Shocking! Michelle Obama Eats Ice Cream

Remember when First Lady  Michelle Obama ordered a 1700 calorie meal at a Washington DC burger joint? The media was on fire with the irony. How could the founder of "Let's Move!" get caught eating the kind of meal that made  Fast Food Nation the classroom text in the fight against obesity?

Leave it to the First Lady to turn the story into comedy for the White House Correspondents Dinner, or as it's frequently called, the Nerd Prom.



Raisins or not, what is it about ice cream that makes us sneak into the kitchen at night to sneak a scoop? And why on Earth would Burger King sell a bacon sundae? The answer: it's Food Porn.

Welcome to the "bliss point", processed food manufacturer's term for the perfect combination of sugar, salt, and fat that triggers your intense craving. These bliss point dishes can be prepared cheaply and shipped long distances. They turn you on, you can get them cheaply, and sooner or later they leave you with a medical condition. That's why I call it Food Porn.

Hence the invention of a bacon sundae: tons of sugar, salt, fat, preservatives, and lab created food coloring. And to many people, totally irresistible.

There is a different kind of "food porn", that's served by famous chefs and bakers at the finest Michelin rated restaurants. They use salt, fat, and sugar too, though not as much of it. But they also use fresh, local produce, spices, heat, and layers of texture and aromas to create their "sinfully delicious" food. A master chef would never rely on ridiculous quantities of sugar and salt, lab created flavorings, and a mountain of "cheese product" or high fructose corn syrup "toppings" to lure you into eating their food.

Back to the original question... Should Michelle Obama, CEO of Let's Move!, eat ice cream? Why not! I'm sure she doesn't gorge on it every day. And, she works out. (Care to arm wrestle?)  But here's the crucial question:

When you eat things like ice-cream, do you consider it food?

Let's talk about what you classify as actual food, that you would serve not only yourself but your children or grandchildren.  To be food, it should meet these basic requirements:

1. It's edible. (ice-cream qualifies, so far.)
2. It nourishes your body in some way.
3. It grew from natural soil, water and air, or the food it ate before you ate it, grew that way.
4. It does not contain lab-created flavorings, sweeteners, or coloring.
5. It's not harmful to your brain, blood glucose levels, or gut when eaten frequently.
6. It will rot within days or a couple of weeks if left out, because it is not full of preservatives.

If you use this as your definition of food, and eat mostly food, by this definition, you will make great strides in preventive health and nourishing your children to build strong bodies. And yes, there are some frozen dairy treats that pass this food definition test.

Sure, you can eat birthday cake on your kid's birthdays, or have a bacon cheeseburger (made with quality, hormone-free meat) on a business trip. Go ahead, let your dinner host give you a big dollop of real whipped cream. I know, I can hear the Paleo dieters shouting that it's never alright to eat wheat! But never is a promise that eludes most of us. So if you are healthy and not allergic, diabetic, or in the early phases of a weight loss diet, it's OK in my opinion to indulge now and then. Apparently, these occasional indulgences are alright with the CEO of Let's Move! too. It's not going to kill you, and you know when you've earned a treat.

Of course, here's where we get into trouble, gain an extra thirty pounds, and start suffering from leaky gut syndrome, high cholesterol and get poor outcomes on our blood glucose tests. We get into trouble when we succumb to cheap food porn. When we repeatedly eat stuff pumped full of additives, high fructose corn syrup, salt, saturated fats, and other things that fail to nourish us, and make us sick over time.

We buy all that stuff because the PICTURE looks likes real food, or the smell and taste combination triggers the part of our brains that go YEA FOOD PORN!! BACON SUNDAE!!! EAT!!!!  That stuff is not food by our new definition.  So, when you decide to have a portion of it, or serve it to your children, please stay fully aware that it is NOT food. It is food porn, eaten purely for fun.  When consumed often, it will make most people sick, fat, tired, muddleheaded, and/or diabetic, and leave them craving more and more of it.

Eating like a King. King Henry VIII

The last suit of armor made for King Henry VIII sits in the Tower of London. From it, historians determined that the 6-foot-three King had a 54 inch waistline, and probably weighed in around 300 pounds before his final illness. He was an extra-large man; four brawny men were required to carry him around in his stately chair.

