Making Healthy Food Choices a Little Easier

I know that most people try their best to treat their bodies well and to serve their families healthful foods. Few things make me happier because I would like everyone to feel the exuberance that results from being fit. I’m not referring to beauty as synonymous with being thin or having swimsuit-lovely figures but to the energy and joy experienced from having a healthy heart. Being fit means more than being one’s optimal weight. Being fit means being able to briskly walk across a parking lot without feeling out of breath, keeping up with one’s kids as they bicycle around the neighborhood, and feeling the heart pump with exercise but not like it feels as though it will explode.

Creating a healthy heart requires aerobic exercise by sustaining an increased heart rate. But I’ve blogged about that previously and I will again. A healthy heart also requires a diet rich in wholesome foods. And that is what I will blog about today.

A diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains will help anyone maintain a healthy weight and healthy lipid and cholesterol levels. The result is a healthy heart and elastic arteries so that blood is less likely to clot, blood remains a healthy viscosity, and arteries can accommodate blood pumped by the heart.

But recognizing healthful foods can be challenged by the way foods are packaged and marketed. A food product labeled “low fat” is not necessarily healthy. It probably means that the version labeled “low fat” has fewer fat grams than the “regular” option but it could still contain more fat than the minimum daily requirements recommend. Food engineers also probably replaced the fat with added sugar and salt to replace taste lost by reducing fat. Similarly, foods labeled as “diet” or “low calorie” may have fewer fat grams and fewer calories than non-diet options but they still offer too little nutritional value to make the calories worth ingesting.

Even vegetarians can choose unhealthy options. Potato chips, soda, and cheese pizza are all vegetarian options, after all, and I don’t think anyone would be fooled to think that would be a healthy diet. Fake meat products made with soy, such as lunchmeat replacements, turkey alternatives and sausage substitutes often contain more chemicals, sodium and fat than lean beef, pork and poultry. Beans, nuts, and legumes are healthier protein options.

Many people are surprised to learn that the foods they eat are not as healthy as they thought. They had the right intentions when they replaced foods with low fat options and meat substitutes. But marketing food products is big business and food companies are motivated to present their products in a way that is often confusing, perhaps even deceiving.

Figuring out how to eat well doesn’t need to be difficult, however. Wholesome foods will be the best option. Fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, beans, and lean meats (if one decides to eat meat) will always be healthier choices than produced and packaged foods. I think Michael Pollan’s advice was concise and accurate when he suggested a few recommendations. He recommends selecting foods with no more than 5 ingredients. That is an easy way to read a food label! More than 5 ingredients indicates that the food probably has been so processed that it has little in common with the original food item. Pollan also has said that if your grandmother wouldn’t recognize it as food, then it isn’t. All food options were whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean meats before food manufacturing became big business. Another of Pollan’s recommendations is to shop only around the periphery of a grocery store, where produce, dairy, and meats are shelved. Interior and frozen food aisles contain mostly packaged and processed foods with more than 5 ingredients and less likely to be recognized by Grandma as food.

Food manufacturers are motivated to make selecting healthy foods more confusing than it really is. The exuberance of being fit can be achieved by exercising and choosing wholesome foods and making those choices feels great!

Transitions

Spring is trying hard to arrive right now. Where I live, some buds are on trees and some perennials are in bloom. But one day seems like spring only for the next day to turn cold again. I keep putting away gloves and hats only to take them back out again the following day. I love springtime so the transition seems like a good one to me. But still, enduring any change requires more effort than the status quo.

Life comes with many transitions, including relocating, entering or exiting relationships, and starting or ending new jobs and life roles. Sometimes people stay in relationships and work settings longer than they know they should if only because the change itself is so challenging.

Yoga has taught me that even through the impermanence of every situation I can find some stability in my breath and in the goodness of each moment. As in life, the transitions in yoga are least balanced. Moving gracefully from one pose to the next requires focused attention and long breaths.

