What Food Waste Has to Do with Your Waist

“Clean your plate.” The mantra of parents everywhere. After all, there are starving kids in Africa. Which means you should overeat as way of showing your gratitude?? Ya, I never understood that one either…

Sure, we don’t want food to go to waste. The USDA has calculated that food waste accounts for about 40% of the total supply of food. Now, think about your $100 grocery bill. By these estimates, $40 dollars of that would go to waste!

But, let’s think about it this way; If your body doesn’t need what you are eating, it goes to waste too. Excess carbs, fat and protein will be stored as adipose tissue, your body’s very own landfill!

Here's a couple strategies to avoid wasting food; not just to trim your food bill, but also your body!

1)      Plan ahead! If you make up a menu plan ahead of time, you can determine what you need to buy and when. If today is Sunday and you want to make stir fry on Friday, you probably will not want to buy your produce until Wed or Thurs. Your food likely won’t last. This means you may have to make more shopping trips, but you’ll save money and food in the long run.

2)      Buy less. Ever look in a fridge full of food and say, “There’s nothing to eat”. Or maybe you’ve heard this from a family member. Less, really can be more. You can see more of what you have to eat, less goes to waste and you can stick to your healthy eating plan better.

3)      Get organized. Organize your fridge so you can see what you have and place new items behind old (new gallon of milk behind the one that needs to get used first). Same goes for your pantry, if you have set spots for certain items, you will see your inventory easily.

4)      Freeze more. If you have leftovers that you or your family won’t eat in the next day or two, freeze what is left and save it for a quick meal in the future.

5)      Share. If you throw a party and end up with a lot of leftovers, send people home with food or bring it to work to share. This prevents temptation for party foods you do not usually eat and prevents waste. You can even investigate local food kitchens or programs that you can donate food to.

6)      Make a choice. When all else fails, choose where you want your food to go to waste.

After all, if it’s going to go to waste, better the trash than your waist! :)

Veggies for Breakfast?!

Weekly Tip:

Get a serving of veggies in at breakfast.

We all know that eating more fruits and vegetables is good for us, but getting them in can be the tough part. Current research shows that only 1 in 4 Americans gets more than 5 servings of fruits/vegetables per day. Also, people with a normal BMI consume significantly more fruits and vegetables compared to overweight/obese individuals. Starting your day with a serving of fruits and vegetables is a great way to increase your intake. There are several ways to do this without compromising taste.

1)      Add vegetables to a fruit smoothie. I wash and freeze kale and add a handful to a smoothie with 8 oz of milk (or milk substitute), 1 cup of frozen or fresh fruit, pasteurized egg whites* and/or protein powder,  and 1-2 tsp of orange-flavored fish oil**. Experiment with different fruit/veggie combos and keep in mind that lightly steaming certain vegetables may make them easier to blend (i.e. carrots or broccoli).

2)      Drink 8 oz of low sodium V8. Granted, you’re not getting much, if any fiber from juices but it’s better than nothing!

3)      Make a vegetable omelet. This is a great way to add any type of vegetables that you have sitting in the fridge. Bell peppers and onions from fajitas, spinach and tomatoes from a salad, or steamed vegetables. Add a little cheese and pair with a slice of wheat toast and you’re good to go!

*Pasteurized egg whites can be found in cartons by regular eggs. They pack a protein punch and take on the taste of whatever they are mixed with. ½ cup = 10 grams of protein. There are hundreds of protein powders in all different flavors, just beware of excess sugar or sweeteners. And keep in mind they don’t always taste very good. I like Tera’s Organic Whey Vanilla and mix 1 scoop (11 g protein) with 1/3-1/2 cup of egg whites in my smoothies. No chalky taste like you get from other protein powders.

** Carlson orange flavored fish oil actually adds a great flavor to the smoothie. Plus the omega 3 fats keep inflammation down, normalize cholesterol and keep your hair, skin and nails healthy. You can purchase it at any health food store. Keep it refrigerated.