Wealthy lords of Tudor England had a reputation as portly or obese people. They took pride in being fat. I mean, after all, if you were fat it meant you had plenty of tasty stuff to eat, any time you wanted it. And that was a privilege reserved for the few. Tudor peasants did not have year-round access to unlimited quantities of food, and could not stop in the middle of a workday for a long, leisurely, and large meal.

So the royal class tended towards obesity. They suffered from constipation, frequent infections, and black, rotting teeth, due largely to lack of good nutrition in their diets. This is very interesting, because in a lot of ways, the "typicial American diet" that still lingers on, descended from the preferences of Tudor England, and is preserved (pun intended) by today's food industry.

So, what eating styles did we inherit from King Henry VIII's court?

ADDING PLENTY OF SUGAR.
Oh how the royals loved sugar! They added it to ale, made marzipan to bake with, and created sugary sauces for meat and fish. The peasants couldn't afford sugar, but many became urban bee-keepers, harvesting their own honey.

MAKING MEAT THE CENTERPIECE
Equipped with a team of the finest huntsmen in the land, Royal Tudor kitchens filled up with the cooking aromas of mutton, veal, wild boar, rabbit, pheasant, pork, badger, goose, and even blackbird! Bountiful plates of meats were a sign of wealth and essential for entertaining at the King's Court. In fact meat, dripping with fat, made up 75% of the royal court's diet.

The poor farmers and trades-folk ate far less meat... only a little bacon here, a couple of hens there, to cook up a winter stew marking a special occasion.

TREATING VEGETABLES AS GARNISH.
Since the "common people" used everything from artichokes, beets, and onions to kale, collards and peas for stews and one-dish meals, King Henry VIII's Court considered vegetables not fit for royalty, and so they shunned vegetables. They also believed raw fruit was unhealthy, so ate very little of it, except when adding it to a warm, sweet meat dressing.

Surely our dining habits have evolved since 1490. Right? Well, we certainly get our meals a lot faster, if you don't count the development time spent in food labs or the time things sit in the supermarket freezer. And your mutton chops wouldn't have come shrink wrapped back then. On the other hand, "in 1822, we ate the amount of added sugar in one 12 ounce can of soda every five days"* but now we gobble up sugar like we're Tudor Royals showing off our expensive taste. The big difference? Sugar's cheap now. But that's another blog.

WHEAT BREAD RULED
Bread was served at nearly every meal. Bread and ale was served to travelers who stopped at inns to rest. Upper class Tudors ate wheat flour loaves called "Manchet", while the peasant breads were made of rye and barley flour.

DO YOU EAT LIKE THIS TODAY?
When you think of the typical American diet, what comes to mind? Bacon cheeseburgers (on wheat flour bread), apple pie with ice-cream, cookies, french fries, toast (again, wheat flour) with eggs... honey-baked ham. Now let's look at the typical American dinner plate. What takes up most of the plate? Meat. And then bread or another starch. And then a little scoop of vegetables (such as coleslaw, or green beans). Where's the fruit? Oh yes, it's in the dessert topping. Where's the rye flour? The what?

Is this bad? Well, yes, unless you want excess fat covering your organs like King Henry VIII had, and to suffer from "painful swelling of the hands and feet". Leg ulcers, depression, and muscle weakness also plagued this King, and many historians believe he probably suffered from Type II Diabetes. Isn't this what is happening to so many Americans? For the first time in U.S. history, our children, the millennials, are predicted to have a shorter average lifespan than their parents, because of early onset heart disease. Which often comes with a history of obesity.

EAT LIKE THE FARMERS DID.
Why do we still follow unhealthy eating habits we inherited 524 years ago from King Henry VIII ? The peasant farmers of 1490 set a much better example during harvest times with their vegetarian main dishes, whole grains and plentiful fresh fruit. With everything we know today about how much we need fresh veggies and fruits to help us stay slim, build strong bones and brains and fight off toxins, it's time to stop imitating the diets of pompous Tudor royals.

It's definitely time to dig in to some fine, balanced recipes like this one from Blue Apron:  http://www.blueapron.com/recipes/seared-trout-with-peach-and-arugula-salad


*http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/02/by-2606-us-diet-will-be-100-percent.html 

Will the NEW Nutrition Labels Help You Eat Smarter?

