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In This Chapter

▶ Setting the stage for your Total Body Diet

▶ Combining mind and body in your wellness plan

▶ Understanding how to reboot your lifestyle for health and happiness

So, you want to embark on a lifestyle change that can promote health, well-being, and the quality of your life? The Total Body Diet offers a road map for a healthy mind and body by identifying nutrient-dense foods, ways to eat more mindfully, and keys to getting regular physical activity.

How can what you eat affect your total body health? Numerous studies have shown that a healthy pattern of eating has been linked to reduced risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, cognitive decline or dementia, and premature death, among other health benefits. Plus, research into physical activity shows benefits of improved flexibility, strength, mood, focus, and productivity.

Here are some key principles of the Total Body Diet:

✔ Choose foods that are minimally processed (prepared without large amounts of added sugar, salt, and fat). Minimize the additives you eat by checking labels and preparing foods at home with herbs and spices instead of a lot of salt, sugar, and fat.

✔ Balance your daily eating plan with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins (either animal or plant protein), and lowfat or fat-free dairy products.

✔ Drink water mainly. Limit your consumption of beverages like regular soft drinks, alcoholic beverages, coffee, and tea.

✔ Prepare meals and snacks at home. You’ll save calories with portion control and get less salt, added sugar, and solid fat.

✔ Eat slowly and savor your food. You’ll reap the health benefits of mindful eating, which can help with the management of weight, type 2 diabetes, appetite, and cravings.

The Whole Picture of You

Before you can begin to make changes in your lifestyle, knowing where you are in your journey toward total body health and wellness is important. Ask yourself the following questions:

✔ Why do I want to make changes now? What is my goal?

✔ How ready am I to make this change? If it helps to quantify your readiness, rate yourself on a scale from 1 (not ready at all) to 5 (very ready).

✔ Am I willing to try new, healthier foods?

✔ Do I want to get more active or change my physical activity?

✔ Do I understand that change is a gradual process that takes time, patience, and daily action?

Think about your answers to these questions. If you’re ready to change your lifestyle and create lasting changes, you’re in the right place. It may take some time to get in the right frame of mind and find the motivation to power forward.

Getting into a wellness state of mind

The way you think about your health and wellness plays a role in the action you take toward living a healthier lifestyle. If you prioritize your health, you’ll develop what I call a wellness state of mind, or a permanent healthy mindset. You’ll think first and foremost about making the healthiest choice at the moment when it comes to food and physical activity. Instead of falling prey to unconscious eating and drinking, your new wellness mindset will help you become more focused on and conscious of your choices.

Wellness is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Your wellness is unique to you, and it takes time to develop a wellness state of mind. It doesn’t happen overnight. Be patient. Understand what you want and where you’re starting from right now.

Tuning up your muscles

Regardless of your age or gender, your body and mind benefit from movement. According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, there is strong evidence that regular physical activity can help to decrease the risk of early death, cardiovascular disease, stroke, high blood pressure, weight gain, and depression among many other health benefits.

There are three key ways that physical activity benefits your total body wellness:

✔ Overload: Placing physical stress on your muscles, bones, heart, and lungs allows them to adapt to greater capacity and makes their function more efficient and stronger.

✔ Progression: Continually increasing your activity level, which overloads your body’s systems, increases your fitness levels to enable you to keep doing more.

✔ Specificity: The type of activity you’re doing benefits the specific body part that is doing the work (for example, aerobic activity works the cardiovascular system).

So what does this mean? If you aren’t currently active, start slow and progress to a higher level slowly to build up your strength and stamina (the ability to sustain the activity for longer periods of time). For example, if you’re new to activity, start with walking instead of running. When you’re comfortable walking longer distances, start working in a little jogging at a time (a minute here or there, then two minutes, and so on). Creating small fitness goals to fine-tune your muscles gradually will lead to big results with persistence.

