Welcome to Health and Wellness for Life and Happy New Year!

This is it. It’s the New Year. We’ve all been here before. Many of us spent the Holidays eating pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down, promising ourselves that we would get on track after the New Year. Now it’s here.

Maybe your goal is to get into shape again, or you want to lose a few pounds. Maybe you’ve been given some bad news from your doctor about your cholesterol or blood sugars. Maybe you’re just tired of feeling lousy all the time.

No matter what our level of health, this is the time of year that people tend to think about their health more than any other time of year. Just watch how the advertising shifts from Christmas gifts to diet products and the latest greatest exercise gadgets. Unfortunately if you’re like most people, the resolve falls out of the resolution by sometime around the first week of February.

Why is that?
Why can’t we stick with it? It’s our own fault. We want everything NOW. It may have taken us years to get this out of shape, but we want a few sessions at the gym to be showing us some big changes. We gain one pound at a time, but we are disgusted when we only lose a pound at a time. We want to lose 10 and one just isn’t good enough. So we get discouraged and quit.

Process or Event?
We have to remember that it was a process that got us here. Whether you find yourself in the best shape of your life right now or seriously needing some work, it was a process that occurred over time that got you to where you are today.

We can’t undo a process with an event. There is no quick fix. It just doesn’t work that way. And the reason we get discouraged is that we are unfair to ourselves to expect changes to happen instantly, instead of a little at a time, day after day. Anything else sets us up for failure.

We have to undo the process with a process. That is what Health and Wellness for Life is all about. It’s not instant-anything. But it is about you and your greatest asset: your health. The only timeline that is set is how many years you want to live and more importantly, how you want to live them.

Please check out our weekly topics. Our weekly messages will give you practical and useful tools with all aspects of your health. We will be adding more information throughout the next several months. We look forward to your comments and suggestions.

“I Don’t Have Time for This.”
I hear it from my patients every day. I even hear it come out of my own mouth way too often…

“I don’t have time for this!” “I don’t have time to exercise, to make healthy meals, to get enough sleep…”

How often do you say or think those words on any given day? Are you thinking them right now as you read this? We have so many demands on our time: housework, yard work, kids, meetings, projects, deadlines…What things do we allow to occupy our time?

When you start to think that your week is too full to set aside time for your health, then your week is either too full, or you are letting the wrong things occupy your time. Either way, the result is disastrous.

Think of your time as a resource. There are only a finite amount of minutes in each day and it is up to us to squander them or utilize them to their fullest potential. We cannot control how many minutes in a day, but we can control how we use them.

What Comes First?
Ask yourself: What are the most important things in your life? What are your priorities? Is it important to have a new car, a big house, social status, health, faith, family, fitness? More often than not, we can tell a lot about our priorities by how we spend our time. When I ask people to list their priorities, no one ever mentions television, internet, or recreational shopping. But how many hours a week do we spend on things like these? Most everyone lists their health as a priority, but how many minutes a week do we dedicate to our health? What could be more important?

Your level of health today is a result of the PRIORITY that you have placed on your health up to today. It is directly proportional to the time and energy you have spent on your health up to this moment. For the most part, we get to choose our level of health. How much of your time do you spend accumulating stuff that within five years will either be forgotten in your storage room or end up in a landfill? And how much of your time do you spend on YOU?

You Cannot Be Too Busy for This!
Your life depends on it. How are you going to spend your time? Think of how many things that you are responsible for in any given day. Of all those things, your greatest responsibility is to yourself. You ARE busy, and so you do not have time to be sick, or get a headache, or ache or be fatigued and run-down. You owe this to yourself and everyone who depends on you.

Let’s face it. You can have everything in the world, but if you’re missing this one ingredient, life falls flat. I’m talking about HEALTH. We all say we want it, but what are we willing to do to get it and keep it. That is what Health and Wellness for Life is all about. Giving you the information and the tools to get what you really want. It’s really not that tough. So, let’s start with the basics.