Here's what's new about the proposed nutrition labels: not much.

image source: Forbes

First, the total calories will be printed in larger type. Second, many portion sizes will be larger, more like what people actually consider a serving, the FDA says. Third, you're going to see what percent of your daily vitamin D and potassium you get in a serving, instead of listings for vitamins A and C.  Fourth, the amount of "added sugar" will be listed on the new labels.

In other words, if you're counting calories, you might find the proposed new labels useful. If you know what "added sugar" means, you might be intrigued for awhile by those numbers. But basically, the "new" nutrition labels are about as different as size 8 and size 10 of the same prom dress your mom wore 20 years ago.

Modern day nutrition and weight loss science has come a long way, and it's needed now more than ever. Check any of the major web sites, Web-MD, the ADA (American Dietetic Association, or U.S. News' "Top 10" diets, and all of them recommend eating more fruits, vegetables, and "good" fats in addition to, or sometimes instead of counting calories. Today's dietitians stress knowing how big a healthy portion size is, rather than counting the calories of every single bite you eat in a day.

By law, the FDA food label's portion size has to reflect "actual" portion sizes that people tend to eat. With what we know now, wouldn't it be far better to show what a portion size of ice-cream, for example, should look like, than have a nutrition label give people "the OK" to eat an average super-sized portion? Should the law be changed to reflect the times, rather than trying to fit the nutrition labels to an outdated law?

Would you really wear that oh-so-1980's taffeta prom dress to your 2015 prom, just because your mom added a bigger bow?

Another thing that has changed over the past 20 years is how much lab-created flavoring and additives are sold in food. Large chunks of today's food industry do not want you to know or notice how many "artificial" ingredients were used to create your frozen breakfast sandwich. If not artificial, then certainly not plant- or dairy-derived. Because the word "natural" is not regulated by the FDA, so food producers can write "natural" in big letters on the front of a package of food containing things you'd never find in your home pantry.

I would like to see a few yes/no check-boxes:

• Y/N   High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Y/N   Non-plant or artificial food coloring
• Y/N   BHA or BHT
• Y/N   MSG or other chemical flavor enhancers
• Y/N   Growth Hormones used (in meat, dairy, egg-laying hens)

I think I speak for the majority of mothers of young children when I ask to see that on the new food labels. And finally, I would like to see more prominence given to fiber content, and a reminder to eat 8 to 10 portions of colorful vegetables and fruits per day.

Guess what's being removed from the nutrition label? Calories from fat. The number I find most useful in figuring out whether my daily fat-to-protein intake is reasonable.

So, the proposed new labels take a few tentative steps forwards and a giant step back. The original food label was at least a fairly accurate reflection of what dietitians knew in the 1980's about how our bodies used food. The proposed "new" label does not reflect how much more we know now about healthy eating and maintaining a healthy weight.

You can submit your comments to the FDA during the remainder of the 90-day comment period.

How to Cut Open the Mighty, Prickly Pineapple

Although most people picture Hawaii as the place to find pineapples, Christopher Columbus, the same explorer who "sailed the ocean blue" to discover the Americas for Spain, found pineapples on the island of Guadalupe. Landing on the island in 1493, on his second trip to the New World, he came upon a Carib Indian village, with serpent designs carved into pillars and this strange fruit that Columbus described as looking like a pine cone but tasting sweet like an apple. I suppose that's where the name pine-apple came from.


Pineapples are gorgeous in their natural skins. The real beauty is in the aroma and taste of the succulent fruit inside, as it presents itself to any kitchen knife wielding home cook who can conquer the prickly prize. There's an art to opening a pineapple. Without this precious knowledge you could end up with stinging finger pricks, giant fruit flying across a slippery counter onto the floor, or a long tedious ordeal trying to peel the skin off this elusive treat.


Oh, you could go buy cut-up pineapple. But where's the fun of that? Who ever got bragging rights for opening a plastic container? Right. So here you go: How to cut open a pineapple in five easy steps.

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1. When a pineapple is ripe, its leaves should be fresh and green, the fruit's body firm. With clean hands, lay the pineapple on its side and cut of the top, 1/2 inch or so below the leaves. Now cut 1/2 inch off the bottom.

