A Substitute For Ice Cream

Ice cream is a great treat in the summer heat, but some people prefer not to eat it either because of its nutritional status or its side effects on the body.

Recently, I came across an ‘ice cream’ that is completely dairy free and sweetened with Agave (a low-glycemic sweetener, which is easier to digest than sugar). This ice cream is actually made with coconut milk.

I was so interested in this ‘anti-ice cream’ that I had to try it. I bought the coconut sandwich bars that are each 100 calories. When I tasted it, I couldn’t believe how delicious it was. My husband and I both loved them. They don’t taste exactly like ice cream, but they give a whole new taste to ice cream.
What a perfect ice cream substitute for people who are lactose-intolerant, vegan, or just aren’t big ice cream fans.

This dairy free company is called Turtle Mountain. They make other frozen treats with coconut milk besides the sandwich bars. Be sure to give this treat a try and check out their website (by clicking on ‘Turtle Mountain’) to find stores near you that carry their products.

Go Lean On Protein

Protein is an essential nutrient for our body to function. However, we must remember that everything needs moderation. A lot of protein comes from animal products, but eating a lot of animal products such as meat can have negative health outcomes.

Eating meat sparingly and choosing leaner meats, can help combat and lower our risk for these four chronic diseases.

Type II Diabetes:

Try to decrease saturated fats by eating less beef and pork and increase polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats by choosing leaner meats like fish and poultry. This will help to manage weight, thus decreasing your chance for type II diabetes.

Cardiovascular Disease (CVD):

Decreasing protein from animals, thus decreasing saturated fats, will help decrease cholesterol in the blood and decrease the fatty deposits on the artery walls. As a result, you will lower your chances for CVD.

Osteoporosis:

Avoid a diet of high protein combined with low calcium. This diet will decrease bone density. Vitamin D helps with maintaining strong bones. You can get vitamin D from some fatty fish.

Cancer:

A high protein diet with red meats, grilled meats, and charred meats can put carcocinogens in the body, thus increasing the risk for cancer. So it is good to decrease these kinds of meats in the diet.

You don’t have to cut meat out of your diet. However, try to eat protein in moderation and choose leaner proteins.

* Sources of protein other than meat:
- dairy products
- soy
- beans
- nuts and seeds
- whole grains

Cinnamon – An Extraordinary Spice!

Cinnamon. The humble spice that sits on our kitchen shelf. To think it has more to offer than good taste. Amazingly enough…it does!

Thru studies, we are finding more and more remarkable health benefits with cinnamon. Below are reasons why to add some cinnamon spice to your life.

Cinnamon –

• a good source of iron, manganese, fiber, and calcium
• helps to regulate blood sugar (helpful with type II diabetes)
• a natural food preservative
• has an anti clotting effect, which thins the blood and helps with circulation
• has an antifungal, antibacterial property – helps fight against yeast infections and stomach ulcers
• helps lower LDL cholesterol
• helps with the digestion of fruit and dairy products

Also commonly used as a remedy around the world, cinnamon is…

• used for a cold, sore throat, or congestion
• used for nausea
• used to help with painful menstrual cramps
• used to improve energy and vitality

If you don’t already, start using some cinnamon SPICE…it will make everything NICE… and delicious!

Feeding Your Child

The Division of Responsibility, a concept created by Ellyn Satter, talks about dividing the responsibilities of feeding between the parent and the child.

The parent is responsible for what, when, and where. The child (toddler-adolescence) is responsible for how much and whether or not.

What
As the parent, you decide what the child eats. This means to limit “open kitchen” time (children eating whatever and whenever). Make sure to provide a variety of food for meals and snacks.

When
Parents need to set times to eat meals and snacks. For example, the parent can make sure that there are no snacks before dinner. This helps the child fulfill his/her responsibility of coming to dinner hungry.

Where
Eating together as a family can help children have a positive eating experience. In addition, children seem to try more food when they see their parents eat because children always want to be more like adults. Try to at least eat dinner together as a family.

How Much
Children instinctually know how much they need to eat. It’s the parent’s responsibility not to infringe.

Whether or Not
Parents also need to remember not to control what their child decides to eat and what not to eat. Parents are in charge of offering a variety of food and from that variety the child chooses what to eat and what not to eat.

This is a wonderful concept that creates good eating habits and helps children grow-up with a positive experience with food.