Here’s more on the health benefits of kale including recipes: http://home.howstuffworks.com/kale3.htm

Think Before You Eat

Our favorite show is on TV and we plop down on the couch with a bag of chips, bowl of ice cream or a stack of cookies. Before we know it, it’s gone and there is little memory of the delicious taste of it on our tongue.


Mindless eating. We’ve all been there.


Most people turn to dieting as a means to lose weight, but this avoids the underlying problem of not taking time to actually enjoy food. Multiple studies analyzing different genders and age groups have concluded that dieting leads to increased likelihood of eating disorders, body dissatisfaction and obesity!

The very thing people are trying to avoid or correct may actually be caused by dieting.
Before you get depressed and run to the freezer for a pint of ice cream... there is a solution.

Stop dieting and make peace with food.

That’s where the principle of intuitive, or mindful eating, comes into play. We have taste buds for a reason! The concept of Intuitive Eating was developed as a means to promote the enjoyment of food while listening to the body’s cues of hunger and satiety.Severe restriction of diet inevitably leads to frustration, deprivation, binging and subsequently guilt and shame. Focusing on enjoying food, allows an individual to enjoy all aspects of food using all the senses (sight, smell touch and taste). This gives time for the body to send signals of fullness. Intuitive eaters tend to have a lower BMI, have better self-esteem, improved cholesterol levels and are less likely to have disordered patterns of eating.

Here is the gist of the 10 principles of Intuitive eating.  (See www.intuitiveeating.org for more details and references) 

Reject dieting. The cycle perpetuated by diet only leads to failure. Never eating dessert again is not realistic. You may stick with it for awhile, but you have one cookie and shame yourself into eating the entire pan, since you "already blew it".

Honor your hunger. If you’re hungry, eat! Don’t focus so much on eating a certain number of calories as this can be flawed. Your body will let you know when to eat and if you pay attention, it will tell you when to stop.

Make peace with food. Food is not the enemy. Think of food as providing nourishment, nutrients and health. But, food is also meant to be enjoyed. Choose foods you know will provide good nutrition, but also something you can enjoy. 

Enjoy food! Take time to savor not just the taste of food but also its sight and smell. Capturing this whole experience takes time, which allows your body to send those signals to your brain telling you when you're full.

Respect your fullness. Eat slowly and only till satisfied. If you stop eating when you feel full, in 20 minutes, you will feel overstuffed. Stop eating at the point of satisfaction and satiety will follow soon thereafter.

Honor your emotions, without food. Don’t stuff your feelings down with food. Explore your feelings and address them in an appropriate way. Journaling is a great way to start this process as is talking with a friend or psychologist.

Love your body, the way it is now. Rolls, cellulite, flab and all! Work towards change but don’t hate! Enjoy what makes you unique and celebrate the changes you see in your body as you pursue healthy eating and exercise.

Exercise for how it makes you feel, not only to lose weight. Exercise can help more than just improve your physical appearance or risk for disease. It also improves mood, sleep and stress. Find an activity you enjoy and do it often!

Respect yourself by honoring your health. Move your body and watch what you eat for your health. Your body will respond in time.

Putting these principles into practice will take time, but a great way to start is to begin journaling. Don't stop just at what and how much you eat. Before a meal ask yourself, "How hungry am I?" Rate your hunger on a scale from 1 to 5, 1 being not at all, 5 being ravenous. As you practice this, you'll find that sometimes you're not actually hungry but something else triggered your desire to eat. Or maybe you went all day without food and now you're at a 5. You can plan better next time to make sure your hunger doesn't get out of control, which will prevent the likelihood of overeating at your next meal.

Then as you sit down to eat, really enjoy your food, with each bite consciously feel the texture in your mouth, the taste and smell. Pause frequently throughout your meal to allow each of your senses to work. Allow your body to tell you when you are full and listen to it. After your meal rate how full you are from 1 to 5, 1 being not at all full (still hungry) and 5 being uncomfortably full. Again, as you track this, you will be able to see the circumstances around eating too little or too much and come up with strategies to fix it.  

