Trying the Healthy Approach? Forget the Word Diet (Chickspeak.com)

July 28, 2009 by Kristin Larmore, photo by Chickspeak.com




Frankly, I think the word ‘diet’ should be removed from the English language, if you’re referring to the type that requires you to stop eating.

I’m not sure when this word meant anything more than the types and varieties of food you eat, but now it apparently refers to the amount. This word has caused turmoil- from eating disorders to weight obsession or general low self-esteem. It leads to an obsession, a nit-picky, mental consumption with outwardly appearances. And when used in casual conversation, it’s never welcome, never taken well.

“Hey girl, you need to go on a diet.” Now let’s get real. You’re immediately thinking, “I don’t look as sexy as her” or “My thighs are bigger than hers” or “What does she do to make her stomach look like that?” and the list goes on.

So I need to know. Why did this idea of dieting ever come about?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always thought “diet” indicated a temporary condition or practice, a necessary evil only endured for a set period of time? But if we’re looking to be healthy and look great on the outside too, then why would we only do it temporarily?

Wait, let me answer this one. It’s because dieting isn’t fun. Who wants to eat like a bird? Not to say every diet requires you to avoid eating, but who really believes those commercials on television that advertise “Eat anything you want and STILL lose weight?”

The more I see my family, friends and relatives diet, the more I see that dieting isn’t conducive to long-term weight loss. The minute you go back to your beloved Ben and Jerry and your Budweiser, the weight comes right back.

My uncle had amazing willpower. He avoided junk food for months on end. We offered him a potato chip and it was a “no thank you.” But he missed his indulgences so much later on, he couldn’t get enough of them. His weight came back to haunt him- twofold.

I can make an example of myself. The summer before my first year of high school, I religiously used Pilates videos every day and denied myself all dessert for about two months. I was almost unrecognizable when I walked into school that day, always known as the chubby kid, but I’m certainly weighing down the scale more than I did then.

At that time in my life, if I wanted a chocolate-covered cherry, for example, I would feel bad about eating the whole thing. So I cut it in half. Can we say obsession?

It doesn’t matter if you’re size two or size 12 or if you’re trying to lose five pounds or fifty; when the body is filled with “regular” food again, it will move toward its original size. In other words, if you lose weight by eating an extremely healthy diet every day and return to occasional frozen meals and fast food, your body isn’t going to respond well.

The fact of the matter is we need to make a lifestyle change. That means a consistent, 365-day awareness of health rather than a summer-length deprivation. Good eating habits are not about denial, but about limiting indulgences. Discipline yourself every day, but only to a point. You can’t eat anything you want all the time; if some muscular bimbo on the television is telling you that, it’s either because she was paid or because she’s taking some type of crazy pill that shouldn’t even be allowed on the market.

You can’t eat solely salad, fruit and vegetables or binge only on bacon, eggs and meat and avoid all carbohydrates. You need the nutrients you get from ALL foods, fat included, except the sugary candies and desserts, of course.

Here are some myth busters, inspired by NetDoctor, about dieting.

Low-fat dieting is healthy

Fat is essential in the diet because it helps repair tissue, provides energy the body needs to function and carries vitamins to tissues. It’s more about the type of fat you’re eating. Just because something is low in fat, doesn’t mean it will make you lose weight. Often, the fat-free items contain more calories, just less from fat. Plus, if something is fat-free, we all know how our brains work: “Oh it’s less of a splurge, so I can have more.” And that defeats the entire purpose of buying the healthier option!

A slow metabolism prevents you from losing weight

Surprisingly, the trend found in studies is that metabolism increases the heavier someone is, so a “slow metabolism” is not the real reason someone can’t lose weight. The reason for this a logical one- the more you weigh, the more calories your body needs to stay moving and the more you’ll obviously burn when you’re at rest.

Fattening foods make for rapid weight gain

Just because you go out for a burger and fries doesn’t mean you gain five pounds, ladies. If you step on a scale and you’re heavier within hours, it’s due to water weight and it will balance out. It takes an extra 3,500 calories to gain a pound of fat, so one day doesn’t do the trick. It’s when the diet is continuously filled with high fat foods that weight increases.

Fasting makes you lose weight

NetDoctor explains losing fat over the short-term instead of the long-term from dieting eats away at muscle tissue, too, and this muscle loss decreases total caloric need. So, when the person stops the diet, it’s easier to gain the weight back. Plus, the body needs nutrients and fuel to function at its best. It’s never good to deprive it of that.

So stop stepping on the scale and obsessing over every little number, but at the same time pay attention to what you’re eating. The important thing is that you love yourself, that you feel comfortable in the body you wake up to every morning.