As Simple as Water
You can’t get more basic than water when it comes to health. It’s the easiest place to start. Water is one of the most essential elements for our body to remain healthy and function properly, yet three out of four people don’t drink nearly enough. The health benefits of hydration are countless, and water is free, yet most people are chronically dehydrated. Want to lose weight? Drinking water is the best place to start.

You’re Not Hungry, You’re Thirsty
In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is mistaken for hunger. Studies have shown that just one glass of water will diminish hunger pangs, if you give it time. The next time you feel hungry, or even fatigued, drink a glass of water and wait 20 minutes. You’ll notice the difference. Even if you don’t feel thirsty, if you know you haven’t had enough water for the day, drink a glass any way.

“I can’t be dehydrated, because I’m not thirsty.”
Don’t confuse thirst with hydration. Your body needs water whether it tells you or not. You can be chronically dehydrated, and feel thirsty, drink one glass of water and not be thirsty any more. But does one glass of water make you hydrated? No! You may not feel the sensation of thirst anymore, but you are not properly hydrated with just one glass of water, but it’s a start.

“How much water do I need?”
Your body needs at least 64 ounce of water per day. That is 2 quarts! Most of us don’t drink any more water than it takes to rinse out our mouths after brushing our teeth in the morning. Remember to drink water slowly through the day. You can’t drink it all at once and expect your body to ration it. If you drink too much at once, typically more than 12-16 ounces, it will just spill over instead of being used by your body to “clean house” and keep your organs and tissues healthy. Try cleaning your house, washing your car, doing your laundry without water. Try bathing without water. We use water to wash the outside of our bodies, right? When you don’t drink enough water, your body can’t clean itself on the inside.

We’ll spend more time on this subject in the upcoming weeks, because the negative effects of dehydration (fatigue, disease, joint pain, memory loss) are so huge, and the positive effects are so numerous. Here are few simple tips to get started:

1. Carry water with you every where you go. Sip it all day long.
2. If you drink coffee or tea, fill your cup with water and drink it before you fill it with coffee.
3. Make it a habit.

It All Adds Up
For some of you, this is a topic that won’t apply. We’re going to talk about the dreaded issue of Weight Management. For you select few that are naturally thin and can eat whatever you want without gaining an ounce, we all hate you. (just kidding)… For the rest of us that are not so fortunate, we know that this is a battle that we wage on a daily basis. (No, we’re not kidding, we really hate you). Weight management is all about the math, which we will discuss in future sessions, but for now, we need to lick our wounds and talk about past failures, so we can leave them behind once and for all.

We Know What Doesn’t Work
Any of us that are all too familiar with trying to lose weight could probably teach a class on what NOT to do. We can list the things that have not worked. Many times, what ever weight we lost, somehow finds us again. And sometimes it comes back with a little extra that we didn’t have in the first place.

If we think about all that has gone wrong in the past, we can narrow it down to one problem: We are not patient people and we want the weight gone, now. It just doesn’t work that way. There are ways to try to cut corners, but we know they don’t work. The promises of fast and easy weight loss don’t work. The gimmicks and fad diets, no matter how much money we spend on them, don’t work.

What Is the Secret?
It’s no secret. It’s just not fun. Nor is it easy. To really take control of your weight, you need to change two things: your mindset and your behavior.

Process vs. Event
This is the shift in mindset. We talked about it on Week One. We may think that we gained those extra 10 pounds all at once, but we didn’t. We gained them one pound at a time. A process. So why do we treat weight loss like an event? It took months and years to accumulate the extra weight, why do we keep telling ourselves that we can reverse the process in a matter of days or weeks? We’ve lost our common sense about weight loss, and in doing so, we’ve spent billions of dollars on the latest, greatest diet revolution. And the only thing that’s thinner is our wallets.