The Total Body Lifestyle

Embracing a healthy way of living for permanent, lasting changes is vital for creating improved health and wellness. The Total Body Diet is about adding beneficial foods, creating new behaviors, and fostering a sense of responsibility to improve the quality of your life. Think about the value you’re adding to your life by reaching your health goals – whether it be weight loss or maintenance, reducing disease risk or managing current conditions, improved strength and flexibility, getting better sleep, or reducing stress.

It’s beyond dieting – it’s about living

This is not a typical diet plan, in which weight loss is the end all and be all. The Total Body Diet teaches you how to live with a greater awareness of how what and how you eat affects your mind and body for the better. It puts you on a path for greater understanding of how to navigate daily food choices, create more structure in your life, and eliminate the excuses that stand in your way to make significant health changes.

How do you get beyond the dieting mentality of eliminating certain foods? Many people struggle with the dieting mentality, so the foods they eliminate become taboo and may become the object of cravings as they’re deemed “off-limits.” This restrictive thinking makes food less enjoyable, too.

Balance is important. If you can, eat whole, minimally processed foods most of the time. Think about fueling your body with nutrient-dense food to keep your blood pressure, blood sugar, and waistline in check.

It’s about changing your lifestyle! The Total Body Diet uses lifestyle as the first therapy to achieving wellness, health, and vitality for life. If you change your everyday behaviors and way of living, you’ll see positive health outcomes above and beyond your dreams.

Making healthier food choices

Making healthier foods choices is challenging – even when you know what the better choice is. A 2014 Gallup poll asked Americans about their consumption habits and found that more than 90 percent of American adults try to include fruit and vegetables in their daily diets. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s State Indicator Report on Fruits and Vegetables (2013) reveals that American adults eat fruit a mere 1.1 times per day and vegetables only about 1.6 times per day.

Let’s face it – you’re bombarded with a myriad of food choices every day. In fact, according to Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink, PhD, we make more than 200 decisions about food every day! Many of these choices are mindless – unless we tap into a more conscious, mindful way of eating.

A trip to the food court in your office building offers you a daunting number of food choices – from salads to soups to burgers and fries to pasta. What do you choose? Are you on automatic pilot and pick whatever sounds good at the moment? Or do you go there with a plan, with your sights set on making a healthy choice, which includes vegetables, fruits, lean protein, lowfat or fat-free dairy, and whole grains? It may sound simple, but without a plan, your healthy eating intentions can get easily sidetracked. So, what do you do? Set boundaries and create a healthier path.

Setting boundaries to create limitless possibilities

Every relationship in your life – including your relationship with food – thrives better with boundaries. If “anything goes” in a friendship, marriage, or relationship with a co-worker, that relationship can get out of control and unhealthy. Your needs may be ignored, taken advantage of, and minimized, if you don’t clearly establish limits.

You may find it hard or easy to set boundaries, but whatever the case, knowing the importance of having limits with food is important to building a healthier relationship with food.

In the psychology world, personal boundaries are defined as the physical, emotional, and mental limits we establish to protect ourselves from being manipulated, used, or violated by others.

Here are seven simple steps to setting boundaries with food:

✔ Eat nutrient-dense foods first, before highly processed, empty-calorie foods. Color your plate with fruits and vegetables. Aim for at least 2 cups of fruit and 2½ cups of vegetables a day, as well as at least 3 servings of whole grains – before you eat refined grains with added sugar and solid fat, like cookies, crackers, and cake.

✔ Go lean with protein. Include plant proteins like beans and peas, tofu, nuts and seeds, seafood, skinless chicken and turkey breast, and loin cuts of beef or pork. Limit processed meats like bacon, salami, pepperoni, and prosciutto. Choose lowfat or fat-free dairy products – aim for 3 servings per day. A serving is 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of yogurt, 1½ ounces of hard cheese, or 2 ounces of soft cheese.

✔ Keep calories light when it comes to beverages. Avoid sugar-laden soft drinks, alcoholic beverages, and full-fat milk. Drink mostly water through the day!

✔ Start your day with a balanced breakfast. Aim to have a lean protein, whole grains, a piece of fruit or a vegetable, and one serving of lowfat or fat-free dairy.

