Pregnancy, Children and Food Choices

I remember receiving a card at my baby shower celebrating the “eating for two” shared belief in our culture. It was all about nine months of indulgence with the message: “If you’re going to be gaining weight, you might as well have some chocolate cake and ice cream to show for it.”

There has been a wide range of studies showing that kids are more likely to be overweight or “sugar-holics” if their parents, particularly their mothers, are. Many of these studies have based their conclusions on the role mothers play in selecting foods for the household and in building awareness of good nutrition within the family.

Born with a sweet tooth?
I was fascinated to discover a new study that discovered the food women eat while pregnant and breastfeeding helps to determine specific neural pathways in the developing brain, and later, lifetime eating habits for their precious children. For example, once the neural pathway is connected to “sweet = soothing,” it can take some committed practice to break that association.

As the child grows, we have a variety of opportunities to further influence their taste preferences. When we reward or bribe children with food, we set up a pattern in the brain that wires it to believe food makes everything better … a cure-all. If you reward children with sweets, snacks and desserts, they quickly learn to associate these foods with feeling better. Food can distract an unhappy child, in the moment, offering instant gratification. As adults, we have learned that our lives are not that simple and we cannot find instant gratification in food.

When you get right down to the driving force, overeating is a search for security – a need to recreate the secure feelings we experience as children when we were held and fed, when life felt easy. By eating foods similar to the foods we ate as children, we are looking to find the feeling in food but it’s a search that often ends in excess weight linked to a whole list of health-comprising ailments.

At the dinner table, keeping lines of communication open to let your children know you are there for them when they want to talk. Some families choose to use sharing dinner together as a time to open up about what you feel most grateful for that day. This can be a wonderful way to focus on the positive and bring in great feelings around sharing food together. Encouraging children to help with dinner preparation puts them in closer contact with making food taste delicious.

Modeling a healthy relationship with food is an excellent way to encourage healthy eating choices in your children. Children certainly take note of parents’ eating habits! Notice what you are saying about food choices, preparation and especially about your body. One of my clients was deeply concerned when she noticed her 4-year-old’s preoccupation with weighing herself, repeating what she’s heard her mommy say too many times – “I’m so fat” – as she stepped off the scale.

Mothers may influence children’s brains during all developmental stages, but as a hypnotherapist, I am very happy to let you know we can still positively influence the brain structure any time we choose. New research in neuroscience shows that, while some brains may have developed in a less than ideal manner, applying neuroplasticity and hypnotic principles to help redevelop our brains is powerful and effective. (Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to form new connections and change its structure in response to experience.) 

Johanna Lynn, a hypnotherapist, offers an inside out approach to truly love your body. Born with a natural curiosity about why people do what they do, Johanna now finds the entire field of mind/body medicine fascinating, with a clinical hypnosis practice focusing on healing with the intention to return to health and vitality.

Photo credit: Manuel

Does Your Comfort Food Really Meet Your Needs?

Foods are strongly linked to our emotions and moods. Therefore, our day’s events can drive our eating habits. Due to our hectic lifestyles and chronic stress, many of us are turning to food to soothe, comfort and provide relief from intense feelings or low moods. We are bombarded daily by stressors, whether in our environment, workplace, family, relationships, financial or all of them. As these generally bring forth unpleasant feelings or low energy, we may reach for our comfort foods to cope. Under emotional distress, we seek out quick fixes and may not have the motivation to make ideal choices regarding our comfort foods.

Many people report sugar cravings after a stressful event, because blood sugar is low and brain chemicals are reduced. Choosing sugary foods is the first and most convenient method of quickly raising good mood chemicals and energy. However, these comfort foods provide temporary relief with negative physiological effects. The foods we crave to ease our stress generally are the ones that are worse for us in terms of weight gain and digestive and immune system issues. Most common “pick-me-up foods” are frosted donuts, cookies, soda pop, ice cream, gummy candies and chocolate bars. What is your comfort food? Is it from a vending machine? Does your comfort food contain the essential nutrients your body and mind need to function optimally? If your comfort food is heavily processed, sugar-loaded and void of nutrients, it will in the end deplete your vital systems of what they require, putting your physical and mental health at risk.

The good news is that there are many healthy emotionally-soothing or mood-enhancing foods. There are foods armed with nutrients that can provide elevated moods and satisfaction. Carbohydrates can provide the necessary relief we are seeking. Complex carbohydrates include whole-grain breads, whole-wheat pasta, brown or wild rice, bananas, barley, potatoes and sweet potatoes. Vegetables are also part of the carbohydrate family that are filled with all the vital nutrients our body requires for optimal functioning. The key is to have these foods available when we are feeling vulnerable.

