When I cared for adults in an internal medicine practice in suburban Cleveland, I frequently observed a wonderful phenomenon. It was not at all unusual for patients to bring along their children and grandchildren, fresh from a prior appointment across the hall with their pediatrician. Beautiful, bright-faced, fresh-scrubbed, engaging, chubby, usually well-behaved, American children. The pediatricians’ well-intended recommendations on reducing the rate of weight gain continued to be unsuccessful, and my patients’ faces told me that the ongoing exhortations had become tiresome. If they knew how to fix this problem, they told me, they already would have. Continue reading
Category Archives: Strategies
Insulin is Like Money in the Bank
Have you ever considered that the amount of insulin you are capable of making over your lifetime is limited? That your pancreas can make, oh, let’s just call it 1000 pounds, of insulin, and that after that it starts to have trouble trying to keep up with demand? Think about that. What would happen if you used up most of your supply by the time you were 40 or 50? Then what? Continue reading
What Makes You Tick?
What makes you grateful to feel your feet hit the ground every morning? What gets you up and out? Here are some of the things that inspire my work and keep me rockin’ and rollin’: Continue reading
Eat the Rainbow
What is the benefit of loading up on colors? Why do people talk about eating as many colors as possible? What does it mean to “eat the rainbow?”
Most of the color in our diets comes from the carbohydrate family. When I talk about carbs, I am referring only to ones with an intact fiber matrix. That includes vegetables, beans, fruits and whole grains. It does not include carbohydrates whose fiber matrix has been stripped away — like white “refined” flour, corn starch & syrup, sugar or white “polished” rice. There is a reason these have no color. Continue reading
All Health is Personal
Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, the former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, was famous for having said that “all politics is local.” By this he meant, I believe, that you grow to understand much more significantly any issue that touches you directly and personally. Continue reading
Here’s Your Approach!
It suddenly occurred to me this week, right out of the blue, that stepping into the driver’s seat (and applying our understanding of the differences between real food and manufactured calories) looks different for each of the three major macronutrients: carbohydrate, protein, fat. The strategy for each is slightly different. Now, if you’re new to this, then it’s perfectly reasonable to try one at a time and, without a single second’s hesitation, I would start with carbohydrates. Continue reading
The Proposed 2015 U.S. Dietary Guidelines
Every 5 years, representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health & Human Services work with academicians to identify “foods and beverages that help achieve and maintain a healthy weight, promote health, and prevent disease.” Things have not been going very well. Continue reading
Does This Nourish Me?
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you choose your foods:
“What should I be buying, preparing, and eating?”
“What should I be making for my family, or co-workers?”
“Does this provide me with nutrients and building blocks?”
“Does it help my body to grow, to heal, to be strong and healthy?”
“Does it nourish me?”
To thrive or not to thrive, that is the question. Continue reading
Diet is a Punishment, Eating a Celebration
Dieting means to restrict, to deny oneself. It is a logical consequence of the assumption that weight problems are due to overindulgence. But there is a big, fat fault line within this assumption, for if it were true, then denial would be an effective and viable option for losing weight. It is not, of course, which is why you have probably noticed that diets almost never work. Continue reading
A Big Fan of Small Change
Maybe you know, or maybe you don’t, but I like to imagine that there’s a big sign on my office wall that says “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” It isn’t actually there, but I like to pretend it is, and I quote it all the time. It’s not important to hit the track like you’re training for the Olympics. It’s not reasonable to think you should be able to lose 20 lbs. by next month. And it’s definitely not in the cards for you to become the next meditation guru. But it’s not necessary either. Continue reading