I have worked on transitions this week by linking three standing poses: vrkasana (tree pose) into virabhadrasana 3 (warrior 3 pose) into garudasana (eagle pose). Any one of these poses is demanding so sequencing them together without letting the floating foot touch the ground is even more of a challenge. Still, once I am in any of these standing poses I can settle in and balance. Moving from one to the next is the tricky part. The best way I have found to approach the transitions is to acknowledge that there is something similar in each. I can build on the fact that the pelvis is level and the hip points aligned forward in each of the poses. The standing foot stays in full contact with the ground to provide stability. And my breath is with me always, helping me to focus and remain stable even as I move. I have learned to be graceful in these transitions by letting my breath move me and quiet my mind. I also am comforted in knowing that as much as one pose is different from the other, some components are constant among them.

Tools I have learned on the mat have helped me to endure transitions off the mat with a little more grace and focus. Even as things change, I love and am loved and life generally is very good. Breathing and focusing through it all makes life’s transitions a little easier. So I take another breath and pull out that winter coat again.

Sweat Equity

I feel great when I work my body hard. It just feels good to build muscle strength and cardiovascular endurance through resistance and cardio training. My yoga practice complements my weight training as resistance training and I feel stronger each day I practice. I personally don’t think that sweating feels good, but that seems to be a trend. Many people seem to want to sweat in the gym and in yoga class. I keep hearing people in the gym and yoga studio express how good they think sweating is for them, that sweating will get rid of toxins. I understand that some people may have a personal preference for feeling good to sweat, but I’m not sure why people want to believe the myth that sweating is good as “detox”.

Truth is that sweat is 99% water. There is a trace of salt, urea, proteins, and carbohydrates in sweat. But mostly sweat is water. The trace salt, urea, proteins, and carbohydrates are organic products that occur naturally in the body. They are not toxic, they are not environmental toxins. One cannot sweat out too much alcohol, a rich dessert, or a carbohydrate-heavy meal ingested the evening before.

Sweat does not contain pesticides, environmental pollutions, or food preservatives. Toxins that we ingest or come in contact with through the environment including mercury, alcohol and fatty foods are metabolized and digested in the liver, intestines and kidneys, and excreted as feces and urine.

Sweat glands are located in the skin and serve to regulate temperature. They do not function in metabolism, digestion, or filtering byproducts of metabolism. Sweating is an important physiological function. Is sweating good? Of course, to the extent that it helps to cool the body and prevent heat exhaustion. Sweat is overwhelmingly water. The body is designed to produce sweat. The water in that sweat evaporates from the skin as a cooling mechanism to maintain a consistent body temperature (98.6 degrees F). Sweating more means one of two things: either the environment is hot or the body’s core temperature is rising probably as a function of muscle activity. Sweating more does not expel preservatives, chemicals, or alcohol. Sweating expels water. That water will need to be replaced by drinking fluids to help the kidneys function in their role of eliminating toxins from the blood.

Can someone sweat too much? Absolutely. Heavy sweating with a rapid pulse can be a sign of heat exhaustion, or overheating. Heat exhaustion can result from being exposed to high environmental temperatures and strenuous activity. When people feel dizzy, fatigued, or faint (particularly when the pulse is faint and rapid) during a workout in a heated room they could be experiencing heat exhaustion. Nausea, headache and muscle cramps are additional signs that indicate the person may be overheating and needs to stop the activity, find a cooler room and drink water. Medical attention is necessary if the symptoms don’t subside.

Excessive sweating during a workout is a personal preference. It doesn’t mean that toxins are shed. The best way to “detox” is to avoid environmental impurities, food preservatives, and household chemicals. Sweating in the gym or studio will help cool you down but won’t be effective in eliminating toxins.

Finding Courage and Joy in the Same Breath

Happy Valentine’s day to all! February 14 is reserved for the celebration of love and relationship. It also is a day to recognize that many additional emotions are associated with love. Love is sandwiched between courage and joy. It takes courage to love another. Opening one’s heart to love another and enter a committed, intimate relationship makes both people vulnerable. Entering a loving relationship opens one up to the potential for rejection, pain, and loss. One does need courage to make the leap with all this at stake.