✔ Bring lunch and snacks with you to work or school to limit dining out in the afternoon. You’ll save money and calories.

✔ Go grocery shopping with a list. This way you have a plan going in and you’ll minimize impulse purchases.

✔ Don’t eat chips, cookies, or crackers out of a box, bag, or carton. Put a serving on a small plate or in a bowl and put the rest away.

Clueing into Your Appetite

Appetite awareness is a vital part of the Total Body Diet. Feeling hunger pangs and the satisfaction of a full stomach are key to healthy eating. Not only are you clueing into what your body needs, but you’re also feeding your body’s normal metabolic functions. The physical signs of hunger (a growling stomach, for example) keep you in tune with your appetite. In this section, I help you get intimate with your appetite. When you become attuned to your genuine appetite for food, you’ll feel better about the food choices you’re making on a daily basis.

Getting intimate with hunger and fullness

Do you know when you’re hungry and when you’re full? Identifying when your body really needs food is challenging, because for most of us, food is so readily available. We live in what I call a seductive eating environment, in which food temptations are everywhere. You may not be hungry, but the sights and aromas of nearby food may cause you to eat anyway. Although these are natural occurrences that are part of every day, you have to tune into them and realize that you don’t have to eat chips just because they’re on the table in front of you, and you don’t have to grab a handful of candy out of your co-worker’s candy jar just because it’s sitting there. By tuning into your body’s natural appetite gauges, you’ll be more apt to pass up the extras and save room for nutrient-dense meals and snacks.

A great way to gain insight into hunger is to keep a journal. By jotting down your hunger (and fullness) before and after you eat, you can become more attuned to the appropriate times to eat and drink.

By definition, hunger is an uneasy sensation due to a lack of food, causing the stimulation of the sensory nerves of the stomach by the contraction and churning movement of the empty stomach. Fullness occurs at various levels, but it’s having an appetite satisfied (not overly stuffed), especially for food or drink.

Knowing when to start and when to stop eating

Babies are born with an innate or natural ability to self-regulate – or an inner understanding of when to show signs of hunger and stop eating when full. Over time and with exposure to an abundant food environment, the ability to know when to start and when to stop eating becomes more difficult. How can you combat this in a world of oversized portions?

According to research in Health Psychology (2012) conducted by Brian Wansink, PhD, and his team at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, if food had “stop signals,” portion controlling food amounts would be a lot easier. In their study, 98 students were recruited from the University of Illinois and Pennsylvania State University. The students were given stacks of potato chips to munch on during a movie in class. Some had red dividers (or a tomato basil chip) placed within the chips (at every 7th chip and every 14th chip) and others just had yellow chips. The findings showed that the subjects who had dividers ate 50 percent less than the ones who didn’t – about 250 calories less! Plus, the ones with dividers knew how many chips they ate – within 1 chip, whereas the others underestimated how much they had eaten by 12.6 chips!

What does this study reveal about knowing when to stop eating? Cues to stop eating are very effective. These cues can include things such as:

✔ Single-serve packages

✔ Snacks divided into serving-size bags

✔ Food placed on a plate and not eaten out of the bag, box, or carton

✔ Snacks that allow you to see how much you’ve eaten, like pistachios in shells

Understanding why you can’t stop at one bite

You may relate to the following scenarios: You have one bite of chocolate cake, and it leads you to take another and another. Or you take one potato chip from the bag and that leads to eating half the bag. Or you have a spoonful of ice cream and keep going back for more. Why is it hard to stop at one bite, chip, or spoonful? It’s not a mystery that foods high in added sugar, salt, and solid fat set us up to want to eat more. Sometimes the food is filling an emotional need brought on by feeling lonely or depressed. Even joyful and celebratory feelings bring on eating and overeating.

According to The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite, by David A. Kessler, MD, foods that are fatty, salty, and sugary tap receptors in the brain that release feel-good chemicals like dopamine, which make us want more of that food. Typically, those foods are high in calories, too – and they don’t provide much in the way of nutrients.

