Well the dog days of summer are over.  With our routines back on a more regular schedule what a perfect time of the year to recommit to our health habits.  So over the next few weeks we’ll focus on the health habits that we emphasize in the office.  Specifically we’ll discuss how to eat well, how to move well and how to think well.  Dr. Dane bought me a great book called Switch, How to Change things when Change is Hard.  One of the points in the book is when we are given too many choices, often we’ll default to our ‘hard wiring.’ This is also known as the paralysis of analysis.  For example, when you walk to the yogurt aisle and see 22,347 brands of yogurt, perhaps, just perhaps, you are confused as to which one is healthiest and therefore you won’t pick any.  So we will try to keep things black and white.  In other words, choose this, not this or do this, not that. So here’s my top ten ‘do this’ rules about eating right.

1. Eat breakfast within one hour of rising and ensure that you get at least 20 grams of protein with this meal.  Examples would be eggs, Greek yogurt, turkey bacon, cottage cheese, an Ultrameal shake or a Boca burger.  Never, ever, ever skip breakfast.
2. Eat every 3 to 4 hours while awake.  This would be a small meal, snack or shake. 
3. NO eating within 2 hours of bedtime.  If you go to sleep at 10pm, your last mouthful would be at 8pm.
4. Remember the rule of 2/2.  (Yes I just made this up and I like it).  Never drink more than two alcoholic drinks in one day. Never drink more than 2 days per week.  If you want this to be Friday and Saturday, good for you.  If you want this to be Wednesday and Sunday, good for you.  But it can’t be Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Capeesh (or for the Italians, capiche)?
5. You are allowed to eat out 2 times per week. That’s it.  If you want to eat out at lunch on Wednesday and Saturday night for dinner, then that’s your two days.  We consume a ridiculous amount of calories, make poor choices, and often eat very unhealthy when we eat out. So as I always say rediscover your kitchen.  A list of excellent cookbooks is available on the wall by the checkout counter or on our website www.wscenters.com.
6. NO starches after 3pm.  This includes pasta, rice, bread and highly refined carbohydrates.  As Pamela Peeke MD, a well known medical doctor and bestselling author says, “If you tell me what you eat from 3 pm on, I’ll tell you what your body shape is.”  We simply do not burn these carbs off and they settle in as nice fat deposits throughout the night.
7. Drink a minimum of 64 ounces of pure water each day.
8. ABSOLUSTELY POSITIVELY NO SODA, diet or regular.
9. ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NO PARTIALLY HYDROGENTATED OILS AKA TRANS FAT. Read your labels, which is where you’ll find this killer fat (and we ain’t kiddin, it kills).
10. When consuming a carbohydrate, get a MINIMUM of 3 grams of fiber per serving.  The Thomas English Muffin Lite, Arnold Thins and Pepperidge Farm Deli Flats, as well as many small whole wheat wraps, are excellent bread choices.  Quinoa is an excellent choice over rice because of its fiber content.  And good luck with pasta, my friends, as it’s very, very difficult to get enough fiber with pasta.

Well I did it.  I finally got the courage to watch Food, Inc, the movie.  Boy was it eye-opening.  This is a MUST WATCH for all food eating Americans. 

Watch it with your family.  The website for the movie is www.foodincmovie.com with a plethora of information/organizations/campaigns that we can support to make sure that our food supply is going to sustain us.

On the website, www.foodincmovie.com, you are able to search by your zip code all the local farmer’s markets.  The more we demand locally grown, organic produce and meats, the more we will be supplied with these foods.  It’s how demand and supply work in this country.  So demand more and the supply will increase (as well as the price will decrease).

Below is a description of the movie that I obtained from the website.

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms’ Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.