2. Now you can stand that beast on end and slice away the tough skin, deep enough to get most of the "eyes" out.

3. From here you have a choice. Lay the pineapple back down and slice it into rings, coring the center of each slice, or ...






keep the fruit upright and slice it carefully into quarters, like the one on the right.







4.  If you cut it this way, you still need to remove the tough core. Just lay each quarter on its side and slice off the hard center in one go.






5.  Now you're ready to create toothpick worthy chunks.

Hello, party.

Which Came first, Big Gulp or Couch Potato?

Mayor Bloomberg’s scratched proposal to ban “big-gulp” over-sized sodas from New York restaurants sparked predictable public objections from the highly profitable soda industry.  Bans like this would mean the soda industry is “being demonized and discriminated against” said Steve Cahillane, president and CEO of Coca-Cola Company’s Refreshments unit.*  Demons aside, the soda industry has a point

There is a lot more to the obesity epidemic than the amount of sugary soda children and adults are drinking.  Although, ask any dietitian and they’ll tell you that one of the best ways to cut calories is by switching from soda to water. But colas were around when your great-grandparents stopped for lunch, and there were far fewer obese Americans in the early 1900’s.

Here are some differences between their generation and ours, all of which may be contributing to the obesity epidemic:

• 1.      The amount of time the average American child or adult spent sitting in front of a TV, radio, computer, or video game vs. the amount of time they were up and moving around.

• 2.      The size of the soda they were drinking, and the ratio of soda to water, milk or other beverages in their daily diets.

• 3.      How many advertisements for junk food they saw or heard in a day. How many fast food restaurants they passed in a day, or week.

• 4.      How far they walked in a week, and the access to safe sidewalks and roadside pathways compared to today. The use of bicycles as transportation, especially among the young.

• 5.      Frequency of meals eaten at home, cooked by a parent from fresh produce , whole grains, and locally sourced meat, fish, and eggs. No matter whether they lived in a city or in a rural area.

So you see, it wasn’t JUST the size of the drink. It was the size of every portion, the quality of food, the family making time to cook and eat together, the amount of non-chair time in a day, and the freedom from a constant bombardment of junk-food marketing. The soda industry does have a point, obesity isn’t all their fault by any means.

But they’re also missing the point. Huge portions of empty calories are a major contributor to obesity. The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine reported in 2010* that “Preload experiments generally have found that sweet taste, whether delivered by sugar or artificial sweeteners, enhanced human appetite.” They noted that people’s “food reward pathways”… the things that stimulate our brains and appetites, were only partially rewarded, leaving diet soda drinkers craving more calories and more sweet flavors. 

To cite Coca Cola Inc.’s pro-active anti-obesity measures, Cahillane told the Associated Press  "We're offering more and more diets and lights and we're spending more and more of our money advertising diets and lights to give people a choice to bring their calorie count down."  More money advertising soda, that’s their contribution? Um, thanks?

Sorry soda industry, but as a nutritional wellness ambassador I wish your “big gulp” drinks would go away... from lack of interest! Soda, is one of the worst “red light foods” and should be considered a when-all-else-fails (and there’s no beer, or drinkable water) choice. Still, if Bloomberg HAD banned large soda drinks, would New Yorkers stop getting fat and out of shape? Of course not. Plus, it treads shaky legal ground. The silver lining is, we got people’s attention. I hope kids were listening, because informing children of soda’s downside, especially when this news is not just from parents, is a great idea.

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~ images courtesy  www.kickthecan.info

quoted: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/coca-cola....

research included:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/

the Search for the Miracle Diet book

January is the time of year when the mighty masses, from lithe yoga instructors to heavy-set sallow-faced pre- and post- heart surgery patients make a beeline for the diet section of the bookstore. Fresh from college or retirement party, they gingerly pick at the vast selection of diet titles, or go straight for the latest fad-diet best-seller. Some leave empty-handed in frustration. 

Am I a vegan or a Paleo? Do I want to get healthy or skinny? Will healthy food make me thin? Will diet smoothies make me healthy? Will my kids eat this stuff??

Can we go home now?

