You Can't Believe Everything You Read on the Interweb....

 I just love our sixteenth President. Honest Abe was a man with wisdom beyond his time. I mean, how did he even *know* about the Internet, considering he died 100 years before Al Gore even had a chance to dream it up? Remarkable, really.

The internet holds a wealth of information, but it can also spread a lot of crap unbelievably fast. Look at Facebook: you have people trying to get a million likes so Josh Groban will take a girl to her senior prom (or was that just me?), and telling people to "remember to SHARE if you want to keep this recipe in your photo album." I guess people don't know about right-clicking and Save As to keep a file on their own hard drives. Or the beauty of copying photos to your iPad. Nice underhanded tactic for getting people to give your business free advertising, guys.

You know, one area I find this disturbing trend of false information to be mushrooming is in the wellness industry. An abundance of exaggerated claims abound, both from alternative practitioners who want you to believe that their magical mix of herbs can cure every ailment, to more traditional doctors who think that all nutritional products are snake oil. Neither one is completely true, and I'd like to set the record straight on a few them now so you know what to watch out for the next time you see a news headline or cute little picture like this pop up on your Facebook newsfeed:

I found this little gem recently, and it just reminds me of how many exaggerated claims are out there about the benefits of healthy foods. That may sound a little ironic, coming from a girl who has a blog about healthy eating; but, in the interest of full disclosure, I believe that even the healthiest eater isn't going to get all of these benefits from a good diet. I watch what I eat for my blood sugar (and my vanity), but I am a big believer in getting a lot more additional nutrition from my daily vitamin tablets.

Let's face it: that picture of asparagus is pretty sketchy. Relieves pain? Prevents birth defects? Fights cancer? Those are some pretty tall orders, my friends. And while I wholeheartedly agree that asparagus contains the nutrients attributed to these health benefits, you have got to get those key nutrients at the right levels before you can experience the benefits. It's not that I don't think asparagus can be a great staple food for people wanting to enjoy good health and have healthy babies; but I certainly don't want an expectant Mom thinking that if she just munches on a cup of asparagus every once in a while her baby will be some perfect little munchkin and her labor will be painless, either. Bottom line: 1 cup of asparagus has 267.8 mcg of folate in it, a nutrient known to be vital to a developing baby in the womb.  But, unless you want to eat 4 servings of asparagus everyday, you still can't match up to the multivitamin I take with 1,000 mcg of the good stuff in it. This is good in two ways:

1)I don't have to worry if I'm getting enough folate. Ever.
2)I don't have to worry if asparagus will taste good dipped in my lunch's strawberry Greek yogurt. Ever.

Here's another gem that is true, but pretty misleading. There are a ton of health benefits from curcumin, an antioxidant most commonly found in tumeric, used in a lot of Indian and Asian dishes. Again, this picture kinds of leaves you thinking, "Oh, we'll just order Indian every weekend, and we'll be fine." Um, nope. Turns out that there are only about 30mcg of this powerful antioxidant in every milliliter of turmeric spice, so that's going to be some pretty spicy chicken if you want to compete with the 15 mg of turmeric I get from my multivitamin, or the 247 mg of curcumin available in my favorite joint supplement. For the mathematically challenged, 15 mg is 15,000 mcg of turmeric. And it's a whopping 247,000 mcg of curcumin. Your curry chicken wants to be my vitamins when it grows up.

Believe me when I say that it's not just the alternative medicine fan girls in the wellness field making unwarranted claims. The medical headlines you see everyday from "major studies" are pretty misleading, too. Have you heard the latest?

Note: This is probably not a real image of a recent headline. I don't think the New York Times uses emoticons.

I think this one scared a lot of women who have been taking calcium to try to prevent osteoporosis. Calcium is a critical part of retaining bone mass, and I would hate to think that women dedicated to enhancing their bone health stopped before they looked into the matter more closely.


