Healthy Up Your Diet

By Sara Tiner

These days, we all get plenty of advice on how to avoid the worst food choices, from "Don't buy the 'meal' at a fast-food restaurant" to "If you need to run into the convenience store, take only enough cash for the purchase" to "Stay on the perimeter of the grocery store; that's where the healthier foods [e.g., fruits and vegetables] are." But what if garbage bags or cat food are on your grocery list? Should we hire a shopping mercenary for a quick, temptation-free retrieval of these necessities from the "bad" middle section of the store? Maybe we should teach our cats to eat lettuce. (Good luck with that.) Really, the only way to tame the processed food monster is to outsmart it.

Unfortunately, the deck is stacked. Food advertising promotes the unhealthiest items - overloaded with fat and piled high at two to three times what an adult portion should be. Food is available everywhere we go - in vending machines at schools and gyms, food courts at department stores and malls, restaurants that take your phone/fax/online order so you can pick up a meal on your way home, drive-thru coffee, fast food ... the list is seemingly endless.  Add these facts of life to the reality that many of us are increasingly sedentary at both our jobs and in our leisure activity, and Houston, we have a problem.

Too Much Weight = Trouble

It's no secret that obesity and its associated diseases can have serious health consequences. Over the past 34 years, hospitalization costs for obesity have soared: up $92 million for child admissions and $31 million for adults. And once the scale says we're overweight, not to mention obese, our overall risk for a host of health problems increases.

Conditions Associated With Overweight/Obesity

Nutrition is complex and highly individualized. Each person has different caloric needs, activity levels and food likes/dislikes. The key is to spend some time thinking about what we eat and how we eat. Then we can make strategic changes that will allow us to fuel up without ballooning up.

Get the Most From Your Food

Food is fuel, but it's so much more. Eating is often the most reliable social part of our day with family or friends. It represents a chance to care for others or ourselves. What we ate as children can comfort us or bring back wonderful memories. And trying new foods can heighten our senses and provide the thrill of novelty. But at its foundation, food needs to be what it is - fuel. If our way of feeding others or ourselves puts us on a path toward obesity or its related diseases, then we're misusing food. As a habitual tool for comfort or as a reward, food can becomes an instrument for the psyche and takes on a role it isn't strictly meant to play.