Of course you can. It's a new year; time to ask the real experts, and get some coaching. If your doctor says you’re pretty healthy, come join a wellness workshop or combine a cooking class with a nutrition app to help you get started (again). If your doctor says you have metabolic syndrome, or “pre-diabetes” go immediately to a dietitian! This is no time to see what Her Royal Princess did, or trust the word of some website called “lose 100 pounds in 15 days”. Her Royal Princess doesn’t have a 4 to midnight schedule waiting tables, isn’t raising three rambunctious boys, dealing with family medical issues, or flying to sales conferences every week. And the site that claims you can lose 100 pounds in 15 days isn’t the Mayo Clinic. They ain’t objective.

Speaking of objective, nutrition science has been making huge advances lately in our knowledge base, but meanwhile everyone with a program or wellness product is cherry-picking “news” that makes them look like they have the secret to your weight loss and health. The true secret is, when it comes to your body, don't rely on something that sounds way too damn simple to be true. Your beautiful body is one complex organism. Your adult intestines are about 26 feet long!

Talk to someone who can put themselves in your shoes, or join a group of people IN your shoes, because what you put on your lunch plate has everything to do with where you are in life and where you’re trying to go. After that, you’ll know which book to buy. Do you need to eat on the go? Perhaps you should avoid the slow-cooker health plan in favor of an app that helps you find nourishing restaurants in any city. While the 25 healthiest foods may be the same for nearly everyone, your method of getting them is yours only.

Hey, Happy New Year!  May your wishes become your path to success in 2013.

Food and Politics: Time for a divorce!

Here's the beef: I want to be able to walk into any food establishment without having to "declare" my stance on gay marriage. Don't you?

As a nutritional wellness advocate and food lover, it disturbs me when people label food as "elitist" or "patriotic". Before the Dan Cathy Chick-fil-A vs. Muppet food fight over the rights of gays to marry, there was a small media firestorm over what (then) candidate Barack Obama put on his hamburger. Spicy mustard, what what? How "un-American", his opponents cried. (Ketchup, apparently, was a Republican domain.)

This is ridiculous! The only labels you should ever apply to food fall into these categories:

1. Health factors
2. Taste
3. Freshness
4. Real or Fake.

Some say you are what you eat, and in a nutritional sense there's some truth to that. But to claim that certain foods make you more or less American, religious, liberal, conservative, elitist or populist is just a bunch of bologna (unhealthy and lacking in taste). Good, healthy whole food and spices are for everyone, and artificial over-salted over-sugared food that clogs your arteries and fogs up your mind are for nobody. Well OK, there are times and places... the Thanksgiving pecan pie, the annual bar-b-que festival... when a little brain fog and indigestion is felicitous.

There's a lot of danger in applying political labels to food. That danger lies in more than our solidarity as a nation: the option of eating lunch with our co-worker without having to worry about the political or religious ramifications of our sandwich condiments. The real danger of politicizing food this way is when it takes away from the message of nutritional health, and causes people to gravitate to different camps. One camp full of "elitist" food like organic strawberries, soymilk, and all sorts of ethnically seasoned delicious fresh food while another "average Joe" group stays in the fast-food and potato-chip camp.

Here, from Chick-fil-A's website, are the ingredients in their signature Chicken Sandwich. You want to label food? Here's a label for you:

Chicken (100% natural whole breast filet, seasoning [salt, monosodium glutamate, sugar, spices, paprika], seasoned coater [enriched bleached flour {bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid}, sugar, salt, monosodium glutamate, nonfat milk, leavening {baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate}, spice, soybean oil, color {paprika}], milk wash [water, whole powdered egg and nonfat milk solids], peanut oil [fully refined peanut oil with TBHQ and citric acid added to preserve freshness and dimethylpolysiloxane an anti-foaming agent added]), bun (enriched flour [wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate {Vitamin B1}, riboflavin {Vitamin B2}, folic acid], water, high fructose corn syrup, yeast, contains 2% or less of each of the following: liquid yeast, soybean oil, nonfat milk, salt, wheat gluten, soy flour, dough conditioners [may contain one or more of the following: mono- and diglycerides, calcium and sodium stearoyl lactylates, calcium peroxide], soy flour, amylase, yeast nutrients [monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate], calcium propionate added to retard spoilage, soy lecithin, cornstarch, butter oil [soybean oil, palm kernel oil, soy lecithin, natural and artificial flavor, TBHQ and citric acid added as preservatives, and artificial color]), pickle (cucumbers, water, vinegar, salt, lactic acid, calcium chloride, alum, sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate [preservatives], natural flavors, polysorbate 80, yellow 5, blue 1).

