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Given we’re just rolling (perhaps literally) out of the holidays, I’m sure you won’t be surprised that my blog this week is the third and final installment of my discussion about personal health management. After all, there’s something about the start of a New Year that causes most of us to reflect on what’s working, what isn’t, and seek improvement through the proverbial New Year’s Resolution! I’m sure more than a few of you received diet or nutrition books, perhaps a new piece of exercise equipment, or video series from that loving and ever encouraging spouse of yours.With the help of my colleague Jerry Scott, most of what I have covered in my two previous blogs on the subject of personal health is fairly straight forward. They are almost all “pass or fail” life and health management issues. Either you smoke or you don’t. Either you use drugs or drink alcohol to excess or you don’t. Either you text and do email while driving or you don’t. Either you exercise regularly or you don’t. We all make our choices and hopefully have the courage to live with and accept the consequences. But the subject of nutrition and the related subject of weight and health impact are particularly confounding to me mainly because we have to eat to live. It’s like trying to work on your car while it’s rolling down the road.
The enormity of the societal problem in this area is well documented. Go to the Center for Disease Control’s website and pull up the power point that shows the percentage of obese adult Americans by state over time. Each slide will show a different snap shot of America in 5 year intervals with new colors representing higher and higher percentages of obese adults. If you go back 20 years and quickly go through the slides in 5 year increments you get a stunning visual on the progression of obesity in America. We have gone from 10% to 30 -40% in less than a generation and the trend shows little sign of leveling off. It certainly appears that we are destined to have an obese adult population passing 50% shortly and likely pushing on toward 75% in a few decades. And, as I’ve discussed before, there is certainly a toll on personal and professional capability, happiness, and life satisfaction inherent in this issue.
So, how do we eat to live and to be healthy? Once again, I consulted with Jerry and he pointed me to the book The Power of Full Engagement, Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz. The authors discuss the concept of “Strategic Eating”. They approach eating from the point of view of food as “fuel” for performance and strongly recommend that we start to conceptualize food this way and to stop approaching food as primarily recreation or pleasure. “At the most basic level, physical energy is derived from the interaction between oxygen and glucose and in practical terms, the size of our energy reserve depends on the foods that we eat and when we eat them.” I asked Jerry for his thoughts on what’s practical in a busy professional’s life.
In this area, like exercise, we are awash in resources, advice, products, technology, and systems. However, if you study nutrition and diet over a period of decades and though nearly endless approaches, all calculated to differentiate themselves in some way to encourage you to buy them, you begin to see common themes. These common themes, according to Jerry, are the basis for building a sustainable and common sense strategy. So here it goes:
- Eat 4-5 smaller meals spaced out evenly through the day. This keeps your metabolism even and prevents over eating due to excessive hunger. This also gets after portion control. A meal should be a fist sized portion of protein and a fist sized portion of carbohydrates.
- Always eat breakfast and make sure you eat a breakfast that includes protein.
- The single biggest problem in the American diet is excess carbohydrates. Carbs spike your insulin and make you more like to retain fat. If you add up what you are currently eating today on average you’ll probably see 80-90% carbs. The strategy of increasing your protein intake will by itself lower the amount of carbs you eat.
- Avoid fast food except one or two times per week. Avoid eating out in general more than one or two times per week. Restaurant food is almost always too high in sodium and the portions are too large unless you make really good choices. Brown bagging your lunch is a good thing!
- Avoid sugar based foods (you know what they are) except one or two times per week. There’s nothing wrong with a “free day” to indulge if you are eating 30 good meals a week.
- Be aware of the calories you are taking in through the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Alcohol is about the most pure form of sugar we ingest. The beer gut isn’t a myth!
- Diets generally do not work. I can attest! Any strategy that leaves you feeling unhappy and deprived is generally destined to fail. Instead concentrate on eating healthier over time.
- Drink 60-80 ounces of water every day. Often we think we are hungry when we are actually thirsty. Most beverages we consume don’t quench thirst and often add unnecessary sugar or carbonation.
If you build these patterns and strategies into your life you will be well on the way to managing your weight and health over time.
What's The Risk?
Unchecked, the average American will gain 5-10 pounds per year from their early 30s on and run a very high risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions. We’re the first generation in the history of humanity to be on a path to eating ourselves to death! Yes exercise is important, but what is that – maybe 30 to 60 minutes a day? The real key is managing the other 23 hours by eating right. We can all make a decision to buck the trend. Will you make your start now? I hope the basic steps Jerry helped me lay out above will be the type of “diet” you can commit to!