There’s nothing confusing about weight gain. We know exactly how it happened. We can make excuses and kid ourselves about our genetics, our stress, our ‘whatevers’. But pretty much the only way to gain weight is to eat more energy than your body needs. The rest is stored for future use. How we gain weight is a simple, predictable process. So, why do we make weight loss so confusing, complex and frustrating? We didn’t buy a kit or a program to make ourselves gain weight, why then do we think we need those things to lose weight? We’ll talk more about this in the next session, but in the meantime, I want you to take a few minutes and write a list of what behaviors have made you heavier than you’d like to be. Be honest with yourself. Next to each behavior, give yourself a VERB to correct it. A “go do it” statement to yourself to correct it or make it better, Here’s an example of how to start a list. Everyone’s list will look a little different:

Behavior	“Go Do It”
I eat fast food every day at lunch	I will pack a nutritious lunch from home
I never drink water	I will sip water throughout the day.

Go ahead, make your own list and get started!

Calories: Your Body’s “Department of Energy”
We’ve all heard of a calorie, and nearly always in association with last week’s dreaded subject of weight management. Calories are not evil, really, they’re not. A calorie is merely a unit of energy for our body, just like a gallon of gas is a unit of energy for our car. We all need a certain number of calories each day. Even if we stayed in bed all day, we would still be burning calories just to stay alive; just not as many as if we were walking around the block or mowing the lawn. It’s important that you have an idea of how many calories your body needs per day to maintain your current weight.

Use this link to find out:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/content/PED_6_1x_Calorie_Calculator.asp

Food=Fuel
When we consume food, those calories, the units of energy, are available fuel for our bodies. The key is to take in the number of calories we need, but no more than that. When we take in more calories than we need, our body stores those units of energy for future use. They are stored as…you guessed it…FAT. On our tummies and on our tushies, it rides along until we need to use it. If we don’t use it, we just carry it around with us, putting strain on our organs and our joints. We have to remember that we are designed by nature to be hunters and gatherers. We are designed to walk, not drive a car….to pick berries and kill bison, not push a shopping cart through Safeway. Our bodies are designed to spend energy seeking out our food sources. But how many calories does it take to roll down your car window and reach out for the white paper bag at the drive-thru with a burger, fries and a coke? We are designed to store units of energy for the times when there are no berries on the bushes and no bison to be found. So, during times of plenty, our bodies store extra units of energy for times of drought and famine. The only problem is that modern life provides us with a readily available food supply, no matter what time of year. To our bodies, there is no winter, no famine. We are always storing, but never using our stored energy. We just keep on storing. We are still genetically programmed to store units of energy for survival, but the ironic thing is that this mechanism designed for us to survive, is killing us instead. Killing us in the form of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

It’s Simple Math:

Calories IN (what we eat) - Calories OUT (what we burn) = What we KEEP (on our tummies, on our thighs…)

If we take in more than our allotted calories per day, we gain weight. One pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories that we consumed but did not burn. Does it matter if that calorie was a Twinkie or a rutabaga? Nope. A calorie is still a calorie. This is only true from the perspective of ENERGY. Does it matter with NUTRITION? You bet it does. That is why we want our calories to not just FUEL our bodies, we want those calories to NOURISH our bodies as well.

Not all Calories are Created Equal
We use the term “empty calorie” for a unit of energy with no nutritional value. For example, a 20 ounce bottle of soda will supply you with roughly 10 percent of your day’s supply of calories, with zero nutritional value. No vitamins, no minerals, no fiber. Same with alcoholic beverages and your morning Mocha. Remember, many of our biggest sources of empty calories are not chewed. Drinks typically do not satisfy our hunger, nor do they nourish our bodies. How many of your calories each day are ¬empty? Write down what you ate this week and take stock in what fuels your body each day. Be creative with healthy changes and add them to your "Go Do It" list from last week.

What Have You Been Drinking?!

Are you drinking too many calories? Calories count, even if you don’t chew them. I often hear my patients ask why they are having trouble losing weight. “I really don’t eat that much” they say. But what are you drinking? Many people don't count the calories they slurp, whether its soda, coffee drinks, juice or alcohol.

