Quick Nutrition Tip

Watching what you are eating? Take a step in the right direction by taking pictures of everything you eat and drink. Its like a digital food journal! It may open you eyes, and/or make you more aware of the choices you are making daily.

Watch your budget and your waistline

One of the best ways to improve your diet and your food budget is portion control!  

As Americans, we eat very large portions.  Think steak house dinner with a 12 or 16oz steak for one person, served with a huge baked potato.  This is after your appetizer of bread and salad, and maybe even a bloomin' onion or baked potato skins.  All of which is way more food than any one person needs in one sitting.  The steak alone exceeds one person's protein portion for the entire day! 

By learning proper portion sizes and using portion control in your eveyday life, not only will you cut your food costs, but you will also cut down on your waist line!   That 12oz steak dinner could be shared with someone else at the dinner table, and you split the bill.  In fact, you could even split a 6 oz steak and get the proper amount of protein needed with an even smaller price tag.  You save on cost, and calories. Don't forget it will also save you from that horrible feeling of being overly full.  

Get started today by watching how big your portions are while eating.  Think your portions are alright, consider comparing them to recommendations by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans or Choose Your Plate. You may be surprised at how far off your portions are compared to what you should be eating.  For example, a baked potato should be the size of a computer mouse… not the size of your plate. 

Watching what you are eating???

Try using smaller utensils, plates, bowls, and cups!!!  

Research has shown people who use smaller bowls and spoons eat less then people who have larger bowls and spoons.  One of the researchers sited in the study below- Painter, JE- did a TV spot with people eating ice cream.  The people who had the little pink sample spoons from Baskin Robbins and a small bowl ate less and were JUST AS SATISFIED with the smaller amount of ice cream eaten when compared to people who had larger bowls and spoons and ate more ice cream.  

Also, if you keep the food you have eaten in front of you, you are less likely to overindulge. Don't let the server clear all the plates and dishes from your table while you are eating at a restaurant.  Keep the empty soda/drink cups on the table too!  

Final application:  When eating nuts (such as pistachios) if you crack the nut and eat it from the shell while keeping the cracked shells in front of you, you are less likely to overindulge and are more satisfied with less pistachios eaten than compared to someone who eat pre-cracked pistachios (or other nuts).  Basically- crack the nuts yourself, you will slow down, eat less, and still feel full!  

When you serve your dinner at home tonight, use the salad plate instead of the standard dinner plate.  Use the small (short) cup, instead of the big 16oz cup.  And don't clear the table of any foods eaten until you are completely done eating.  Happy Eating! 

Research citation:  Wansink B, Painter JE, North J.  Bottomless bowls: why visual cues of
portion size may influence intake.  Obes Res. 2005 Jan;13(1):93-100

Healthy foods cost more???

Think it's too expensive to eat healthy... think again!

A new research study that was just released shows ounce for ounce, calorie for calorie... healthy foods cost the same as junk foods. And in some cases, healthy foods are cheaper! 

Myth Dispelled! Healthy Foods not more expensive... read on

A Diet You Can Manage

First off, a diet is completely an inaccurate term- I was just trying to get your attention. It is not a diet, it is a lifestyle. Let's talk about ways we can make eating healthy part of your everyday life.

To start a lifestyle of healthy eating, it takes many small steps. Take the following scenarios for example:

• When someone decides to run a marathon for the first time, how do they approach it? Do they wake up one day and run a marathon? No.
• When someone wants to start a company, does it happen over night? No. 

So then why do we expect to have a perfect "diet" instantly?
Why do we think we can wake up on Monday and go on a diet to lose weight. Really?! And we think we are going to be successful with that?

Tell me, a persons who wants to run a marathon but doesn't train at all...do they make it to the finish line? No. They might if they hitched a ride or took a short cut, but that is cheating! They did not run across the finish line because they work hard to get to that goal, they did it by cheating.  You want to train for a marathon and pass through the finish line because you trained and worked hard to make it to your goal!  Winning is only fun if you put hard work into it, not if you stole it by cheating.

The same basic principle of working hard to achieve your goal applies to eating healthy! You need to take several small steps to get to your ultimate goal if you want to be successful.

Truly your GOAL should be TO EAT HEALTHY & BE SUCCESSFUL DOING IT.   Not just to diet or lose weight.

