Neighborhood Gardens

The Health Nut has awakened from her winter slumber and has been noticing garden plots all over the suburbs. Now that is a beautiful site (or sight). Soon the burbs could look like the hills of Tuscany where every useable plot of land is planted with vegetable gardens, grape vines, olive trees, and other types of fruit trees. How refreshing!

Now is a great time to clear a spot and go to your nearest nursery and pick up some seedlings or plant your own seeds. Gardening is so much fun and it is good exercise. The rewards are worth the hassle.

First make sure you put up a good fence that deer cannot jump over (they can clear 7 feet) and watch out for other critters. If you have a dog, he or she will keep the varmints away. You might want to add a scarecrow as the birds can wreck havoc on a garden.

Second add some worm castings to the soil along with some good topsoil. The worm castings (a nice euphemism) for worm poop adds nutrients to the soil. The topsoil helps the soil hold water in the dry weather by breaking up the red clay of Virginia.

Thirdly, mark what the vegetables are so when they start to grow you won't confuse them with weeds.

Then have at it and enjoy the process.

Stay tuned for more gardening updates.

Red Mango

Next time you are racing through an airport starving, try Red Mango. Really good. The POM yogurt with fresh fruit, granola, and mini chocolate chips is so refreshing. Healthy, delicious, and fast.

The Holidays are Here

Before you start indulging with reckless abandon, take a moment now to think about your New Year's resolutions. If they relate to diet, weight, exercise, and fitness or general well being, then "Whoa Nelly."

Hold on tight, grab a pen and paper (remember those), and start writing down what you want to be when the new year rolls in:

1. Thinner
2. Fitter
3. More in control
4. Full of vitality
5. A non smoker
6. ......... (fill in the blank)

Notice there is no "Happy" on the list. Happiness is not a state in itself but comes from other actions like being committed, having purpose, feeling good, helping others, and reaching your goals (whatever they may be), to name just a few. There is no right or wrong here.

Of course if you can just stay in the present moment you will happy because you are not thinking about anything but the moment! Staying present is a very tough exercise especially with a Blackberry buzzing in your pocket.

Back to making what you want happen. Creating a vision is the first step to achieving success in any endeavor. You've got to really want whatever it is you want to achieve and you have to envision it before you can have it.

Once the desire is there, you make a plan. Then the work begins. Having a plan and not sticking to it won't get you there. That does not mean you can't be flexible and revise the plan as you go along. Also no plan is perfect. You don't have to do things 100% to see results. You just have to do your plan well enough that the old ways that were not working are replaced with actions that work.

It sounds simple but it is really hard. You may have to continually do battle with yourself until the new behaviors take on a life of their own. When this happens, the endorphins that flow from feeling happy (meaning achieving your goals) motivate you to keep going. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So go for it now and use this month as a laboratory for what you want to create in the coming year.

It's Halloween

Tonight's the night! If you decide to indulge, pick out your favorite candy (or candies) and ENJOY every last bite.

Then...have a plan for tomorrow. Either throw away what's left or put it in the freezer (watch out if you love frozen Snickers) or ration it till it is gone. If you take the latter two approaches, compensate every day for the extra calories by reducing your intake of other sweets and carbs or upping your exercise.

Simple and it works.

A New Type of Birth Control

Here is another reason that BPA or bisphenol used in plastics should be avoided. According to a recent study involving Chinese factory workers, workers who had BPA in their urine also had impaired semen quality. This translates to a drop in semen concentration, drop in overall sperm count, and drop in sperm vitality and motility.

While many think that low dose exposure presents little concern, remember that BPA is everywhere. So while we might not be getting the intense exposure of a factory worker, small doses do accumulate. BPA is in baby bottles, plastic containers, dental sealants, and food and beverage container liners, to name just a few. If you eat take out, microwave in plastic, or eat and drink from cans, you are exposed.

Go to Target and purchase a set of glass containers for the microwave. Anchor makes good ones with tight fitting lids. You can also order them on Amazon.

The Health Nut believes the old adage, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Don't Let Halloween Turn You Into a Candy Witch!