We know that if we want to control our calories that we should avoid burgers and fries. And we don’t think of coffee as fattening, because it isn’t. A regular cup of black coffee has about 10 calories. But when we add sugar, milk, and flavoring, the entire equation changes. Some coffee drinks weigh in larger than a burger, and have more calories than a healthy meal. Let’s do a comparison:

Venti Java Chip Frappuccino at Starbucks	650 calories , 25 grams of fat
Big Mac at McDonalds	590 calories, 34 grams of fat

If you used the link I gave you last session, you know about how many calories per day you need to maintain your current weight. By cutting out just 250 calories per day, that can add up to losing a pound every two weeks. It doesn’t sound like much, right? If you take in those same 250 calories every day for a year, you can expect to gain over 25 pounds!

Almost all drinks have calories, and they do essentially nothing to satisfy your hunger or provide your body with the nutrition it needs. Many of them are daily habits and the calories add up:

Venti ‘Skinny’ Vanilla Latte	250 calories
Coke 12 oz can	140 calories
Rum and Coke 12 oz	369 calories
Corona Beer	148 calories
Monster Energy Drink 16 oz	200 calories
Gatorade 20 oz	122 calories
Red Wine 8 oz	170 calories

Because many of our drinks are such a normal part of our day, we don’t think of them as “extra” or indulgent. When we try to lose weight, we cut out dessert, but might not think about our daily caffeine hit. A Mrs. Fields Chocolate Chip Cookie has 250 calories, 40 calories less than a 20 oz bottle of Mountain Dew (290 calories). Both account for more than 10% of the average person’s caloric needs for the day.

Most of the empty calories (calories with no nutritional value) contained in our favorite drinks come from sugar. The next upcoming session will cover the devastating health effects of sugar and some effective strategies for limiting your consumption.

For a great way to check the calories of your favorite foods and drinks check out: www.thedailyplate.com

Sugar: America’s #1 Addiction

If I were to ask you this question: “How much sugar do you eat?” Almost everyone would answer with something like “I really don’t eat that much sugar.” In truth, most of us have no idea how much we are really taking in, because SUGAR IS EVERYWHERE in the typical American diet. Not only in sugar-sweetened beverages that we discussed last session, but sugar is, in a sense the number-one food additive. It turns up in some unlikely places, such as bread, hot dogs, coffee drinks, soup, crackers, spaghetti sauce, lunch meat, canned vegetables, flavored yogurt, ketchup, fruit drinks, salad dressings, mayonnaise, and peanut butter. Just because a food isn’t sweet, like candy or ice cream, doesn’t meant that it doesn’t contain sugar.

Excess sugar intake is so bad for your health that for the first time in its history the American Heart Association released a scientific statement regarding the implications of sugar consumption. The negative health effects of sugar include risk factors for obesity, dental disease, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, type II diabetes and chronic inflammation (which is a factor in many other diseases).

Before we get into this, let me give you a quick overview of the measurements, so you can convert them on your own

    1 teaspoon of sugar = 4 grams
    1 teaspoon of sugar = 16 calories
    1 pound = 113.4 teaspoons

American Heart Association Guidelines:

The AHA statement says that most women should consume no more than 100 calories (about 25 grams) of added sugars per day. Most men should consume no more than 150 calories (about 37.5 grams) each day. That’s about six teaspoons of added sugar a day for women and nine for men.

Guidelines vs. Reality:

Still don’t think we don’t eat that much sugar? The numbers are staggering. A 2001–2004 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) that showed the average intake of added sugars for all Americans was 22.2 teaspoons per day (355 calories).
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/120/11/1011

Let’s look at a year of sugar consumption and do that math a different way. Knowing what we know about calories and weight gain…

The Average American Consumes…
22.2 teaspoons per day x 365 days per year = 8103 teaspoons of sugar per year
8103 teaspoons per year ÷ 113.4 teaspoons per pound = 71 pounds per year!