Know the major problem with this study? The researchers only studied the effects of calcium taken alone, not with the critical addition of magnesium that is supposed to accompany every dose of calcium in a ratio of 2:1. Any decent calcium supplement manufacturer should know that. And in case you don't know, calcium is responsible for contracting muscles, and magnesium is known to relax them. So, yeah. Only taking a pill that has muscle-contracting properties without muscle-relaxing abilities could kind of become a problem on an important muscle like the heart. Just saying.

And this next little report is a real doozy. You probably saw this headline recently:

If you're just a headline skimmer, that's probably as far as you got. Or you might have read these ominous findings, which sound far more serious just because they use all those sciency words. Read it to yourself in your best Tom Brokaw voice:

...randomized clinical trials cast doubt on the efficacy of vitamin E supplements to prevent CHD [18]. For example, the Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation (HOPE) study, which followed almost 10,000 patients at high risk of heart attack or stroke for 4.5 years [19], found that participants taking 400 IU/day of natural vitamin E experienced no fewer cardiovascular events or hospitalizations for heart failure or chest pain than participants taking a placebo.[emphasis mine]

Further down the study, however, almost as a side note, was this statement:

However, the study did find two positive and significant results for women taking vitamin E: they had a 24% reduction in cardiovascular death rates, and those ≥65 years of age had a 26% decrease in nonfatal heart attack and a 49% decrease in cardiovascular death rates.


Oh, so I guess improving your odds of living by up to 50% is no big thing, right? 


My best pieces of advice for anyone wanting to get to the bottom of all these claims and find out what is really best for your health:

1) Learn to read all the lines and in between the lines, and find a few experts whose knowledge you really respect. It's amazing what you can find out when you don't take headlines as Gospel. But, because even a health blogger like myself doesn't spend all her leisure time reviewing medical journals, I have a group of go-to experts whose information and opinions I really rely on to help me sort through the mumbo-jumbo. There are a few doctors whose works I will eat up faster than a Snickers bar. Which, as you know, is saying something. I trust their medical background (they are all MDs, DCs, or PhDs), and their common sense approach to nutrition.  Believe me, scoping out my own sources before sharing health advice works a lot better than using a photoshopped picture referencing a non-existent study from Copenhagen from one of my 456 Facebook friends who is always posting pictures of Crisco-baked peanut butter cake and now wants to talk about natural cures for arthritis.

2) Always read my blogs and hang on every word I say.
So maybe I'm not your first choice of expert. That's OK. But, as fun as this little blog is to write, I do some serious hunting before I put anything down here. If it's not something I've looked into myself, it's a study that one of my admired experts has referenced, with sources, and that makes me feel good about it. I don't like bad information any more than you do, and I'm not interested in spreading it. Because researchers in Copenhagen found that those who spread bad information while taking high doses of Vitamin E were 270% more likely to die than those who ate curry and took a calcium placebo.....



Full Disclosure: Yes, I am paid to recommend a particular brand of multivitamin. Which is pretty cool, because I've seen people have super rad health improvements by taking the right nutrients in the right doses instead of just eating curry-spiced asparagus once a week. So far, I've yet to discover a more rewarding way of making a living than helping people feel better.

Is Your Breakfast Ruining Your Diet? Become a Cereal Killer in Four Easy Steps.

Hey, there. How are the New Year's reso annual changes coming along? If you've stuck with any resolves at all, you've kept at it nearly two months longer than the rest of society. Kudos. But if you're like most of us and need little encouragement to keep going or simple steps to get your willpower back on track, you're in luck. And if you are barely literate serial killer thinking this is some sort of nifty forum for guys like you, you're out of luck. Cause it's not. And that's creepy. And you should probably leave now.

Anyway.

If you find yourself battling with your willpower and struggling with temptations throughout the day, the solution may be as simple as changing what you eat first thing in the morning. Turns out that, in a study done on school age boys, children who consumed a typical American high-glycemic breakfast ate up to 80% more food throughout the day than those who were fed a low-glycemic breakfast. Additionally, kids with low-glycemic breakfasts were shown to have better concentration and performance in schools, too. Now, I'm no rocket scientist, but doesn't it stand to reason that we adults might be susceptible to those same plagues of hunger, cravings, and distraction when we feed our bodies improperly? I think it's time we take a look at some craving-combatting options and figure out what health impostors are stopping us from having our healthiest year yet.

