October 15, 2014

On the Road Again: Restaurant Meals…How to Deal?

I’ve just returned from a relaxing vacation…ahhh!

We traveled the highways and byways of upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Boston, Western Mass, and Pennsylvania Dutch country. We ate B&B breakfasts, standard fare breakfasts at anywhere America hotels; lunches and dinners at cutsy bistros, American style restaurants and as much ethnic fare as we could find…with an ice cream cone and a few yummy desserts indulged in.  

All those meals enjoyed at friends and family members homes or with friends and/or family at restaurants, however, took a toll on my health goals (for myself and my family), sharpened my negotiating skills with my immediate family members (you’ve got to understand I’m known as the food police or the kinder name for me is the Portion Control Queen).

While I enjoyed not having to plan, shop, cook, and serve meals for a couple of weeks, all these restaurant meals had an impact on my wits, but didn’t take a toll on our collective waistlines!

 
June 14, 2012

Parents: Time to Take a Seat AS Head of the Table

ADA 72nd Sci SesI’m just back from the American Diabetes Association’s 72nd Annual Scientific Sessions and I'm even more concerned about our diabetes epidemic. Prior to 10 year ago you never heard about type 2 diabetes in children or prediabetes. Not so today! Stats show 1 in 3 children born in 2000 or beyond will develop type 2 diabetes. Today nearly 80 million Americans (that’s over a quarter of our population!!) have prediabetes. The TODAY multicenter NIH trial, recently in the news and headliner at ADA, is downright scary! It showed that type 2 diabetes in youngsters progresses more quickly requiring more rapid progression through oral blood glucose lowering medications and on to insulin. A major concern with type 2 in youth is that with rapid disease progression and less than ideal control, these people may develop heart, kidney and eye disease just a couple of decades later. That's the prime of these childrens' lives.

A take away message from the 2012 ADA meeting is we’ve got to continue to beat the drum about preventing overweight BEFORE type 2 diabetes. The most cost effective approach is to encourage healthy eating from the start. I believe it’s absolutely critical for parents to take a seat AS the head of the table and serve up  tough love when it comes to healthy eating.

 
January 11, 2012

My New Year’s Muse – From Local Resolutions to Global Wishes

new yearsYes, it’s that time of year again where we reflect on the past and move into the future with goals to better ourselves in the year ahead. In my bailiwick the focus is squarely on eating healthier and being more physically active.

I’ve posted my resolutions here, along with a handful of global wishes. It is said that if you state your goals, actually say them out loud, you’re more likely to see them through. I figure putting them out in the blogosphere for all to see is one step better. I’ll report back on these at the end of 2012.

I’ve got five, what I’ll call local resolutions. Actions I want to take close to home, my backyard and kitchen table to be precise.

Here’s my run-down:
1. Prepare and stock homemade salad dressings, ditch the bottles: For several years I’ve wanted to rid our fridge of bottled salad dressings. But I eat a lot of salads and they’re, well, just so easy to open and drizzle. However, because I eat at least one salad a day, they’re a good place to target to taper fat grams, calories and particularly sodium milligrams, to make a significant dent in our daily intake. Homemade dressings will also limit our intake of unneeded additives and preservatives. Got any recipes for healthy salad dressings I can blend up in volume and stash in the fridge?