On a note unrelated to any particular diet, I wanted to take a moment to spotlight one heck of a health and fitness inspiration.

I discovered this gal on a recent vacation when we had a TV in our hotel room (the kids were super psyched!) and watched a show called American Ninja Warrior. If you haven’t heard of it and you are in the right age range, you will best liken it to something along the lines of American Gladiators. If neither of those names means anything to you, American Ninja Warrior is a strength and agility competition in which contestants train to tackle a specific (very difficult) obstacle course. They are timed, and they must achieve certain times and complete certain obstacles in order to move on to the next round.

In the episode we watched, there was a very tricky obstacle christened “The Wedge” in which contestants hung from a horizontal bar with rubber tennis-ball-like objects on either end. This bar was wedged into what looked like two sheets of angled glass. The contestants had to use their momentum and body control to “jump” the bar across the tunnel between the two glass sheets, ensuring they keep the bar horizontal and don’t lose their grip. If my description makes absolutely no sense, fear not, for the video below will clear things up. “The Wedge” took no prisoners. Time after time, they would get to that darn wedge and their grip would slip or the bar would land slightly sideways and down they would plunge into the waiting pool below. It was beginning to look downright impossible.

Enter our heroine – Jessie Graff. Jessie is a stunt woman from Pennsylvania. She enters stage left with a delightful smile and a Wonder Woman costume. Her interviews gave a taste of her zest for life and her positive attitude. She is beautiful and fit on the outside, sure, but her mind and heart also exude beauty. Jessie, the only female in the show I watched, conquered the dreaded Wedge like it was a set of monkey bars on a playground.

So why am I all about Jessie Graff now? It’s not just because she’s a woman or because she “beat the boys” (though I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a defiant third-grade girl inside me who found a little bit of glee in that). It’s because she surpassed everyone’s expectations – including her own. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we combine discipline with a positive attitude. I so admired these qualities in her that I tracked her down on Facebook. Her page is littered with pictures of little girls in Wonder Woman suits and comments from people saying that she is inspiring others out of eating disorders by showing what the human body is capable of when properly fueled.

This lady is stupendous and has most definitely been added to my mental Wall of Inspiring People.

You and I also can (and should) make a practice of surpassing everyone’s expectations – including our own. Make a fitness goal to see what your body can do – even if it seems a little out of reach. Add some positive attitude and discipline and you can inspire the socks off of yourself and others too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw-SF5C2iHM

Living a healthy lifestyle of any kind – heart healthy or otherwise – can be daunting! It can sometimes feel like you should never eat those foods you love so much or that you’ll never enjoy food again. Not so! Check out this video I made to help you navigate a happy heart-healthy lifestyle.

Alright, here goes a new post (some might call it a rant) about my feelings on meal plans. I gotta tell ya, I love to hate ’em. Making them, selecting them, and most of all, following them. They are stinky, like fish. That will make more sense in a few paragraphs. Promise.

Why are they stinky, you ask? Well I would be more than happy to tell you.

The food we eat is connected to everything in our lives. Everything. Your budget, your spouse (or lack of spouse), your kids (and their preferences, allergies, and appetites), your schedule, your culture, and your mood all play in to the food you choose to eat. That being said, someone would have to thoroughly understand all of those things about you in order to select foods that are good options for a meal plan for you. Now, how many meal plan makers know you that well?

Take the meal plan I’m currently on, for example. The meal plan ingredients increased my grocery budget by 75%! Typically I use dinner leftovers for lunches, but this meal plan uses NO leftovers for ANYTHING. You know what that gets you (besides an expensive grocery trip)? A fridge full of leftovers waiting to go bad. It also leaves you cooking two meals every night – dinner and tomorrow’s lunch. Not sustainable, functional, or enjoyable.

My final gripe about following meal plans made by others? Sometimes I just don’t like the food. Like, for example, coleslaw. I’m not a huge fan, but it’s on the meal plan, because the person who made it didn’t know me and my lack of appreciation for coleslaw. So here I am, either eating coleslaw or feeling as though I somehow “failed” my meal plan because I didn’t like it.

And you know what else (yes, I lied about the final gripe part)? As a dietitian, my goal is to empower my patients to live a healthy life they love. Now even if I gave them the perfect meal plan that worked great for their lifestyle, are they empowered? What will they do when the week-long meal plan is over? Will they just eat the same food week after week forever?

