Is Maria Kang a Healthy Role Model?

This month I read Maria Kang’s book The No More Excuses Diet: 3 Days to Bust Any Excuse, 3 Weeks to Easy New Eating Habits, 3 Months to Total Transformation for the From Left to Write Book Club. The book wasn’t great, but it did help me recognize my own excuses and motivate me to get my healthy living challenge back on track.  Most of Kang's diet and fitness advice isn't new. You can read the first chapter where she introduces the majority of her tips here. 

Prior to reading the book I hadn’t heard of Maria Kang or the controversy she created when she posted the following photo to her Facebook page:

 

The photo went viral and Kang was vilified by critics for “fat shaming.”

At first, I was irritated by her photo, but the more I thought about it I became angry.   If you look into Kang's background you learn she is a former fitness competitor and personal trainer making it easier for her to get back into shape after having children. Also, she admits to struggling with bulimia.  I can't help but wonder if she isn't still obsessed with compulsive exercise and being thin.  I don't think she is a healthy role model and do think the air-brushed photo above is fat shaming.

I would have been more likely to consider Kang a healthy role model if she would have used the following more natural photo: 

 

As for healthy role models, I prefer Eliz Greene of Embrace Your Heart whom I've written about before.

 

 

Eliz was seven-months pregnant with twins when she suffered a massive heart attack. Her life changed — not only did she survive a ten-minute cardiac arrest, the cesarean delivery of her daughters and open-heart surgery, all on the same day — she gained new perspective and passion for life. Eliz developed strategies to fit activity and healthy habits into her life. She lost the more than eighty pounds she gained while pregnant and has kept it off for more than a decade.

I had the pleasure of attending a presentation given by Greene a few years ago.  She is this teeny tiny women who danced across the stage persuading her audience to exercise in ten minute increments when we were unable to fit a 30 minute workout into our schedule. Many women can't make it to the gym 5 to 6 times a week, but we can dance around the kitchen while doing the dishes.

Do you think Maria Kang is a healthy role model?  If not who is your healthy role model?

 

Why I’ll Never Be a Food Blogger

A couple of months ago a woman I know signed up for a six-week boot camp program to lose weight before an upcoming family wedding. She prefers participating in intense exercise programs over crash dieting when trying to lose weight quickly. Unfortunately this time around she injured her knee during a running exercise two weeks in. Her orthopedic reluctantly agreed to give her a cortisone shot before the wedding, so she'd be able to walk without pain. Since she still wanted to lose weight, she asked when she could rejoin her boot camp class. To her surprise he said, "Never."  Considering her age - 52 and her physical condition he would never recommend she participate in let alone begin an exercise program with a boot camp.  Instead he suggested she change her diet and once her knee healed - walk for 30 minutes every day.  If she did these two things he guaranteed she'd lose weight.

What diet changes did he recommend?
The majority of her diet should consist of fruits, vegetables and proteins.  A serving of protein should be the size of her fist with the remainder of her plate being filled with fruits and vegetables.  

An idea for a food blog is born:
Almost immediately she began complaining about her new diet: fruits and vegetables were expensive, they spoiled too quickly, her husband and son wouldn't eat them, it was only week two and she was already tired of salads.

I came up with an idea for a food blog - The Savvy Diet - it would be based on meals consisting of vegetables, fruits and proteins.  I began researching seasonal foods and planning healthy menus with families and budgets in mind.  I took photos of my meals and jotted down post ideas. I began reading Dianne Jacob's book Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Reviews, Memoir, and More (Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Blogs,).

Why I'll never be a food blogger:
While reading about good writing and a food writer's voice in Will Write for Food I became overwhelmed with feelings of imposter syndrome not only for food writing, but for all writing.  (Note my absence from this blog).  I set the book aside.

Then while perusing a recipe for peaches and cream cake given to me by the above woman I noticed she had written in the margin next to the ingredients, "I use raspberry flavored peaches (Del Monte)."  At that moment I knew I was not a foodie and would never be a food blogger.  I would never, not ever in this life time, have thought to add a raspberry flavored peaches to this recipe or to any recipe.  I returned my copy of Will Write for Food to the library without ever reading the chapter on food blogging.

What does this mean for my Career Reinvention Challenge?
According to James Altucher in his post The Ultimate Cheat Sheet For Reinventing Yourself to discover your "it" you should go to the bookstore and find 500 books about it. If you get bored three months later go back to the bookstore. As to my career reinvention I've ruled out food blogging/writing and I'm heading back to the library.

What qualities do you think make a successful food writer/blogger?

