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ByNatalia
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February is American Heart Month!

As you may know, February starts tomorrow and is the start of American Hearth Month! To help support a healthy heart, here are some strategies you can implement to assist in a long and healthy life:

Get active! The American Heart Association recommends adults get at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes per week of vigorous aerobic activity (or a combination of both), preferably spread throughout the week.

Maintain a healthy weight. When your weight is in a healthy range, your heart doesn’t have to overwork to circulate blood. Being an average weight reduces your risk of developing heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and many other life-threatening conditions, including some cancers and sleep apnea

Quit smoking. And stay away from secondhand smoke!

Control your cholesterol and blood pressure. Did you know high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, and smoking are key risk factors for heart disease? Preventing and managing these health conditions through diet, activity, and behaviors is essential.

Drink alcohol in moderation. The 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that adults of legal drinking age can choose not to drink or drink in moderation by limiting intake to 2 drinks or less for men and 1 drink or less for women in one day.

Manage life stressors. Find healthy outlets for the inevitable stress of life, such as adult coloring books, reading, exercising, sewing, or picking up a new hobby that brings you joy.

It’s so important to take care of this essential organ all year round, but wear red during the month of February and give your heart some love!

ByAnn
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Setting Realistic Goals and Keeping Your Expectations Realistic

Once you feel ready to make changes to your lifestyle, the next step is setting what your goals will be. They can be anything you want: weight loss, building strength at the gym, eliminating medications, or all of the above! However, many set goals based on what they think they SHOULD be verses what’s realistic. Setting goals that don’t make sense will just set you up for frustration and not being able to achieve them. If you don’t achieve what you set out to do, it’s easy to just stop and give up! Of course, this is what we want to avoid. Work with your dietitian to achieve attainable, reasonable, and time appropriate goals. Change takes time, so allow yourself the time and practice. For example, if you gained 20 pounds over a period of 3 years, you won’t be able to lose all 20 pounds in 1 month!

Set SMART Goals

A good goal-setting strategy is the SMART goal checklist. Be sure that your weight-loss goals meet the following criteria:

  • Specific: A good goal includes details, such as what you will do, how long you will do it, and when you will do it. For example: A goal to walk 30 minutes after work every day.
  • Measurable: If you can measure a goal, then you can determine how successful you are at meeting your goal. For example: A goal of incorporating more vegetables into lunches and dinners.
  • Attainable: An attainable goal is one that you have enough time and resources to achieve. This can help you to set goals that are achievable and sustainable. For example: You don’t have time to go to the gym 1 hour per day, so a more realistic goal would be 3 days per week for 30 minutes each time.
  • Relevant: Don’t set goals that someone else wants you to achieve. Ask yourself what’s most important to you and then determine your goals. For example: If weight loss is a priority, then your dietitian can help you come up with realistic goals and a reasonable plan on how to achieve them.
  • Time-limited: Giving yourself a time limit can motivate you to get started and stay on course.

Long-term vs. Short-term Goals

Short-term goals will help you to start making changes and stay motivated, which will then lead to long-term success. Long-term goals help you to focus on the big picture. You will hear us dietitians talk ALL the time about lifestyle changes, not diets! Shifting your thought process will help tremendously.

Allow For Setbacks

Setbacks are a natural part of behavior change. Life happens! If you have had a challenging period of time, don’t waste time being so hard on yourself. Just take steps to move forward day by day. This could also become a time for you to re-evaluate your goals and adjust them as needed.

ByAnn
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Intuitive Eating: Rejecting the Diet Mentality

If you have dieted your entire life and bounced back and forth between the latest and greatest fad diet that promised you would lose weight, you may have learned firsthand that DIETS DO NOT WORK! You may be saying “Duh Ann, thank you for this earth shattering information.” However, I encourage you to practice re-routing your thought process and think about intuitive eating.