Of course not.

Remember the old saying, “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and feed him for the rest of his life”? Well, a meal plan is a fish.

I can give someone a meal plan fish and they can meet their nutritional goals for a week (if they can manage to stick with a meal plan someone else made), or I can teach someone how to plan for themselves and meet their health and quality of life goals. Truly, they are the only ones who know themselves well enough to do it. It’s not easy and it’s awkward at first, but once they get the hang of it they are empowered. They can eat for life – on a budget and with foods they love! And that is why I love what I do!

And why I hate stinky meal plan fish. End rant.

This post has nothing to do with nutrition but I hope it will make you laugh. Today was my last day at my current job(s) and I’m feeling a little nostalgic. I thought I’d do something a little different today and share some of the craziest, sweetest, most hilarious and oh-my-goodness-worthy quotes from my beloved patients. Enjoy!

1. Patient: Where do you get your cream of rice? I’ve checked all the stores. I looked at Sears, Home Depot, and Staples and none of them have cream of rice.

2. Patient: You have a fiance, don’t you?

Me (wearing gloves – my engagement ring is not visible): Well yeah, actually, but why do you say fiance instead of boyfriend or husband?

Patient: You have that ‘engaged’ look. I can tell.

3. Me: Would you like me to take your blood pressure?

Elderly male patient (with strong German accent): Vhy yes…do you vant to sqveeze me?

Me: Umm….nope.

4. Patient (to another dietitian): Thank goodness it’s you. That other dietitian (me) was so scrawny.

5. Elderly female patient: Your eyes are so pretty. I don’t know why you wear your hair over your eyes like that…it covers up the pretty part of your face.

6. Me: Well, that’s all of my questions. We’ll check on you tomorrow and see how you’re doing. Have a nice day!

Elderly male patient: Don’t leave! You’re pretty!

7. Me: We have several types of nutritional supplements if you’d like to try any of those to help increase your calorie intake.

Older male patient: Do you have Boost?

Me: We sure do!

Older male patient: I love Boost! What flavors do you have?

Me: We have chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.

Older male patient: Strawberry! I love strawberry!

Me: Great! Would you like me to have one sent with each of your meals?

Older male patient (takes my hand, looks at me very seriously): I love you.

8. Patient: Are you skipping school to be here?

Me: I’m sorry?

Patient: You look like you’re fourteen!

Me (to myself): Make mental note not to wear braids to work. Ever. Again.

9. Me (working on teaching some diabetes education): The next thing on the nutrition label you need to look at is Total Carbohydrates.

Patient: Yes. Carbohydrates. Got it. How much money do you make?

Me: Why do you ask that?

Patient: Because I want to know. How much do you make?

Me: Well, I’d rather not say, actually. Is that alright?

Patient: Okay. How many hours do you work?

Me (teasing): Well, that depends on how long it takes to get through your handout.

Patient: How many hours do you work each week?

Me: Well, it is different every week, but these aren’t really relevant topics. Is it alright if we go back to looking at the nutrition label?

Patient: Okay. So how much money do you make?

aaaaand my personal favorite…

10. Older male patient: You look so pretty with your hair up. You should wear your hair up every day. If you were my girlfriend and you wore your hair up I’d say, “Da**, you’re a gorgeous wench!

Me: Umm…thanks?

Picture from againsthighcholesterol.com

Normally I love to use legumes (beans, peas, lentils, peanuts) as fiber and protein sources in my diet, so I got to wondering why it is that legumes are not allowed on the paleo diet. Honestly, I have no clue how they were introduced into our diets in the first place and thus no clue whether the hunter-gatherers would have had any or not. So I set off to do some research and found an article entitled “Why No Grains and Legumes?” on a paleo blog (eureka!).

So the author was claiming that legumes are out on paleo for a variety of reasons, one of them being their lectin content. I had never heard tell of such thing so of course, further research ensued. Come to find out lectins are proteins that hang out on the outside of plant and animal cells and bind carbohydrates. They just so happen to be found on legumes, particularly beans, as well as wheat, potatoes, and some other foods. It seems that one of their purposes is to prevent insects and critters from eating the plants. The lectins are actually toxic and they cause hemagglutination – which is a fancy word for “they make blood cells stick together.” When animals are fed raw bean diets, they develop lesions, fatty livers, and digestive/absorptive problems among other appetizing maladies. Other researchers have suggested possible (though not proven, as far as I can tell) links between lectins and diseases such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis. Now I’m thinking, “What the heck? Why have I never heard about this before?”

