Wellfie Wednesday Tip #152: Kids Eat Right Month™

Happy Wellfie Wednesday! Welcome back! This week is brought to you by Patrick (@TheFuelPhysio) and he’s here to let you know that August is Kids Eat Right Month™ (Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics)!

Kids Eat Right Month™ is a great time to really emphasize the importance of healthy eating for our future generations! But also the importance of making meal times and even the preparation of meals a family affair so that healthier eating become a true family tradition and life long habit.

One of the best things you can do as parent is to get your kids involved in meal planning and prepping! This allows them to really explore and experience different types of foods and flavors, while appreciating the time that goes into preparing a meal. Make family meals an almost daily habit and make it fun! Try coming up with nightly themes, like Mexican or Italian, and don’t overburden with recipes that have an extensive list of ingredients, keep it simple. See the infographic below for some age appropriate tasks!

Visit Kids Eat Right for more information, including some great recipes that are perfect for the whole family!

Thank you for all of the #WellfieWednesday support, be sure to post your pictures this week that demonstrate your active patriotism and tag the WW crew members in your post (@TheFuelPhysio, @Eric_in_AmERICa, @AaronPerezPT, @DianaKlatt) and keep the wave of healthy change going!

- WW Crew

Wellfie Wednesday Tip #150: Reducing Diabetes with Plant-Based Foods

Happy Wellfie Wednesday! Welcome back!

This week’s tip looks at following a plant-based dietary pattern and it’s associated reduction in risk of developing diabetes. A new systematic review and meta-analysis was released on Monday, which found that greatest adherence to a plant-based pattern produced a 23% lower risk of developing diabetes. And greater adherence was said to be a predominant/frequent consumption of a “healthy” plant-based pattern that consists of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts.

Benefits of following a plant-based pattern have been found to far exceed that of just reducing diabetes, and has also been found to reduce lipid cholesterol, reduced risk of coronary heart disease, and reduce systemic inflammation within the body. And even for those with a diagnosis of diabetes, adopting a more plant-based pattern is found to be an excellent component of disease management, improving glycemic index and insulin sensitivity.

Now know that other factors are at play for risk of developing diabetes, but chances are good that you can successfully reduce that risk substantially with a healthy eating pattern, adequate physical activity, sufficient sleep, and maintenance of a healthy weight. And if adopting a more plant-based pattern is something you’d like to try out, remember to start small and gradually make changes for sustainability.

Thank you for all of the #WellfieWednesday support, be sure to post your pictures this week that demonstrate your active patriotism and tag the WW crew members in your post (@TheFuelPhysio, @Eric_in_AmERICa, @AaronPerezPT, @DianaKlatt) and keep the wave of healthy change going!

- WW Crew

Qian F, Liu G, Hu FB, Bhupathiraju SN, Sun Q. Association Between Plant-Based Dietary Patterns and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA Intern Med. Published online July 22, 2019. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2019.2195

Wellfie Wednesday Tip #139: National Nutrition Month® 2019

Welcome back! Happy Wellfie Wednesday! And Happy National Nutrition Month®! This week is brought to you by Patrick (@TheFuelPhysio), our crew’s Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.

National Nutrition Month® is an annual campaign “To increase the public’s awareness of the importance of good nutrition and position Academy members as the authorities in nutrition.”

The Key Messages of this year’s campaign are:

1. Discover the benefits of a healthy eating style.

2. Choose foods and drinks that are good for your health.

3. Include a variety of healthful foods from all of the food groups on a regular basis.

4. Select healthier options when eating away from home.

5. Be mindful of portion sizes. Eat and drink the amount that's right for you, as MyPlate encourages us to do.

6. Keep it simple. Eating right doesn't have to be complicated.

7. Make food safety part of your everyday routine.

8. Help to reduce food waste by considering the foods you have on hand before buying more at the store.

9. Find activities that you enjoy and be physically active most days of the week.

10. Consult the nutrition experts. Registered Dietitian Nutritionists can provide sound, easy-to-follow personalized nutrition advice to meet your lifestyle, preferences and health-related needs.

Check out the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics website (https://www.eatright.org) for an abundance of resources for healthier eating.

Thanks for all of the support, be sure to post your pictures this week and tag the WW crew members in your post (@TheFuelPhysio, @Eric_in_AmERICa, @FreestylePhysio, @DianaKlatt) and keep the wave of healthy change going!

