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Showing posts from October 16, 2011

Pumpkin-illa Smoothie

I am really enjoying the change of seasons...especially the cooler temperatures in Florida. I am approaching my 2nd week of unstructured exercise, simply choosing what I want to do and listening to my body. The first week after Kona was simply to catch up on sleep, use sleep as a way to recover from my 140.6 mile adventure, to loosen my body with daily movement (walking, easy swimming, bike riding), to honor my body with fresh foods and to respect my body if it craved something different than what I typically put into my daily diet. Although I don't believe in being restrictive with the diet, I feel strongly that "sugar" cravings after a hard workout or race should not always be rewarded with ice cream and sugary treats. This time around, I believe that my plant-based diet and emphasis on WHOLE foods curbed a lot of my typical post-race "carb" cravings and I found myself gravitating to wholesome carbs such a whole grains as well as lots of healthy fats and quali...

Never go into a meal starving

There's nothing wrong with being hungry for a meal. However, as athletes and fitness enthusiasts, meal-time is often a confusing time for many. As you continue your quest to develop a healthy relationship with food as well as appreciate the "fuel" that you put into your body, my number one tip to prevent overeating at meals (regardless if a workout preceeds the meal) as well as to prevent cravings after the meal, is to have a pre-meal snack. If you do workout before the meal, you have no excuse to go into the meal starving because as athletes, seeking performance gains (or body composition changes) from our training/exercise sessions, we want to be sure that we focus on nutrient timing, specifically the post-workout recovery snack. I believe that one of the missing links in weight loss, weight maintenance and performance gains is that people are too concerned with calories in vs calories out, especially around workouts. For having a glass of milk or a scoop of whey protei...

Consumer Reports on Health

I feel as if I am finally caught up on my reading..aka journals, newsletters and magazines. Thanks to 24 hours of flying and over 8 hours of hanging out in airports, I am finally up-to-date wit the latest and greatest in the nutrition world. As for exercise, I'm excited to announce that the American Dietetic Association (which is soon to be called by a new name: Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics ) has created a nutrition care manual dedicated entirely to sports! I use the care manual A LOT in the clinical world, especially when I receive a consult by a doctor or nurse to give a patient education on a certain topic. Most of our consults involve CHF (congestive heart failure) and diabetes (typically newly diagnosed type 2 diabetic) but we also get consults for renal diets (with or without dialysis), vegetarian/vegan diets (typically the doctor wants us to educate on more protein and calcium in the diet based on lab work) as well as weight loss. What I love about the care manual is t...

Love your body day!!

Thanks to my friends/mentors at Preferred Nutrition for telling me about Love Your Body Day!! When I was interning at Preferred Nutrition for my 8 week community nutrition rotation (July - Sept 2010), I really started to appreciate the human body, as an athlete and as a health-conscious individual. I strengthened my beliefs about nutrition as well as developed new philosophies about how we should view food. I really feel as if my time at Preferred Nutrition was one of the most monumental experiences in my internship as I truely started to develop a passion for helping people with nutrition. I really learned a lot from working with clients with eating disorders and by sitting in on lots of counseling sessions, I really grasped the concept of counseling and helping people, without saying a lot. As a dietitian, my goal isn't to tell you everything I know but rather to focus on the NOW and what you can do today, to make tomorrow even better. I believe the eating is much deeper than ...

Take a Dip!

I am excited to share my latest article on the NEW USA triathlon website. Did you know that over 140,000 individuals are members of USA triathlon? It is so fantastic to see our sport growing so quickly. I don't believe that you have to be a triathlete, runner or cyclist in order to live a long and healthy life but I do believe in goal setting and challenging yourself to become a smarter, more balanced, stronger and more productive YOU. Two of my recipes that I feature in the article contain yogurt which is a great source of calcium and protein. Eight ounces of Plain, low-fat yogurt contains 415mg of calcium and 1 cup of low or non fat milk contains 300 mg. According to the recommended daily allowance of calcium, it is suggested that adults 19-50 years consume 1000 mg of daily calcium whereas people over the age of 50 should consume 1,200 mg and it is noted that women after menopause need more calcium to prevent osteoporosis. Individuals 9-18 years should consume 1300 mg and pregna...

Food day - Oct 24th!!

(Found this picture on a vegetarian facebook page...LOVE IT!!) OCTOBER 24h - FOOD DAY!! How exciting...a day to celebrate REAL FOOD!!! According to the Food Day website : Real food tastes great. Meals built around vegetables, fruits, and whole grains are delicious and satisfying. But far too many Americans are eating diets composed of salty, overly processed packaged foods clad in cardboard and plastic; high-calorie sugary drinks that pack on pounds and rot teeth, but have no nutritional benefit; and fast-food meals made of white bread, fatty grain-fed factory-farmed meat, French fries, and more soda still. What we eat should be bolstering our health, but it's actually contributing to several hundred thousand premature deaths from heart attack, stroke, diabetes, and cancer each year. What's more, the way our food is produced all too often harmful to farm workers, the environment, and farm animals. Food Day's goal is nothing less than to transform the American diet—to inspir...