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June 2007 - Posts
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For this “Fun Friday”, I want to share one of my favorite ‘summer break’ activities – water sports. Picture it! The sun is blazing and you’re frying from the heat. You dive into a pool and the water is crisp and cool. You take a few strokes and it feels fantastic to stretch your muscles and be active. Now that is my idea of a healthy summer break.
I have always been a big fan of water sports. When I was a kid, my mom used to take me and my sister and to my aunt’s house. She lived within walking distance to a lake and I remember spending countless weekends swimming, boating, and tubing around the lake. I also swam competitively when I was in high school which introduced me to the amazing health benefits of swimming. Swimming laps helped strengthen my muscles, build my lung capacity and it also gave me a sense of accomplishment.
So now, I am always looking for fun activities to get me in the water. In a few weeks, I am planning a trip to Six Flags: Hurricane Harbor. It is a water park near DC with tons of water slides and pools. I also just found out my local YMCA has open swim hours. For a few dollars, I can do laps, horse around in the pool or dive off the diving board. Now that is some inexpensive fun.
This summer, I encourage you to take up a water sport. Whether it is swimming laps or even horsing around in the pool, it is a great way to get in some family fun.
What are your favorite water activities? Reply to this blog and share them with us.
Justin – A Lumen
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In my past blogs, I've often talked about different health tools on the Lumenos online health site that are great to use when you are looking for more health information such as nutrition and fitness. One more way to stay on top of your health is to be able to better understand the benefits that your plan provides. For most people checking your e-mail online is an everyday task. Now you have one more place to go to check mail. The Lumenos online health site Message Center.
The Message Center is an easy way for people to check for relevant news from the Lumenos plan, important notifications, new tools and much more. Everytime you log in to the Lumenos online health site, you'll see a box on the left hand side called the Message Center. This box will alert you to the number of new messages that you may have in your inbox. If you have a message, just click into the link and this will take you to the e-mails in your Message Center. Additionally, you can also send an e-mail to Customer Service or just send in your phone number if you want someone to call you back.
It's a great way to stay in-tune with updates from the health plan. So next time you are logged into your account, check in to the Message Center to see if you've got mail....
Reena (A Lumen)
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Summer is a great time to capture those great blockbuster movies. It is not the movies without a tub of popcorn or a box of chocolate covered raisins. Unfortunately, these treats can add up to more calories than a meal!
A large tub of popcorn without the added butter is a whopping 1150 calories and 76 grams of fat. A large popcorn with the added butter is 1657 calories and 134 grams of fat, which is 206% of your daily value of fat! On the other hand, chocolate covered raisins are 185 calories for a 1.7 oz package and only 7 grams of fat. The tricky part is the size of the box of candy that you get in a movie theater. Candies like gummy animals and licorice ropes are a better choice over other sweets. A handful of gummy bears offers a fat-free few hundred calories as opposed to a 3.3 ounce size package of chocolate peanut candy packing in almost 500 calories.
  
If you have to snack, try giving up that high calorie beverage that you normally drink with your popcorn or candy. Choose a diet soda instead of a super-sized, super-sugary soda or slushee. You can also bring in your own bottled water.
Don’t worry – there are ways to save calories and enjoy the movies too. The best option is to bring snacks from home and you can have them portioned out and ready to go. Keep in mind that many movie theaters discourage bringing your own snacks. So check with the manager – or at least be discreet. You can make your own popcorn at home and bring it in or choose to order a small (400 calories) and share it. Another option to consider is that you don't have to eat anything at all during a movie. Eat a healthy meal or snack beforehand, and you may be able to break the movie-snacking habit that's costing you money and calories. Keep in mind that anything you are eating during a movie is “mindless eating”. Since you are really into watching the movie, it can result in eating the whole bag without noticing. Plan to bring smaller portions to avoid overeating.
Enjoy your summer at the movies!
Rebecca
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I'm excited to launch our next Ignite Book Club - starting next week, June 12. As a reminder, the book we'll read is called Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink, Ph.D. This is not a "diet" book per se, but in the book, Dr. Wansink shares research he's conducted at his "Food Lab" at The University of Illinois, and Cornell. I've started it, and it's really interesting, so I hope you all will join me in reading!
In one study, moviegoers who had eaten within the previous hour were given a free bucket of popcorn.. some medium sized, some large. Some subjects were given stale popcorn as well. The study found those with larger buckets ate more, even if the popcorn was stale! Another study found that more food variety leads to eating more- for example people eat more when jelly beans are mixed flavors vs. one flavor. I look forward to gaining some insight as to the estimated 250 decisions we make about food each day, many of which we are unaware.
Here are a few reviews of the book- more info can be found at www.mindlesseating.org
“Brian Wansink is the Sherlock Holmes of food, discovering one reason after another how our food world drives us to eat. We would each do well, the nation would do well, to be mindful of what he recommends.”
—Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., Director, Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, Yale University, and author of Food Fight
“Wondering why you ate too much popcorn or Chinese food? What made you crave that Cinnabon or those M&Ms? Mindless Eating unveils the invisible cues that make us reach for more… and gives us the smarts to reach for less. You won't find a more entertaining book about what and how much we eat.”
—Bonnie Liebman, Director of Nutrition, Center for Science in the Public Interest
“Brian Wansink is best known as a “food psychologist”—the guy who knows why we do what we do when we eat… What he has learned helps explain why so many of us struggle with our weight.”
— New York Daily News
Next week, we'll discuss the first two chapters- see you then!
Dell- a Lumen
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As I noted in a previous blog, the low-carb diet craze of a couple of years ago caused many people to try to avoid carbohydrates while pushing up their protein intake. But just as not all carbs are bad, too much protein may not be good.
The protein problem, just like the carb problem, has a lot to do with the source: we get too much of our protein from fatty red meats.
Protein, like carbs, is a necessary part of a complete diet. A typical adult male needs about 60 grams of protein a day; a typical adult female about 50. But instead of getting all of that protein from meat, you should be getting much of it from other sources, such as egg whites, nonfat dairy (like yogurt), beans, peas, soybeans and tofu.
As many vegetarians know, you can actually get all your daily requirement of protein from non-animal sources, but it takes work. You need to make sure you’re eating from all the plant groups: beans, whole grains, fruits and veggies.
Of course, that advice is true even if you’re not a vegetarian.
Dr.Mike
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