Sumo wrestlers eat big dinners

Want to avoid holiday weight gain?  If you are one of those of you who continue to count calories, I have news for you. We don’t burn calories at the same rate throughout the day. This reality check puts a real wrench in calorie counting. Here’s a better strategy and far more simple:

Eat Breakfast like a King,

Lunch like a Prince

Dinner like a Pauper

When the sun is highest in the sky, noon that is, our bodies burn food at the highest rate. Throughout history, the main meal of the day was at midday, not at night.  Makes sense, right? As a matter of fact, Sumo wrestlers build bulk by  skipping breakfast and eating big dinners. Learn more about this and other useful strategies for letting go of excess weight in my Dump Your Diet eBook.

What to have for dinner? How about a bowl of soup?

Added bonus: Eating lighter at night will enable you to sleep deeper and wake up hungry. Just in time for a big, hearty breakfast.

Sleeping Beauty

Sleep is more important than ever this time of year. Yet due to the holiday craziness, more people are getting less sleep. When we burn the candle at both ends at the end of the year, we pay for it with our health.

When I studied Chinese herbal medicine, I learned that sleep is when we grow and heal.  This makes complete sense, when you’re sick, you need more sleep!

If you take a look around outside, you’ll see all of Nature is slowing down and sleeping more this time of year. What we sometimes forget is that we are part of Nature, we must pay attention to the colder and darker days by taking it down a notch too. Electric lighting along with bright computer and TV screens disconnect us from the fact that its dark and we need to slow down.

If you’re reading this and its after 9pm where you live, here’s some sage advice. Turn off the lights. Turn off this computer. Get some extra sleep tonight. Tomorrow you’ll feel better than today, you’ll have more energy, you’ll be thinking clearer. You’ll be able to get more done in less time tomorrow.

Go ahead! Do it! Grab some extra ZZZ’s. Your body, your mind and your spirit will thank you!

Always make the time to sit at a table and eat!

This weekend is the one where we set our clocks back one hour to real time: Daylight Savings Time is now over for 2010. This whole “spring forward, fall back” deal started back in 1966 when The Uniform Time Act of 1966 wast started. This federal law was meant to simplify this practice so that all states would change their clocks at the same time. The Energy Policy Act signed into effect under the Bush administration shortened this period of Daylight Savings even further which is why we were trick or treating in the dark for four years.  I guess someone in the government figured out that we weren’t really saving any energy by playing with the clocks for a few more weeks, so they put it back to the way it was.

In my humble opinion, here are the benefits of this “fall back” to real time.

First and foremost: we get an “extra hour” today. That boils down to parents are up, kids are still sleeping but they’re not late. You can use that extra hour to have a peaceful breakfast, read your novel, write or all sorts of things.

Theoretically, it should make getting everyone up tomorrow for school and work easier. Kind of like a little jet lag in your favor. That early morning sunshine helps everyone wake up.

It will get darker earlier, this is a benefit if we take advantage of it. As we move into the darkest time of the year, all of nature slows down a bit. Animals go to sleep earlier. We forget, with all of our lightbulbs and screens, that we are also part of nature and that we too would benefit by slowing down and going to sleep a little earlier in November and December.

What if I told you that you could prevent holiday weight gain by getting in the dark and going to sleep a couple of hours earlier for the next two months? Would you do it? One of my favorite books on this topic is, Lights Out: Sugar Sleep & Survival which explains why we gain weight in the winter. Sleep and down time are overlooked sources of nourishment. This is the time of year to embrace them. Unfortunately, our society pushes us to do the opposite: holiday parties, shopping til you drop and staying up late.

Dump Your Diet eBook

I’ll be discussing many strategies to prevent holiday weight gain tomorrow at Gilda’s Club in White Plains NY. I hope to whip these points into a downloadable piece in the next few days. In the meantime, you might want to check out my eBook, Dump Your Diet which also contains valuable information on letting go of unwanted weight.

In the meantime, enjoy that extra hour today, but make sure you get to bed earlier anyway.

As a food educator, I consider sleep to be an important nutrient, as vital to your health as health supportive food is.

As a parent, I’ve decided to say “no” to sleepovers until the end of the school year. Here’s why:

Yesterday, my daughter had a physical. The very first thing that the pediatrician asked her was “what time do you go to bed and what time do you get up in the morning?” I was happy to hear her ask my daughter that question, it shows her I’m not the only one who values sleep so highly.

According to Chinese medicine, sleep is when you grow and when you heal. Every parent knows that when their kids are going through a growth spurt, they sleep more. Anyone who has ever been sick knows that sleep is essential for healing.

Medical researchers have learned loads about the importance of sleep from fruit flies showing that sleep is directly involved with memory and learning. I’m not making this stuff up! Just Google “fruit flies and sleep” and you’ll see what I’m talking about!