These trigger foods can make you want to eat more. Not surprisingly, these are the foods that you want to limit on the Total Body Diet. Throughout this book, I give you helpful tools and strategies to limit these types of foods. Understanding what foods are trigger foods for you is life-changing and allows you to create a healthier relationship with food.

To identify your food triggers, write down which foods you cannot stop eating once you start. For example, write the following statement and fill in the blank:

Once I start eating ________, I can’t stop.

Multiple foods may be trigger foods for you.

Now that you’ve identified foods that are triggers to overeat, avoid keeping those foods in the house or at work. Set limits around these foods in order to reach your Total Body Diet goals.

The saying “Out of sight, out of mind” applies to food, especially foods that excite our taste buds and other senses. The first rule of thumb is not to have tempting foods in plain sight. If you have these foods around, you’ll eat them. Buy single-serve portions of ice cream, or go out for a single scoop, instead of having a half-gallon container in your freezer. Ice cream will be more like a treat when you do have it – and you’ll enjoy and savor it more, too!

Recharging with Rest

How does sleep foster total body wellness? Recent research shows that a well-rested body and mind are essential to good health. Just as eating well and getting regular physical activity are important to your health, sleeping seven to nine hours at night is a must for revitalizing your energy, thinking, and muscle repair and recovery. Sleep science, a relatively new field of research, reveals how sleep can affect overall quality of life.

Your body and mind work hard while you’re awake. Sleep allows your major organs like your heart, lungs, brain, muscles, and stomach to slow down and literally recharge. According to the National Sleep Foundation (www.sleep.org), here are some of the ways different parts of your body benefit from sleep:

✔ Brain: Cerebral spinal fluid is pumped more quickly through the brain while you sleep, clearing away waste from brain cells, so your brain is clean and clear for the day ahead.

✔ Heart: Your blood pressure and heart rate slow during sleep, giving the heart a break overnight.

✔ Lungs: Breathing slows and becomes very regular during sleep, easing the load on your lungs overnight.

✔ Muscles and joints: Growth hormone is released to rebuild muscles and joints while you sleep.

✔ Stomach: Eating a balanced meal with a bit of carbohydrates (like whole-grain pasta, brown rice, or whole-wheat bread) along with protein-rich foods (like turkey or cheese) with some healthy fats (like avocado or olive oil) can keep your stomach satisfied overnight, which helps you sleep more soundly.

Melatonin is a hormone that is secreted during the nighttime hours that regulates your natural sleep-wake cycle and conveys day and night to your body. Melatonin is produced in the body with the help of an amino acid, tryptophan, which is found in high-protein foods like turkey, milk, and cheese. Certain foods naturally contain melatonin, such as tomatoes, walnuts, rice, barley, strawberries, olive oil, wine, beer, and milk. However, before you go out and get these foods to aid in better sleep, a study in Food & Nutrition Research points out that the health benefits of diet-driven melatonin boosts seem not to be the product of any single food or nutrients present in the diet. So these food are not sure-fire sleep-aids. Still, it can’t hurt to get more nutrient-dense plant foods, as well as a few doses of lowfat dairy every day!

Recognizing the power of catnaps

You get drowsy in the afternoon and nod off for 20 minutes. Is that beneficial? Yes! Naps can recharge your brain, boost your energy, and make you more alert for the rest of the day. Many cultures plan for naps on a daily basis, but in the United States, the hustle and bustle of life gets in the way of regular naps. Sleep deprivation can lead to major health issues like weight gain, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, and mood disorders like depression.

Whether snoozing during the day is planned or spontaneous, brief catnaps of 10 to 20 minutes can be good for your health, according to sleep science experts. The value of an afternoon nap can mean the difference between performing well at work or not, or between being happy or sad.

Plan a short nap in your day, if you can. According to the journal Sleep, a brief respite of sleep – 10 minutes – appeared to be the best for improved alertness and brain power. Longer naps of 30 minutes or more create groggy, sluggish feelings afterward.

