
Zucchini spiralized into noodles. You can eat them raw or cooked, and they have a different taste and texture depending on how long you heat them. Mix them heated with marinara, parmesan, turkey meatballs, or your own creation. Or try them in a cold pasta salad, mixed with your favorite confettied veggies, olive oil, queso fresco crumbles, black beans, or whatever you like on noodles. Toasted sesame seeds and a little sesame oil works on either hot or cold noodles. Yellow squash work great, too.
A grilled or roasted portobello mushroom turned into pizza. Just fill with spinach, onion, garlic, pesto, cheese or whatever you like.
Grilled eggplant slices as taco shells or "bread" for a grilled cheese sandwich. Just slice them thin, grill each side with a spriz of oil and voila.
Cabbage roasted into steaks. Slice purple or green cabbage into 1/2" disks, spray with a little oil, then top with herbs, garlic, spices or whatever you like.
Cauliflower diced into rice or risotto. You can either put cauliflower in your food processor and chop it to bits before cooking, or just buy it ready-to-go at Trader Joe's. As an extra perk, it cooks very quickly.
Riced cauliflower pizza crust. Here is a recipe from Cacique that I've been meaning to try: http://www.caciqueinc.com/blog/2016/01/cauliflower-crust-pizza/#.VtdLaZWCOrU.
Cauliflower as mashed faux-tatoes. Boil cauliflower and blend it 'til it looks like your favorite Thanksgiving treat.
Zucchini French fries. Roast or grill thin slices of zucchini, with salt and pepper sprinkled on, and perhaps a spritz of oil. Sliced portobello mushroom strips also work well.
Thanks to our clients, who taught us these tricks. We know you have more great ideas...will you share them with us?
Lately it seems that many folks are struggling with cravings, so here are the latest research-proven ways for curbing them:
If you are beginning to crave a junky treat, load up on a healthier version of a similar flavor, so that your taste buds get sick of it. For example, if you are craving pizza, eat tomatoes and lowfat cheese. For pasta cravings try spiralized zucchini noodles or Shirataki noodles with tomato sauce and parmesan. If you are beginnng to crave chocolate mint ice cream, try putting cocoa powder and mint extract in almond milk.
It sounds corny, but a recent study found that daydreaming about happy things helped reduce cravings, especially after a little practice, and when incorporating happy sights, sounds and smells.
Especially if you can find distractions that keep your hands busy, like knitting, video games, or giving your honey a foot massage.
Because of "taste bud ping pong", there are some seemingly-innocent foods that can trigger cravings. Top offenders are coffee, anything salty (even cottage cheese or canned tuna or deli meat), and anything very sweet (even natural sweeteners, like stevia.) One strong taste--even if it was a nutritious or calorie-free food--can send you craving the opposite taste.
Again, it sounds corny, but spending just a few minutes writing and/or stating things for which you are grateful has been shown to help people eat healthier and resist cravings...and boost mood!
Easier said than done, I know, but keep in mind that when you choose to burn the candle at both ends, you also are choosing to increase your cravings.
Okey dokey. Good luck!
Watching football (I.e., hours of sedentary snacking and high adrenaline) is the optimal condition for promoting blood sugar spikes, fat storage and inflammation, if you don't watch it.
One way to reduce the risk is to do a good workout before the game, to deplete your muscles of glycogen. Another option is to choose healthier snacks to replace the chips and pizza. Here are some ideas:
If skipping your favorite junk food bums you out, take heart: Research shows that most people mindlessly much on anything within reach during the Super Bowl, and enjoy it the same whether it's raw veggies or hard core junk food.
So make us proud Sunday! And please share your healthy snack ideas. We can never have too many.
Some recent nutrition findings explain why many Americans don't lose weight after the holidays, despite eating healthier. Here's the (rather humbling) summary, after grocery bills were examined for 207 households:
On average, households bought more unhealthy food during the holiday season (between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day) compared to the previous months. No surprise. After January 1, they bought more healthy foods. Again, no surprise.
HOWEVER, after January 1, while buying more healthy food, they still purchased holiday levels of UNhealthy food. They just bought MORE food and MORE calories. Doh!
If you want to see the gory details, the complete article can be read at: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0110561
Since I'm currently in Truckee, where the Donner Party famously starved to the point of cannibalism, I'm reminded that over-buying food is a survival instinct baked deep into our biology. But...if your New Year's weight loss has been stymied, you might want to pay closer attention to your grocery purchases.