Most people pay attention to statistics and facts about stress, obesity and smoking. Here are a few to ponder:

STRESS

75% of Americans have symptoms resulting from stress EVERY month and 73% of those experience psychological symptoms and 77% experience physical symptoms. Half of Americans lie awake at night due to stress and 33% believe they are coping with extreme stress. Half of American’s believe that their stress has increased over the last five years (I wonder why?).

Psychological symptoms of stress include:

• Feeling angry or irritable (over 50%)
• Feeling like crying (35%)
• Feeling no motivation or energy (45%)
• Feeling anxious (45%)

Physical symptoms of stress include:

• Tiredness (51%)
• Tense muscles (30%)
• Headaches (44%)
• Queazy stomach (33%)
• Dizziness (13%)
• Appetite loss or increase (23%)
• Loss of interest in sex (15%)
• Grinding teeth at night (17%)

SMOKING: Everyone should be aware by now that smoking greatly increases your risk of lung, mouth and throat cancers, strokes and heart attacks.

OBESITY: The American Epidemic

These facts are from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) website:

About one-third of U.S. adults (33.8%) are obese.
Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2—19 years are obese.
[Data from the National Health and Examination Survey (NHANES)]

Trends by State 1985–2010

During the past 20 years, there has been a dramatic increase in obesity in the United States and rates remain high. In 2010, no state had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. Thirty-six states had a prevalence of 25% or more; 12 of these states (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia) had a prevalence of 30% or more.

The animated map below shows the United States obesity prevalence from 1985 through 2010.

Percent of Obese (BMI > 30) in U.S. Adults
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Weight loss without a diet? Yes, you can get to a healthy weight and maintain that weight without a diet plan. The key to successful weight loss and maintaining a healthy weight is changing your lifestyle habits. The average woman uses anywhere between 1600 calories and 2200 calories per day, depending on her age and level of activity. However, weight loss will often happen when you stop counting calories, ditch the diet plan and start eating healthy:

• Avoid foods high in simple carbohydrates (sugar, fructose, corn syrup – read the label for carbohydrates and keep your daily intake under 25 grams per day).
• Eat at least 30 grams of complex carbohydrates per day, found in whole grain breads, pasta and cereals (oatmeal is especially good for you!).
• Avoid processed foods like white breads and pasta (read labels before you buy – there is virtually no fiber, vitamins or minerals left after the wheat has been stripped, which is why they add B vitamins and iron back in artificially).
• Avoid foods with additives (learn to read labels and avoid additives like artificial sweeteners – except Stevia, artificial flavors, artificial colors, preservatives, corn syrup).
• Eat 6-8 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. They fill you up, are low calorie and chock-full of healthy antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.
• Eat healthy fats (1/3 of your caloric intake): raw walnuts, almonds, extra virgin olive oil (great on pasta with some basil and parmesan cheese), salmon, free-range organic eggs, milk, kefir, yogurt, coconut milk by “Silk” (found with the milk products), butter (1 TB per day), natural peanut butter (no added sugars).
• Make sure you get 2 grams (or 2,000mg) of calcium each day from milk, kefir, yogurt and cheese (go light on the cheese as it is high in fat). These choices also give you protein.
• Eat at least 50 grams of protein per day: milk, kefir, yogurt, eggs, chicken, turkey, tofu, nuts, fresh lean pork (not preserved with nitrites). Whenever possible, buy free-range eggs, chicken, turkey and pork from your local farms. Limit the amount of red meat you eat to once a week unless it is free-range organic beef or buffalo.
• Stay well hydrated with plenty of water (yes, 8 glasses and more if you are exercising), and substitute tea for coffee and juice. You can sweeten the tea with Stevia and a little lemon if you like. There are a variety of delicious flavors of tea to try and enjoy.
• Finally, avoid alcohol, except one, and only one glass of wine a day – if you wish.
• On special occasions, you can indulge yourself with sweets, just watch your portion and use moderation!

By replacing unhealthy food choices with healthy ones, you will lose weight. If you add some moderate physical activity four or five days per week, you have a great plan for getting to a healthy weight without any special diet plan or expensive “diet” foods. It takes 30 days to form a new habit: In 30 days, you will have changed your lifestyle to one that supports wellness and a healthy body.

Contact me for your customized no-diet, weight loss plan. Bon appetite!

A Vitamin D blood serum level of 50-70ng/ml is the most effective way to tell if you have enough Vitamin D in your body. Because of the fear that many people have of sun exposure and slathering on sunscreen, most of us do not get enough Vitamin D year round to prevent us from catching the flu. While getting your Vitamin D from the sun is the best and most effective way (15 minutes per day of skin exposure to the sun), a Vitamin D3 supplement is another good way to get the required levels of Vitamin D that you need to boost your immune system and prevent infection from the flu.

The RDA for Vitamin D has been recently raised due to current research that show most adults require 8,000 IUs of Vitamin D everyday in order to keep their blood serum levels at 40ng/ml, which still falls short of what appears to be required for preventing colds and the flu.

More to come on the other benefits of Vitamin D and flu prevention.

(1)  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?orig_db=PubMed&db=pubmed&cmd=Search&term=Epidemiology%20and%20infection%5BJour%5D%20AND%201129%5Bpage%5D%20AND%202006%5Bpdat%5D

(2)   http://www.virologyj.com/content/5/1/29

(3)   http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/169/15/1443-a