When it comes down to it, food is just food. Individual foods rarely have the ability to significantly transform your health or overall well-being. You’re much better off paying attention to your overall dietary patterns rather than individual foods. So cut yourself some slack. There’s plenty of room for Twinkies in the context of an overall nutritious diet. Subscribe to this basic eight-word mantra (enjoy a variety of real food, primarily plants) and other aspects of the diet matter much less.
Advice given in the previous chapters bears repeating here. Choose foods that help you to feel good. Use your nutrition knowledge to support you. For example, do you find yourself straining on the toilet? Increasing your fiber is likely to help you feel more comfortable. Do you have inconsistent energy throughout the day? Consider changing the types and amounts of foods you eat to stabilize your blood sugar.
You can trust your body to guide you in making good nutrition choices. After all, you are the best nutritionist you know!
Action Tips . . .
Take the Pledge . . . today and every day. To help you commit, there’s a copy in the appendix, suitable for photocopying and with a place for a signature.
Live Well Pledge
Today, I will try to feed myself when I am hungry.
Today, I will try to be attentive to how foods taste and make me feel.
Today, I will try to choose foods that I like and that make me feel good.
Today, I will try to honor my body’s signals of fullness.
Today, I will try to find an enjoyable way to move my body.
Today, I will try to look kindly at my body and to treat it with love
and respect.
Relaxation and Sleep
As we discussed in chapter 3, your mental health and sleep habits have a major influence on many of the neurotransmitters and hormones involved in weight regulation and health. When you’re stressed, you pump out the hormone cortisol. Cortisol kicks up your appetite, prompting you to want to eat large amounts of foods, high in sugar for quick energy. How do you get enough sleep and learn to manage stress?
Getting Sufficient Sleep
The best strategy to ensure you’re getting enough sleep is to let your body guide you. If you need an alarm clock to get you out of bed instead of waking up to your body’s natural rhythms, especially if that alarm pulls you out of a deep sleep, then you’re not getting enough sleep.
Conversely, if you feel really sluggish after sleeping, you might be getting too much sleep. Studies find most people need between six and eight hours a night.
If you’re not sure if you’re getting enough rest, try going to sleep fifteen minutes earlier each night to see if you wake more rested. Every night, go to bed another fifteen minutes earlier until you reach the right amount of sleep, i.e., waking up on your own and feeling rested. If you’re like most Americans, you’re trying to burn the candle at both ends, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself going to bed an hour or two earlier than normal in order to wake rested.
If you have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, pay careful attention to the next section on managing your stress. You may also want to check in with a trusted health professional.
Managing Your Stress
Everyone in our society talks about being stressed. But stress is not necessarily a bad thing. For instance, when you get a promotion, buy a new home, or have a baby, you’re stressed, but in a
good
way. There is no way you’re going to get rid of the stress in your life, nor should you want to. That would make for a very boring life! Instead, you can learn to manage the stress in your life so it has the least negative impact on your physical and mental health. One of the best ways I know is meditation, also known as mindfulness.
First, if you have preconceptions that meditation is reserved for New Agers, drop them. Meditation is just a simple practice geared to helping you experience the present moment. You don’t need to burn incense, nor do you need to sit cross-legged. It’s becoming quite accepted in the medical mainstream, thanks to studies showing significant benefits for a variety of medical conditions. It can reduce blood pressure, improve sleep, reduce the perception of pain, and increase your self-awareness. It also changes the point at which a traffic jam sets your blood boiling.
There are dozens of meditative flavors that can help you revise your stress response, including breathing exercises, yoga, relaxation training, mental imagery, and martial arts like t’ai chi. But the basic strategy is the same.
Here’s one helpful approach. Find a quiet place with few distractions. Sit or lie comfortably. Try to let go of outside thoughts and focus instead on your breathing, noticing the sensation of air moving in and out of your body. If a thought pops into your mind, simply acknowledge it and then let it go.
It is that simple. All you are doing is bringing your awareness to the present. The more you practice meditation as a discrete exercise, the better you’ll be able to bring mindfulness into your everyday life. This practice will help you in immeasurable ways, increasing your sensitivity to your body’s signals; allowing you to more fully taste and enjoy food; and helping you live in and appreciate the body you have. Meditation will support you in your quest to stop chasing the elusive goals of weight loss and the fantasy that thinness equals happiness. It will help you appreciate who you are and what you are doing in the moment.
Particularly in the beginning, the practice of meditation is difficult. Your mind wanders; one thought leads to the next, which leads to the next, and much time goes by before you remember to come back to the present. This experience itself can be quite instructive. It tells you that you don’t need to take each individual thought so seriously. It’s just a momentary thought and your mind will be wandering on to something else soon. Think about that the next time you feel driven to finish off that quart of ice cream. If you can just “sit” with the thought for a few moments, experiencing it in a nonjudgmental way, the drive may just dissipate—a clear sign that you weren’t really physically hungry.
Help Your Kids Establish
Nourishing Eating Habits, Too
Your kids also need support in developing a healthy lifestyle and feeling good about their bodies. Establishing good habits while they’re young will help them grow up trusting themselves and without the self-hatred and weight obsession many of us learned early on.