If you're ready to make a change to your morning, follow these guidelines on

How to Become a Cereal Killer in Four Easy Steps:

1) Get Down to Business. Fast.

What's the first thing to go on any new diet? Unnecessary calories. And what does this sometimes result in? Skipping breakfast to give ourselves the benefit of a deficit for later on in the day. Oh, man. If there's one thing that can set you up for failure throughout the rest of the day, it's skipping breakfast. I know we've all heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and if you're a non-breakfast-eater, you're probably sick of it. 

I'm sorry to tell you that your body really doesn't care about your personal preferences. Not only does your metabolism remain in a sleep state until you feed it something, it also goes into a self-preservation mode, meaning that it clings tenaciously to every calorie you consume and actually perceives it as more calories than the label states. Don't believe me? One study revealed that those who ate only two meals a day gained more weight than those who ate three meals a day. I know what you're thinking: "Well, maybe they pigged out the rest of the day. Not me. I'm soooo much better than that." Prepare to be knocked off your high horse: The study I just referenced compared people who ate the same exact amount of calories. You just got myth-busted, my friend.

Just don't skip breakfast. And don't wait more than a half-hour to get around to it. It'll make you more vulnerable to temptations later in the day (like we need more of those!), and it is the metabolic equivalent of burning daylight. And besides, you don't want to get myth-busted again, do you?

2) Don't go for a soft target.

Maybe the only thing almost as detrimental to your dieting success than skipping a meal is loading yourself up on the wrong stuff at breakfast. Most Americans choose quick fixes like cereal, a coffee and pastry,  OJ and a bagel, or other foods that can be snapped, crackled, popped, or toasted. Turns out, most of our favorite breakfast foods are serious sugar spikers that cause the 10:00am candy drawer raid, the 11:00 am slump in productivity, and the 99-cents upgrade to your Extra Value Meal at lunch. All of these actions are the results of a vicious biological cycle that keeps our body in a perpetual craving state until our blood sugar reaches a balance point. But by making smarter breakfast choices, we may be able to eliminate this chain reaction altogether.

I realize not everyone is getting their breakfast from a box with a cartoon character on it, or dunkin' a donut in a sugary beverage masked as coffee; but before you go around tooting your own horn about how you don't feed your kids Fruit Loops and only consume flakes that contain the words "bunches of oats" on the box, let me give your mind a little food for thought:

• Fun Fact: Special K has the exact same glycemic index as Fruit Loops. I repeat: exactly the same glycemic index as a food-colored cereal touted by a toucan that leads little children into jungles. Toucan Sam probably is a serial killer, if you ask me.
• Fun Fact: Cheerios (with its low sugar content) and Shredded Wheat (with its notable fiber content) fall into the same glycemic category as Cocoa Puffs (with its super annoying bird mascot).
• Fun Fact: A piece of whole wheat toast with jelly has a higher glycemic load than two Oreos. And not nearly as much creamy goodness.
• Fun Fact: A bagel with cream cheese has a higher GL than a Snickers bar. And no caramel filling, either.

Turns out that America's obsession with "whole grains"--which, by the way, usually consists of nothing more than white-wheat bread and Big G cereals that mix in a little corn kernel with their food-colored loops--has left out one pretty important component: any source of sustained energy and satiety. Our bodies are begging for more substance from our breakfast.



3) Rough 'em up.

Before you go into a panicked tailspin about how I am advocating the abandonment of all cereals, relax. While I don't believe cereal is really the best choice you can make in the mornings, there are a few brands that pass muster and a few tricks to make subpar varieties just a wee bit better. First, here are my top picks for cereals that have a pretty decent GL, mostly because their manufacturers thought that leaving grains largely unprocessed and fortified with protein and fiber was a good idea:

• Uncle Sam's Cereal*-- Ok. Admittedly, the stuff has a mild cardboard texture and is best when left to soak in milk for a few minutes before eating. BUT, it is one of the only grains I have ever found that actually flattens my tummy, thanks to an impressive 7 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber per serving. And, it makes a great crunchy topping for Greek yogurt or apple crumble. Who doesn't love that?
• Steel Cut Oatmeal--This delightful,largely unprocessed version of oats the way God intended them to be is a real gem. Full of nutrients that the quick oats and those little instant packets leave out, its GL is exponentially better than either of its more instant counterparts. It takes a while to make, which puts it out of the running for my morning pick-me-up, but it's worth the effort if you have the time!