Cooking Healthy Meals

Sometimes it is hard to know what to cook or how to cook a healthy meal. This last weekend I was talking to a friend who loves to cook. She told me about a cooking blog that she contributes to. It gives many great ideas for cooking healthy meals. You can visit this blog at http://just-cook-already.blogspot.com/. She also has a blog called http://recipesat350degrees.blogspot.com/ that has many fun recipe ideas. Both of these blogs are fantastic.

In these days, we are so lucky to have many wonderful resources that can help us live a healthy lifestyle.

“One-Meal-A-Day” Diets

Are "One-meal-a-day" diets a good idea or a bad idea for losing weight? It probably isn't such a good idea and here are the reasons why...

People do two types of "one-meal-a-day" diets.

One involves a person restricting their calories by eating one small meal a day. This diet will set off a great deal of hunger, which will cause you to break your diet quickly. Also, this diet will deprive your body of the essential nutrients and vitamins. So ultimately this diet will not make you feel better. Another down fall is it tends to make you lose more muscle than fat.

The second diet involves a person who eats one big meal a day, thus eating all of his or her calories in one meal. This diet will also set off a great deal of hunger, causing you to break your diet quickly. When eating all of your calories in one meal, your body will tend to store a lot of the food as fat. This type of diet can also upset the body’s metabolism by making it slow down.

Lastly, when you eat only one meal a day your body will thinks it’s going into a famine. The second you start eating more, your body will store a lot of those calories as fat - so as to be prepared for the next “famine.” This totally defeats the purpose of the diets.

We should eat at least three meals a day to be at a comfortable weight. Treat your body well.

Cancer Fighting Foods

Certain foods can help to prevent cancer. A cancer fighting diet is very colorful. A plate full of vegetables, fruits, and grains will give you plenty of colorful cancer fighting foods.

Dark Greens- broccoli, spinach
Greens- cabbage, chili peppers, Brussels sprouts, avocado
Orange- carrots, oranges, sweet potatoes
Red- apples, strawberries, raspberries, chili peppers, tomatoes
Pink- grapefruit
Blue- blueberries
Yellow- bananas, squash, lemons
White and Brown- whole grain breads, nuts, mushrooms, soy products, flax
Black- black beans, dark chocolate (at least 70% coca)

Adding some spices to your meals can also help to prevent cancer. Tasteful and helpful spices are tumeric, ginger, garlic, and cinnamon.

So next time you’re preparing a meal, try to add some color and spice to give more flavor and cancer prevention.

H2O – Don’t Run Low

Water is said to be the forgotten nutrient. People try to pay attention to what they eat, but they forget to pay attention to how much water they get a day.

Water is an important molecule in our body because…

1. The water molecule is used to perform chemical reactions in our bodies. If there is a lack of water, then these reactions will be harder to perform. Therefore, the body will not be able to function properly.

2. Water is used to cool the body down. The body loses heat as water evaporates from the skin. This keeps the body at a cool temperature.

3. Water is used as a transportation medium in the circulatory system. Blood is mainly made up of water and is responsible for transporting things like nutrients, oxygen, wastes, etc.

Everyday we lose about 2-3 quarts of water from the basic functions of daily living. As a result, we are told to drink at least 2-3 quarts of water a day or 8-12 eight ounce glasses of water.

When it comes to exercising, we need to drink water before, after, and during.

Before: Drink 2 ½ cups of fluid 2 hours before exercise. Then drink 1 ½ cups of fluid 10-15 minutes before exercise.

During: Drink water every 15-20 minutes while exercising.

After: Weigh yourself before you exercise and after you exercise. For every pound of weight you lose drink 1.5 pints of fluid (3 cups). So if you lose 2 pounds drink 3 pints of fluid.

The reasons for dehydration are a poor thirst mechanism and restricting water to lose body weight. The body is not very good at telling you it’s thirsty. So remember to always be drinking water throughout the day. Also, any fast weight loss is usually water weight and needs to be replaced. A good way to know if you are hydrated is if your urine is almost clear.

Here are a couple ways to remember to drink water throughout the day. You could line up eight glasses in the kitchen and put each in the dishwasher after you drink out of it. Also, if you’re not already carrying a water bottle close by, try to get into the habit. It will help your body to feel better throughout the day.

Prevention is The Key

Benjamin Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” In old China, doctors used to get paid for keeping their patients well. If one of their patients got sick, the doctors had to treat them without getting paid. That is some health program! It’s crazy how health is viewed so differently now.

