Leap of Faith

Towards the end of my 90-minute vinyasa flow yoga class, we sometimes practice inversions.  Typically, I do "legs up the wall."  I remember when as a 5-year old in my tumbling/ballet/tap class, the teacher had broken her promise to hold my legs.  Today, I decided to let go of my apprehension.  I placed my forehead on my mat and swung one leg at a time up the wall.  I was in a yogi headstand!  The only problem was getting down!

Life is filled with opportunities when we have to let go of the apprehension, push away the barriers which hold us back.  Growth and change require us to suspend our disbelief, if even for a moment.  Fear of failure keeps us on that treadmill instead of on the open road. 

Our Maltese Yvette typically waits by a step for one of us to carry her down to her area.  Sometimes, for no clear reason, she takes a flying leap down the step.  When we stop at the threshold, we usually don't make the move. 

Whether we are contemplating career change, having a baby, getting divorced, changing our hairstyle, starting a new workout routine, or switching up our dietary habits to lose twenty pounds, we must take that leap of faith, that first step, ignoring our fears of failure or perhaps even success.

So, today, as my teacher directed me to straighten my legs and let go, one leg at a time, I thought about how far I have come on my journey when I stopped over thinking decisions and went with my instincts.  To grow or change, we need to take that leap of faith.

Chocolate, A Love Story

As the final minutes of Valentine's Day 2013 sweep on the clock, perhaps you're tempted to delve into that red velvet heart-shaped box of cream-filled chocolates or pink- and red-coated M&Ms.  Chocolate in its various guises is like that mysterious blind date. In some forms, the confection is chockful of antioxidants and naturally-occurring feel good chemicals.  But, in the garden variety movie theater form, chocolate may be filled with fat, sugar, soy lechitin, and calories.  As with searching for Mr. or Ms. Right, finding the right chocolate may be just around the corner.

When it comes to chocolate, the preferred type is tall, dark, and handsome.  Oops! Wrong blog!  As you have probably read, dark chocolate contains a number of antioxidants and other naturally occurring chemicals that cause the brain to release endorphins, those feel good neurotransmitters referred to as "private narcotics" by the website How Stuff Works  Yup.  Same endorphins that give us "runners' high, that exhilarating feeling we get after a cardio class, or a particularly hot hour of lovemaking. 

Chocolate comes from the cacao plant. Its rich nutrients are particularly concentrated in dark chocolate, which has cocoa solids and flavanol antioxidants found in green tea and blueberries.  Antioxidants may protect against cellular damage causing cancer, cardiovascular disease, and premature aging.  In clinical studies, chocolate has demonstrated properties known to reduce blood pressure, prevent arterial plaque formation, and cause a mild reduction in clot formation. 

In the "I love it when you whisper glycemic load in my ear!" category, dark chocolate boasts a low glycemic load approximating your morning oatmeal.  Glycemic load refers to how quickly blood sugar spikes after eating a particular food. 

If the health benefits mentioned above don't send you foraging through the pantry in search of a midnight candy nosh, consider that dark chocolate is a good source of minerals such as copper, magnesium, potassium, calcium, and iron. 

Whether your significant other or your office mate gifts you with the sweet stuff, chocolate can bring the same sensations to the brain as love.  The confection is a concentrated source of theobromine, a mild stimulant, caffeine, and phenylethylamine, which releases endorphins in your brain.  PEA, as it is affectionately known, is released by the brain when people are falling in...

L-O-V-E

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Beth

Clean Your Diet Coke Habit

My past two blogs, I wrote about my past Diet Coke addiction and the potential health risks of aspartame.  If you're motivated to eliminate the not so "Real Thing" from your daily routine, here are some tips to help you detox from diet soda.

Registered dietician Eliza Zied MS, RD, CDN, and author of Nutrition at Your Fingertips, tweeted and blogged about her aspartame rehab, offering some suggestions.  Zied believes two servings per day of aspartame may not pose a problem for those without other medical complications.  However, since artificial sweeteners are present in everything from that can of diet soda you drink at the movies or with your lunch to sugar free yogurt, gum, candy, and in your skinny nonfat latte, the servings per day end up in the five to six plus range.  During her research for a post on MSNBC, Zied did find a suspected connection between aspartame consumption and metabolic syndrome, Type 2 diabetes, and kidney problems.  Like many recovering Diet Coke addicts, Zeid decided to go cold turkey, realizing one sip from that dewy ice cold can can lead her to fall off the wagon. 


1. Make a Trade: Substitute that afternoon or perhaps morning Diet Coke for seltzer with a splash of fruit juice or squirt of lime, flavored sparkling water, or unsweetened iced tea.