Is it hard to re-train your brain? Of course! Keep in mind that different methods work for different people to achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle, but I ask you to keep an open mind and consider some of these suggestions to break through the barrier:

What is intuitive eating? Intuitive eating is an approach to help you become more in tune with your body’s signals. As adults, we tend to ignore or forget about our body’s signals of hunger and fullness. Emotions and life’s stressors kick in and we eat if we are happy, sad, stressed, mad, bored – whether we are hungry or not. We can sometimes eat well beyond our fullness and end up feeling uncomfortable or sick.

Diet culture, social media, and our upbringings have caused us to set rules and restrictions on food. For example,

  • Labeling foods as “good” or bad”. If we eat a “bad” food, we feel guilty or ashamed, which will lead to further restricting.
  • Finish everything on your plate despite feeling full before that.
  • Unrealistic advertisements on weight loss. For example, “lose 30 pounds in 30 days!”
  • Only being allowed to eat specific foods in order to lose weight.

Intuitive eating is the opposite of this, and instead is re-learning to eat outside of the diet mentality. It’s (1) putting the focus on your internal cues (a.k.a. your intuition) like hunger, fullness and satisfaction, (2) moving away from external cues like food rules and restrictions, and (3) working towards not feeling guilty.

What are some principles of intuitive eating?

  1. Reject the diet mentality: Dieting isn’t sustainable. Fad diets are all about marketing. Unfollow social media accounts that push dieting behaviors, especially those that make you feel bad about yourself.
  2. Honor your hunger: Hunger is a normal feeling to experience – our bodies NEED food. If you are hungry, eat. Focus on eating slowly and savoring the food. Make healthy food choices that make your body and mind fee great. If you try to override feelings of hunger, this can lead to overeating and binges.
  3. Make peace with food: Stop categorizing foods as “good”, “bad”, or “forbidden” – no single food has the power to make you completely healthy or unhealthy. Deprivation builds into uncontrollable cravings and overeating. When you finally “give in” to that food, you’re likely to overeat, which can trigger guilt and start the cycle all over again.
  4. Relearn your satisfaction/fullness signal: This goes hand in hand with #2. If you are full, stop eating. If you have forgotten what true fullness feels like, make sure to “listen” more closely as you eat.
  5. Avoid eating for comfort: There are SO many reasons why we eat. It can be due to anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger, or stress. It’s okay to have these feelings, but it’s important to get to the root of these problems and find ways to nurture yourself and resolve issues without turning to food
  6. Respect your body: Do your best to feel good about the body you are currently in while you work on making changes to your lifestyle. Set realistic goals as opposed to striving for something that’s completely unattainable. Accept that making changes and being consistent takes time.
  7. Find exercise that you enjoy: Instead of focusing on the exercise you think you “should” be doing, shift your focus to what types of movement feels good to you. Are you exercising as a form of punishment for what you ate? Exercise should be something that makes you feel energized, improves your mood, strengthens you, and improves your sleep.

Allow yourself some time to practice these tips, even if it’s just one for now. Change doesn’t happen overnight!

ByAnn
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Healthy Shopping on a Budget

All of us have noticed the increase of food prices. This can become challenging when you are trying to shop on a budget AND eat healthy at the same time. Here are some great tips to help you maximize your shopping trips. Remember: a little research and planning ahead can go a long way to keep some extra cash in your pocket.

(1) Try Shopping Apps

  • Ibotta, Rakuten, Fetch: Get rewards or money for shopping that you are doing anyway!
  • Flipp, Basket: You can find local sales in your area without driving around
  • Brand Websites: Check out different websites to find coupons

(2) Buy in Bulk at Wholesalers (e.g. Costco, BJ’s, Sam’s)

You can freeze the additional packages you purchase or make enough when you cook for leftovers and freeze them.

(3) Plan Around Sales and Check Store Flyers

Planning ahead will prevent you from wandering around the store aimlessly with no idea of what you will eat for the upcoming week. You may also end up buying extra food that you don’t need, which can end up going to waste. Plan your meals around what’s on sale at the time.