Finally, on those days when you simply have to indulge in that Special K or Cocoa Puffs--because it really makes no difference which you choose--there is something you can do to salvage your decision: add Fibergy to your milk. Yes, the same magic powder that works wonders to counteract the sugar-spiking effects of a slice of cake can easily be mixed into a cup of milk and then added to cereal for a sneaky, tasteless way of boosting satiety without boosting blood sugar. That stuff is pure magic.

4) Pack a Lean, Mean Punch

Finally, the last tip for making a better breakfast is to include plenty of lean protein in your first meal of the day. Not only will you feed your muscles instead of your fat cells, but you'll make it through that 10:30 meeting a whole lot better, too. Note I said plenty of lean protein. Most people err either on the side of too little protein--obviously, pouring milk into Fruit Loops does *not* adequately curb the sugar spike--or go for sources that don't exactly qualify as lean--a Sausage McMuffin does *not* qualify as lean. (Nor do the 13 grams of protein from my Cinnabon last April.)

You know what does qualify as a lean protein source? Veggie omelets. Scrambled eggs. Crustless quiche. Cottage cheese and fruit. Stuff with good old dairy products and not a lot of fluff. These things can take time to prepare, but at least it is time well spent.

However, I'll be the first person to admit that the reason I used to reach for the toast and a bowl of cereal was because it was a quick fix to start my day. I hate mornings enough to allot only about 3 minutes for breakfast each day. Now that I know how much damage I was doing to my productivity and my body,  I'll let you in on my biggest breakfast lifesaver: Chocolate Nutrimeal Shakes. Even with me stumbling around in the morning, trying to blink my contacts into place while questioning the Hubs' remarkable zest for life before daylight, they take all of 45 seconds to prepare. It's so fast to whip up that it makes eating cereal seem tedious. Plus they have all four stomach-slimming components of a balanced meal--carbs,fiber, protein, and good fat-- and are loaded with vitamins that actually wake me up and teach me to love again. And did you catch that first word? Yeah. Chocolate. Life *is* worth living after all. Even in the mornings.

So get out there and slaughter some cereal this weekend, my friends. Your waistline will thank you. And Toucan Sam will be defeated for good. Sounds like a weekend well-spent to me.

Seriously, did no one teach those cereal commercial kids about stranger danger?

 

* Editor's Note: Uncle Sam is in no way affiliated with Toucan Sam.

Things I Will Do Differently in 2013. These are *not* resolutions.

Well, here we are at the start of another year. I can't believe it's been almost 365 turns of the sun since I started pestering you people with my health facts and dietary foibles. And, yet, you're here today, for reasons unknown to most of mankind. Which is why I would like you to take a moment and answer this simple multiple choice question below and write your response in the comment box:

I continue to read the Waist Management blog because 

A) I have gleaned a lot of information about my food choices that keeps me coming back for more.

B) I am constantly looking for ways to justify my love of Oreos and Snickers. You had me at hello.

C) I don't really *read* the blog, per se. I just like the Doodle Buddy pictures. Although my 5-year-old is a better artist, frankly.

D) Actually, my life really is *that* boring.  

Well, whatever keeps you here, welcome back. I hope we'll have a great year together. Can I let you in on a secret? I'm planning some pretty awesome new articles and features for the blog this year. And I'm pretty stoked about it. I hope you will be, too, once they are revealed in all their weird glory.

Can I let you in on another secret? I'm planning some pretty awesome new features for myself this year, too. To be truthful, 2012 was pretty sketchy for me. It had its high points, like running my first half-marathon, but it had its ugly points, too, like the whole Cinnabon escapade. I didn't really believe that the whole Mayan apocalypse thing was going to happen, but, when I look at the year in review, it didn't seem like I was doing a whole lot of planning for the long term, either.