2. Take a Walk: Regular activity can help with that afternoon energy drop. Exercise leads to body awareness, which promotes cleaner eating.

3. Clean the Home Plate: Eliminate processed food and anything with an ingredient list you can't pronounce.  Shifting to a cleaner diet of fresh vegetables, grains, lean protein, and fruit will help with the detox process.  You are what you eat.

4. Water, Baby!: Crowd out unhealthy, chemical-filled beverages with a daily eight glasses of water.  We often confuse thirst for hunger which can lead to binge eating. Diet soda's caffeine is a diuretic while the sodium exacerbates thirst.  Do your body a favor.  Quench your thirst with water instead of a soda or "energy drink."

5. Take a Multivitamin: Packing in all our needed nutrients at meal and snack time is a stiff work order.  A multivitamin with plenty of water to detox the chemicals is a wise strategy.

6. Be Aware of Triggers: Perhaps a rushed lunch at your desk or drive through in the car triggers a craving.  Maybe it's a ballgame or the movies.  As the boy scouts say, "Be prepared."

7. Don't Skip: Avoid meal-skipping which can lead to overindulgence later on when you're famished and tired.  My high school lunches consisted of an apple and a can of TaB.  Not the healthiest choice.

Here's to clean living!

Beth

It's a Diet Coke Thing

To quote from Diet Coke's 2004 ad campaign, "It's a Diet Coke Thing."  I detailed my relationship with the red and white can in my last post.  The ingredient that gives Diet Coke its sweet taste is of course found in a myriad of diet soft drinks, chewing gum, candy, and in those light blue packets people sometimes dump into their morning coffee.  Diet Jello is a go to dessert for low carb dieters.

The safety of the artificial sweetener aspartame AKA NutraSweet has been questioned since its debut into the food and beverage industry in the early eighties.  The chemical formula that creates the low calorie sweetener is a methyl ester of the aspartic acid/phenylanaline dipetide.  Like many peptides, the chemical is unstable, breaking down at higher temperatures.  If you've ever tasted a can past the expiration date or that was sitting in the hot sun, you'd find the soda essentially without taste.  During Desert Storm, soldiers were treated to cases of the presumably thirst quenching beverage.  When aspartame reaches temperatures of over 85 degrees F, the chemical breaks down into toxins including wood alcohol, formaldehyde (embalming fluid), formic acid (ant sting venom) and DKP (brain tumor agent.)  Perhaps it's no coincidence the symptoms suffered by Gulf War vets are similar to those reported by frequent aspartame users.

According to Dr. Janet Starr Hull, author of "Sweet Poison," aspartame is associated with 92 different symptoms, which may present suddenly or gradually.  Unlike saccharin, aspartame is a dissolved during the digestion process, sending the chemical throughout your body.  Symptoms reported to the FDA include everything from migraines and dizziness to seizures, night vision problems, tinnitus, digestive issues, palpitations, and ADD.  That's just for starters. 

Aspartame illness, as some in the medical community refer to the spectrum of associated symptoms, can mimic a number of serious diseases including Parkinson's Disease, Lyme Disease, Epstein-Barr, chronic fatigue, Graves Disease, ALS, Alzheimers, Epilepsy, hypothyroidism, fibromalgyia, ADD, and MS. 

In an ironic twist, low-calorie aspartame may actually lead to gradual weight gain and hypoglycemia.  You can't fool mother nature.  When we trick out bodies into thinking sugar calories are coming, the pancreas pumps more insulin into our system, exacerbating high blood sugar and contributing to weight gain, especially in the abdominal region. 

The chemical structure of the amino acids present in NutraSweet or aspartame may block or lower serotonin, tryrosine, dopamine, norepinephrine, and adrenaline, effecting the neurological system.  If some of these sound familiar, they are present in many meds taken by people with low levels.  Coincidence or not?

NutraSweet should especially be avoided during pregnancy and childhood when the concentration brings additional toxicity due to lower body weights.  Methanol, one of the chemical components broken down from aspartame, causes problems with DNA replication and is suspected to cause birth defects including retardation.

If you're still hooked on that icy red and white can, I'll share Dr. Hull's detox tips in my next blog.

Until then,

Beth

You Are What You Drink: Diet Coke

Recording artist Taylor Swift has penned a deal to join the Diet Coke team. The association of the lanky doe-eyed pop star with the "pop" brand has added to the stream of controversy relating to marketing of processed foods or drinks to kids. 