Please Note, I am an Amazon Affiliate

Calling Shenanigans on Three Magazine Diet Myths

Photo Credit: bravenewtraveler via Compfight cc

Americans are more insecure about their weight now than ever before. Women are conditioned from a young age to believe they are overweight just because they don’t look like the emaciated women they see on screens and in magazines. While many are not as fat as they think they are, obesity is on the rise among children and adults across the first world. Magazines only contribute to this problem while pretending to offer solutions.

Go to any grocery store aisle and take a look for yourself. The average magazine cover is designed to play on your insecurities and make you feel inferior. They are strategically located in an area where you are likely to be doing a bit of reflection about the food you are planning to eat over the next week. Catchy headlines simultaneously point out all your flaws and offer supposedly easy solutions to eliminate them. The first thing you see when you look away is a huge rack of candy bars. You have to be smart if you want to fight this level of manipulation. In my work as a nutrition consultant, I have seen firsthand how hundreds of people have been duped by magazine diet and fitness claims.  Every day, I have to talk men and women out of their preconceived notions of nutrition.

Here are three popular magazine myths that are touted as truths in the check-out line and some of the most common misconceptions my clients have:

1) Dieting is the best way to shed pounds.
Most weight-loss fads you read about in magazines involve dieting. These include guidelines on what to eat, when to eat, and foods to avoid in your daily meals. Some say you can lose weight by eating nothing but chicken soup. Some involve counting calories, having more and smaller meals throughout the day, eating only this, not eating that, etc. You can read all kinds of things in these articles, such as testimonies from people who have tried it and medical professionals who recommend it as a viable weight-loss option. Yet very few of them mention the other components to a healthy lifestyle.

News flash! You cannot lose weight and keep it off only by changing what you eat. Good health isn’t just a series of eating habits, it is a complete lifestyle. It is about more than just your body weight, too. So many people don’t even pay attention to good health until they start to lose it, and these are going to be the folks who have the hardest work to do. If you want to make big changes to your body, you will have to make equally big changes to your lifestyle. Everything from your self-image to your mental attitude and your activity level has a role to play in creating a sustainable system for maintaining good health. Those who start with a healthy diet and a good fitness regimen will find that the other components follow a bit more naturally. However you cannot expect to magically see the progress you are hoping for just by picking one easy thing to change.

It’s time to get out of the diet mindset and move towards overall nutrition—this shifts the focus from short term results to lifelong health.

2) Juice Fasts are an easy way to drop weight fast or jumpstart your nutrition.

Ask anyone, and they will probably agree that drinking nothing but juice for days on end is a great way to detox and lose weight. How many of them can tell you why they believe this? Many of my clients who have tried this saw only insignificant and temporary results in terms of weight loss. Since they have no way of knowing for sure how many toxins left their body, it just goes without saying that this must have worked.

In reality, even homemade juice contains little more than water and sugars. When you juice multiple fruits into one glass of liquid, you are taking in all the calories of each fruit with none of the good stuff. Raw fruits and veggies normally offer lots of vital nutrients and fiber. However, these tend to reside in the pulp and skin of the fruit. Guess what you are throwing into the trash when you empty the filter from your juicer? Everything your body actually needs in order to function.

Those who fast for too many days often experience symptoms of food poisoning. My clients think that this is a sign that the detox is working--the scientific community, on the other hand, agrees that this is your body’s way of telling you it is not getting what it needs and you should probably eat a sandwich. It is perfectly fine to have juice as part of your diet, and it is much better to make your juice at home than to purchase it pasteurized from the store. However, if you are looking to maintain the full nutritional value of raw fruits and veggies, try making them into smoothies instead of juice.

3) Carbs must be avoided like the plague.

Even though the Atkins Diet craze has long since passed, I bet you still find yourself irrationally avoiding carbohydrates on a regular basis. Some people have even started avoiding gluten because they think it is bad for everyone. The truth is gluten is harmless unless your body has a specific kind of intolerance, and carbs are absolutely essential to a healthy diet.

It is perfectly fine to avoid highly processed and refined carbohydrates such as pasta and bread, but not because they are carbohydrates. You should avoid them because they are high in fat and difficult for your body to process. A diet completely devoid of carbs is missing some very important components. Carbohydrates are your body’s top source of fuel. It is much easier for your body to access these fuels in natural carbohydrates such as veggies, fruit and whole grains, so it doesn’t hurt to avoid the super-processed stuff. Just don’t be fooled into thinking your body has no use for carbs and you should avoid them altogether.
 

The Bottom Line

The truth is there’s no easy way to lose weight and keep it off. The lifestyle habits that lead to weight gain and obesity are not likely to be changed without serious dedication and very hard work. However, people just don’t want to hear this. All it takes is for an “expert” of indeterminate origin to mention an easy way out, and they will completely ignore time tested truths in favor of the shortcut. Those who waste time and energy on these fake solutions are much more likely to fail than to succeed in their quest for a healthier lifestyle.

