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Making Healthy New Year’s Resolutions That You Can Keep

on January 3, 2012

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Keep that resolution beyond January.It’s that time of year again, when we start making promises to ourselves to live a better life. According to various polls throughout the years, 40 to 45% of adult Americans make resolutions each New Year’s. The top resolutions tend to be about weight loss, exercise regimes, and quitting smoking. But it’s hard to make these good intentions stick: a 2002 study in the Journal of Clinical Psychology found that less than half of those who resolved to do something were able to maintain their resolutions six months later.

Going by all the blogging, tweeting, and Facebooking of my colleagues and other health professionals, lots of them say that resolutions can set you up for failure and that you should focus on a healthy lifestyle year-round instead. While I don’t disagree with these sentiments, I’m still in favor of resolutions. I love the idea that we can get a fresh start each year — as long as it doesn’t set us up for failure or postpone what could we could have started today. Here are some of my B Nutritious tips for healthy resolutions:

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Stop Worrying: Why “Holiday Weight Gain” Is (Mostly) a Myth

on November 17, 2011

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Every year around this time, my clients start stressing about the holidays and the weight gain that supposedly always happens. People always quote the statistic that the average American inevitably gains at least five pounds during the holiday season, but I have some good news here folks, it hasn’t been proven.

There have only been a few studies that even examine holiday weight gain in Americans. The most well-known one, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that most people only gained a single pound during the holiday season. One pound, not so bad, right? The problem with this single pound is that the study also found that this weight gain wasn’t corrected for afterwards, leading to adults gaining at least one pound each year. After 10 years, that weight is more than just a little issue.

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Taking Pills to Stay Healthy? Not So Fast

on October 17, 2011

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Recent articles in the New York Times and elsewhere about the possible downsides of taking extra doses of dietary supplements have had my clients grilling me about vitamins. Not whether to take them or not, but whether or not to stop taking them. The article referred to two new studies that showed that taking vitamins may be harmful to your health. One study, which focused on vitamin E and selenium, found that men who take these vitamins had a slightly higher risk of developing prostate cancer. The other study found that women who took multivitamins and other supplements had a higher risk of dying than those that did not.

So how do I answer my clients? It seems legit to be fearful after reading a study (or two) like this, but my answer hasn’t changed.

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Mom Still Knows Best: Breakfasts Rich in Protein Help You Stay Full Until Lunch

on June 17, 2011

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BreakfastShe was right! That’s your mom I’m talking about—the one who always said breakfast was the most important meal of the day. And now it turns out that it should also be heavy on the protein.

A new study published last month in the journal Obesity found that a high-protein breakfast increased satiety and reduced food cravings. The study took three groups of teenagers. One group skipped breakfast, another had a regular breakfast with what was considered a normal amount of protein, and the third had a high-protein breakfast consisting of a protein-enriched Belgian waffle with syrup and yogurt (why they couldn’t have just used eggs is beyond me). The subjects who ate the high-protein breakfast had increased satiety and reduced food craving.

Don’t jump for the meat lover’s omelet yet. This was a small study, and more research needs to be done. But the findings do make sense. Breakfast is an important meal because it’s the first meal you eat after fasting through the night.

Keep in mind that protein comes in many forms that aren’t filled with saturated fat; opt for healthy choices. So instead of that bagel with butter, here are some high-protein breakfast suggestions:

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The Java Fix: What Else Is in Your Coffee?

on May 20, 2011

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Brooke Alpert is a nutritionist and the founder of B Nutritious, a private nutrition counseling practice based in New York City. She blogs for us about how to stay healthy, fit, and centered during even the craziest of work weeks.

As if you needed a new reason to drink coffee: a recent Swedish study, published in Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association, found that women who drank at least one cup of coffee a day had a 24% reduction in stroke risk over a decade. (It should be noted that drinking more coffee didn’t lower the risk of stroke any further, and that the study is silent on how coffee intake may affect men’s risk of stroke.) Such a limited study isn’t a reason to start drinking coffee if you don’t already, but it can put you at ease if you consider coffee a coworker and a friend.

I’m fine with my clients who like their coffee, and I have no shame that I pray at my Nespresso machine every morning. Coffee has antioxidants and other compounds that can lower inflammation as well as improve insulin sensitivity. But–and this is a Venti’s worth of but–when done wrong, coffee might as well be dessert. When I ask my clients how they like their coffee, I’m often surprised at what they put in it. Between the cream, the whole milk, sugar (or artificial sugars), syrups, and whipped cream, we can certainly not expect much in the way of heart-healthy or waist benefits here.

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Make Your Lunch at Work Count

on April 22, 2011

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Brooke Alpert is a nutritionist and the founder of B Nutritious, a private nutrition counseling practice based in New York City. She blogs for us about how to stay healthy, fit, and centered during even the craziest of work weeks.

Think that a long leisurely lunch will help you eat less for the rest of the day? Some new research suggests otherwise. A study published last month in the Journal of Nutrition found that people who had a two-hour meal didn’t eat less over the rest of their day than those who spent just 30 minutes eating.

Having a long lunch (or any other long meal) can lead to different outcomes for different people. For some of my clients, long work lunches lead to eating more calories from multiple courses that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. For others, the leisurely speed of the meal allows them to be more aware of their hunger levels and feel more satisfied than they would be if they’d just been shoveling in food at their desk.

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Should Your Work Life Be More Like Preschool?

on March 25, 2011

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Our newest blogger is Brooke Alpert, MS, RD, CDN, a nutritionist and the founder of B Nutritious, a private nutrition counseling practice based in New York City. She’ll be bringing advice on how to stay healthy, fit, and centered during even the craziest of work weeks. And because every few days seems to bring new headlines about wellness and nutrition, Brooke will also help us separate the truly worthwhile discoveries from fads and questionable findings.

I have a two-year old, so I watch a lot of Nick Jr. on TV. There’s a promo I’ve seen more than my fair share of that has me thinking.

It has a few sections, but the best one starts in an operating room, with all the beeping and other noises you’d expect. A bunch of doctors and nurses are all huddled around what seems to be a patient. Once you get in closer, you see that everyone is playing with the swabs, the wooden sticks, the Q-tips, and the rubber gloves. Then you hear an announcer ask, “What if life was more like preschool? You’d have arts and crafts time.” Others parts show a bunch of rough-looking mechanics pausing for a story and office workers with eyes closed for nap time.

Maybe this commercial is on to something. Let’s break down what happens in preschool: play, snack, recess, and a nap. It got me thinking about what I recommend to my clients. I want them to sleep more, make healthier choices, exercise, and enjoy life. Not so different, right?

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