Kristin Larmore, a recent Journalism graduate, is considering culinary school to become a food expert, splurges with a scoop of ice cream instead of two or three and is highly anxious about trying new recipes after reading Cooking Light. She would love nothing more than to become the next Rachael Ray, but she’ll happily settle with critiquing food or writing restaurant reviews.

Summer Exercise Variety Best Found Near Water (Chickspeak.com)

July 24, 2009 by Kristin Larmore, photo property of Chickspeak.com

The winter months are long gone, and we can no longer make excuses. The days of “It’s too cold outside, “I don’t want to drive in this weather” and “I’m not going to wear a bathing suit anyway” drifted away with the cold fronts. Opportunities for activity and fitness abound!

Luckily, it seems our motivation increases anyway with warmer weather because we don’t have to do the same type of exercise repetitively. Typically, our appetites decrease with the heat, and we want to get out and do something with our day. Even if it’s just taking a walk or going to the park or visiting a landmark in town, there’s a lot more moving involved.

Summer offers a greater variety of ways to keep fit, instead of snuggling under a warm blanket eating and watching television, essentially sluggish and inactive. Inside exercise like pilates, yoga, or gym training is still an option, but motivation decreases with darker, colder days. Especially in a place like Ohio where I live, getting out of the ice-encrusted driveway is hard enough! Unless the equipment is sitting in a basement corner a set of stairs away, it’s not happening, people. There’s always something “more important” to do.

But the desire to be inside on a windy, sunny day in Ohio with zero humidity comes with great difficulty. The sheer presence of the sun improves the mood and cures that nasty seasonal effective disorder rampant earlier in the year.

However, summer is a time to not only take advantage of exercise opportunities, but to monitor their frequency. Heat, harmful UV rays and dust, pollen or allergy-inducing particles in the air can take a serious toll. Plus, the experiences of exercising outside versus sweating away on a gym treadmill are night and day, almost. Breathing is labored and surfaces are slanted, uneven or covered in pot-holes, unkind to the knees and back, especially. What do you think health professionals have to say about that?

Some doctors can be overly protective and overly cautious sometimes, right? At least in our minds. But they still know much more about how to stay healthy than we do. A physician told me recently that running outside in the summer, especially in a humid, sticky place, is not recommended for anyone at any time of day.

Well, that answers why I almost passed out a couple summers ago jogging around in the muggy middle of Charlotte! I was sucking up all that pollen into my nose from heavy breathing. I thought exercise was supposed to be a release, an ease of tension?

So how do we take advantage of the sunny outdoors and avoid these types of threats?

From my experience, typical methods of physical activity such as running- ones you can do all year round inside- should generally remain inside because they induce heavy breathing that can irritate allergies. Even if you’re not one who’s prone to allergies, I’ve learned new ones can develop unexpectedly and without warning. Five years ago I had zero noticeable reactions, and today quite a few bother me daily.

Not to say you shouldn’t participate in a bike race or a marathon, but focus on other activities you won’t have come fall and winter, ones that work other body muscles and don’t induce heavy breathing. What about water sports? They offer a different type of workout, focusing more on arm strength and overall body control, and often give nasal cavities a break from enduring frequent sprinkles from overhanging trees. Here are just a few examples.

Kayaking: Make arm fat disappear

Not only is kayaking relaxing and reflective, but it eats away at our sagging winter arm fat. Even if you go out for an hour or two of continuous arm movement, you’ll certainly feel it the next day. For you ladies who skip weight training at the gym, this is a great way to make up for it.

Waterskiing: Test upper body strength

This one requires a bit more skill and concentration, but it’s certainly tests your biceps, triceps and shoulders. Waterskiing is a great way to test your upper body strength because the key to staying afloat is keeping your arms locked and out; otherwise, you’re going to topple forward and possibly incur a massive bruise like I did on my leg two summers ago. As you stand there with the wind soaring through your ear cavities, knees slightly bent and quadriceps working, it’s a feeling unlike anything else. Just like your first time up a rock climbing wall, you know if you’re where you want to be arm strength-wise once you try it. If you can’t get yourself up, upper body might be an area you’ll want to work on.

Tubing: work overall body control

Tubing is a unique experience unlike any other; anyone who’s ever experienced it knows. It takes some control drifting between strong waves and currents to keep your body safely situated on a slippery piece of inflatable plastic- interesting custom if you think about it. Of course, tubing still demands the most from your arms, as gripping the handles is the only thing keeping you on.

Swimming: work overall body strength and condition

It’s hard for anyone to refute that swimming is one of the best workouts for your body because it works just about everything. Plus, it keeps you cool. Even though you’re breathing hard in the end whether it’s at the local YMCA or a beautiful lakefront, you finish knowing it wasn’t so bad on your limbs.