Do you dread the candy holidays? They start in February with Valentine's Day and continue year round with the biggest fest happening on Halloween. What is a mother or father to do? (If you don't have kids, well then, you might welcome the chance to indulge!)

The good news is that kids usually forget about the candy after a few weeks. Sometimes letting them go nuts for a couple of days gets the major desire to gorge on sweets out of their systems. If you limit your celebration to one party, your chances of reducing the bounty are increased.

However, if you plan to go out trick or treating, here are a few suggestions to help you deal with the onslaught:

1. Buy a limited quantity of the treats so you and your family won't be tempted to eat leftovers.
2. Read the labels on the bags and look for candy without hydrogenated fats or palm oil. These are higher in trans and saturated fats. Obviously it is difficult to avoid sugar.
3. Make young children carry their own plastic pumpkin or bag. When they start complaining that the container is too heavy, it's time to go home. (Of course this does not apply to infants.)
4. When you get home, throw away any open wrappers or suspicious looking ones. There are many systems for sorting: likes and dislikes, chocolate vs non chocolate, etc. Sorting is so much fun!
5. Plan ahead. Knowing the candy is coming, start to avoid fast food and cut down on other foods loaded with fat and sugar. Eat more fruits and veggies.
6. Make a plan about the candy prior to trick or treating. Here are some suggestions:

• Set a time limit on how much they can have in a day.
• Set a time limit when the candy moves to the freezer.
• Set a time limit when the candy will get thrown away.
• For cavity prevention, be sure they either brush their teeth or rinse their mouths after eating candy.

Planning ahead and setting reasonable guidelines will help you avoid being seen as the witch this Halloween season.

Why Stay Alkaline?

Here's proof that what often seems like wacky information can actually be sound advice. About forty years ago (yes that is right) when I was a student at the University of Arizona, I visited a "nutritionist." While the guy was not a "certified nutritionist," meaning he did not have a degree in nutrition from a university, he was a so-called expert in fasting and cleansing the body. For those of you who think cleansing is a new phenom, it has been around for thousands of years, though in many different forms and incarnations.

The nutritionist told me that I needed to keep my body alkaline. He had me test my urine every morning with PH strips to see whether I was more acid or alkaline. Keeping the body more alkaline, he said, would promote good health.

How do you make the body more alkaline? By eating lots of vegetables and fruits. Even acid fruits become alkaline in the body. Alkalinity promotes good bone health and promotes good kidney function. Too much acid in the bloodstream causes muscle wasting. "Muscle loss is the body's way of adapting to excess acid, so is bone loss" according to the recent issue of the Nutrition Action newsletter.

What foods create acidity in the body? Carbohydrates (bread, rice, pasta, oats, sweets), even whole grains, proteins (meat, fish, dairy). Oils are neutral and luckily red wine and beer are slightly alkaline producing. Fruits and vegetables are highly alkaline. The PRAL or potential renal acid load lists foods that drop the acid load. Foods with a high negative PRAL (like fruits and veggies) neutralize foods with high positive PRALs.

This does not mean eliminate all animal protein or carbs. Your protein intake in grams should be approximately half your body weight in pounds. Interestingly, while animal proteins are acid producing, beans are less acid producing than the same amount of protein from beef. However, "the acid producing quality depends on how many sulfur-containing amino acids (protein's building blocks) are in the protein. There is a wide range in both plant and animal sources so it is misleading to refer to protein as plant or animal, unless you know the overall picture."

Limit your carbs to about 6-8 servings and make those whole grains (see my GoBeFull book for portions sizes; http://www.gobefull.com/) and increase your intake of fruits and veggies to eleven servings a day. While eleven servings seems like a lot of fruits and veggies, it is not that hard if you eat more salads, vegetarian entrees, and snack on fresh fruit. Raisins (watch the serving size) have the highest PRAL. Spinach is also really high.

Add in regular high impact, weight bearing exercise and Vitamin D (about 800 mg./day) to insure strong bones.

Just so you know, that wacky nutritionist who told me to stay alkaline went on to invent Juice Plus! Sometimes what seems like quackery in one decade turns out to be common sense in another.