Ideas for getting started TODAY:

-Write a food journal for three days.

• Write down EVERYTHING you eat AND drink. Make sure to estimate serving sizes as accurately as possible.
• Be honest. If you ate 4 fun size Snickers bars, write very single one of them down. If you don't, you are only cheating yourself. 
• Do not eat differently than you normally would.  Otherwise, you will not get an accurate depiction of what you eat on a daily basis. 
• Lastly, make sure one of those days is a weekend! Some people have a tendency to eat differently on weekends, or drink beverages they don't normally drink during the week (eh, em... alcohol).
• After you track what you eat for a few days, enter it into a program such as MyFitnessPal. This is a government ran app, you can track your daily food intake, and track your exercise. 
• If you prefer, you can even enter your food intakes into the app on a meal or daily basis instead of waiting until the end of the three days.  Do note, you may pay more attention to calories, fat and protein consumed if you enter your intakes in to MyFitnessPal the same day you are eating, this can cause you to have a slightly different picture of what you actually eat.  This is because you are paying more attention to your food, and you are less likely to eat mindlessly (i.e. those 4 fun size Snickers bars).  

These first couple of steps may seem tedious, but they are basic... and necessary. Think about it, if (or when) you plan your financial budget, you have to track your spending for a few months to get an idea as to where all your money goes. Same concept! You must track EVERYTHING you eat for a few days in order to get a better picture of what you eat everyday.  Writing down you food intake everyday will also give you an idea as to we're to start you journey to a eating healthy lifestyle.

Let's think of some examples of what you can change after you track your food intake.

• BEVERAGES: Do you drink a lot of calorie and sugar filled beverages? Juice, soda, whole milk, or alcohol? If you are drinking anything other than plain water, plain coffee or plain tea (no added sugars, sweeteners or creamers), you can probably use some help in this area
• Do you drink whole, try switching to 2% milk.  Or if you already drink 2%, aim for 1% or fat-free.
• SNACKS: Do you have a lot of little snacks through out the day? Those little candies from the jar on secretary's desk can add up significantly over time. Consider taking a mid-afternoon snack with you to work, that way you aren't raiding the candy drawer at 2 or 3pm to make it to the end of the work day. This may even help hold you over until dinner better and help you to not over eat dinner! Win-win!
• ADD-ONS: Do you add a lot of ranch, cheese, butter or other fatty, calorie filled food item, dip or added fat to your foods? Try cutting back, if not cutting it out.
• SKIPPING MEALS: Do you skip breakfast? Or another meal? It's probably best to have a least a snack instead of completely skipping. Otherwise, once you do end up eating, you are far more likely to overindulge.  That then leads to extra calories consumed and weight gain, and is not beneficial to your eating healthy lifestyle.

These are just many ideas to get a jump start on your path to eating right for your healthy diet lifestyle.

• By no means should you do everyone of these things at once!!! Repeat, do NOT attempt to make all these changes at one time. 
• You should pick only one thing to change and dedicate your focus to that. Once you have mastered than, move onto the next lifestyle change to master. 
• Changes should be made no more frequently than once a week, and more ideally, should be done with a 2-3 weeks period apart from one another.  This will help you to be successful and master your new changes in lifestyle!!

If you already know one of your weaknesses, without doing the food intake for three days... consider picking a small change you know will help you, but is also FEASIBLE!  If your goal means to give up something you know you will pick up again in 6 months and eat an entire grocery store's worth of that item, pick something else.  You want to pick something that you know you can change, that way you set yourself up for SUCCESS! 

Good Luck! And remember, start today with ONE small change towards a better lifestyle.  

Working out in the Airport

It should be more culturally acceptable to work out when doing nothing in public!!

I'm not talking about full on push-ups in public, but more like movement to keep you going. For example, my husband and I were waiting for our plane to board earlier this morning and I started doing squats. He looked a me like I was crazy. There may have been other people who had the same impression, but who cares. I sure don't, I'll be the one looking decent in my shorts and swim suit this summer.

If everyone started doing this, people wouldn't think you were crazy. You would be crazy NOT to be using your down time effectively, by working out in public!