I want this year to be different. And, no, I'm not talking about resolutions here. You should know by now how I feel about those. I'm simply talking about purposeful healthy living starting now. Or maybe Monday. IDK. And <--that is why I had to come up with a game plan. Here are three key steps I'm going to take to make this year better than the year before:

1) Eat less register candy. Um....somehow this shouldn't be enough of a problem to make it to my list, but it was in 2012, my friends. I don't even know what started the rash of last minute additions to my grocery basket, but I think I managed to eat more candy in 2012 than I had in the past decade combined. This might not even be an exaggeration.

Jennifer's 2012 Grocery Basket:

Sing it with me now: "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn't belong...."

We all have little habits that can add up to big problems. Consider this fact: Just 10 jelly beans a day--or 100 extra daily calories--results in packing on an extra 10 pounds in the course of a year. Frankly, I probably should have tried jelly beans before I indulged in those Snickers. Or M&M's. Or whatever the flavor of the month happened to be. But that little fact *does* help explain why my legs have a little extra jiggle in them, doesn't it?

This year is about eliminating just one vice and seeing what happens. That might be register candy for me, and soda or that dangerously delicious Carrabba's bread for you. But I bet we'll both be surprised when we drop weight almost automatically by eliminating just one thing.

2) Have more fun. Does anyone else find themselves waiting for the weekend to arrive and then getting to the end of it without having done a single fun thing? That was pretty much our 2012. Well, actually our Saturday schedule look something like this:

Step 1: Get up and run our local causeway at 7:00 am. This is not my idea of sleeping in on a Saturday.
Step 2: Watch Netflix the rest of the day. And, yes, we *just* discovered Netflix last year. Hello, 21st century.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, there's just one small problem with that plan: a sedentary lifestyle--especially one that involves a lot of TV watching-- slows down your metabolism and basically cancels out the benefits of vigorous physical activity. You read that right. Our hours of Netflix slowed down our metabolisms enough to cancel that extra burn we felt we got on our 3 mile causeway run.

While spending time with our TV land friends was all well and good for last year, the Hubs and I were talking about getting out and adding a bit more variety to our weekends this time around. While our primary motive was simply to get out of the rut we found ourselves in, as we make plans to go to a trampoline gym and use the indoor ice rink (the only way a Floridian will ever have a chance at the Winter Olympics), I realized something else, too: sometimes burning calories can be pretty fun.

I think most Americans--myself included--limit their concept of exercise and calorie burn to a regimented workout time. But that's not really what an active lifestyle is all about. It's really about creating time for enjoyable activities that have the fringe benefit of counting as exercise. Believe me, I have no idea how many calories I'll actually burn clinging to the wall of the ice rink as I get passed by a bunch of six-year-olds, but it really doesn't matter. The point is that I will be having a good time not thinking about exercise, but getting the benefits of it anyway. Besides, if I burn 100 calories more than I did watching Lost  marathons, I'll be ahead of the game.

Fun fact: An hour of ice skating can burn up to 500 calories. An hour of drawing yourself clinging to a wall in an ice skating rink can only burn like 30, the same amount you expend blushing each time another child passes you on the rink.

We all have things we like to do, yet never seem to find time for. My encouragement to you in this time of new beginnings is to get out there and do it! I don't care if it's nature walks, gardening, family ping pong matches, or joining a bowling league--this year's challenge is to rediscover a fun activity that keeps you moving without feeling like a chore.

3) Eat more fiber. Well, something has to replace all that register candy....
Last year, I started being more conscious of adding more fruits into my snacking routine, and adding my company's fiber powder to just about any liquid, and I can't even tell you how much better I feel. With all the research pointing to fiber being a key in insulin control, reduced cholesterol, a cancer preventative, and better blood pressure, what's not to love about it?   It may not be my most exciting goal ever, but I'm pretty sure my body will thank me for it, both in the short run with a flatter gut, and in the long run with better health. Now that we've dodged the Mayan apocalypse bullet, it seems worth planning for the future again.

