Dear Diary :: Food and Nutrition

Dear Diary
by author Jenn Farrell

It all started with Harper’s Bazaar. I’m not a regular reader, but whenever I pick up a copy I’m always amused by the “Eating Diaries,” wherein three slender and well-dressed women recount their daily food intake and exercise regimes.

Reading what these women eat feels more salacious than pawing through their handbags. For every entrepreneur/mom who lives off grilled fish and organic salads, there’s a fashion editor who “eats” vitamins and mineral water for breakfast and lunch, and four glasses of champagne for dinner.

Then the nutritional experts weigh in and suggest ways for these women to improve their eating habits. I laughed out loud when they recommended that legendary model Iman–whose diet is utterly above reproach–stop having her afternoon treat of three hard candies.

I’ll probably never be asked to wriggle my way into a size-2 couture gown or share my eating habits with the readers of Bazaar. But it did get me thinking. I’m sure I overestimate the number of fruits and veggies I get in a day and have a conveniently bad memory about sugar and other junk I eat, so why not write it all down for a couple of weeks?

The first few days went well. Despite my promise to eat “normally,” knowing I was tracking myself put me on my best behaviour. I had salads and grilled chicken for lunch, drank lots of water, ate two fig bars instead of four, and stayed away from the cupboard with the ancient Halloween candy. Wow, I thought, I’m getting healthier just by doing this!

But soon enough, my old habits started to reappear. Filling out the journal was accompanied by dread instead of pride. I decided to sit down and look back through my days as a diarist and see what patterns emerged.

What I discovered seems obvious now, but came as a shock when I saw it. The long wait between lunch and dinner made me so ravenous that by four-thirty I’d be inhaling whatever junk I could get my hands on. Then I’d feel lousy and tired.

Sometimes I snacked so late that I lost my appetite for a proper dinner, but then I’d be back in the kitchen two hours later, poking around for more snacks. So that’s where the bedtime stomach aches were coming from! These problems were easily solved by planning a healthy snack between two and three o’clock that included those neglected fruits and vegetables.

It was also clear that a breakfast without protein made for a major slump before lunch, because those were the days I’d have to go back and have that second cup of coffee. That was remedied by making sure I added some yogourt or almonds to my morning meal.

I don’t keep a diary anymore; that would be a little too control-freak for me. But it was a valuable way to see where I could improve my eating habits and my moods. I may not be ready for Harper’s Bazaar, but I feel better already.

Jenn Farrell is a Vancouver writer and editor.

Source: alive #315, January 2009

Cancer-Fighting Recipes
When I came to Canada in 1959 I was practically a greenhorn concerning vegetarianism. Then I married Siegfried! One of the wedding gifts I received from him was a vegetarian cookbook. I struggled with the concept.

Return to Your Roots
Is your body genetically programmed to thrive on foods which were prevalent in the diet of your ancestors? If your forbears lived in northern Europe, should you build your diet around fish and dairy? If you're of Asian desc.

Can My Diet Survive the Shortbread Season?
It's that time of year when all those parties and social gatherings dot the calendar. Everywhere we turn, sweet temptation rears its ugly hea.

Our Food Is Killing Us!
Dieticians and nutritionists tend to evaluate the food and drink we consume by the calories they contain and whether they will make us lose weight or make us fat. They develop formulas with the right proportion of carbohydrates, protein and fats for keeping our bodies healthy and good-looking.

You Are How You Eat
Food eaten without relish and appetite may remain for hours in the stomach undigested. There's no end to nutritional advice about what we should eat. We can barely make it from one meal to the next without information about food choices from our televisions, radios, books, newspapers, and magazines.

The Science of Mood Foods
Why is it that the majority of diets seem to go down in a hail of cookies and ice cream? The answer usually lies in our inherited biochemistry. Back in the good old days (a few thousand years ago), food was not as plentiful as it is today.

The French Paradox Explained
Many jealous North Americans have wondered how the French can consume foods that are known contributors to weight gain - white bread, cheese, rich sauces, and red wine - yet never seem to gain a pound. Scientists have coined it the French paradox.

Food Combinations for a Healthy heart
Viscous fibre from oats and barley, plant sterols from fruits and vegetables, soy protein, and nuts such as almonds and walnuts: these four types of foods have been shown to improve heart health by increasing high-density lipoprotein.

Monitoring After-Meal Blood Sugar
One of the most important goals in helping people manage blood sugar, lose weight, and control appetite is preventing excessive after-meal elevations in blood sugar levels.

Fast Food
Time-starved or just plain starved, many of us are reliant on searching for a convenient and healthy "meal replacement to complement our fast-paced lifestyles.

Wheatless Wonders
As a nutritionist, I am often asked about gluten-free diets by those with difficulty digesting certain grain foods. Gluten is a protein made up of many different proteins. Two main groups of these are gliadin and glutenin.

When the Body Talks

Vitality: Quest for a Healthy Diet in the Wake of the Low Carb Craze
It was the ever witty Mark Twain who said, "Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint."

The Anti-Inflammatory Diet
What do type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, cancer, heart disease, stroke, Parkinson's, and rheumatoid arthritis all have in common? Ground-breaking research indicates that they may all begin with an inflammatory process.