Well most likely that is because according to the Cornell University agricultural website, wet cooking methods including soaking coupled with adequate boiling are sufficient to eliminate the toxicity of most of the lectins and render them safe for human consumption. Several paleo blogs I found, however, disagree that cooking eliminates all of the harmful potential of these little proteins.

What I find interesting (aside from all the disagreement) is that it seems these foods are not being eliminated from the paleo diet because the hunter-gatherers didn’t eat them, but rather because of these lectins. Since that is what I understand to be the premise of the paleo diet in the first place, the elimination of foods such as beans and potatoes seems beyond the scope of the diet itself. In fact, according to the Wikipedia page “Bean” (I know, we’re using big-time science here), beans have been around since 7th millenium BC. On top of that, the “Paleolithic” Wikipedia page says that we suspect humans in the Paleolithic era ate a substantial amount of tubers. Potatoes are tubers. So, I’m not exactly sure how the “paleo diet” crew latched on to the elimination of potatoes and legumes, but nonetheless, lectins have proven to be an interesting topic of research. I tend to agree with the following statement, courtesy of my fiance: “I’m pretty sure the cavemen ate whatever they could get their hands on. If they found some good eats they probably didn’t pass them up because of their lectin content.”

I gotta tell ya, this is the kind of stuff that makes being in the health field so difficult. Everybody is always saying something different from the next and unfortunately even well-done research is not perfect. We have to do the best we can with what we have and press on to the next topic. If you know anything more about lectins that you’d like to share, be sure to let me know in the comments!

References:

http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/lectins.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22545/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1115436/

If you visited a few days ago you may have read my lamentations about the social struggles I have been facing on my journey with paleo. I have realized how much of a social eater I am, and the way that eating paleo affects that part of my life.

I then asked myself a question I never thought to ask before: is it worth it? Say hypothetically that paleo or any other “diet” for that matter is the absolute perfect, most healthful way to eat (I don’t endorse this to be true for reasons I’ll talk about in future posts, but just go with me for a minute). If I knew for a fact that eating this way was ideal for my body but that it would bring forth this separation from social activities that I love and experiences I want to have, would it be worth it? Would I still do it?

The answer to that question had to come after some introspection about even broader and more philosophical issues: why did I become a dietitian in the first place? Am I on the search for identifying the perfect way to eat? Do I want to help people live as long as humanly possible? Do I want to help the healthy continue without disease? My answer was tough to identify, but eventually it came to be that I want to help people live their best possible lives.

I want to help people live lives of quality that are meaningful and enjoyable to them. For most people that involves being healthy. For some people, that means living to 100 years old or avoiding every possible chronic disease. For others, it means going to bed every night without a growling stomach. Others want to lose extra weight so they can play outside with their children. For me, it means participating in the full experience of preparing, sharing, and discovering all of the foods I enjoy.

So the answer to my first question is no, for me it isn’t worth it to eat this way forever. I personally would rather live 70 years of my “full meal deal” than 100 years on paleo or any other diet that leaves me feeling so restricted. And that’s my best possible life.

I brought the issue to my former classmate and friend Nick, who also happens to be a dietitian (check out his website here). Now, there is something unique about Nick that you all should know. He eats basically only meat and vegetables and will encourage his clients to do the same. I came to him during the peak of my misery in my first week of paleo and basically scolded him for ever recommending this miserable existence to anyone (if you know me at all, you know I have a tendency to be just a tad dramatic). He found my frustration with the restrictions of the diet interesting because he said he finds eating that way liberating. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing but meat and veggies is liberating?!?

As we talked more, the pieces fell into place. In his past, Nick had spent some time in the bodybuilding community and was introduced to a world of disordered eating behaviors. From what I understand (correct me if I’m wrong, here Nick), he felt controlled by his body’s desire to eat certain foods – namely, carbohydrates. Over time he began to research the part that carbohydrates play in the body and decided to start eliminating carbohydrates from his diet bit by bit (probably a better strategy than the cold-turkey one I used) until his body no longer craved them. Carbohydrate addiction is a real thing – and there is definitely science to prove it. To beat any addiction, most people have to eliminate the offending substance entirely. For Nick, he is now essentially carb-free, healthy, and doesn’t have to fight his own body to eat the way he knows is best for him. He works with clients who are obese and carbohydrate-addicted and has been majorly successful because he understands their battle, what they need, and the science behind it. Carb-free is his best possible life.