- WW Crew

Wellness Wednesday Tip #50: Benefits of Traveling & Keeping Your Routine

     Welcome back and Happy Wellfie Wednesday! This week is brought to you by Diana and inspired by her recent travels.

     I have just returned from a trip to Italy and wanted to discuss the effects of traveling and your physical health. Many people are under the impression that when you travel you won’t be able to keep up with your fitness routine or that you will ignore your nutritional goals, but that’s completely untrue. During my trip, I found that I was far more aware of what I was eating, more active, and overall felt more invigorated and energized.

Physical activity. I’m not sure about all of you, but when I am home I walk a decent amount. I try to walk places if I can versus driving, which is pretty easy for me given that I live in New York City. While I was traveling I found that I was walking an average of 15 km (9 miles) a day! This was the best way for me to get around and see everything as well as preventing me from mistakenly getting on a bus or metro in the wrong direction and getting more lost. Traveling makes you more active of a person because you aren’t sitting at your desk working or studying! You are out and about, trying to explore as much as possible. And as a #WellfieCrew member, I obviously also brought theraband with me to keep myself active. They take up very little space and can be manipulated in so many ways for exercise. Backpacking also acts as an indirect method of exercise as you are carrying around all of your things while traveling between cities! In American standards, I am an early riser. In European standards, I am considered mad! I told a few of my hosts that I wake up at 6am to run almost daily and they were all completely shocked! This turned out to be a great time to go out as cities were silent and you could run on a path to see monuments and landmarks to avoid the masses and crowds during the daytime (for example, the Trevi fountain in Rome).

Nutrition. What’s the first thing you think about when you hear “Italy?” Pizza. Pasta. Cheese. Wine. Not things you typically associate with a healthy diet. Italy is notorious for eating an abundance of grains, dairy, and meats. You would think that I would have gained weight and felt unhealthy after having pizza daily, but it was the opposite! I found that everything tastes lighter and fresher, which I at first thought was just the fact that I was in a new country but in actuality, the quality of the food is better in the European Union. The EU has higher regulations and restrictions on their treatment and production of food products and thus the quality of the food on your plate is greater (in comparison to the United States). This is certainly felt in eating as you feel lighter and less weighed down by a nearly identical meals of pizza and antipasta (appetizer) in the EU versus the USA. (13 Ways the EU Beats the U.S. on Food Safety) On top of the quality of ingredients, I found that it was easier to keep track of what I was eating while traveling because it was harder for me to succumb and purchase my guilty pleasure foods (ie. Haribo fizzy cola gummies…) because of my weak grasp of the Italian language.

Expand Your Perspective. “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” (Bill Bryson) Travel gives you a chance to interact with new people and new environments, which ultimately gives you a greater perspective of things. You are exposed to other people and hear about the way that others live in their hometowns or you see how people live if you happen to go to smaller cities and villages. It gives you a perspective you would have otherwise never known, especially as someone from a dominant country (ie. the United States of America).

Mental Wellness and Stress Reduction*. We lead busy lives, constantly occupied, and always trying to increase our multitasking abilities. Travel is a great way to escape the stresses and commitments of everyday life, offering novelty and change in the form of new people, sights and experiences. Traveling has many advantages, with stress relief topping the list. With a short list of activities each day, freed up from the complexities of ongoing projects and relationships, the mind can reset, as does the body, with stress relief the main outcome. Humans thrive on novelty, and travel offers the complete package with new faces, sounds and sights. (Dr. Margaret J. King, https://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2017/02/24/how-travel-can-benefit-our-mental-health/)

     Overall, traveling and vacation tends to be misinterpreted as purely for relaxation and doing nothing but it’s quite the contrary! You can relax and stay active, recharge and explore, and open your mind to new things, all from the simple act of traveling! “Investment in travel is an investment in yourself.” (Matthew Karsten)

*Longer article to come. I met many people in my travels that I have reached out to in order to collaborate to write about the effects of travel on the mind, body, and soul. Check back in a few weeks at klattalyst.com/thetraveleffect

     Thanks again for all of the #WellfieWednesday support, be sure to post your pictures this week and tag the WW crew members (@PBernerSPT, @Eric_in_AmERICa, @AaronPerezPT, @fitnerdaimee, @DianaKlatt) and keep the wave of healthy change going!

- WW Crew