I am pretty sure I can write at least two more posts about what you and I can do to lose weight and keep it off without dieting. So far I have had 2 people email me suggesting I put all these posts into a short report. Great idea and I thank you!  That is now on my project list.

One of the best ways to maintain your weight loss is to change and control your environment. That means tossing out the cookies, the already opened creamy dips in the refrigerator. Read the rest of this entry

Losing weight is confusing because there are so many “best” diets telling you what to do. The good news is you can clear that confusion by simply making a few choices regarding nutrition and physical activity that can help you lose weight without purchasing expensive diet programs. Read the rest of this entry

“Loose Weight Like the Stars,” #6 Tips to Fast Weight Loss”, and “The Magic Formula for 12 Pounds in 2 Weeks” were just some of the headlines on the magazines I saw while checking out of the grocery store. These were all magazines targeted to women and each was touting the quickest and easiest way to lose weight.

My question is why do you have to go on a diet to lose weight? Why can’t you just change your life style?

Some will argue that I am just playing with words. I am not. After all, the whole purpose of losing weight is to lose it and keep it off for life. To do that you need to change how you think about food and learn more about those foods that give you value and those that don’t. Rather than struggle and put yourself through a 2 week or a 4 week struggle of some formula that the latest health maven just created, why not make a few changes in your life, enjoy the successful results, and then include a few more healthy changes.

For instance, eat breakfast every day. Eating breakfast is the one habit that is common to people who have lost weight and kept it off. You may think not eating breakfast is a great way to cut calories. The result is by 9 am you are starving, you eat way too much for lunch, and then you just keep on eating all day. Try a bowl of whole grain cereal topped with fruit and low fat milk for a quick but nutritious start to your day.

How about closing the kitchen at night? You choose the time when you will stop eating so you won’t give in to late-night munchies or snacking while you visit friends in Facebook or tweet your neighbors or watch Iron Chef on the Food Channel.  Have a cup of tea, enjoy a small bowl of fruit or light ice cream or yogurt if you want something sweet after dinner. Then brush your teeth and use that as a signal that you finished eating.

Try doing just these two lifestyle changes for the next 2 months. If you’re feeling comfortable with them after a couple of weeks, add another change to your life style. I will list some of those in my next post.

In the meantime, if you have any ideas about lifestyle changes, let me know. Click on comments and type your ideas in the comment box.  This could be a fun exercise to share. We could compile a list and share them with the world on the Internet.

To your success at healthy aging.

Ruthan Brodsky

No one and not any one thing has the power to make us feel stressed. This is my response to the many comments in which people asked how to handle stress at family gatherings. It is our internal reaction to external events that generate stress. That is why some of us seem to take most things in stride while others tend to become overly excited frequently.

Don’t get me wrong; there are some things all of us need to be stressed about all the time – such as a small kid running in the street after a run away ball. And it is true that things would be easier to manage if life were simpler, if the pace of change was slower and we had fewer choices to make. However, since life is not like that there are steps you can take to reduce your overwhelm and reduce your stress.

Exercise. Thirty minute of physical activity may not only help you relax, it may also get your body in better shape. If you are stressed at work and you have an hour for lunch, take half of that and go for a walk or jog or run up and down the stairs. Find a co-worker to do this with you.

Stop thinking that you can control things. It is impossible to cover every eventuality. For instance, if you are going on a vacation, some planning is a good idea but you cannot control on weather. However, you could come up with a Plan B for bad weather on your vacation.

Reduce your multi-tasking. Multi-tasking can contribute both to overwhelm and to low effectiveness. If you do multi-task make sure those are tasks that can be done automatically, without much thought.

Meditate. It won’t take you long to learn to meditate. Five to 10 minutes of quiet reflection can bring some relief. If you are having a stressful day at home or at work, close your door and meditate or go for a quick walk and clear your mind.

Above all do not put any of these suggestions on your to-do list. You don’t need to go to class to learn any of these techniques. I recommend you simply make them part of your life.

To your success at healthy aging.

Ruthan Brodsky

Today my best friend was very stressed. He has been having trouble with his computer for the last couple of weeks and today was no exception. He struggled with it for two hours and then gave up after calling his IT person who never did call him back. “I couldn’t concentrate after being so frustrated so I didn’t get very much done.”

It’s true. When stress occurs repeatedly without relief, not only do our brains not function as well but severe health problems can result.  Each person reacts differently even to similar stress situations.

On the other hand, stress is a natural part of life. I feel stress when I have too much to do. You may feel stressed when you have had too little sleep, or you are not eating the right foods, or you have a bad cold. Stress can also be emotional.