Oh, but once one does commit, the resulting joy that extends from the loving relationship is phenomenal! Partnership, support, acceptance, and warm fuzzy feelings all are joys that extend from loving another. A loving partner is a number-one fan and who doesn’t find joy in having a number-one fan? The support that a loving relationship provides may even generate more courage. The rewards are well worth the risk. If they weren’t then we wouldn’t have a day on the calendar devoted for this joyful emotion.

In celebration of Valentine’s day this week, I’m honoring courage and joy by practicing adho mukha vrksasana (handstand).  It takes courage to go upside down, supporting one’s weight on the hands. Some of my students haven’t experienced this sensation in decades. But we will work up to the pose, starting with an accepting, loving environment. We will begin by finding courage from our breath and arm strength. We will begin with breath of fire and poses that approximate adho mukha vrksasana, further developing courage and love for our bodies. Some students will find themselves in the full expression of the pose and some may even hold the pose for several breaths. Other students will use props and modifications to find their own expressions of the pose. But everyone will develop courage to take himself/herself upside down, even a little bit, and in that pose will find exhilaration and joy.  

Yes, it takes courage to come into adho mukha vrksasana, just as it takes courage to love another, but the resulting joy of both experiences is worth it!

Maintaining “Resolve”

This is the last full week of January; how are you doing with your new year resolutions? People have usually begun to drop off their intensity and interest for the goals they set for themselves a month ago. It might be because their resolutions were too vague to maintain such as “I resolve to be a better person.” It might be because their resolutions were not reasonable such as “I will lose 10 pounds a month until summer swimsuit season.” Human behavior requires that goals be measurable and attainable for us to stay interested, such as “I will add two servings of vegetables to my meals each day” or “I will park at the far end of the lot to get a brisk walk each morning and evening.”

A clear difference between those last two “resolutions” and the first two is that the latter are set as intended habits. We can schedule our activities and plan our meals in a way that adjusts our habits. We can track our success in adjusting our habits by reviewing our calendars or activity logs. Scheduling, planning, and tracking activities make them more obvious and easier for us to maintain interest. For instance, I could decide on a healthy habit to omit sodas, alcohol and juices from my diet, drinking unsweetened water, tea and coffee instead. It would mean planning to bring a water bottle or an insulated flask of tea with me when I leave the house in the morning. I could track my success by marking days on a calendar indicating the days I did not drink calories. I would be healthier because I would have ingested less sugar and salt, reducing my risk for certain cancers, heart disease, and diabetes.

Oh, and by the way, I would have reduced my caloric intake by about 200 calories a day per drink if I omitted sodas, alcohol and juices from my diet, drinking unsweetened water, tea or coffee instead. It takes about 3500 calories to burn a pound of fat. So by cutting out sodas, alcohol, and juices I could eliminate at least 200 calories from my diet a day and lose nearly two pounds a month. And that is by doing nothing else! If my second new habit is to use stairs rather than elevators each day or to take a brisk walk during lunch hour then I would be conditioning my heart and lungs and burn even more calories.

If our new year resolutions are really ways to improve our health then we don’t need to become frustrated by setting resolutions to “lose weight” or to “get healthy”. Weight loss and healthy hearts will become welcomed secondary benefits to developing new healthy habits.

Think of a healthy habit you can adopt for the month of February. Make your resolution to change your habit, not to achieve a goal. Plan your day to include that habit and track daily whether you maintained your commitment. If you miss a day, just start over the next day without looking back.

Chances are you will have maintained that resolve longer than a traditional new year “resolution.”

Resolve to Improve Wellness

I spent some time looking out at the cardio room in the gym last week. It was more crowded than usual, a reflection of the annual mid-January rush to sign up for gym memberships in support of people’s new year resolutions. I was encouraged to see people I hadn’t seen before, committed to treating their bodies well. Unfortunately, many of them didn’t realize that they were really wasting their time. I wanted them all to better understand how to use exercise to improve their health.

