Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Sharing the motivation

Many of you may already know these things, but I find myself prone to eating things I shouldn't so this was motivating for me. Today Greg was on a film shoot at Duke Integrative Medicine. Integrative Nutritionist Beth Reardon, MS, RD, LDN gave a seminar entitled "An integrative approach to chronic illness." The simplified idea behind it was that everything you put in your mouth either leads you toward or away from chronic illness. Here are some staggering motivating statistics from her hand out:

Percent of Chronic Diseases that are preventable:

Colon Cancer 71%
Stroke 70%
Heart Disease 82%
Diabetes 91%
Other Cancers 40%

She stressed that 40% of all cancers may be prevented by consuming a diet high in fruits and vegetables, getting regular exercise, and maintaining a healthy weight.

If you... You can expect an extra...

Eat your veggies 1.5 years
Exercise 2.4 years
Eat nuts 5x a week 2.5 years
Normal BP 3.7 years
No diabetes 6.6 years
Healthy weight 11 years

Carbs 50-60% total calories
Fewer refined, more whole foods
Choose beverages wisely
Hefty whole grains
Cook Pasta al dente
Eat more beans and legumes
Basmati rice/brown rice

Protein 20% calories
Increase vegetable protein
Reduce red meat
Remove poultry skin, buy organic
Omega Eggs
Minimize cured meats
Eat more fish
Incorporate more soy, beans, nuts

Fats 25-30%
Watch PUFAS (Soy, Saff, sun, sesame, corn oils)
Avoid margarines, shortening and hydrogenated anything
Use EVOO (not sure what that is) and Canola
Consider nut oils for dressings
Eat nuts daily
Mayo with canola, olive oils
Omega 3's (ALA, flaxseed, hemp, pumpkin, walnuts, canola, green leafy vegetables, fatty fish, seaweed)

Omega 3's -complicated diagram but basically...
Decrease pain
anti-inflammatory
Vasodilates as opposed to vasoconstricts
decreases clotting
decreases platelet stickiness
decreases bp (blood pressure)


Whew. Greg also brought home what they cooked for lunch there for me to try. It was barbecue tofu and spaghetti carbonara sp? with pine nuts and red onions (I think that was pine nuts) It was actually a little bitter but I managed to eat some of it and I am motivated to try harder. Here's to good health....

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Awesome. You must have been listening to our conversations the last couple days. We have been trying to eat better for a while now, but we seem to revert back to past behaviors pretty easily. The chick on Oprah yesterday made me think a lot too. I've found the only way we can get all of our omega 3's in is by taking purified cod liver oil. It is molecularly distilled (Carlson's or Nordic Naturals) and doesn't taste fishy at all. We get the liquid. We have so much to improve on. I swear, we're never going to buy another hotdog again.

Anonymous said...

EVOO is extra virgin olive oil. Half this list is on my "Do not eat" list. Eating healthy and safely is really tricky for me. I hope you can have greater success without all the aggravation. I eat a lot of Basmati rice because it's delicious.

Alice said...

Oh, the balance between enjoying life and giving ourselves enough guilt trips to live healthier! I love junk food ... but I can do better. I think we're going to try eating beans at least twice a week and doing more brown rice. Maybe you could post any healthy recipes you come across!

Kerri said...

I can't decide if this was depressing or motivating...maybe a little of both!

Greg said...

Wow, I think I only have a couple of years left...sad!!