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Tips to Sticking to Your Resolutions

It’s not uncommon for the motivation to stick to New Year’s resolutions to fizzle out as quickly as an uncorked bottle of champagne. The enthusiasm of new goals often fades as the temptation to indulge takes over. Stick with your resolutions this year by following these tips when selecting what to aim for:

  • Set specific goals. A vague goal is more easily broken. Try taking a larger goal and dividing it into manageable tasks.
  • Set measurable goals. If there’s no way to track your progress, you’ll have more opportunity to slip—make sure there are ways for you to check your progress along the way.
  • Choose goals that are meaningful to you, not to somebody else. If you’re doing it for yourself, rather than to please others, you’ll have much more motivation to succeed.
  • Aim to achieve, not to avoid. Rather than saying you’ll stop eating unhealthy snacks, think of what you want to achieve, such as snacking on fruits or vegetables when your stomach starts to rumble.
  • Don’t do what you’ve always done. Try something new, especially if what you’ve been doing hasn’t worked.
  • Make family and friends aware of your resolutions—tell them what you’re trying to achieve and ask them to hold you accountable. If you’re the only one who knows your goals, it may be easier to give up on them.
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Have a Happy, Healthy Holiday

The holidays are here again, which means spending time with family and friends, giving and receiving thoughtful gifts and enjoying delicious meals over memory-making conversations.  ’Tis the season to indulge! But, to keep waistlines in check, overindulgence should be reserved for glad tidings, joyful experiences and kindness toward others.

The National Institutes of Health reports that Americans gain 1 to 2 pounds over the holiday months and do not typically lose that weight with the coming of warmer weather. Over a lifetime, those extra pounds can really add up, potentially leading to weight-related health issues.

Here are a few tips on how to keep off the pounds during this holiday’s celebrations while still managing to eat, drink and be merry with the rest of the season’s revelers:

  • Eat what you love. Drool while dreaming about grandmother’s sweet potato casserole? Have a year-long hankering for mom’s homemade pecan pie? There are likely two or three holiday menu items that you can’t skip over without real regret, so don’t. Serve yourself a single slice or dollop and really enjoy every bite. Pass over fatty or starchy sides that aren’t your very favorites and add heaping helpings of simply prepared vegetables or fruit in their places. The meal will then balance itself out.
  • Say “no” to noshing. The office will be teeming with holiday cookies, candy, fudge and fruitcakes. Fight the urge to hit up the kitchen for a daily afternoon sugar fix, and limit yourself to one or two treats per week. Eating a healthy breakfast and lunch with ample servings of fruit, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein will help strengthen your resolve so that you can pass right by those holiday treats and only grab a mugful of coffee or a glass of water. The first tip carries over here: Reserve calorie splurges for only those things you really enjoy, and make a little go a long way by truly savoring just a small taste.
  • Go walking in a winter wonderland. With cooler weather, the temptation is to hibernate. But a brisk walk while bundled in thick layers will get the blood flowing and warm up the body — all while torching calories as an added bonus. Winter sports such as snowboarding, snow skiing and ice skating are fun activities for the whole family to enjoy and also help combat holiday weight gains.
  • Come prepared to party. Don’t starve yourself before a holiday event in anticipation of an evening calorie overload. Eat small, healthy snacks throughout the day so that you won’t arrive ravenous. Choose a smaller plate when in line for the buffet, and then only take a few favorite treats. If there’s a veggie tray, help yourself to plenty of carrots and broccoli. Then, start working the room. You’ll find yourself so engaged in great conversation that you may just forget to go back for seconds.
  • Drink to your health. Watch your intake of alcoholic beverages and their sugary nonalcoholic siblings. Enjoy a good glass of wine, your aunt’s homemade eggnog or a cup of warming hot chocolate, but try to limit yourself to one or two drinks over the course of an evening. Drinking a glass of water between more caloric beverages is a great way to pace yourself.
  • Don’t put yourself on the naughty list. The holidays are a time to be a bit kinder to everyone, including yourself. If you slip up and eat yourself sick for one meal, just eat lighter for the next. Keep in mind that it takes an extra 500 calories each day over the course of a week to gain 1 pound. Helping yourself to seconds (or thirds) will not equate to gaining 10 pounds – but negative thoughts like, well, I’ve already blown it so I’m just going to be bad this holiday can completely unravel efforts to curb weight gain in December.

With a pinch of effort, a dash of enthusiasm and a heaping helping of good humor, it is possible to see the same number on the scale Jan. 1 as appeared Dec. 1, even whilst visions of sugarplums dance in our heads.

