Sunday, October 11, 2009

Weight Loss and Healthy living: Good Food MOST of the Time

Dr Eduardo Sanchez Vice President of Blue Cross/Blue Sheild of Texas and chair of many national and international commities on preventive health, gave rousing opening remarks to start the 'Commodity to Community' conference, the 13th annual Community Food Security Coalition Conference. He definitely set the tone of what looks like a wonderful conference. For this Blog he made two points. The first is that you should "eat good food MOST of the time." The second, "always chose water over soda."

"Eat good food Most of the time", is a great message. When I present my six rules for calorie reduction and later when I present my rules for sustainable weight and health, this is an important message to remember.

We cannot always be angels. There is occasionally that little devil sitting on your shoulder when you see some special food. This will be especially true in 6 weeks when Thanksgiving comes around. The important thing to remember is that if you eat well most of the time an occasional treat and not so healthy selection will be O.K. You just have to ensure that the eating well is most of the time and doesn't slip to being some of the time.

So consider yourself, as Dr Sanchez said, in training for the next six weeks for thanksgiving. Then go back into training for the holidays coming 4 weeks later.

I give talks all the time to community groups and I say all the time: "I feel like I practice a form of child abuse by letting my kids drink soda all the time." It took almost 2 years to break my kids of that habit. All three of them drink almost exclusively tap water. This leads to about 400-600 empty calories per day they were downing. Dr Sanchez's message is the same, you should always drink water instead of soda (or pop for you mid-westerners),

His third recommendation was to check out a report from the National Institute of Medicine, that he Chaired. http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2009/ChildhoodObesityPreventionLocalGovernments/local%20govts%20obesity%20report%20brief%20FINAL%20for%20web.ashx


So take his suggestion to heart and live a healthier happier life.