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- Good choices equal good health
Good choices equal good health
- By Dr. Kimberly Queen
- Published 03/10/2007
- Diet & Exercise
2006 VOL 1, NO 1
There is no magic bullet for weight loss or a quick fix for staying healthy. Optimal health comes through a combination of balanced diet, moderate exercise and positive change in the emotional patterns that affect the way you think and feel about yourself. This is especially important for patients challenged by weight control issues and chronic health concerns. In my practice, I promote a three- fold approach to optimal health-- Healthy Eating, Healthy Exercise and Healthy Living.
Healthy Eating begins with making smart food choices, but what does this mean? In 9 years of clinical practice, I have found only 2 popular diets that provide good instruction in this regard: the Harvard and the Mediterranean diets. Walter Willett, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at The Harvard School of Public Health, wrote Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating. His book provides sound, scientific nutritional advice emphasizing a new food pyramid that he and his colleagues developed after the largest and longest dietary study to date. The new food pyramid features abundant fruits, vegetables, whole grains, non-hydrogenated vegetable oils, and daily exercise. It bears a distinct relationship to the Mediterranean diet, but the Harvard diet avoids promoting specific dishes by making general recommendations for healthy ingredients.
The so-called Mediterranean Diet was introduced to North America by nutritionist, Ancel B. Keys after he compiled dietary and epidemiological data from seven European nations over a 15-year period. He was especially interested in how men in the mountains of Crete experienced low rates of heart disease and cancer and lived healthy lives to old age. Keys studied diets that had few saturated fats and dairy products, relatively high consumption of fruits, vegetables and nuts, and combined with lifestyle factors such as daily exercise and low stress levels.
Both the Mediterranean and the Harvard diets emphasize balance between food choices and lifestyle factors. They both promote moderation in alcohol and red meat consumption and are reasonably low-fat diets-- heart healthy factors that protect against cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer. Both diets promote nutritional habits that are effective to regulate blood sugar levels, make weight control easier and improve quality of life.
I like the fact that both diets recommend proportions of 55% good (complex) carbohydrates, 25% good fats (unsaturated vegetable oils and omega-3 fatty acids fish or seed oils) and 20% proteins (that do not include beef). The diets also recommend 1 to 2 servings per day of low fat dairy, beans, peas, and nuts or seeds. Some patients have allergies to dairy or nuts, or other dietary restrictions. I do not typically tell them to "Buy a book and good luck!" I start each patient with a food diary, and we work together to formulate an individualized and balanced approach to eating and exercise. The ultimate goal is to develop personalized lifestyle modifications that they will enjoy and maintain over the long haul, because food choices must support the demands of exercise, and at the same time, make the patient feel less deprived as they work toward their health and weight control goals.
Healthy Exercise is necessary for long- term weight control and a healthy lifestyle. For many patients, this is "good news and bad news." Moderate daily exercise alleviates depression and pain and maintains good memory in old age. However, extreme exercise may take up to four years off your life span! Excessive exercise also increases the incidence of colds and other respiratory illnesses and musculoskeletal injuries. I counsel my patients to "figure out" what kind of exercise they want to do, based on climate, interest and level of fitness. I believe even a small amount of healthy exercise is better than none. I usually recommend choosing an activity that a patient can start slowly and increase gradually-- like walking with a pedometer, which is a great way to exercise by counting steps. Other good exercises include swimming, biking, running and dancing. For patients with weight control issues, I eventually incorporate some type of muscle building activity in order to burn more calories: it might be lifting weights at the gym or doing push-ups at home, performing yoga or Pilates, or exercising on a therapy ball with hand weights.