Kristin Larmore is a recent graduate of Appalachian State University. She avoids running outside, but takes full advantage of summer waterskiing, tubing and kayaking at her grandmother’s lake house in Michigan. She can’t wait to try whitewater rafting and rock climbing.

Peaches: July's Perfect Pick (Chickspeak.com)

July 12, 2009 by Kristin Larmore

The fuzzy flesh, the sweet and carrying aroma, the dripping juice that trails down the chin after just one bite: how can anyone resist a fresh, summer peach?

There are few things, to me at least, more enjoyable than picking fruit on a Sunday afternoon. Peach picking is more relaxing, too, as you can bask in the shade of a droopy, green canopy instead of baking in the heat of a berry field. For some, it relives childhood memories of climbing trees in the sticky heat of summer months.

For some reason, one of my fondest memories of peaches comes not just from fruit farms, but from that classic film James and the Giant Peach. Sure, it’s animated and for kids. But it’s a grand representation of how succulent a peach can be- as he’s crawling through the tunnel of the peach, he grabs one moist and goopy handful after another. James and his bug friends basically live on peach as they eat and travel in it at the same time. Now that’s how you love a peach.

Peaches have been cultivated longer than any other fruit, according to The Nibble magazine’s website. It’s no wonder we have songs about them. As a kid, I remember my sisters and I would burst out in melodic odes whenever we’d buy or pick the fuzzy fruit, singing “moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches.” Or what about, “Millions of peaches; peaches for me. Millions of peaches, peaches for free?”

For any of you history buffs, did you know that the Chinese were the first to grow peaches as a symbol of unity and immortality? What about the fact they were then discovered in Persia and brought to Greece by Alexander the Great?

We might like to say that peach cobbler is a great finish to an American meal, but we can’t take the credit, guys. We have Christopher Columbus to thank for that one, who didn’t get a hold of peaches until later. Though California’s got more than a 50 percent handle on our country’s peach production and we have a southeastern state named after them, China ranks first and Italy ranks second in global production.

Next time you visit the grocery store or market to find a good buy on some fruit, check out all the varieties of peaches. Even though they look the same, they’re slightly different. Except the donut peach, mind you; it resembles the pastry, but without a hole.

Or the red, grey-fuzzed peches de vigne, the finest peaches mostly found in French vineyards; unfortunately, those might be off-limits.

And we complain about the steep prices now? When peaches were the new delicacy in Rome, those armored men sold them for what would today be about $4.50.

For you health nuts like me, you can breathe a sigh of relief here. They might taste like dessert, but peaches are high in vitamins A, B and C with only about 37 calories a serving. Even though it’s sticky, the juice serves as a great moisturizer and is used in a variety of cosmetics, according to The Nibble.

Consider the versatility, the easy creations you can whip up!

Liven up a party

Try a peach martini or peach margarita. Or get a taste of Italy with the Bellini: fresh peach puree, spumante, and a sparkling wine or Champagne. Consider fresh peach and mango salsa served with either a snack chip or even the main meat dish, if you’re making one. Good add-ins would be tomatoes, green onion, red bell pepper, cilantro, ginger, garlic powder, pineapple or lime and orange juice. If you like it sweeter, add in honey or sugar to taste.

Warm up the kitchen

These are going to be the more time-consuming recipes because of baking times and exact measurements. Bake peach muffins or peach bread. And a perfect compliment to a warm peach pastry is obviously peach jam! Easily add flaxseed, walnuts, pecans or oats to any baked good to contribute healthy fats and fiber. Try Southern Living’s tipsy peach bread recipe on myrecipes.com, which actually calls for frozen peaches if you want something easier. The dark rum creates a nice twist, of course.

Satisfy your sweet tooth

This is probably a favorite for most peach lovers. Relive the taste of peach pie or cobbler. If you’ve got more time on your hands, make some peach ice cream. Celebrate Independence Day again with Cooking Light’s featured cover dessert for this month: berry-peach cobbler with sugared almonds. Try something as simple as peaches poached with honey, vanilla and orange juice served with vanilla ice cream. Poaching will bring out the aroma and flavor, soften the fruit and add a syrupy and saucy consistency. Add a store-bought crepe, peach brandy or peach schnapps and a sprinkling of cinnamon and brown sugar to the mix, and you’ve fancied it up with little effort. Your friends will think you’re a chef.

Kristin Larmore recently graduated from Appalachian State University. She plans to familiarize herself with Midwestern culture and cuisine this summer, does most of the baking for her mother at home and fills half her cart with produce at the grocery before she reaches the aisles.