Regular sleep schedules are the best way to ensure deep, restful, restorative sleep. That means taking an unpopular stand on my kid’s social lives, but I’m forever reminded that parenting is not a popularity contest.

Yesterday, my hubby came down with something that could be considered the flu. Sudden onset, body aches and pains, chest pain, dry cough. It sidelined him to the couch and will probably keep him home from work for a few days. Is it the famous piggy flu? Or just another garden variety bug that he caught from burning the candle at both ends? Does it even matter?

I thought I’d take this opportunity to share with you some of the strategies I use so that maybe, just maybe, the rest of my family won’t get sick. And if they do, they won’t suffer as severe an illness.

As far as vaccines go, I’m not convinced that a flu shot really does any good. Sounds like the new swine flu one is still under-tested and will be available too late to matter. There is more to do than washing your hands and sneezing into your elbow as the CDC keeps telling us to do. Let’s look at some things that can be done for little or no cost.

SLEEP Consider for a moment that sleep is a nutrient that we need every day. Scientists have shown that sleep is when we grow and when we heal. Parents know this first hand with their kids. When you’re sick, you sleep! Well, why not make sure you get adequate sleep BEFORE you get sick? This is one reason I’ve canceled all sleepovers this year. I want my kids home to sleep in their own beds at a reasonable time. Regular sleep hours are shown to be helpful in boosting immunity, and also in better brain function: retaining what you learn. Make regular, restful sleep a priority in your home and you’ll have happier healthier kids to show for it.

SUGAR We all love sugar, some of us have real problems with it as it can act like an addictive drug for some. The bottom line is that refined sugar can deplete your immunity and can drain the body of much needed nutrients. I could show you all sorts of articles and studies to prove this point. The bottom line is, we all need to look at decreasing our consumption of refined sugar. Replace sugary drinks with water, preferably filtered, from the tap and you’ll be saving loads of money and the earth ( all those toxic plastic bottles!). Take a good long look at how much refined sugar you and your kids eat over the course of a day or a week. Get conscious and cut back on the white stuff!

GOOD BUGS One thing that the Purell splashing germophobes might not realize is that we consist of all sorts of microorganisms living together in harmony. One group of bacteria that I’m particularly fond of is the lactobacillis family of bacteria that lives in your gut. You can add to this happy family of bugs that helps your digestive and immune systems to work optimally by enjoying foods that naturally contain these beneficial bacteria. Miso soup, Kim Chee, Sauerkraut, Kefir and Yogurt come to mind. You can also take probiotic supplements. This is one thing I get my family going on when there is a flu bug like the piggy flu flying around. I think of it as a tonic, a small action taken once a day that will make a big difference over time.

DE-STRESS Last but not least is about finding ways to decrease your stress levels. That may be a big ask in these trying times but is so so important. Taking a regular walk, doing daily yoga, remembering to breathe (that one is a biggy, believe it or not!) and taking time to laugh (I do that with the Daily Show and the Colbert Report). Reducing stress levels will help build up your resistance to illness.

I’ll have more recipes and strategies on flu prevention in my upcoming cable TV series, Dr. Susan Rubin’s House of Health. Stay tuned for more details.

2009 is supposed to be the Year of the Ox, but it certainly seems to be the Year of the Pig so far, allow me to explain!

The American News Project in a story entitled The Food Lobby Goes to School, was surprised to find the National Pork Board to be one of the lobbyists pushing for more of their products in school food.

Sustainable food advocates and many vegetarians have known for some time that the way the food industry raises lifestock is toxic to our health and the health of our planet. It was great to read the piece by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff entitled Our Pigs Our Food Our Health which connected the dots between industrial hog farms and diseases such as MRSA.

Great timing for Nicolette Niman, whose well written book about meat production,Righteous Porkchop, hit the stores just as this Swine Flu story hit the newspapers.

David Kirby wrote a piece on swine flu suggesting that this is a great example of “Mother Nature Biting Back”, it seems to me, he’s probably right.

The National Pork Board is hard at work to change the name of Swine Flu into “North American Influenza” in a desperate attempt to spin their image. Those PR folks they hired to lobby for more pork in school food just got a bigger job to do!

So what do we do in light of all this besides just wash our hands?

Here’s five suggestions that could support your health.

1. Cut back on refined sugar- it impairs immune function.
2. Support your gut with the “good bugs” by regular use of probiotic supplements or even a daily bowl of miso soup.
3. Get enough sleep each night.
4. Meditate daily.
5. Eat lower on the food chain: more veggies!

When eating, support your local farmer, buy grass fed, pasture raised animals from small, local/ regional sources. Stay away from giant producers – Tyson, Smithfield Farms, Cargill who have created this toxic environment that is conducive to disease and pollution.