Positive Peer Pressure to Help Keep Me on Track: I'll admit that my resolve to eat less register candy might be a little weaker if there wasn't a super cool competition that my company is hosting to incentivize it. The Hubs and I are signing up for the USANA RESET Challenge: Destination Transformation, a flipping awesome 90-day stint that rewards 30 winners with a trip to an exclusive wellness spa in Baja, Mexico. We love to travel, and the word "spa" works wonders on the Hubs, so we are all in. And you can be, too. It takes a simple sign-up, and a before-and-after picture, along with a weekly online weigh-in, and you're pretty much there. And let's face it, even if we were not among the lucky 30 winners, we'll have joined a community dedicated to getting our health back to where we want it, and that is its own reward. Though, if we find out that one of my readers has surpassed us in a fight for the prize, there may be some revenge exacted in the form of an unflattering Doodle Buddy picture in the blog.

Here's to a healthier 2013 for all! Don't forget to answer the survey question. 
 



 

I Just Ate Gelato for Lunch. But You Should Probably Just Have Cheesecake.

Today I ate gelato for lunch.  This probably makes me the worst health class teacher in the world. In that case, I will be truly glad if the whole Mayan apocalype comes to pass tomorrow, because then I only have to live one day with the infamy of being forever labeled as The Health Coach Who Ate Gelato for Lunch, the wellness industry's equivalent of a scarlet letter. Check out what happened to one coach in an identical similar situation:

The wellness crowd can be pretty brutal, forcing offenders to suffer through public humiliation in the form of ugly shoes and threats of coconut almond milk.

I really didn't intend to have ice cream for lunch. And I don't really have an excuse for doing so, either. Other than the fact that the Hubs and I just came back from a weekend cruise filled with more-than-you-can-eat dining options that tend to trigger off a cycle of sharp blood sugar rises and crashes that lead to carb cravings. Other than the fact that, in the three full days since we've returned, we've had three different food-laden celebrations to attend. Other than the fact that my earliest bed time in the past couple of nights has been 2:30am, with an average sleep time of under 5 hours--which can really mess with a girl's hunger and satiety hormones. Other than the fact that I haven't exercised all week, which can also impair a girl's sensitivity to insulin and keep the cravings coming in full force. 

In short, I pretty much haven't done anything smart enough to stop it. Please, people, if you're reading this, don't be an idiot with your health in the days leading up to Christmas. Or the Mayan Apocalypse. Sleep well, eat some veggies to balance off that 5-lb bag of candy you won at the office gift exchange, and take a walk around the block to look at Christmas lights. Every smart thing you do helps. And, clearly, every smart thing you fail to do adds up, too.

You know what I should have had for lunch? Cheesecake. I'm not out-and-out *advocating* that you replace your salad with it, but I might be a little serious. People malign this sumptuous dessert because of its high fat and calorie count, but I'm here to tell you that not everything that tastes good is bad for you. Especially when you transform it into a healthy slice of glory like my friends at Trinity Health Weight Loss did. I made a couple of modifications improvements to their original recipe, so that this dessert makeover can fly under the radar at your next big party. Or potluck. Or lunch.

I've even given you the breakdown of what makes it so balanced, just in case people start looking at you all judgey and whatnot while they eat their tofu.

                                           Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake Ingredients
Protein Powerhouses:           1 lb. nonfat cottage *or* ricotta cheese
                                            1 lb. nonfat cream cheese
                                            1 1/2 c. vanilla Greek yogurt
                                            3 eggs
Fab Fiber:                             3 T. Fibergy (or 6 T. special-order hi-maize resistant cornstarch)
Safe Sweeteners:                  1 1/4 c Stevia
                                            2 tsp. vanilla
                                            1 T. cocoa powder
                                            6 oz. dark chocolate chips (What happens to the other 6 oz is up to you)
Don't Panic:                          1/4 c. butter 
                                                       