The best way for otherwise healthy people to start exercising is to perform the activity 3 or more times per week for 20 minutes or more. I recommend gradually working up to at least 30 to 60 minutes per day, 4 to 6 times per week. Healthy exercise can vary, and it can include several short bouts of activity in a day-- like taking stairs instead of an elevator or parking farther away from a destination and walking. I have even recommended doing house or yard work as a form of light exercise. Healthy exercise sessions start with a gradual warm-up period of 5 to 10 minutes. During this time, muscles stretch slowly as the exercise intensity gradually increases. After exercise, the body should slowly cool down for 5 to 10 minutes. During this time, stretch the muscles slowly in order to increase blood flow and maintain flexibility.
Although everyone knows that food calories are the fuel for exercise, I do deal with patients,
especially those with weight control issues, who "freak out" when they are told how many calories their body needs to exercise at even a moderate level of intensity. I also encounter patients without weight control issues who complain of "exhaustion" after light exercise, and I find that many of them are burning more calories than they take in. For example, no one should burn more calories than their basal metabolic rate (BMR): the energy expenditure necessary to maintain basic physiologic functions under standardized conditions. Expending more energy or eating fewer calories than the BMR will "empty the fuel tank"-this does not promote optimal health and is the perfect set- up for diet disaster. I occasionally use the Harris Benedict Formula to determine my patient's total daily calorie needs for their preferred activity. When I counsel patients on how much they should weigh I use the Body Mass Index (BMI): the "weight to height ratio." BMI is also useful to assess health risk for conditions associated with obesity.
Exercise can be of benefit to everyone and I suggest everyone take the time to talk to his or her doctor before beginning a new exercise program. Doctors of medicine and chiropractic can help patients identify potential health concerns and provide counseling on dietary needs for specific exercise programs. Exercise comes in many forms. I emphasize balance in making exercise choices-- do not go crazy with exercise, but do something healthy everyday.
Healthy Living has to do with making good choices regarding our activity, food, personal relationships, and work environment. Optimal health, whether for the person who has a good relationship with food and exercise, or a person challenged by weight control issues and chronic health concerns, involves recognizing patterns that affect the way we think and feel about ourselves.
In Buddhism, there is an important saying that right thinking equals right action. The trouble is many of us act compulsively without awareness-- we spend our days cramming in every little thing we feel the need to be done in order to experience a sense of accomplishment. We use food and exercise as punishment or reward, and the pattern of our so-called addiction to success wears into our psyche-harming us at the deepest level because we repeat negative patterns of acting and thinking. This emotional stress can promote negative health effects, including higher than normal blood levels of cortisol, the stress hormone.
I prescribe yoga exercises for many patients as a tool for healthy living. Yoga reduces stress and helps to normalize cortisol levels in otherwise healthy individuals. Dr. Timothy McCall, Medical Editor of Yoga Journal, tells us "Yoga can bring more awareness and better concentration. The regular practice of yoga boosts your ability to feel what is going on inside your body." I find it useful in training patients to pay closer attention to their stress habits, including why and when they eat or exercise. This practice in mindfulness helps them identify the emotions that may be fueling their appetite or their "need to go run 10 miles."
Healthy living tools used to promote weight loss include resisting the temptation to read, watch TV, listen to music, or talk with a friend while eating, and making the meal a meditation by chewing slowly and breathing between bites. My advice is to pay attention to your food: honor your food and your body's response to it. These techniques are also applied to exercise by paying attention to your breath and your body's response to the intensity of the activity. Check in with yourself while you exercise and change the frequency, intensity or duration depending on the feedback your body gives you.
I counsel many patients about lifestyle modification and we discuss their attitude toward "diets" and "workout programs." Many patients have strong preconceptions: they are willing to go to extremes to avoid certain foods or exercises, while they overemphasize others. Others are resistant to recommendations that are not widely publicized in the media: they believe the best advice gets the most press coverage. I try to help all of my patients understand that "common sense" and "balance" are two of the most important lifestyle tools that benefit any patient.
A balanced approach to optimal health emphasizes the integration of body, mind and spirit. It allows everyone to avoid the controversy of diet and exercise fads. Instead, we are free to eat mindfully, exercise joyfully and increase our awareness of the subconscious behavior that influences our self- image in a positive manner.