I saved the best principle for last: Forget perfection, work towards steady progress. 

The lifestyle you have now didn't happen overnight, so changing it will take time. Small changes add up. It’s what you do MOST of the time that counts BIG.

We Don't Eat Calories

Without boring you with biochemistry, I’d like to clarify a common myth. Weight loss is not all about calories. Gasp! You read that right. The be all, end all of weight loss and subsequently health is not dictated by calories. Let's back up for a moment. What is a calorie anyways? The scientific definition is the amount of energy needed to heat up 1 gram of water, by 1 degree C. Makes total sense right? Simply speaking, a calorie is just a measure of energy. Since everything that happens in our bodies require energy, scientists came up with a way to quantify it can be measured. Just to clarify though, you don’t have “calories” floating through your blood and what you eat isn’t digested into to “calories”. Your body actually generates ATP from food, which is used as energy. But I promised I wouldn’t delve into biochemistry… I say all this because calories get a spotlight they don’t really deserve. People obsess about them in efforts to lose weight but the bottom line is... Wait for it...
WE DON'T EAT CALORIES! WE EAT FOOD!

Where those calories are coming from (protein, carbs or fat), the combination of them at a meal or snack and the circumstance surrounding when they are eaten are much more important. For instance, eating a 200 calorie snack doesn’t sound so bad. But if that is happening in the middle of the night when you should be sleeping… well, you can see why that isn’t really healthy. In the same way, 200 calories of chocolate cake versus 200 calories of fruit and yogurt are completely different as well. The calories from the fruit and yogurt have a different composition of fat, protein and carbs as well as numerous vitamins and minerals.

Let's dig into why the origin of calories is important. You’ve probably heard about food being fuel, but food also requires energy to be digested and used for fuel! What you eat actually costs the body energy. This is referred to as the Thermic Effect of Food or TEF. It accounts for approximately 10% of the total amount of calories you expend in a day. What is amazing is that you can manipulate that to your benefit to increase your calorie burn. Carbohydrates require little energy to break down, fat requires a little more, but protein costs the body the most in regards to energy. Even though carbohydrates and protein contain the same amount of calories per gram (4 calories per gram), it takes more energy for the body to digest and use each gram of protein compared to carbohydrates. 

I hope you're beginning to see why focusing only on the amount of calories you eat daily is flawed. Instead of paying so much attention to calories, investigate where those calories are coming from. There are dozens of applications to help you determine this. The tool I use is Tap and Track, (http://www.tapandtrack.com/ or can be downloaded from Apple Apps) illustrates the breakdown in calories using a pie chart to represent, in percentages, the amount of calories that are coming from carbs, fat and protein. I aim for 40% carbs, 30% fat and 30% protein (plus or minus about 5%). Once you track your food, check out where you fall in these categories. 

A diet too high in carbohydrates (more than 60% of your diet) can cause high triglycerides and promotes weight gain. Carbohydrates are broken down much quicker than fat or protein in the body, so you end up feeling hungrier, which leads to overeating. Too little carbohydrates (less than 35%) can leave you feeling sluggish and if you’re exercising, can actually cause your body to break down muscle to make energy. Obviously, you want to emphasize eating carbohydrates from fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains. The fiber in these foods helps to slow down digestion (i.e. makes you feel full). Refined carbohydrates from sweets, enriched grains, soda and sugar have little to no fiber and provide no value to your diet (no vitamins/minerals or antioxidants). As a side note, most packaged foods (even under the guise of health food) is relatively low in fiber. The natural fat content of whole grains causes it to spoil rather quickly, so in order to keep food shelf-stable, those parts of the grain are removed.