In our world today, prevention isn’t in the spot light. We get so focused on curing things that we forget about prevention. The book, “Staying Healthy with the Seasons” talks about the five building blocks to preventative medicine.

1. Nutrition- A natural balanced diet that avoids excess of any kind.

2. Exercise- It’s not just having an exercise program; it’s exercise being a part of your lifestyle. This includes strengthening, aerobic exercise, and stretching.

3. Sleep- Get a good amount of sleep each night. This is your body’s time to recharge for the next day.

4. Stress Management- Learning how to balance your life with work and play. Part of stress management is also learning how to relax. Find activities that you enjoy and make them a part of your life.

5. Attitude- Treat yourself and others around you well. Attitude determines how well the first four steps will be lived.

Preventative medicine helps the body to not reach the state of “dis-ease” or disease. The way to really prevent this state of “dis-ease” is to always be aware of how your body is feeling. If you take time to listen to your body, you will learn more about how to take care of yourself. Prevention is the key to having a healthy lifestyle. Stop and Listen.

Elson M. Haas, Staying Healthy with the Seasons. Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 2003.

Clarifying External and Internal Cues

Part of the Satter model was explained in the last post to determine how much food we should eat. Our bodies can tell us when to eat and when we are full, but our bodies can not tell us which nutrient to eat or what kind of food we need.

This post is a continuation, clarifying more about external and internal cues. Internal cues tell you if you are full, hungry, or if you have an appetite (those words are defined in the post below). Appetite might be a confusing cue to recognize. The reason appetite is part of your internal cues is because you shouldn’t restrict your body. If you have an appetite for a certain food, it is ok to eat that food. The whole point of the Satter model is to develop eating competence or become comfortable with food.

When you are trying to satisfy your appetite, you have to be listening to your other internal cues which tell you how much to eat.

When you try to listen and satisfy your appetite, remember that you still need to tell your body to eat with balance because our bodies can’t tell us what nutrient we need. For example, if your body has an appetite for chocolate you shouldn’t eat chocolate until you’re full. You could eat a little bit as well as other parts of a balanced meal such as your grains, fruits, and vegetables.

The external cues are things telling you to eat from outside your body. For example, if every time you are watching t.v. and you feel you need a snack, then the t.v. is probably triggering you to eat. Another example of an external cue is peers. If you are at a party and everyone is eating, then sometimes you feel you have to eat too. Remember, you should be listening to your internal cues to know if you are really hungry or not.

Don’t expect to be perfect. Keep practicing listening to your internal and external cues. Along with striving to eat well, remember that exercise and nutrition go hand in hand.

Knowing How Much to Eat – Eating Competence

How much do we really need to eat to stay healthy? There are two ways to go about this.

One: Knowing your recommended daily calories and keeping track

The website http://www.mypyramid.gov/ is a wonderfully useful site to calculate how many calories you need a day.

1. Under “Interactive Tools” on the left side, go to “My pyramid plan”
2. Type in your information and it will tell you approximately how many calories you need a day.

Then you would keep track of your calories to see if you are over or under your calorie needs. Overall, it is good to know about how many calories your body needs.

Two: The Satter (ecSatter) Eating Competence Model

One of the components of this model is eating according to your internal regulation. The Satter model has been put through many studies and has shown to be successful. Having structure in nutrition is the goal, and the way you achieve structure is by internally regulating your food intake.

Internally regulated food intake is managed by paying attention to three things: hunger, appetite, and satiety. Hunger – wanting to eat food because your body needs energy. Appetite – desiring a specific food for its aesthetics or taste. Satiety – the feeling of being full. Together, these three internal cues know your individual energy needs. Problems arise when these internal regulators are ignored or overruled.

So the Satter model suggests listening to your internal cues, as apposed to listening to your external cues. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between external and internal cues. The external cues are things such as eating when you’re not hungry but because everyone else is or you’re bored. Before you eat, try to recognize your internal and external cues. Learning to distinguish internal and external cues will make it easier to follow your internal cues.

It takes some time to learn how to listen to your internal cues. The Satter model explains how moderate levels of physical activity make internal cues stand out more or easier to recognize.

(Ellyn Satter, MS, RD, LCSW, BCD. “Eating Competence: Definition and Evidence for the Satter Eating Competence Model.” Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 2007;39:S142-S153.)

The Satter eating competence model is intriguing to me and I love learning about it. There is much more to this model. If you have any questions about it let me know. Also you can visit the Ellyn Satter website at http://www.ellynsatter.com/ to learn more.