Protein Up Your Detox
Most North Americans begin their daily ritual with a shower. We place significant importance on the products we use to brush our teeth, wash our hair, and cleanse our bodies. Yet many of us do not practise the same stringent guidelines when it comes to what we ingest and how we cleanse our bodies from the inside.

The Natural Makeover Diet
Our faces don't lie. You can determine the state of a woman's health simply by looking at her skin, hair, and nails. Try as we might, no amount or makeup will work to change those suitcases under our eyes or the alligator skin on our hands.

Acid or Alkaline?
Your body's alkaline and acid balance (pH levels) can play a role in your overall state of health. For optimum health and well-being, leading health experts agree we should have a pH level as close to 7 (neutral) as possible.

The Natural Makeover Diet
Naturopathic doctor Joey Shulman is a high-profile authority on nutrition and fitness. The deceptively simple appearance of her new book, however, almost caused it to become lost in the pile of material that makes up this reviewer's desk.

Five Steps from Fine to Fabulous
We all have the power to influence our health and well-being through the choices we make every day.

Yeast
A recent conversation with Edith, an old friend, reminded me that even an ordinarily vivacious and energetic health professional can occasionally have trouble with weight and depression.

The Metabolic Syndrome Program
Most of us don't yet know much about metabolic syndrome (MSX), but in the few short minutes it will take to read this page, we may realize that someone we know could be suffering from this group of conditions.

Balancing Act
Living a natural lifestyle is challenging, and raising children with the same beliefs is even harder. Living a natural lifestyle is a commitment-a commitment to your family, to the environment, and most of all, to yourself.

The Brain Diet
People in the medical and natural health fields, along with the rest of us, are long overdue for a body of work that targets medicine's final frontier-the brain. Alan C. Logan uses recent, relevant research to show the definitive link between our mental state and what we eat.

The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan
Of the varied health books that cross my desk each month, this one falls solidly into the category of practical tools. The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan is just that-a guide to help those readers who have already identified cellular inflammation as a causal factor in their degenerative health.

Avoid Holiday Overindulgence
Highly viscous soluble dietary fibres (plant-derived polysaccharides) help people achieve and maintain their ideal body weight. It slows stomach emptying, produces a sensation of being full, and exerts powerful effects reducing the level of compounds that stimulate appetite, while at the same time increasing the level of compounds that block appetite.

21 Days to Crack the Code
Your 10,000 taste buds are replaced every 21 days, but after the age of 40 they are not replaced as efficiently, leaving a person with only about 5,000 taste buds and, unfortunately, a narrower preference for food choices. As a result, flavour enhancers in processed foods are not perceived as easily and we need to be extra vigilant.

What's Your HQ?

"...a necessary first step on your journey to improved health, vitality and longevit.

Untangling the Yo-Yo
In our age of quick fixes and instant solutions, crash weight-loss plans and fad diets seem almost mandatory. Who wants to wait weeks to see results when magazine covers promise that we can melt fat overnight, and drop 10 pounds in seven days?

Looking to Eat Healthier?
We know what foods are healthy: our challenge isn't about finding the best health-promoting foods but rather how we can conveniently incorporate them into our diets.

Eat More-Weigh Less
Even thinking about dieting makes most people hungry, but eating more food can actually help you lose unwanted pounds. The key is choosing the right foods.

Enhancing Metabolism with Fibre
When people decide to follow a healthy eating plan, they almost always consider their protein, carbohydrate, and fat intake with very little thought, if any, to dietary fibre.

Keep These Eight Off Your Plate
My first food-additive health scare left an indelible mark. I was working at a golf course while going to college. After one event, the party's hostess offered cake to the staff.

Spotlight on Diabetes
Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in Canada and affects approximately 5 percent of the population. According to Statistics Canada, rates are significantly higher in the eastern provinces.

Soluble Fibre
To your body, all carbohydrates equal sugar, so you may wonder, "If food turns into sugar in our bodies anyway, why are refined sugar and white flour so bad?

The Spectrum
Dean Ornish is a high-profile name where alternative medicine is concerned. A 30-year veteran of North America's controversial diet wars, Ornish is consistently lauded by the scientific community for his work in reversing heart disease and other illnesses through dietary and lifestyle changes.

Hungry for Comfort
We all love comfort foods; those flavours that can take us back to simpler times when stress was something that only happened to others. Comfort food cravings are hard to resist, especially after working through a hard day or making it through a difficult situation.

The Obesity Epidemic
Excessive body fat accumulates when we take in more calories than we expend. But the expanding North American waistline is caused by a complex relationship between environment and genes. This month Research Watch explores the causes of the obesity epidemic.

Losing Weight
The New Year kicks off with parties presenting irresistible desserts, delicious eggnog, and those tasty little appetizers that are so hard to refuse! With the alcohol flowing and office or family gatherings happening all around you, temptation is at an all-time high.

Deal Out Cancer
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, about 40 percent of women and nearly 45 percent of men in this country will face a personal battle with this fearful disease.

Carb Balancing Act
Making headlines today is something called the GI diet—a carb balancing act recommended by the Canadian Diabetes Association and the World Health Organization.