Most of us are worried about money and some of us are more stressed about our finances than others, and with good reason. You may have lost your job, you are behind in your mortgage payments, your wife is very ill are all reasons to be very stressed. Workplace stress is also a major factor for many. Whatever your source for stress, and however reasonable it may seem to be upset, you still have to manage how you deal with stress otherwise you have put yourself at risk for serious illness such as stroke, heart failure and different auto immune conditions.

One of the keys to coping with stress is to figure out your personal tolerance level for stressful situations. Sometimes you need to learn to accept or change stressful or tense situations whenever possible. You learned to accept stress when your kids were infants and woke you up in the middle of the night. You learned to accept stress when that new puppy you brought home howled and whimpered for a week at night. You may never learn how to reduce your stress when the roads are icy in the winter. However, when the orange barrows come out in the spring and summer you learned to reduce your stress with road construction by leaving for work after rush hour and coming home later to avoid traffic congestion.

Pay attention to your lifestyle and make some changes:
Prioritize. Use a calendar or a notebook to figure out what needs doing and what does not need to be absolutely done. Make your to-do lists realistic giving yourself enough time to finish the task.

Take one thing at a time. Pick one urgent task and work on it. When that is done move on to the next.

Learn to say NO. If you are responsible for nurturing others you may say yes to all sorts of requests because you feel guilty or out of love. You do not need an excuse to say no graciously.

Do not try to be superman or superwoman. No one is perfect. That is what you tell others when you coach them so do not expect perfection from yourself.

If you have something that relaxes you when you become stressed, please share your tip with us. Click on comments and type your example in the comment box.

To your successful healthy aging,

Ruthan Brodsky

I was stressed yesterday afternoon because I was unable to get some work done because I couldn’t get a software program to work. I was stressed last night and woke up stressed this morning. Then it dawned on me the password had changed because of security and I was using the old password.

I had been stressed, highly agitated, aggravated and very frustrated for close to 12 hours. Not good and I know better. My body was in the fight mode, every hormone was mobilized, and I wouldn’t be surprised if my heart rate had increased. I know better than to put myself in survival mode when technological glitches are now part of my life. Even so, my emotions got the best of me and I was not being very kind to my body. The one good thing I did, however, was to set the problem aside and tell myself I would take care of it in the morning. Sometimes by then, technological problems resolve themselves. This one did also and I was back to my normal, mellow self.

Obviously I need to learn to manage stress and my emotions a bit better. I know I will have a healthier heart when I make some changes such as figuring out how to manage my emotions better when it comes to technology glitches.

It’s interesting but stress is a very personal matter. What may drive me crazy won’t bother most others. For example, I love to drive and take road trips while others have a fear of driving on expressways and toll ways where everyone is traveling 80 miles per hour. Absolutely no fear here but you won’t catch me rock climbing which is fun for lots of other people.

In other words, outside events such as technology glitches or rock climbing or planning your daughter’s wedding are not bad or good. It’s how we react to them that is important. There is no way I can control the outside events in my life, especially the technological ones, but I should figure out how to handle them better emotionally and psychologically.

I welcome your tips about how you manage your stress. Type them in the “Comments” and we’ll share them with readers.

To your successful healthy aging,

Ruthan Brodsky

Yesterday’s post described the overall results of 4 recent studies published in the January issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

One of the reports was about a 15-year study of 13,500 participants in the Nurses’ Health Study. Researches found that those nurses who were physically active at midlife had better odds of better health regardless of how much they weighed. Any participant who reached 70 years of age with no chronic disease, impairment in cognitive function or physical disability was regarded as a successful survivor. Almost 11 percent made the sample. Walking was the exercise of choice. What was amazing is that even moderate walking pace was associated with a 90 percent increase in successful aging. Very brisk walking increased the odds by over 2 ½ percent.

My message to you: if you can walk, then walk. If you can walk fast with your arms swing back and forth do not be embarrassed because you think you look like an idiot. Swing those arms even harder and walk faster.  It works!

A second but smaller study showed that women, 65 years or older, who had exercised for at least 18 months, had denser bones and were at less risk of falling.  This was a 5 year study and the exercise program included endurance, resistance and balance exercises. The women who exercised also improved their bone density and incidentally, reduced their risk of heart disease significantly.

By now your favorite anti-aging anecdote has to be exercising.
More details on these studies in my next post. In the mean time do a chair squat to strength your quadriceps.  Stand in front of a chair. Bend your hips and knees as though you were going to sit down but hover above the seat instead. Make sure your knees do not extend over your toes when you squat. Repeat 10 times. Do two or three sets.

To your successful exercising for your anti-aging.

Ruthan Brodsky

Exercise can be your most important anti-aging weapon!