NRDC's Laurie David blogged in Huffington Post, criticizing the brand's swift reach to hook younger kids to the addictive soft drink.  Aspartame and other ingredients in the diet soft drink have been associated with a who's who of medical and neurological problems, most pooh-poohed by the soft drink industry.  Should one of America's strongest performing exports be marketing to children?  We'll table  that discussion for another day.

I'm here to come clean today about my own past.  I am a reformed Diet Coke addict.

TaB was my gateway drug.  In fact, when Diet Coke was first introduced into the food supply back in 1982, I'd drive miles in search of the pink can with its spicy, peppery taste.  Eventually, I succumbed to TaB's replacement.  My college days often started with a Diet Coke from the cafeteria, especially tailing a late night pizza binge.  Coca Cola's marketing agency so appreciated  my story, I won a silver purse in a writing contest in honor of the soft drink's 25th anniversary. 

Though Coca Cola, the FDA, and the makers of NutraSweet will defend the artificial sweetener to the end, I can tell you from personal experience diet soda has some strong addictive properties.

I had pretty much conquered my habit till an at home writing job brought me back to my college desk littered with empty Diet Coke cans.  After researching the various medical and neurological symptoms associated with NutraSweet/aspartame, I decided to clean house.  I told my daughters we'd no longer be adding Diet Coke to the shopping cart.

A few years later, the 3 pm craving for an icy can is gone.  I've substituted green tea or a club soda.

My story is far from unusual.  A friend's husband who typically downed at least two six-packs a day shared with me last year he had gotten a handle on his addiction.  He quit cold turkey.

Just like alcoholics can't take a sip, a can or two leads to cravings and a can or two a day can lead to more symptoms than cited by voice over in a pharmaceutical ad.  Since the 1980s, most complaints addressed to the FDA concern aspartame or NutraSweet.  The sweetener has been associated with everything from migraines or memory loss to vertigo, dizziness, digestive issues, increased risk for diabetes, kidney disease, heart attacks, strokes, and depression.  The list continues.

A  study at the School of  Medicine at the University of Texas San Antonio tracked the waist measurements of those who guzzled diet soda with teetotalers of the bubbly stuff.  Diet soda drinkers showed a seventy percent increase in waist measurement over nondrinkers.  So apparently, the drink we choose to acquire or maintain that youthful svelte physique a la Taylor Swift wasn't exactly meeting its mark.

The perils of aspartame or NutraSweet bring a pretty high cost for that icy can or fountain drink at the movies.  I'm so committed to getting you to drop that can, I'm dedicating my next few blogs to the safety issues surrounding diet drinks.

To borrow from Diet Coke's 1998 marketing campaign, "You Are What You Drink.:"

Signing off until tomorrow,

Beth

Clean Your Personal Space

 

All car interiors appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real cars, living or dead, is purely coincidental!

Yesterday as I was waiting to start Coach Neda's insanely awesome Malibu JAM class (blog to follow!), I heard one of my fellow "dancers" quip her life seemed so disordered when her car or bedroom were in disarray.  I got to thinking how my personal panic mode sets in when my car is littered with the "accessories" that come with motherhood or when my bedroom is cluttered with anything from NyQuil bottles and cough drops to books and to-do lists.  Closets and drawers can be overflowing with cute shoes, NARS, skinny jeans, and Lululemon but once there's an overflow into other areas, anxiety sets in.

Living in LA, my car is a personal refuge as much as the means to get from Point A to Point B with school drop offs, yoga, Trader Joe's runs, and work in between.  I kaboshed the whole car as dining experience thing years ago.  But, kids still leave gum wrappers, shoes recently worn to a bat mitzvah, folders, and that middle school PE sweatshirt. Looking through the rear view mirror, only to find that horror of all horrors, a messy backseat!  My 12 year old daughter sometimes reminds me to take a cleansing breath, promising to put away her stash once we're home.

During a recent battle with that long lasting respiratory thing everyone has, I am unsure what caused me more angst.  My intermittent cough and laryngitis or the accumulation of OTC flu and cold meds atop my desk.  I am a must make the bed before I leave the house kind of girl so bedroom disarray doesn't work for me.

What does this have to do with nutrition?  When our personal space feels out of whack, it's much easier to fall into a pattern of disordered eating ranging from skipped meals to closet bingeing from that bag of Ruffles, Ben & Jerry's Phish Food, or the kids Halloween candy, pick your poison.

When our personal space is compromised, so is our resolve to eat clean, unprocessed foods.  So, take a deep cleansing breath and enlist everyone's help to put things back where they belong.  Eliminating that which causes us stress makes it so much easier to take the time to choose salad or an apple when we're famished rather than the closest "junk" food. 

Beth