Though the cliche is not new, I am realizing how it applies to my profession: different strokes for different folks. There may be one “perfect” way to eat. Maybe someday scientists will identify it, but even if they do it won’t really be perfect for everyone. People have different needs, desires, and priorities in regard to their food. As a dietitian, it is my responsibility to encourage clients toward their own best possible life and understand that it doesn’t look the same for everyone. What do you all think? What’s your best nutritional life?

Aside from evaluating the health ramifications of paleo eating, I am also considering its real-life applications for my patients and clients. During my trek through the paleo diet, my main question has been, “is this realistic?” Is a diet like paleo truly something that I feel is so undeniably important that I could, in good conscience, recommend it to the people that I see every day and expect it to improve their lives? Thus far, based on my experience, the answer has been “no.”

There are definitely stories out there about people who start eating paleo who feel so much better. And I have no doubt that that is the case for them. Paleo eating is a drastically healthful change from the way that an “average” American eats. It entirely eliminates “empty calories” in the sense that nearly every single thing that goes in your mouth on a paleo diet contributes something beneficial to your body. Anyone who consumed copious amounts of foods that contribute nothing nutritionally besides calories (I’m talking about you, donuts, soda, and candy) is bound to feel exceptionally better after cutting out these harmful foods and replacing them with foods that actually nourish his or her body. What’s more, the paleo diet eliminates some key underlying allergens that can wreak inflammatory and digestive havoc on their undiagnosed victims. For those people, the paleo diet is sure to improve the way they feel.

Personally, my body feels exactly the way it always has, which is pretty great. Honestly, it would be hard for me to say that I felt better unless I suddenly had Roadrunner energy or Superwoman strength pop out of nowhere. And trust me, that’s not because I am the model of perfect eating (that is a common misconception about dietitians) or exercise, but because I am healthy and still rather young. I have no aches and pains, no digestive issues, no allergies (that I know of), no chronic diseases, and plenty of energy if I get enough sleep. So I really struggle to see how this restrictive eating plan makes my life any better.

In fact, following paleo is kind of a drag for me. I haven’t had any crazy sugar cravings or desperate desires to raid my fiance’s bagel supply, but my dietary quality of life is pretty lame. You see, normally Charlie and I love to go out to eat and cook together, and I would venture that it is safe to say we are novice foodies. We love to try new dishes from all kinds of restaurants and cultures and savor all the delectable flavors we can get our hands on. Since I started on paleo we have only eaten out twice, one of which I chose to be one of my non-paleo meals so that I could actually enjoy it. The other time I was able to order a meal that fit the paleo restrictions, and honestly it was pretty gross. Really all I can order out most places is some version of a hunk of meat or eggs with vegetables, and I’ll be frank – that eating pattern started turning my stomach at day 3. Other than that, my fiance and I rarely end up eating the same food when I visit because mine is so expensive (and doesn’t taste that great) that he usually makes something different for himself. I don’t blame him – though I have found a couple winners, the best thing I can say about most of the recipes I try is “well, it’s better than a hunk of meat and a pile of veggies.” I’m also getting pretty tired of all my food tasting like coconut (which if you know me you know I do not like) because nearly everything involves either coconut milk or coconut oil, but I digress.

I couldn’t really eat much at the places that my friends and I like to go to hang out, so I sat awkwardly and drink my water or tea (or occasionally eat my fruit plate) while everyone else chows down. It is also particularly difficult to anticipate following these diet restrictions when eating at others’ houses (which I do semi-often), and I feel that briefing my poor hostess with “well, I can eat anything except dairy, grains, peas, beans, peanuts, vegetable oil, salt, and sugar” is a pretty rotten thing to do. Together, these issues have placed me on an island of dietary isolation that has definitely impacted my life in an unfavorable way. Imagining a lifetime of eating this way is completely out of the question for me – making, eating, sharing, and discovering good food and drink is far too much a part of my life to amputate it like this.

Wow…I have a lot more to say about where this experience led me and how I discovered that paleo most certainly has a place and an importance for people I meet every day, but this post has grown beyond my expectations rather quickly. I’ll have to make this a “To Be Continued”…Come back next time for part 2!