My goal is to inspire you with this information. You already know that exercising regularly is one of the most important steps you can take to improve your health. The problem is so few of us do exercise on a regular basis.  A lot of us start out with good intentions, especially after New Years or when bathing suit season arrives, but then we quit, most of us quitting the first three months.

There are four new studies out that ever so clearly demonstrate that physical activity improves six areas of physical and mental health. This is more than just keeping your weight down and maintaining good cardiovascular health. This is something you can do, no matter your age and no matter your ability. Just think of this as an anti-aging product that will not cost you any money. Sounds like an oxymoron right?

It’s not. Exercise may not eliminate your fine wrinkles that are hyped by the cosmetic ads. However, if you think of an anti-aging product as something that keeps you looking good, puts that extra spring in your step, helps prevent you from becoming ill, then you have no further to look than exercise.

The six areas why we need to exercise as the birthdays add up are:
1.    Better overall health;
2.    Improved ability for attention;
3.    Improved conflict resolution skills;
4.    Reduced risk of cognitive impairment;
5.    Stronger bones;
6.    Less risk of falling.

The entire January 25, 2010 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine is given over to studies of the benefits of exercise and diet in older people. The underlying message was to start exercising when you are young, start exercising at any age, and make it a habit throughout your life.

I will post more information from these studies in the next few posts.

To your success at making exercise an enjoyable habit.

Ruthan Brodsky

The DASH or a Mediterranean type diet will put you on the right path if you want to eat wisely, or mindfully as they say, for your heart and your brain. A combination of the two diets would also do well because they are so similar. I wrote about these two diets in my last post. In this post I am going to give you more results from the different studies.

One of the studies, conducted by Columbia Medical Center researcher Nikolaos Scarmeas, MD, found that those who eating closely followed the Mediterranean diet had about a 40 percent lower risk of Alzheimer disease. The study also found that people who followed the diet and exercised had even more protection, up to 67 percent lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease. The study was published in the August 12, 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Interestingly, the researchers are not sure which parts of the diet or exercise provide the protection against cognitive dysfunction but they are presuming that it is the combined benefits that lead to improved overall physical health and that includes brain health. For instance, the diet and exercise may both lower inflammation, oxidative stress and risk for heart disease and at the same time improving a person’s metabolic profile.

What was more interesting to Scarmeas is that the benefits of the diet were specific to the eating plan and did not rely on calorie reduction for maintaining a healthy heart or brain. It was not the amount of calories the participants ate but whether the calories were healthy or not. Just as importantly the effect of physical activity was more important than someone’s body mass index. In other words, no matter what a person weighed or how heavy they were, the person who exercised more was more protected.

Question for readers: Do these results imply we can have healthy hearts and brains as we get older and forget about portion size and counting calories as long as the calories are healthy? What do you think? Type your responses in the comments area.  This could get interesting!

To your healthy aging.

Ruthan Brodsky.

A healthy diet that helps keep you physically fit may also cut your risks of developing Alzheimer’s disease and depression. That is what the research shows and I have no doubt that they are absolutely correct. It just makes common sense if we took the time to think about it.

There have been two recent studies which report that if you follow a Mediterranean-style diet you can preserve your memory and ability to think better than those who follow a poor diet. The Mediterranean diet differs from others because it contains fish, lean meat, little or no red meat, lots of fruits and vegetables, whole grain, nuts and legumes, olive oil as the primary source of fat and moderate consumption of wine.

I also think the DASH diet, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension, could also produce similar results if it were processed through the same research. This is a diet which emphasizes large portions of fruits, vegetables, grains and plant proteins from legumes and nuts along with more moderate servings of low or non-fat dairy products and small servings of meat, poultry and fish. The total package is a low saturated fat diet that is also low in cholesterol and high in dietary fiber, potassium, calcium, and magnesium and high in total protein but low in animal protein.  This diet is available free from the National Institutes of Health’s website.

The two diets are very similar in that they both emphasize on plant based foods. Fish is a major player in the Mediterranean diet and less accentuated in the DASH diet. Both, however, include fish and there is evidence from studies which show omega-3 fatty acids, which is one of the advantages of fatty fish, do help the brain with its normal functions. There are also indications that people who ate fish reduce their risk for depression because omega-3 fatty acids raise the levels of serotonin and dopamine, two brain chemicals that are thought to play an important role in depression. There is also some conversation that omega-3 fatty acids seem to reduce the levels of brain chemicals that make you feel anxious and stressed out.

It is no secret that eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise have got to be the best combination for staying healthy whatever your age. And it makes even more sense that what is good for the heart should be good for your brain.

More about eating for heart and brain health in tomorrow’s post. If you have any questions write them in the comment box and I’ll either answer them in my next posts or respond personally to you.

To your success at healthy aging,

Ruthan Brodsky

PS  Here’s a link to guidelines for the DASH diet