Common-Sense Steps to Limit your Sugar Intake:
1. Ban the Soda: A 12 ounce Coke has almost 10 teaspoons of sugar. That’s more than ¼ cup of sugar! It’s also more than your entire recommended daily allotment according to the AHA guidelines. Also avoid sweetened fruit juices.
2. Identify the Sources of Sugar in Your Diet: While most of us associate sugar with sweet foods, they only account for about 10 percent of our sugar intake. Read labels and remember sugar is everywhere.
3. Know What is a Sugar: Sugar has many names, and the best way to identify the names is to know that they all rhyme with the word “gross”:…glucose, fructose, dextrose, and sucrose to name a few. (Fitting, isn’t it?!) High fructose corn syrup, now disguised as HFCS on labels, is particularly damaging.
4. Eat Real Food and Cook at Home: Processed foods are notorious for containing hidden sugars. Seek a diet rich in fruit, vegetables, low-fat dairy products, high-fiber whole grains, dairy, lean meat, poultry and fish.

Even if you are at your ideal weight, your health can still benefit from avoiding sugars. It may be challenging, but it will be well worth the effort.

Why Fiber?

It’s a funny thing: bulk, roughage, fiber, whatever you want to call it. One of the most important components of proper digestion is something that isn’t digested at all. It is the part of plant foods that your body cannot break down or absorb, so it passes through you relatively intact. It does not contain nutrients or calories. So, then, why is it so important?

You’ve heard it before: Eat more fiber. Why? Fiber has many health benefits. Mainly because foods that are high in fiber are also naturally full of vitamins and nutrients. That is why the term ‘whole foods’ is used.

When whole wheat is refined to create foods such as white bread and pasta and most cereals, the outer coat of the wheat (the bran) is removed, creating foods that are low in fiber content. When the skins of fruits and vegetables are removed, it decreases their fiber content.

Here are a few reasons to add more fiber to your diet:

Fiber Keeps you Skinny: You have to chew high fiber foods longer, which gives you more time to realize you’re not hungry anymore so you’re less likely to eat too much. High fiber foods also tend to have fewer calories with more volume which makes you feel full longer.

Fiber Helps your Heart: Some types of fiber help to lower the bad types of cholesterol (LDLs). Many studies have also shown that a high-fiber diet reduces inflammation and lowers blood pressure.

Fiber Helps you Go #2: This one is a no-brainer. Fiber increases the bulk of your stool which makes it easier to pass and helps prevent constipation, diverticulitis and hemorrhoids.

Fiber Helps Control Blood Sugar: Fiber can slow the absorption of sugar into the blood stream and has shown to play a role in preventing type II diabetes.

The Best Ways to Add “Bulk” to Your Diet:

• Fruits: Fresh, with the skin when appropriate
• Vegetables: Fresh, with the skin when appropriate
• Nuts: Don’t eat the shells. It’s not worth the dental work
• Whole Grains: Products should say “whole” on the label**
• Beans, peas, and lentils

** Multigrain and whole grain are not interchangeable terms. Whole grain means that all parts of the grain kernel, which contain all the nutrients, fiber and other healthy plant compounds are used. In contrast, multigrain means that a food contains more than one type of grain; it doesn't tell you whether they're whole or refined grains, or a mix of both. Look for products that the word “whole” appears first on the label, such as whole wheat, whole oats etc.

Get Rid of Anything White: White is great for your laundry, but it’s generally terrible when it comes to your food. Try to avoid white bread, pasta and rice. Try whole grain pasta, brown or wild rice and WHOLE grain breads. Just because your bread is brown, doesn’t mean its high in fiber. Check the label.

An Apple a Day…Keeps the Doctor Away: I didn’t make this up, really, but it’s catchy isn’t it? It’s nutrition advice that has stood the test of time, and with good reason. Try to add fruits and vegetables to your snacks and to every meal.

Eat Breakfast: When looking for a great way to start your day, look for a cereal that is high in fiber. Look for one that has 5 grams or more per serving. Fiber in the morning has shown to ward off afternoon cravings. Don’t forget about oatmeal as an excellent choice. Not the instant, sugar-stuffed kind. Steel cut oats are best.