http://www.chick-fil-a.com/Food/Menu-Detail/ChickfilA-Chicken-Sandwich#?details=ingredients 

I defy you to find sodium aluminum phosphate, TBHQ, calcium peroxide, or "yeast nutrients" in your home pantry. But that's a whole nuther blog.

Raise a glass to choosing to feed yourself, your children, and your lovers fresh healthy REAL food, and not having to label yourself in the process.

Chinese women count calories? No way.

A common morning greeting in China is "Ni mai cai qu?" meaning, are you going to buy vegetables? The Chinese character cai means vegetable; it also means dish of food.*  The phrase stems from a typical thousand-year tradition of going to the vegetable and fruit market first thing in the morning.

For those same thousands of years, Chinese women, on average, stayed slim by American standards, but they didn't carry calorie counters or apps and they didn't start meals with the words "I shouldn't be eating this". I used to sit down to meals a lot with a Chinese grad student I shared my house with last year. "You eat less than me" Linfen would say, though clearly my waist was not as slender as hers.

It is true, she'd come to breakfast ravenous, and sit down with her son to steaming bowls of noodles, egg and greens. For lunch and dinner, mother and child got a bowl of rice, and they ate each bite with fresh cooked greens or bok choy, daikon radish, eggplant, meat, and fish. Tantalizing aromas rose from each dish. Neither showed much interest in sweet desserts.

Their "secret"? An entire food philosophy based on nourishment, balance, flavor, and knowing when they were hungry. And finally, not being expected to count calories or eat a certain portion. "You don't eat soup?" Linfen asked me one day about 2 months in. Yes, we do... I make soup sometimes, I replied. "Whenever there is a group meal there is always soup in the center of the table," she tells me. She tries to explain about yin and yang and the importance of warming foods.

(I cooked snow peas, yellow squash, and corn in a bean-paste with a TBSP of canola oil and then 1 TBSP each water + sweet hoisin sauce.)

I try often to re-create the aromas and Asian-style nourishment my friend brought to our kitchen. I'm not counting calories, I'm eyeballing nutrition. I'm balancing. I never knew Zen would make its way into our evening meal. But I'm glad it has.

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Here's a good recipe from Yummly. Notice the balance of flavors 

in the little chart. You can leave out the cornstarch... 

it's not supposed to be a thick sauce.

* from whythechinesedontcountcalories

5 Mistaken Beliefs, Part 2

In the previous post, the Bountiful Bite exposed the first three of 5 mistaken beliefs about eating better and losing weight.  I nabbed the headlines from Forbes.com’s 5 Mistaken Business Leader’s Beliefs, and magically applied them to your own business of shedding unwanted body fat or slimming down and getting in better shape. 

 These last two "Mistaken Beliefs" are ingrained beliefs we all struggle with. We get duped by force of habit. Why shouldn’t you

1.      4.  Believe That Because Everybody has always Done it This Way, It is the Best Way of Doing Things?

­Forbes gave a business example. Do you know why newspapers were always printed on large tabloid paper? Because in 1712 England, newspapers were taxed by the number of pages. But it wasn’t until about 2005 that American newspapers started cutting down their paper size.  For 300 years newspaper printers did what had always been done, even though it was costly and cumbersome.

Why do we order a big bacon, egg, and muffin breakfast at the hotel? Why do we have ice-cream every night in the summer? Sure, it tastes good, but we know it makes us fat. Yet, your neighbors eat this way, the server at the restaurant encourages it, your grandma always served it, and colonial farmers ate bacon with a big breakfast. Never mind that the colonials burned thousands of calories farming, building houses, and keeping warm, the server gets a bigger tip the more food he sells you, and grandma has heart disease.

Sometimes the standard way is not the best way.

2.      5.   Believe the Customer?

