Willpower -- Not So Powerful.

"This time I'm going to lose the weight." "I have had it! I'm going to start exercising and eating right!"

Living a healthful lifestyle is not rocket science. In fact, you know what you should be doing right now. (Put down the donut). Why is it that we so often fail in making good choices in our health? One possibility it we set ourselves up for failure.

Here's the typical scenario. Billy wants to start exercising. He starts going to the gym 6 days a week for 45 minutes. This lasts 2 weeks then he misses a day. He feels bad about it but tries harder. After a month he is back to his couch potato ways, never to darken the door of a gym again. He failed.
Billy set himself up for failure. He was unrealistic about his abilities and most of all his willpower.

Psychologist and lead researcher Loran Nordgren, PhD, of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management says "The key is simply to avoid any situation where vices and other weaknesses thrive and, most importantly, for individuals to keep a humble view of their willpower."

Keeping a humble view of willpower is key. Make realistic goals. Maybe plan to exercise twice a week for 12 weeks, then increase. Set yourself up for success then build on it. When it comes to diet, try to focus on one thing first. Maybe you need to cut soda, or eat 1 extra serving of fruit a day. Give yourself a time frame and celebrate when you make your goal. Then set another one.

Keep it real and you will succeed.

Introducing the Fall Makeover

By: Dr. Anderson

Welcome to a new season – Fall.  I love when the seasons change.   This change of season brings about an opportunity for other changes, in your habits.  It’s a great time to to assess where you are in life, set goals and make improvement where needed.

Fall is also a time to gain weight.  It’s well know that people gain weight in the Fall.  I think there are several reasons. 

1. More clothes to cover your body so a few extra pounds wont hurt.
2. Animals store more fat just before Winter.  Humans may have similar wiring that encourages eating.
3. More social eating.  Halloween parties, football tailgating, and eating in groups for any reason promote grazing and consuming large amounts of calories.
4. More couch-potato-ing.  Less sun means less activity.

To help combat this trend, I am happy to announce my Fall Makeover.  This post is the first of 8 weeks of posts and workshops aimed to support you in your health goals. 

We will cover it all. 

• Diet and exercise, how and what to eat. 
• What stress does to the body
• How the body works
• and some good ole’ fashioned anatomy.

Each week (or more) I’ll post an article on the blog with links and recourses for you to read and use.

Every other week we will have an in-office workshop.  I have a series of 5 free workshops planned, the first on is October 6th.  They are scheduled for every other Tuesday, register here. 

We are also going to do some tracking for you.  If you like, we will take your weight and blood pressure starting the first week of October.  Then as you progress through the season you can see your progress while you implement what you are learning during our Fall Makeover.

Attending the workshops are not needed but highly recommended.  Let me know if you want to join the process by registering.

Have a healthy day!

Top Cyclists on Tour de France Skip Pasta

At this years Tour de France, one team has decided to skip the traditional pasta meals and replace them with low-inflammatory foods. 

http://www.slipstreamsports.com/2008/07/25/our-special-anti-inflammatory-diet

Whole Food And More: Drinking Coffee And NOT Eating In The Morning Halts Weight Loss

If you have attended my workshop on Smart Eating, you will remember I discussed the way your body shifts to storage mode if you skip breakfast. Here is a link to a woman sharing her experience with a diet called Extreme Regimen Weight Control. She discusses how caffeine in the morning suppresses appetite, which is not a good thing if you are trying to lose weight. - Dr. Anderson

Whole Food And More: Drinking Coffee And NOT Eating In The Morning Halts Weight Loss

View our diet page here.

Smoothy Recipe

I'm a big fan of smoothies. Here is a great recipe to start with. Throw all this into a high speed blender and you are set. It will be around 350 calories. If you have other suggestions please leave a comment. Thanks.

• 8 oz of milk
• 2-3 tablespoons of frozen fruit (Raspberries, blueberries, bananas, etc.)
• 1-2 tablespoons of yogurt one scoop of protein powder

Extras: Peanut Butter; Oatmeal; Ground Flax Seed; ice (if you use fresh fruit)

Seminar: Eating Smart

We did this workshop last night. Here are the slides and audio for your pleasure. Link to Smoothly Recipe.

Kids Need Breakfast

We all need a good breakfast. It provides the fuel for our day and helps us stay healthy.

The journal, Pediatrics reported a study of 2216 children over 5 years. They looked at eating and exercises habits among these kids. The study found that skipping breakfast in children leads to weight gain. They also found that girls were more likely to skip this critical meal.

Moral of the story, eat your breakfast. Even if it's just a quick bowl of cereal. - Dr. A

Would You Like 20% More Energy? Exercise.

It seems too good to be true.

Our bodies were made to move. Today we call it exercise; 150 years ago they called it living. Today we can spend hours sitting, fixed in a chair; 150 years ago they were working the land or building a railroad.

If you don't move you will eventually have to deal with aches, pains, arthritis, weight gain, fatigue, sluggish bowel function, lower test scores, depression, osteoporosis, loss of focus, back pain, fibromyalgia, bad attitude, bounced checks, hangnails, yellow teeth, loss of friends, foreclosure on your house, restless legs syndrome, restless arm syndrome, buck teeth, excessive nose hair, you name it!