                                            How-to-guide on making your dessert awesome:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Use an electric mixer to beat both cheeses until creamy.
• Beat in stevia and eggs.
• Beat in Fibergy and vanilla.
• Stir in butter and Greek yogurt at low speed.
• In a separate bowl, melt chocolate chips in the microwave and stir in cocoa powder.
• Separate half of the batter into another separate bowl, and add chocolatey goodness.
• In a lightly greased 9-inch springform pan, pour the vanilla batter first.
• Add chocolate batter, and drag a knife through the entire mixture for a super awesome marbled effect. (Note: Most of the time, my cheesecake ends up looking like it has a top layer of chocolate, and a bottom layer of vanilla, more than a super awesome marbled effect. But, it's OK. It still tastes super awesome.)
• Bake for 1 hr. 15 min, or until it passes the toothpick test. THEN, turn oven off and let cake cool in oven for 2 1/2-3 hours. (I can't tell you how many times I've forgotten that step.)
• Chill well, remove from pan, and cut into 16 servings.
• Enjoy the awesomeness and remember to share.

 
 

With any luck, your cheesecake should come out looking like this:

 

 

 

And with any guts, you should be able to tell all those tofu-eating losers to go see if their precious soy plant can give them such a tasty snack for under 200 calories and an impressively low 6 GL. And when they come back with a resounding yes, remind them that the key word was "tasty." And then come back and thank me for being the worst health class teacher in the world.

Full Disclosure: Yes, my decision to eat gelato for lunch was shameful. But it still was tasty.

                                              

 

                                            

                                            

Thanksgiving Survival Guide: Give Your Body the Bird. No, Not *That* Bird.

I can hardly believe Thanksgiving is just a week away. If someone figures out what happened to the rest of 2012, please let me know. I thought I would make it my healthiest year on record. And, to be sure, there *were* the half-marathon and the bridesmaid makeover. And there were also the Cinnabon and the Ben & Jerry's incident. And now, according to the Mayans, we are now down to about one month of making our lives count before the world comes crashing down. All I know is I don't want to spend my last days being any fatter than I have to be. I wanna look amazing when the world ends. Thankfully, I don't buy the Mayan scheme, because I have a long way to go before I can really rock the corpse look in style.


But anyway. 

Being healthy isn't about to get any easier. The Hubs and I have roughly 1.5 million highly-caloric events in the next two months, including a weekend cruise we're taking to escape the holiday madness. Being an amazing procrastinator, I am just now struck by how extremely urgent it is to reign in the holiday binge fest if I don't want our ship to go down like the Titanic. 

You may be in the same boat. (No, not *that* boat.) Worried that one day of feasting and football may cause your cocktail dress for the office party to look like one of Serena Williams' tennis outfits? It doesn't have to end that way. I'm here to tell you that there is a holiday makeover for just about every staple dish on the Thanksgiving table. Let's take a look at some simple ways to make your Turkey Day a little easier on the waistline.

Give Your Body the Bird. I'm serious. The centerpiece of the American feast is actually the single best thing you can give yourself during your holiday celebrations. Packing an impressive 24 grams of protein per 3 oz. serving, this 0 GL food promises to help lower the overall blood sugar impact of your meal.Will it negate having 3 helpings of mashed potatoes and 5 slices of pie? Um, no. But pure protein like this is much slower to digest than its carby counterparts, and it kind of leads by example in helping the other stuff to slow down its conversion into glucose, too. Plus, if you have some on your plate every time you go back for seconds (OK, sixths), you'll have less room for other poor choices that usually define a good holiday. 

I hope I don't ruffle too many feathers when I tell you that your best choice is to eat the white meat of the turkey without the skin. (Actually, I probably irritated you more by making such a lame turkey joke.) There are two reasons for making this choice : a) dark meat and skin contain additional fat without additional protein, giving you no real health benefits and b) it seriously just tastes so much better. Leave the drumstick for your least favorite relative.

Bill had always *suspected* that Grandma liked the other kids better, but when he got the drumstick at this year's dinner, his dream of inheriting the beach house died along with the little bird he had always called Tom.