One woman walked on the treadmill for about 12 minutes. Sounds fine, but she was walking at a speed slower than I can imagine her walking in the mall. I watched a gentleman on the stationary bicycle. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t have been able to keep it balanced if he were pedaling that slowly on a real bicycle. I’m concerned that these people will not continue their new exercise programs for long if they don’t see benefit however they define benefit. I also love efficiency and one thing that bugs me is wasting time. So I am an advocate of getting the most out of one’s time in the gym. As long as you are putting in the time on the machines, then I say make it worthwhile!

Aerobic exercise is necessary for good heart health. Aerobic exercise increases heart rate and can be any enjoyable activity that maintains an elevated heart rate, including bicycling, swimming, brisk walking, dancing, jogging, running, and cross-country skiing. Aerobic activity burns calories, conditions the heart and lungs to reduce risk of heart disease and stroke, increases good cholesterol, reduces risk for type 2 diabetes, reduces depression, lowers risk of premature death, and helps to tone the body by reducing the fat layer that lies over muscles. To benefit, however, requires at least 30 minutes of exercise 5 times a week. The 30 minutes can be distributed in three 10-minute segments over a day, but the activity must be moderately intense. Moderate intensity is usually interpreted to mean that the body is working hard enough that the person can talk but not sing. Or on a scale of 0 (sitting in a chair) to 10 (highest level of effort possible), the person judges her intensity at a 5 or 6.

Any increase in intensity and amount of exercise will enhance the benefits noted from the bare minimum criteria above. Increasing aerobic activity to 5 hours a week also reduces risk of colon and breast cancers and prevents weight gain.

Perhaps I just didn’t see the higher intensity work by the people I watched in the gym last week. Sadly, I am not optimistic that is so. Any enjoyable aerobic activity will be beneficial as long as people exercise long enough and at adequate intensity. Usually committing to exercise with a friend will help sustain the program. For many people activity that requires least equipment and financial investment such as brisk walking or dancing is best. For others, structured time such as basketball games and tennis matches are motivating.  It doesn’t matter what the activity is as long as it is sustained at a moderate intensity level.

I encourage everyone to exercise and as long as they are spending their time doing the activity, may it be most beneficial. The reward will be a longer, healthier life. That is a resolution worth maintaining!

Practicing with Patience

Mindful attention to things around us and a regular yoga practice are effective tools to learn lessons that serve us well off the mat. This week my students and I are working on practicing with patience. We have practiced challenging standing poses such as bird of paradise, arm balances such as astavakrasana (8-angle pose), and forward folds such as parivrtta janu sirsasana (revolved head-to-knee pose). None of these is easy but a beautiful thing about yoga is that every beginning student can take some expression of the pose and that every advanced student will be challenged by some expression of the pose.

So, this week my students with more and with less experience with yoga poses have tried these challenging standing poses, arm balances, and folds this week. Advanced students have fallen out of some of the poses and beginning students have used props to approximate some semblance of the poses. But everyone has tried them – and it appeared as though most of the students had fun trying! They might as well try - holding astavakrasana for five breaths is not going to reduce world hunger, so the risks are relatively minimal although the benefits are substantial. These challenges afford an opportunity to strengthen muscles in new ways and to stretch muscles in other ways. More importantly, challenges on the mat teach patience. No one I know has ever come straight into a beautiful bird of paradise pose the first try. It takes time, practice, and patience to finally succeed. I remind students to use the breath to transition from one pose to the next and to observe their reactions when they don’t quite end up where they wanted to be. Getting into the final expression of the pose is much less important than being patient with the process of getting there. Practicing with patience means allowing ourselves time to develop the strength, balance, and flexibility to get into and sustain the pose. Practicing with patience means accepting our current limitations that prevent a full expression of the pose. Practicing with patience means breathing in the moment without forcing and controlling the outcome. Practicing with patience makes practicing challenging poses more fun.

The trick is to bring the patience we learn on the mat out into the world when class is over. Any challenge daily life throws our way can be practiced with patience, observing our reactions, accepting our current limitations, breathing in the moment, and letting go of controlling the outcome. Practicing with patience might just make life’s challenges more fun.