Make Sure You Add Water: For fiber to work, it needs the lubricating properties of water. Water helps your food slide through your system the way it should. Remember to drink those eight 8 ounce glasses a day.

"Eat Your Breakfast"

Like it or not, your mom was right. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It’s not just important to your morning, but to your afternoon and to the rest of your life for that matter.

Don’t Leave on an Empty Tank: If we’re going on a road trip, we don’t leave home on an empty tank, right? We know how many miles we need to cover and we know we need fuel to get there. Why then, do we skip breakfast and leave the house to start our day on an “empty tank”? When you skip breakfast, you have no fuel for the day ahead. When we eat a big lunch and dinner instead, those calories are more likely to be stored as fat, because you’re not burning them at night the way you would all day. Your metabolism naturally slows down at night with inactivity. It’s a lot like your car needing less fuel when it’s idling at stoplight than going 60 mph down the interstate.

Losers Eat Breakfast: If you want to lose weight, eat breakfast. If you want to keep it off, eat breakfast. Recent studies show that the vast majority of people who have lost weight and have kept it off regularly eat breakfast. Of course they aren’t eating donuts or Sugar-Bloated-Oaties Cereal. Successful weight management includes breakfasts with whole grains, low-fat dairy, fruit and lean protein.

It All Catches Up to You: While you might think that you are saving a few calories by not eating in the morning, it has been shown that breakfast-skippers eventually eat more than breakfast-eaters by the end of the day.

Wake Up Your Metabolism: During sleep, your body is temporarily fasting, which slows your metabolism. Eating breakfast not only jolts your metabolism back into action, but allows it to function at a higher rate all day. This also gives you more energy to get that much-needed exercise without feeling sluggish.

For Kids’ Sake: Kids who eat breakfast are less likely to be overweight, perform better in school and athletic activities, and have better overall nutrition. Studies have shown that they also have better problem solving skills and better concentration than kids who skip breakfast. Remember, whole grains, fruit, dairy and lean protein. Eggs are a great source of high-quality protein for growing bodies.

“I Don’t Have Time for Breakfast”: I hear this all the time. People say they don’t have the time for a healthy breakfast. While that may be true, what is even more true is that you don’t have time to be sluggish and tired all day. You don’t have time to look at those numbers three times instead of once, because you don’t have the energy your brain needs to concentrate. You don’t have time to be exhausted all day because you don’t have the fuel your body needs to operate properly.


With our demanding schedules and all of the stressors of our busy lives, don’t forget to get your day off to a great beginning and give it the fuel it needs to get you through your day.

First of all, I want to thank you all for your warm welcome and for the pleasure of presenting my CHOICES course to those of you who attended the Conference in Eugene. I also want to extend my sincerest thank you to Team Oregon for the wonderful event you arranged for all of us. I know I speak for others when I say that all of your hard work to make it such a terrific experience is truly appreciated. Your efforts are commendable.



For many of you, CHOICES was a reminder of many of the things you already know, but may have forgotten or pushed aside over the years. Maybe you’ve put your health on the back burner because of commitments, your job, your family or relationships.

Every single day, our health is affected by our CHOICES. Both what we DO and what we DON’T DO. Some choices are purposeful, some are without thought, but all are indicators of the priority we have placed on our health up to this moment. Some of us are on the right track and some of us have some serious work to do.

If you think of anything worthwhile you have accomplished in your life, you had to make it a priority. It’s really the only way it works. Taking care of yourself is no exception. It is a daily process and the real challenge is to make your positive choices permanent. Each day, we wake up with new opportunities for choice. We can either improve ourselves, stay the way we are, or go in the wrong direction. We need to be willing to accept the consequences of those choices, how they affect our health, and how they affect others in our lives.

I had a really terrific time with you all in Oregon. As promised, I will continue to provide regular postings for your website. We welcome any comments or suggestions you might have for future topics. Again, thank you for allowing me to take part in your great organization.