Choose Sides.  To be honest, side dishes can get pretty sketchy at these meals. I mean, at what other time of year is it OK to desecrate the wholesome goodness of vegetables by drowning them in cream of mushroom soup and topping them with other fried vegetables? And who first thought it was appropriate to jam bread crumbs up into the...uh....cavity....of a dead bird? 

My advice: Reform the sides you can, and pick favorites among the ones beyond help.The *really* good news in all of this is that not every side dish has to be a dietary nightmare. If you're in charge of bringing a side dish to the family table, could I make a couple of suggestions? There are healthy versions of mashed potatoes *and* stuffing, both of which are a tasty improvement upon their traditional counterparts. Frankly, these aren't coming to my family dinner, where healthy makeovers are rejected faster than a screenplay for a Lindsey Lohan biopic. But your family may be more open to these things, so I'll share them anyway:

Quinoa Stuffing:  A Thanksgiving staple goes from dietary pitfall to protein-packed superfood using this ancient South American grain. Drowning in mushrooms and creamy broth, you would never know that your stuffing substitute was actually good for you.

Low GL Garlic Mashed Potatoes: Once again, my friends at Trinity Health Weight Loss have come up with an easy, tasty recipe makeover. Cut the GL of mashed potatoes down from 16 to 9 with this protein-laced potato and cauliflower blend. For an additional way of keeping your family from becoming suspicious, try topping it off with some low-fat cheddar cheese.
                                                                

Now, if your family is like mine, and the arrival of glorified rabbit food will lead to the start of WWIII, you might just need to pick and choose among the options you have. In my world, this might mean passing up store-bought dinner rolls in favor of a small helping of my Mom's mashed potatoes. Or pretending like Durkee fried onions aren't all that great on green beans, anyway, just so I can sneak in a little stuffing. Although I'm not really sure I can lie to myself like that. 

If you can't possibly choose favorites among the side dishes, have a super small serving of everything. The beautiful thing about GL math is that you can reduce your portion size of any item down to a small enough amount where it's no longer that bad for you. It may mean you have 1/4 cup of unreformed mashed potatoes to whittle the GL down to 4, leaving you wiggle room for other goodies, like that spoonful of  Stovetop stuffing you can't live without, even though you just found out that the GL is 13 per 1/2 cup. So, yeah, maybe an 1/8 cup would be about right. And that makes me depressed. Maybe I'll skip the mashed potatoes in favor of more stuffing. And you can do the same. Or not. It's up to you to distribute the approximately 20 GL you have for your meal however you like best.


Save the Best for Last: After you've managed not to gorge yourself on the meal, you may be tempted to sneak in a little dessert during clean up. Don't. If you're smart, you'll wait a couple of hours to start in on dessert for two reasons: 

1) Um. You just finished your meal. You don't really need to eat more now. Let your body enjoy not being stuffed to the gills for once. And avoid Aunt Edna's snide remarks like, "How could you possibly eat another bite? I won't be hungry for weeks after those three celery sticks."

2) When you eat dessert immediately after a meal, the GL of both the meal and the dessert are combined, making it easy to have two modest GLs that combine for one that's way over the top. (Example: You have a 16 GL meal and then immediately have an 11 GL dessert, like this gluten-free, low-glycemic pumpkin pie. Well, now you're at 27 GL total, and your waistline isn't happy, even though both choices individually were reasonable.) By waiting a couple of hours, your meal should be properly digested and converted into however much sugar it's going to make. After the magic 2-hour mark, your GL count essentially zeroes out, meaning you *could*  have 15-20 GL worth of dessert and not feel *too* guilty about it, since it's a holiday. In other words:

                     Waiting for dessert= Best. Mulligan. Ever. 

Here's wishing you the best and healthiest Thanksgiving possible! 

I leave you with an old Irish-Italian-French-German-American Blessing:

May your quinoa give you strength for the shopping ahead, and may the turkey leg never be placed in your hands.--Unknown*


Editor's Note: While the source of this proverb remains unconfirmed, the diversity of heritage leads us to suspect that this may be an original work by the author of a fairly obscure blog. As more information becomes available, we will seek to give proper credit to this sage woman. individual.