The health professionals at The Medical and Surgical Clinic of Irving would like to wish you and your family an abundance of health, wealth and good cheer this yuletide season.

Resources:

http://www.cpmc.org/about/e-health/11-05%20healthy-holidays.html
http://www.eatright.org/Public/content.aspx?id=4294967607
http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/holiday-foods-diet
http://www.betterhealthusa.com/public/273.cfm

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Food Label Basics for Your Patients

Over the past 50 years we have seen many diets low in carbohydrates help thousands of patients lose weight and then they gain it right back. The problem is exacerbated by forcing people who have been eating large quantities of food to try to cut their food intake, sometimes by as much as 50%.

Now that we have food scientists working to make “forbidden” foods available for everyone there are even more challenges in keeping our patients on track. We know that increasing vegetable consumption along with lean meats is a great way to stay full and reduce carbohydrates. But what about all those new foods and the ways that they are marketed? What can you do to help your patients to see through the food label maze?…

Serving Size
The first place that our patients get tripped up is serving size. There are no regulations in the U.S. as to what a serving size has to be, so manufacturers have learned to use them to their advantage.

Since many people think that a 20 oz. bottle of soda is a single serving, they will assume it has 27 grams of carbs but really it is 2.5 servings so 70 carbs. The large muffin you get at Starbucks or Panera or a grocery store is 35 grams a serving but the nutritional information says 3 servings or 105 carbs.

Different manufacturers give different sizes for the same item in order to make it look like less carbs. One raisin bran manufacturer’s serving size is ¾ cup while another company is 1 cup. Even though they both contain the same amount of carbs per equal volume, your patients may assume otherwise.
Fiber
Fiber measurements is often manipulated on a food label. Fiber has long had a reputation as a nondigestable food and so many of us, myself included, encourage our patients to eat high fiber foods. However that does not necessarily mean that it makes the food lower carb.

That 1 cup of raisin bran has 8 grams of fiber and 46 grams of carbs, so the net effect is still 38 grams of absorbable carbs. To put this in perspective 1 cup of Lucky Charms has only 28 grams or 25% less. And although people say there is less sugar in the raisin bran there is actually 45% more sugar in the raisin bran. The highest fiber pasta has 5 grams of fiber and a net of 37 grams of carbs in a one cup serving.

In addition patients will often buy fiber to add to their food and then subtract the “fiber carbs” not realizing that every gram of fiber has a gram of carbs as well.

Sugar Alcohols
Sugar Alcohols also get a lot of attention when food labels are read. In simple terms a sugar alcohol is a sugar that has an H molecule removed and an O-H molecule attached, purportedly making it almost impossible to absorb in the body. These were introduced for weight loss as early research showed that they did not cause a release of insulin and so there would not be weight gain. It made some sense that this would be beneficial to diabetes patients as they would not have a rise in glucose levels and many foods are introduced each day that have these sugar alcohols in them.

Experiences shared by patients and educators have shown that for all patients this is not necessarily true, and some professionals only let patients discount one half of the total.

Carb Absorption
“Processed to reduce carb absorption” is another label phrase that can present problems. Some wheat containing products often tout that you can’t absorb the carbs that are there. Interestingly enough the majority of patients cannot absorb the carbs in the Dreamfield pasta.

Currently we are using 3 ways that your patients can use to find out how these “fake or altered” altered foods affect glucose:

1. They can test their glucose before they eat and then two hours later and see if there is a glucose spike. This is how we tested the Dreamfield pasta. We gave 6 patients 2 cups of regular pasta and found an average increase of 70 mg/dl and when we gave the same 6 patients 2 cups of Dreamfield pasta the average increase was only 32 mg/dl.

2. We can use Diastix or other glucose urine testing strips to evaluate spillover of glucose in the urine. Glucose will overflow into the urine only when the blood glucose level is high, that is, too high for the kidneys to stop it spilling over into the urine. In most people, blood glucose levels above 180mg/dl will cause your patients to reach the ‘renal threshold’ for glucose. This urine reading is usually 2 hours behind your blood glucose levels but is a great indicator of the effects of food.

3. For products that say they are sugar free, you can verify that by using urine glucose testing strips. The process recommended by Dr. Richard Bernstein and used by many of our patients is to chew on the supposedly carb or sugar free food and then touch the testing stick to the saliva and compare the color change to the back of the bottle.

As you can see as food scientists have become savvier at their work it can be very hard to help our patients get through the nutritional label maze.

Copyright © 2013 Diabetes In Control, Inc