Fat is important for numerous reasons that I won’t get into right now, but the #1 reason to make sure you’re getting the right kinds and amounts is because it helps to make you feel full. Avoid trans fats (from fried and packaged foods), limit saturated fats (from high fat meats, full-fat dairy, fried and packaged foods) and eat poly and monounsaturated fats (avocados, olives, oils, nuts, seeds, fish and meat and dairy from animals that are fed grass instead of corn). We’ll talk more about the differences between corn-fed and grass-fed animals later. Aim for between 25-35% of your total diet. Less than this and you’re likely missing out on essential fats that are important for regulating inflammation and keeping your hair, skin and nails healthy. Too much fat, especially from saturated and trans fat can lead to higher cholesterol levels, which puts you at increased risk for heart disease.

Protein is a friend to body builders everywhere, but its benefits go far beyond helping muscle repair and build. In fact, I would argue, it is one of the least important functions that protein has. Like fiber and healthy fats, protein promotes satiety, or the feeling of fullness after meals. As I read recently, “Protein is to diet as black is to fashion: It makes everyone thinner”. Even more importantly though, protein is needed to make enzymes and immune factors in the body. With little protein intake, the body attempts conservation and these important functions are compromised. Add to that the fact that as we age, we naturally lose muscle mass, which is what causes the metabolism to lag. Making sure you are getting adequate protein will protect this muscle and keep your metabolism going. While muscle at rest doesn’t burn much more calories than fat pound for pound, muscle demands a substantial amount of energy when it is being used. Aim for 20-30% of your diet from protein. An easy way to figure out what about 30% protein would look like is to eat 1 gram of protein per 1 pound of weight. For a 150 lb woman, about 150 grams of protein per day on average. Less on days without weight training and more on days with strength training.  

These are all general recommendations with the goal of promoting health and weight loss. There are ALWAYS exceptions. If you have chronic diseases like diabetes or kidney disease, the recommendations change. Be sure to talk to a Registered Dietitian or other health professional if you have questions or concerns with how your your diet choices impact individual health conditions.

Fabulous Fiber

Dietary fiber is found in fruits, vegetables, beans, lentils, nuts, seeds and whole grains. Basically anything that comes from a plant (and isn’t overly processed) will have fiber in it.

So what’s all the fuss about fiber?

Fiber is well-known for it’s function to help you... well, you know! But fiber's superpowers go beyond the toilet. Fiber-rich meals help you feel more full, which translates into eating less and losing weight!

Fiber also acts like a sponge in the gut, trapping and carrying out fat, toxins and bile. Bile is needed for digesting fat. The body has a great recycling process for bile; it’s secreted, does it’s digesting business and the body reabsorbs it and does it over and over again. Since fiber traps bile and gets rid of it, the body has to make more in order for digestion to continue. Cholesterol is needed to make more bile, so increasing fiber intake actually helps to decrease cholesterol in the body . Pretty cool huh? I think so… But wait, it gets better! Fiber itself contains a component that travels to the liver and tells it to actually decrease the amount of cholesterol it produces! 

Fiber’s affect on decreasing cholesterol is actually threefold: 

1) Your body absorbs less fat, which means less cholesterol is needed shuttle fat throughout the body.

2) It gets rid of bile, so cholesterol is needed to make more.

3) It tells the liver to stop making so much cholesterol.

Fiber also helps to regulate blood sugar because it slows down digestion, allowing for the body to get nutrients over time. This is what makes you feel more full. Wild fluctuations in blood sugar cause increased hunger and subsequently weight gain. Over time this can lead to insulin resistance. The vicious cycle continues as excessive amounts of insulin promotes more weight gain. Gone treated, insulin resistance can progress to diabetes. 

To sum up, fiber lowers your risk of heart disease by decreasing cholesterol levels, keeps you full, helps you lose weight and may decrease your risk of getting diabetes.

Told you fiber has superpowers.

The average American gets less than half the recommended amount of fiber per day. Women should aim for at least 25 grams of fiber and men at least 30 grams per day.