Forbes: “these people are already your customer; sure they are going to be satisfied with you.” They suggested business marketers talk to people who aren’t already customers.

You may be your own worst customer! I know I’m guilty of this. I love to drink coffee, and when I hear something beneficial about caffeine, I feel vindicated. When I hear something negative about caffeine, I tend to dismiss it as “pseudo-science” or consider myself immune to the negative effects. It took numerous messages to convince me to ever ask for decaf.

So, be a little a skeptical about your own dietary mythology. We’d all like to continue consuming what we’re used to, ignoring warnings about pesticide build-up in our bodies. We’d like to believe that the diet that lets us eat our favorite food (or junk calories) every day is the one that really works and makes us healthy. But we are the gasoline customer and the car. And when we fuel our engines with sodas, toxins and non-nourishing food, they’re going to sputter and break down.  It’s helpful to reach beyond the “customer” within you.

Read the Forbes business post here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/freekvermeulen/2011/05/30/five-mistaken-beliefs-business-leaders-have-about-innovation/

5 Mistaken Beliefs that can Ruin Your Diet Plans

I came across an article recently called “The Five Mistaken Beliefs Business Leaders have about Innovation”.  Pretty smart stuff, and guess what, the five headlines apply to dieting. Actually, I hate the word “dieting”.  I prefer to call it “eating better”,  and maybe losing weight.

Besides, I’ve spent a good ten years learning to eat better,  but haven’t tried any of the trendy “diets”.  So my approach to changing what we eat is different from someone trying to sell you a particular fast or fashionable diet.  I have 5 mistaken beliefs for you about eating better. I admit, I stole the headlines from Forbes.com’s 5 Mistaken Business Leader’s Beliefs. 

1.  Believe the Numbers
2. Believe Success has been Attained
3. Believe You Know the Competition
4. Believe That Because Everybody has always Done it This Way, It is the Best Way of Doing Things
5. Believe the Customer

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/freekvermeulen/2011/05/30/five-mistaken-beliefs-business-leaders-have-about-innovation/2/

Magically, we will now apply these 5 beliefs and their flaws to your own business of  slimming down and improving you and your family's eating habits. Why is it a mistake to...

1. Believe the Numbers?

According to Forbes, a lot of executives make the mistake of insisting on “seeing the numbers” too much too soon. This totally applies to your weight loss plan. 

If you check the scale every day the first month, you are likely to be thrilled when you drop the first 7 pounds or so and then worried when you plateau. It surely has something to do with water-weight and metabolic adjustment (or a weekend bout of beer pong?).  Whatever the cause, too much concentration on your scale will fill you with longing and guilt, elation and worry, and the urge to fast, or cop out with a chocolate cake binge. So, go easy on the numbers on your scale… check in once a week and try attaching value to the progress you see in two months, not two days.

2.      Believe Success has been Attained?

Lets' say your weight loss plan is going very well and you’re getting used to the feeling of success.  Forbes: “When an organization becomes very good at something, top of its industry, it starts to focus on the thing that made its success, crowding out other options…”

Then along comes a new baby in the family, and your before work trips to the gym are now just wishful thinking.  Along comes holiday season and with it, tables full of fried food, cookies, and your favorite pies. So celebrate your successes, but have a “plan B” in place for dealing with the times when your rigid wellness plan won’t work. Maybe an 8 oz. glass of skim milk will help you pass up on holiday second-helpings. A little flexibiltiy goes a long way when building a "diet" you can live with.

 

3.      Believe You Know the Competition?

What if you’re a parent and you’ve worked hard to get your preschooler interested in eating broccoli, carrots, nectarines, and brown rice. She’s a model eater, and regularly shuns sugary drinks, repeating your claims that they are “slow you down drinks”.  Bravo Mom or Dad!
In the fall, off she goes to kindergarten, and comes home asking, no – begging, for brand name candy, chips, and sugary pseudo-juices the other kids saw on TV. And their moms gave in and served them at lunch. Your child says the kids make fun of her “green food” when you put cucmber slices in her lunch. You don’t know how fierce the competition for your child’s palate can be. Prepare for the onslaught!

Next Post:

More mistaken beliefs that can ruin your diet plans.

The hidden everybody does it this way syndrome.

You might be your own worst customer!