-KD Queen, DC
There is no magic bullet for weight loss or a quick fix for staying healthy. Optimal health comes through a combination of balanced diet, moderate exercise and positive change in the emotional patterns that affect the way you think and feel about yourself. This is especially important for patients challenged by weight control issues and chronic health concerns. In my practice, I promote a three- fold approach to optimal health-- Healthy Eating, Healthy Exercise and Healthy Living.
Healthy Eating begins with making smart food choices, but what does this mean? In 9 years of clinical practice, I have found only 2 popular diets that provide good instruction in this regard: the Harvard and the Mediterranean diets. Walter Willett, Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at The Harvard School of Public Health, wrote Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating. His book provides sound, scientific nutritional advice emphasizing a new food pyramid that he and his colleagues developed after the largest and longest dietary study to date. The new food pyramid features abundant fruits, vegetables, whole grains, non-hydrogenated vegetable oils, and daily exercise. It bears a distinct relationship to the Mediterranean diet, but the Harvard diet avoids promoting specific dishes by making general recommendations for healthy ingredients.
The so-called Mediterranean Diet was introduced to North America by nutritionist, Ancel B. Keys after he compiled dietary and epidemiological data from seven European nations over a 15-year period. He was especially interested in how men in the mountains of Crete experienced low rates of heart disease and cancer and lived healthy lives to old age. Keys studied diets that had few saturated fats and dairy products, relatively high consumption of fruits, vegetables and nuts, and combined with lifestyle factors such as daily exercise and low stress levels.
Both the Mediterranean and the Harvard diets emphasize balance between food choices and lifestyle factors. They both promote moderation in alcohol and red meat consumption and are reasonably low-fat diets-- heart healthy factors that protect against cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancer. Both diets promote nutritional habits that are effective to regulate blood sugar levels, make weight control easier and improve quality of life.
I like the fact that both diets recommend proportions of 55% good (complex) carbohydrates, 25% good fats (unsaturated vegetable oils and omega-3 fatty acids fish or seed oils) and 20% proteins (that do not include beef). The diets also recommend 1 to 2 servings per day of low fat dairy, beans, peas, and nuts or seeds. Some patients have allergies to dairy or nuts, or other dietary restrictions. I do not typically tell them to "Buy a book and good luck!" I start each patient with a food diary, and we work together to formulate an individualized and balanced approach to eating and exercise. The ultimate goal is to develop personalized lifestyle modifications that they will enjoy and maintain over the long haul, because food choices must support the demands of exercise, and at the same time, make the patient feel less deprived as they work toward their health and weight control goals.
Healthy Exercise is necessary for long- term weight control and a healthy lifestyle. For many patients, this is "good news and bad news." Moderate daily exercise alleviates depression and pain and maintains good memory in old age. However, extreme exercise may take up to four years off your life span! Excessive exercise also increases the incidence of colds and other respiratory illnesses and musculoskeletal injuries. I counsel my patients to "figure out" what kind of exercise they want to do, based on climate, interest and level of fitness. I believe even a small amount of healthy exercise is better than none. I usually recommend choosing an activity that a patient can start slowly and increase gradually-- like walking with a pedometer, which is a great way to exercise by counting steps. Other good exercises include swimming, biking, running and dancing. For patients with weight control issues, I eventually incorporate some type of muscle building activity in order to burn more calories: it might be lifting weights at the gym or doing push-ups at home, performing yoga or Pilates, or exercising on a therapy ball with hand weights.
The best way for otherwise healthy people to start exercising is to perform the activity 3 or more times per week for 20 minutes or more. I recommend gradually working up to at least 30 to 60 minutes per day, 4 to 6 times per week. Healthy exercise can vary, and it can include several short bouts of activity in a day-- like taking stairs instead of an elevator or parking farther away from a destination and walking. I have even recommended doing house or yard work as a form of light exercise. Healthy exercise sessions start with a gradual warm-up period of 5 to 10 minutes. During this time, muscles stretch slowly as the exercise intensity gradually increases. After exercise, the body should slowly cool down for 5 to 10 minutes. During this time, stretch the muscles slowly in order to increase blood flow and maintain flexibility.