Relishing your bedtime routine

You’ve had a long day at work, at school, or with the kids, and you deserve a good night’s sleep. Some of the best ways to ensure a good night’s sleep is to have a regular routine at night. If you have an established routine, you’ll be more apt to stick with it and get better shuteye, too.

Here are tricks and tips for getting a sound night’s sleep:

✔ Establish a regular sleep schedule. Go to bed at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning.

✔ Keep your bedroom temperature cool. For most people, about 67 degrees is ideal for sleep.

✔ Take a warm bath or shower before you go to bed. As you cool down, the drop in body temperature will make you feel sleepy.

✔ Make your bedroom soothing and tranquil. Choose comfortable bedding, low lighting, and soothing music.

✔ Make sure the bed is just for sleeping and sex. Limit television watching or using your smartphone or computer in bed because the light from these devices stimulates your brain, making it harder to sleep.

Sleep hygiene is not the shower you take before bed – it’s the habits you put in place before bed, such as avoiding bright lights in the bedroom, using ear plugs or a sound conditioner, listening to soothing music before bed, and positioning the clock away from direct view so that it doesn’t distract you from getting to sleep. Practice good sleep hygiene, and your body will thank you for it.

Identifying the importance of a good night’s sleep

Your lifestyle greatly affects your sleep quality and patterns. What you eat, what you drink, and how physically active you are play a big role in how well you rest. Here are some lifestyle changes that you can make in your Total Body Diet that can help you sleep better, too:

✔ Avoid caffeinated foods and beverages at least four hours before bed. Caffeine is a stimulant, and it can make it harder to fall asleep. Go for decaffeinated coffee, or have herbal tea, which is naturally caffeine-free. Skip the chocolate cake or brownie (or have less) – the caffeine may affect your shuteye.

✔ Limit alcoholic beverages close to bedtime. Alcohol may make you drowsy at first, but it may cause you to wake up during the night, especially the second half of the night, when you’re in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep – the restorative, dream phase. The more you drink, the greater the disruptions, according to sleep experts. Limit your nightcap to one standard drink (12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1½ ounces of liquor), if you want one, and have it at least a few hours before bed.

Alcohol is one of the most commonly used over-the-counter sleep aids, according to a review in the journal Alcohol. However, it does the contrary: It disrupts sleep, causing insomnia, daytime sleepiness, and snoring or sleep apnea (a start-stop breathing pattern during sleep), leading to many other health problems. If you’re dependent on alcohol to fall asleep, this could be a red flag to stop or evaluate whether you have a drinking problem. Seek professional help from your healthcare provider or an addiction specialist.

✔ Work out earlier in the day. Taking an evening boxing class or lacing up your running shoes at dusk may be tempting, but it can leave you feeling wired and then you may find it hard to unwind and get to sleep. Swap this more intense exercise in the evening for more relaxing activities like yoga nidra, which is a conscious deep sleep. There are many yoga nidra workshops and free downloadable audios available online.

✔ Eat lighter at night. If you eat a large, high-calorie, fatty meal in the evening, you’re bound to have a harder time getting to sleep and staying there – you may wake up with heartburn or may toss and turn due to a full stomach.

Here are some smaller meal ideas for the evening:

• A 3-ounce piece of grilled fish, 1 cup of broccoli, and ½ cup of cooked brown rice

• 1 cup of tofu stir-fried with 1 cup of mixed veggies and ½ cup of cooked brown rice

• 2 cups of mixed greens salad with a 3-ounce sliced baked chicken breast and ½ cup of cooked whole wheat couscous

• 2 slices (or 2 ounces) of turkey breast, ½ medium avocado, and 1 cup mixed greens in a 6-inch whole-grain wrap

For nighttime snacks, try the following:

• 1 cup of plain lowfat Greek yogurt with 1 tablespoon of ground flaxseed and a 1 teaspoon drizzle of honey

• A piece of whole-grain toast with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter and a handful of grapes

• ½ cup of cottage cheese spread on a large rice cake and 1 small apple

• Two slices of turkey breast rolled up with two thin slices of cucumber and ½ slice of provolone cheese in each slice