WARNING - do not read this post if...

you do not have a healthy relationship with food. After more than a year of meeting with J at least every other week, she finally said I was ready to read chapter 14, "Honor Your Health - Gentle Nutrition." While I feel I still have a long way to go to really make peace with food, I have come a long way. This chapter was important for me to read now because I can experiment with different kinds of food to find healthy foods that are still easy to swallow.

Before I get into the things I learned in chapter 14 - I want summarize some of points that came from my discussion with J about making goals. Goals should be "SMART."

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timely

We also talked about the four "p"s which are:

• purpose
• personality
• principles
• passions
  

For my next meeting with J, I am going to make a "bucket list" for my life and reasonable goals for this summer and read chapter 14. I'll post my bucket list in another post. Here are some of the important points from chapter 14:

• Honor your health and taste buds at the same time, always remembering to focus on how it makes you FEEL
• Consistency over time - progress not perfection is what matters
• BE CAREFUL - nutrition guidelines could be embraced as a diet
• Healthy eating = eating primarily healthy foods and having a healthy relationship with food
  
• Remember:
• variety - try new a new kind of bread or cereal or whatever
  
• balance = to be achieved over time, not every day or every meal
  
• moderation = does not mean elimination, not too much or too little of anything
• Build muscles - raise your metabolic rate
• FOOD PYRAMID
• Grains
• best kind of food to fuel your body
• carbohydrates are your friends
• whole grains provide vitamins and minerals
• Fiber is really good for your GI tract
  
• Fruits and vegetables
• 5 servings a day (think volume - this is easier to get than you think)
• loaded with antioxidants and fiber
• fruit tastes better when they are eaten in a non-diet manner (I'm starting to believe this one)
• Protein
• Beans are a good source of protein
• high protein diets are not good - if you aren't eating other kinds of foods, it doesn't matter how much protein you eat, your body will take energy from your muscles
• It's easy to get the protein needed - men need 63 grams a day and women need 50
• Dairy
• we need calcium even if we've stopped growing because if you don't consume the calcium our body needs, it will be leached from our bones
• Water - duh
• Fat
• fat is a nutrient. Come on you "fatty acids."
• be careful of the "fat-trap" - if you eat non-fat foods, you think you can eat all you want and you might not listen to your satiety clues plus non-fat foods are usually filled with sugar. If you eat the regular foods you are more likely to be satisfied earlier (without eating as much)
  
• Learn to balance fat in your diet by
• cutting the fat without losing taste or feeling deprived (applesauce instead of oil in cooking)
• choose healthy fats (low in saturated fats - those from animals)
• canola, corn, safflower, sunflower, salmon, avocado, nuts and seeds
• when you eat fat, make sure its worth it - ask yourself how it tastes - savor it@
• Ask yourselves these four questions
1. Do I really like the taste of these foods?
2. How does this food or type of food make my body feel?
3. How do I feel when eating consistently in this manner?
4. Am I experiencing differences in my energy level?
• REMEMBER DEPRIVATION DOES NOT WORK!!!
• REMEMBER WE ARE ALL HUMAN AND WE ARE NOT EXPECTED TO BE PERFECT!