Although everyone knows that food calories are the fuel for exercise, I do deal with patients,
especially those with weight control issues, who "freak out" when they are told how many calories their body needs to exercise at even a moderate level of intensity. I also encounter patients without weight control issues who complain of "exhaustion" after light exercise, and I find that many of them are burning more calories than they take in. For example, no one should burn more calories than their basal metabolic rate (BMR): the energy expenditure necessary to maintain basic physiologic functions under standardized conditions. Expending more energy or eating fewer calories than the BMR will "empty the fuel tank"-this does not promote optimal health and is the perfect set- up for diet disaster. I occasionally use the Harris Benedict Formula to determine my patient's total daily calorie needs for their preferred activity. When I counsel patients on how much they should weigh I use the Body Mass Index (BMI): the "weight to height ratio." BMI is also useful to assess health risk for conditions associated with obesity.
Exercise can be of benefit to everyone and I suggest everyone take the time to talk to his or her doctor before beginning a new exercise program. Doctors of medicine and chiropractic can help patients identify potential health concerns and provide counseling on dietary needs for specific exercise programs. Exercise comes in many forms. I emphasize balance in making exercise choices-- do not go crazy with exercise, but do something healthy everyday.
Healthy Living has to do with making good choices regarding our activity, food, personal relationships, and work environment. Optimal health, whether for the person who has a good relationship with food and exercise, or a person challenged by weight control issues and chronic health concerns, involves recognizing patterns that affect the way we think and feel about ourselves.
In Buddhism, there is an important saying that right thinking equals right action. The trouble is many of us act compulsively without awareness-- we spend our days cramming in every little thing we feel the need to be done in order to experience a sense of accomplishment. We use food and exercise as punishment or reward, and the pattern of our so-called addiction to success wears into our psyche-harming us at the deepest level because we repeat negative patterns of acting and thinking. This emotional stress can promote negative health effects, including higher than normal blood levels of cortisol, the stress hormone.
I prescribe yoga exercises for many patients as a tool for healthy living. Yoga reduces stress and helps to normalize cortisol levels in otherwise healthy individuals. Dr. Timothy McCall, Medical Editor of Yoga Journal, tells us "Yoga can bring more awareness and better concentration. The regular practice of yoga boosts your ability to feel what is going on inside your body." I find it useful in training patients to pay closer attention to their stress habits, including why and when they eat or exercise. This practice in mindfulness helps them identify the emotions that may be fueling their appetite or their "need to go run 10 miles."
Healthy living tools used to promote weight loss include resisting the temptation to read, watch TV, listen to music, or talk with a friend while eating, and making the meal a meditation by chewing slowly and breathing between bites. My advice is to pay attention to your food: honor your food and your body's response to it. These techniques are also applied to exercise by paying attention to your breath and your body's response to the intensity of the activity. Check in with yourself while you exercise and change the frequency, intensity or duration depending on the feedback your body gives you.
I counsel many patients about lifestyle modification and we discuss their attitude toward "diets" and "workout programs." Many patients have strong preconceptions: they are willing to go to extremes to avoid certain foods or exercises, while they overemphasize others. Others are resistant to recommendations that are not widely publicized in the media: they believe the best advice gets the most press coverage. I try to help all of my patients understand that "common sense" and "balance" are two of the most important lifestyle tools that benefit any patient.
A balanced approach to optimal health emphasizes the integration of body, mind and spirit. It allows everyone to avoid the controversy of diet and exercise fads. Instead, we are free to eat mindfully, exercise joyfully and increase our awareness of the subconscious behavior that influences our self- image in a positive manner.
-KD Queen, DC
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