Carolyn Heintz works in San Diego as a personal nutrition consultant, as a mom to two daughters, and as an advocate for the health screenings that helped saved her father’s life. When she’s not working, she’s soaking up any nutritional, fitness, or wellness knowledge that she can get her hands on and sharing that information on her blog.

 

What worked in 2011: Learning to slow down and take care of myself

My husband and I have an annual New Years Eve tradition; we each list our top “ten” memories/successes of the year then read them to each other over a glass of wine. This year I struggled to come up with ten memorable items. 2011 was a year filled with melancholy moments including a friend being diagnosed with melanoma then lymphoma, my 25 year old future nephew in-law had to be rushed to the emergency room with a pulmonary embolism, my husband rolled his vehicle on black ice in March (thankfully he was okay), I had bronchitis for three weeks in July, even one of my dogs was so sick he had to be taken to the vet.

This not being a typical year is what worked for me:

I got a prescription for bifocal contacts:
I have had to wear reading glasses in addition to contacts for at least five years now. The problem was I was constantly misplacing my reading glasses, breaking them, forgetting them or was too lazy to search for them in my purse. I couldn’t read prices at the store, coupon expiration dates, menu items at restaurants or actually see the photos my friends showed me on their iPhones without them. When my “new” optometrist recommended I try bifocal contacts I consented. The decision to switch to Air Optix multifocal contact lenses was the smartest thing I did all year and I am not being paid to write this. I now have perfect vision which is important for an accountant (mistaking 3’s for 8’s doesn’t work well in my profession).

I lost weight:
I have been talking about losing that extra ten pounds for at least five years with no success. Last spring after realizing both the dress I purchased for a wedding and the outfit I bought for a bridal shower were a little too snug I decided it was time to get serious about losing weight. I asked a friend who had lost weight what had worked for her. She had joined Weight Watchers and gave me suggestions which I followed. I changed my breakfast to low sugar oatmeal, my snacks to fruit and 90 cal granola bars. I moved my salad from lunch to before dinner and began eating Healthy Choice meals for lunch. I also switched my workouts to a high-intensity boot camp class. It all worked and I ended up losing eight pounds. Enough weight to fit into some of my old clothes and to feel much better.

I learned to say no:
After too many sleepless nights (perimenopause), I started considering what is important to me; spending time with friends, going to the gym after work, actually using my vacation time and getting a good night’s sleep. To do this I had to start saying no to extra projects, volunteer work and excessive entertaining.

For 2012:
I want to maintain my weight loss. As Betty White wrote in her memoir If You Ask Me: (And of Course You Won't), it is much harder to lose ten pounds than one or two. She recommends weighing yourself every day and if the scale begins to tip up cut back on what you eat for a day or two. I have been practicing this throughout the holidays and so far so good.

I want to continue discovering who I am. Hey I turn 50 this year it is about time. I had another bad week at work then was strongly encouraged to go in on Saturday (its year end). While sitting in my office miserable, I decided it is time I get serious about figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life.

If you enjoyed this post you may also like:
Know your limits and learn to say no
Drinking buddies are not real friends
That dress looks great on you
Weekend Wisdom

Hara Hachi Bu

I have a coworker who makes it a known fact that she dislikes exercise and strenuous activity of any kind. When the ladies in her department go for their daily walk she always refuses to join in, preferring to remain inside eating her lunch and reading her book. She doesn't seem to be overly conscious of eating healthy; her lunch usually consists of macaroni and cheese, noodles in a Styrofoam cup or leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, yet she maintains her weight. I have always wondered how she does this; if I miss even one week of exercise my weight shoots up a pound or two.

At a recent retirement party, I sat next to this coworker and must say I am now onto her secret. After eating only half her plate of food, she pushed the uneaten portion aside claiming she was full. She did eat one small appetizer and a half a piece of cake, but only because others forced it upon her. In comparison, I ate five or six appetizers, my entire plate of food and a whole piece of cake.

So there you have it, she is as disciplined with her food as she is with her work. Now that I think about it, I have never witnessed her eating a single treat others have brought into the office and I would know since I am usually the one eating the majority of these treats.

In Okinawa they have a term for this, Hara Hachi Bu, "eat until you're 80 percent full." In addition to maintaining their weight, Okinawans have the lowest rates of heart disease, cancer and stroke - and one of the highest life expectancies - of any population in the world. Stop eating when you feel only slightly full; within 15 minutes you should be satisfied.

I can’t say in the weeks since this party that I have changed my eating habits, but I have become more conscious of portion size and have made small attempts to quit eating before I am full. It’s a start.

Enough said.