Children learn most by mimicking what they see around them. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that taking care of yourself is selfish. The Health at Every Size changes
you
make will have huge payback for your kids’ health and well-being.
Research finds that sharing responsibility with your child about what and how much he or she eats is the most effective approach, from infancy through adolescence.
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It’s your job to provide enjoyable food and cultivate an atmosphere that supports pleasure in eating. It’s your child’s job to decide whether he or she wants to eat and how much. Since you will have less and less control over your child’s exposure to foods over time, your best bet is to support him in honoring his body, learning how to make good choices, and taking care of himself.
Though kids have slightly different nutritional needs than adults, the same advice that works for you will also support healthy growth in your kids:
Enjoy a variety of real food, mostly plants
.
Protein Myths
Did you know that many green vegetables get more than 50 percent of their energy from protein, packing in more protein per calorie than meat and dairy? That even a low-protein vegetable food like a potato gets 10 percent of its energy from protein? That a low-protein processed grain like white bread gets 12 percent?
The dietary recommendations for kids are based on body weight, but approximately translate to 12 to 15 percent of total energy, so even these low-protein sources contribute a considerable protein punch. Assuming overall dietary variety (not just sugar!), when kids get enough calories they get more than enough protein to meet their growth needs.
Don’t let the protein-pushers fool you. Americans err on the side of getting too much protein, rarely too little. Don’t start your kids on that path. While growing bodies need proportionately more protein than adult bodies, nearly all unprocessed plant foods, including vegetables, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds, contain adequate protein to support healthy growth. Meat and dairy can certainly be a part of a nutritious diet, but it’s no more necessary for children than for adults.
Children—often even more so than adults—are easily seduced by the intense flavorings found in processed foods. When their diets are centered on processed foods, it dulls their ability to sense and appreciate more subtle and wider-ranging flavors, a trait they will carry on into adulthood.
Exposing them to a wide variety of whole foods when they are young will make them less interested in fast foods and processed foods. This isn’t to say that they will lack interest in those foods entirely, but that they are more likely to achieve a healthier balance. Provide a variety of foods so they can choose foods they like and develop their own tastes.
There’s no need to ban “junk food.” Offer foods like candies, cookies, and ice cream—in moderation. Deprivation won’t do anything except make “forbidden” foods more enticing.
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A vivid example brought this home for me. I was cleaning up after my then six-year-old son and his friend and found an empty cookie bag. My son acknowledged that he had taken the full bag from the cupboard and ate a couple. “But they ruined our play date, Mom. Miguel just wouldn’t stop eating them and didn’t want to build Legos anymore.”
Cookies were taboo in Miguel’s home. Apparently, the deprivation he experienced left him without the skills to set appropriate limits. My son, on the other hand, knowing he had access to cookies much of the time, could enjoy them—and stop. He could also enjoy playing and wasn’t distracted by the food.
Research indicates that parents who restrict access to certain foods are actually more likely to have heavier kids!
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This fact makes sense: The kids lose their ability to self-regulate as a result of parents’ interference.
Promising a child dessert if she eats her vegetables or encouraging a child to clean his plate can also contribute to developing unhealthy eating practices .
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What’s the best predictor of whether or not your kids eat their fruits and veggies? Whether or not they like them! Put effort into tasty preparation and you’ll see the results, though you might need to exercise some patience. Young children are often hesitant to try new things .
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This wariness is normal. In fact, there’s even a scientific name for this: neophobia, or fear of new things. Pressuring your child to eat a new food can backfire.
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The best strategy is to eat well and wait for your child to follow your lead. He or she might not like mustard greens the first time around, but may be more open after watching you enjoy it over time.
Eating together has many benefits beyond more nutritious eating.
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Studies show that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, develop eating disorders, and consider suicide, and the more likely they are to do well in school, delay having sex, and eat their vegetables.
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Farm-Fresh Balsamic Braised Beets (Often a Big Winner with Kids!)
Peel beets and slice them into quarter-inch strips. Be sure to get hands and face as stained as possible. Add the beets, some balsamic vinegar, and a little brown sugar (optional) to a large skillet. Bring to a boil and allow the beets to brown lightly, then flip them to brown the other side. Reduce heat to medium and continue simmering, uncovered, until beets are tender. Add balsamic vinegar as necessary to make sure the liquid doesn’t get too low. Serve alone or on a bed of sautéed beet greens with the concentrated sauce drizzled on top.
Beets also taste great when cooked in a roasting pan in a 400-degree oven.
Try, too, involving your kids in food preparation. It will heighten their appreciation of what they eat. Consider growing your own food, even if it’s just an herb in a windowsill pot; visiting a local farm; or shopping, cooking, and planning meals together. Beets are much more enticing when your child sees one growing in a field, pulls the bulb from the ground, meets the farmer who planted it, and then tries the farmer’s recipe for balsamic braised beets. Schools that help students follow food from the garden to the kitchen to the table, doing much of the work themselves, are seeing amazing results.
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