Now, I know I'm a dietitian. Food is my specialty, but nutrition, healthy and exercising go together... It comes with the territory. I'm not trying to be a fitness expert, or step on the toes of fitness experts'. I more so trying to motivate people to get moving, to burn extra calories when ever possible. The occasional squats while in line might not cause you to loose 10 pounds this month, but it will take you one step closer to getting you healthier AND it may even pave the way to more intense workouts in the future... Just a thought. If it doesn't, at least your are getting in some sort of physical activity.

Food (and exercise) for thought! Get out there and getting moving today, not tomorrow!

Healthy Eating Myths

So I was reading different stuff on my phone, having fun surfing the Internet and playing with my new twitter account. Man, someone was reading my mind yesterday!!

I recommend going to the link below for the WebMD article about myths about eating healthy... This definitely supports what I posted about last night. Particularly the part about a diet being all or nothing and thinking of it as something too big to tackle. Take the first step now. Make an oath to make one small change every week or month. One small change can make a huge difference in the long run.


@WebMD_Blogs: I don’t have time to #cook, and other myths that keep unhealthy food habits alive: http://t.co/fW7uQ15Y @mtjacobsen

Asian Inspired Meal

Ingredients

1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 lb frozen chicken, thawed
2 medium zucchinis, sliced 1/4 inch pieces and cut in 1/2
4 small red, orange, and yellow bell peppers, julienned
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp lite or reduced sodium soy sauce
Optional
1 Tbsp sesame seeds

1 cup white rice
2 cups water

Add rice and water to a small pot.  Bring to a boil.  Cover and reduce to a simmer.  Cook 15- 20 minutes.

In a large skillet, add oil and garlic. Heat until garlic is aromatic, then add chicken and cook over medium heat.  Cook chicken until nearly done, remove from pan and cut into chunks.  Add back to pan, and add zucchini; cover and cook for about 5 minutes.  Add bell pepper and cook for another 3-5 minutes.  For crispier vegetables, remove from pan and serve.  For softer veggies, continue cooking to desired texture.  Top with sesame seeds.  Serve with a quick dinner salad for some extra vegetables with dinner.

To speed up the cooking process, I usually butterfly cut my chicken.

Kid friendly note: have the kids help prepare the vegetables.  Kids are more likely to eat foods that they help prepare, or even grow! Start a family garden and get your kids in the kitchen! Yes, my 6 year old eats this food.  The baby eats the zucchini with the rice, and small pieces of the bell pepper, we are still working on her :)

Sorry this took a little longer than expected to post!! Hope you enjoy!

Welcome to Me

Who am I?

I am a registered dietitian, mother, wife and student.  Currently I am juggling caring for my family, household duties, work, and my Master's thesis.  Most importantly, I am trying to feed my family right. 

I decided to start blogging:

To apply my knowledge of nutrition

with my trials and triumphs of feeding my family...

In an effort to help others learn to eat right.  

Background Info:

Food has been my whole life. 

A majority of memories as a childhood revolve around food.  

I remember helping my mom all day long prep Thanksgiving dinner.  Now Thanksgiving dinner is my holiday!

In the summer I lived with my dad, some of my fondest memories are wearing an apron in the kitchen while picking parsley leaves or walking to the farmer’s market to buy fresh fruit, veggies and herbs.  

For years I teased my grandmother for planning meals days, weeks, and even months in advance.  Now, I do the same thing and I love it!  

Although my life had always revolved around food, I had never thought about having a career involving food or nutrition.  It wasn’t until I took a class at the local community college and the instructor asked me if I had ever considered a career in dietetics (nutrition).  The next semester, I started taking a nutrition class and knew I was destined to be a dietitian.  I spent the next 5 years dedicated to becoming a dietitian.  

Now, I am proud to say I am a registered dietitian!!

Educational moment:

What is a registered dietitian?  A registered dietitian is your nutrition health professional.  To become a registered dietitian, you have to complete a bachelor’s degree in dietetics and nutrition at an accredited school, then complete an internship (aka supervised practice), and then pass the certification exam.  Once you become a dietitian, you need to continue your education to maintain your registration.  

But then what about a nutritionist?  A dietitian may use the title nutritionist, but not all nutritionist are dietitians.  The definition of nutritionist varies from state to state, and not all states regulate the requirements for the title of nutritionist (in California anyone can use the title nutritionist, so be careful).  A nutritionist may or may not have the educational background, supervised practice, certification exam, or required continuing education that is required of a dietitian.  Be cautious when you see this title used.  Make sure they are also a registered dietitian.