Ok, I may have exaggerated a bit but you get the point. If you don’t use it you lose it. Last week a nice research study came out of the Journal, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics and reported by Web MD the benefits of low-intensity exercise.

"Too often we believe that a quick workout will leave us worn out -- especially when we are already feeling fatigued," researcher Timothy Puetz, PhD, says in a news release. "However, we have shown that regular exercise can actually go a long way in increasing feelings of energy, particularly in sedentary individuals."

The study had participants ride a stationary bike for 20 minutes three times a week at a low intensity. After 6 week their energy was up 20%. Not bad.

If you haven’t incorporated exercise into your life yet, start today.

Watching Our Children Get Fat

At the Children's Television Conference in 1996, President Bill Clinton underscored America's obsession with television when he noted that "a typical child watches 25,000 hours of television before his or her 18th birthday. Preschoolers watch 28 hours of television a week." If you tend to shrug off this fascination with the tube as harmless, consider a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association that examined the potential connection between TV viewing and obesity. Nearly 200 third and fourth-grade students from two public elementary schools participated in the study, in which children from one school received an 18-lesson, six-month classroom curriculum to reduce television, videotape and video game use. The intervention was based solely upon teaching the children to budget their entertainment time and did not include other lifestyle modifications such as exercise. The second school received no curriculum to modify TV viewing and was compared with the initial group after six months. Children from the first school showed significant decreases in body-mass index, triceps skinfold thickness, waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratio following the six-month educational program, especially compared to the second school that received no intervention to decrease TV viewing. Children from the first school also reported significant decreases in overall television viewing and meals eaten in front of the television. These findings add to considerable evidence suggesting that television can influence our children, and the news isn't good. As parents, let's take the opportunity to do something about it. It's time to stop watching our children get fat. Robinson TN. Reducing children's television viewing to prevent obesity. Journal of the American Medical Association, Oct. 27, 1999: Vol. 282, No. 16, pp1561-67.

Back Pain a Question of Weight?

If you're overweight and suffering from back pain, your doctor will probably suggest that you drop the extra pounds. Losing the weight is probably a good suggestion from an overall health perspective, but it might not be the answer to your back pain, at least not according to a recent study. The potential association between excess weight and back pain was examined in 152 patients attending a hospital-based spinal pain unit. Researchers determined the body mass index (BMI) of each patient after measuring weight and height. (The BMI is essentially a scale that determines "appropriate" weight range by comparing weight and height.) Results showed that BMI had no significant effect on the incidence of back pain, except perhaps in cases involving extremely obese individuals. If you're looking to lose some weight, exercise and dietary adjustments are a good place to start. But if you're suffering from back pain, the chiropractic office is the place to go. In fact, your doctor of chiropractic will be able to manage your back pain and also help you design a sensible program to shed those unwanted pounds. Baker PG, Giles LGF. Is excess weight related to chronic spinal pain? Chiropractic Journal of Australia, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp51-54.

Caffeine May Trigger Most Migraines

Linda M. Selwa, MD and colleagues at the University of Michigan Health System report that a dramatic percent of migraine headaches may be triggered by drug-rebound from caffeine.

“Many of my patients have told me stories about needing caffeine when they feel a headache coming on, or having headaches on the weekends when they haven’t had their usual work-day amount of caffeine,”
explains Dr. Selwa.

“In fact, caffeine is a key ingredient in almost all of the over-the-counter migraine medications. That’s because caffeine is useful in stopping a headache once it starts,” she continues. “The unfortunate thing is that, in patients who use caffeine chronically, they’re much more likely to get a migraine as the caffeine begins to
wear off.”

Participants in Dr. Selwa’s study are instructed to discontinue caffeine use for one month.

“In several patients, we’ve been able to get them off their migraine medications as long as they stay away from caffeine,” comments Dr. Selwa.

“Migraines are a significant cause of disability in this country, resulting in an estimated $13 billion dollars in lost work hours each year,” she notes.

University of Michigan – April 4, 2003.

Study Looks at Low-Carb Diets

The first large review study of low-carbohydrate diets reveals that people on diets of 60 or fewer grams of carbohydrates a day (a threshold used in some of the popular low-carbohydrate diets) did lose weight. But the weight loss was associated with restriction of caloric intake and longer diet duration, not with reduced carbohydrate intake.

“Low-carbohydrate diets have been extremely popular as of late, and the lay press has suggested they’re a safe and effective means of weight loss,” said lead author Dena Bravata, MD. “While these diets are effective in the short term, weight loss results from reduced calories, not carbohydrate restriction.”

“The findings suggest that if you want to lose weight, you should eat fewer calories and do so over a long time period” stressed Dr. Bravata.

As part of the analysis, investigators from Stanford University Medical Center and Yale University reviewed a total of 107 diet studies, which involved 3,268 people from around the world.

JAMA – April 9, 2003;289:1837-50. http://jama.ama-assn.org/