(4) Create a Shopping List

Use your weekly eating plan to create a grocery list. Try preparing meals that include similar ingredients throughout the week to keep your list from becoming too long.

(5) Don’t Shop Hungry and Don’t Stray From the List!

This is self-explanatory: the hungrier you are when you go to the store, the more likely you will buy more.

(6) Generic/Store Brands Can Be Cheaper

Compare different brands of the same item to find the lowest price. Using the unit price can help to compare the cost of the different sizes of products.

(7) Shop In-Season Produce

Produce that’s local and seasonal are at it’s peak flavor and are more abundant, so it’s typically sold at a lower price

(8) Try Frozen or Canned Alternatives

Frozen fruits and veggies are a great alternative to fresh ones since they have the same nutritional content and are typically low in salt if the only ingredient is the labeled fruit or vegetable. Be sure to check the ingredient list to avoid items with added sugars or salt! Check that canned fruit labels say either “in water” or “in juice”. Before you eat canned vegetables, make sure to rinse and drain them to remove excess salt.

(9) Tips for Purchasing Meat

  • Consider purchasing larger quantities of meat that are on sale and preparing enough for two or more meals.
  • Look for meat packages marked “Manager’s Special” for a discounted price (this only means that the expiration date is coming soon, so it’s okay to buy them and prepare them early in the week)

(10) Tips for Purchasing Dry Goods and Grains

  • Dried beans, peas, and lentils are great options to keep on hand and are cost-effective.
  • Buy in bulk, prepare ahead of time, and freeze.

(11) Reduce Waste!

Use highly perishable items, such as seafood, salad greens, berries, and fresh herbs early in the week. Enjoy leftovers for lunch or create new meals from leftover ingredients. Cooked meat and vegetables can be made into a casserole or soup.

(12) Last But Not Least: Order Less Takeout!

ByAnn
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Beating the Cold Weather Blues

It’s normal to feel your mood change as the weather gets colder. You may feel a bit more down or “blah”, but here are a few simple tips that can help you beat the blues until it gets warmer again*:

—Wake up a few minutes earlier and get moving—

The sun will be shining through your windows earlier in the day during the winter. While it may appear to be a negative thing, it’s actually good. Make yourself a cup of coffee or tea earlier than usual or get up and go for a chilly morning walk. You can even do both!

Vitamin D levels are typically lower during the winter months, so going for a walk in the sun can help boost your vitamin D levels. Just adding a few more minutes to your day can help set the tone for your day and boost your mood instead of the mad-rush before work starts or rolling out of bed and logging onto your laptop.

—Find a hobby—

Read a new book, learn a language, craft, dance, sing, laugh with friends, exercise, etc. Find something that occupies your time instead of just sitting and watching TV.

When you are happy, you boost your endorphins. Endorphins are your body’s natural pain relievers and are also responsible for feelings of pleasure after doing activities you enjoy, whether it’s hiking or running, eating chocolate, or laughing with friends. More research is needed, but here are some other known benefits of having a healthy level of endorphins:

  • Help reduce stress and anxiety
  • Potentially decrease pain
  • Boost self-esteem
  • Help with depression

—Make healthy food choices (most of the time)—

Of course, all of us will be indulging more during the holiday season. However, use moderation when you can! Eat slowly, stay hydrated, and stop eating when you’re full. There’s no reason to feel completely stuffed after every single meal. Also, avoid keeping too many tempting snacks and foods in the house you may pick at (e.g. a plate of cookies in the kitchen). Some foods have been linked to helping you have a more positive mood, such as:

  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Dark chocolate
  • Nuts and seeds
  • Fruits
  • Salmon
  • Spinach and other dark leafy greens
  • Brightly colored veggies

*If you notice that you can’t seem to get rid of that sadness feeling, please speak with your doctor.

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(c) SHS Nutrition, LLC (2021)