Most people crave carbohydrates pre-evening and throughout the night. Bingeing on high-carb foods, such as potato chips, cookies, cereal, French fries, rice cakes and snack crackers, causes one to feel regret and remorse. To prevent carb-overloading after supper, have a half a piece of whole-grain bread dipped in olive oil 20 minutes before supper. This will raise good mood levels enough to take the edge off and prevent you from over-eating at supper. During supper, it is important to eat carbohydrates, such as brown rice, sweet potatoes, or mashed turnips and squash. Be conscious of your portion sizes. In the evening, if cravings persist, try eating air-popped popcorn drizzled with olive oil and a hot cup of rooibos tea.

Food cravings can also be managed through stress-relieving strategies, such as having a warm bath, reading a book in a quiet room or taking a casual walk. Jot down some self-care activities that bring you pleasure, comfort and calmness. It is important that your stress-reducing methods be simple so they are easy to follow through. Rather than food, find comfort in a loved one, friend or pet, as they can provide long-lasting physical and emotional benefits.

Using foods to de-stress or defuse emotions and feelings may not be the ideal coping mechanism. However, many choose to do so. As rational thinking may not always be present after a stressful situation, it is important to have healthy foods accessible and available to meet your physical and emotional needs. Eating to live is more satisfying than eating to “get by.” Reassess your comfort food and determine if it is really meeting your needs.

Treena Wynes, author of “Eating Ourselves Crazy” is a Registered Social Worker, former bulimic and owner of a weight-loss counseling service. She focuses on the emotional and mental aspect of food addiction and obesity issues.

Photo credit: **tWo pInK pOSsuMs**

5 Tips to Beat Your Holiday Sugar Cravings

It’s the holiday season again, bringing festive good cheer, celebrations with friends and family and usually more delicious sweet treats than you can handle!

So before we launch into the negative effects of too much sugar (and, of course, give you some healthy alternatives!), we want to give some background of the sugar addictions we have in this culture.

Since the beginning of civilization, sugar has been directly linked to feelings of love, comfort, joy and celebration. The very first thing a baby tastes is their mother’s sweet milk, so we all have a very basic and immediate trigger with sugar and love as well as basic survival. Hunter gatherers didn’t come across many sweet foods; when they did, they knew it meant fat, calories and energy (i.e., survival as well).

So we’re sort of hardwired to crave sweets. We also crave sweets when we’re deficient in certain nutrients, especially chromium, carbon, phosphorus, sulfur and tryptophan. Don’t beat yourself up about sugary indulgences; the guilt and worry is way more toxic to your body (and your mind!) than anything you’re eating. We promise. Let go, savor and enjoy every delicious mouthful, and then make sure you get your greens in to balance it out. Some other tips to follow are:

1. When a sugar craving hits, try eating whole fresh fruits, nuts, non-gluten grains, sweet potatoes and dark green leafy vegetables like kale and spinach to balance the body and lessen the cravings.
2. Boost overall intake of protein and fats since our bodies are biologically programmed to use those as fuel first. So lots of beans, dark leafy greens, nuts, seeds, coconut, olives and spirulina are all great choices to keep you nourished, satiated and energized. Your body will be able to run longer and more efficiently with these as the primary sources of fuel rather than any kind of sugar that spikes insulin and then quickly brings about a crash and interferes with fat burning.
3. Sugar also affects overall immunity by wiping out beneficial bacteria in the gut. So along with taking a strong probiotic during the holiday season (we recommend at least 40 billion organisms daily), it’s good to limit sugar intake as much as possible.
4. If you do choose to indulge in sweet things, try choosing ones that minimally spike blood sugar, like whole fresh fruit, coconut nectar and brown rice syrup, or even better, stevia, which is a natural herb that has zero effect on glycemic levels.
5. ‘Tis the season for giving, sharing, celebrating and being joyful. Offer tons of gratitude that you’re able to make choices for your most vibrant health and direct your energy toward your friends and family rather than stressing about a few sweet treats.

Life is inherently sweet on its own and you’re one of the sweetest things in it!

Happy Holidays!

Jenny Nelson is a Clean Wellness Coach and Alejandro Junger, M.D. is author of “Clean:The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body’s Natural Ability to Heal Itself.”

Photo credit: Sharyn Morrow

Sugar Addiction: A Nation In Need Of Rehab

Imagine how American society would function if drug dealers pumped 150 to 175 pounds of heroin per person per year into the veins of the elderly, the middle-aged and the young alike. Legally.

Well, sugar, an addictive substance that speeds along the same brain pathways as heroin, enters the food supply in those quantities. The result of this sugar surge is that more than one in three adults now has either Type 2 diabetes or its harbinger, pre-diabetes. Include those under age 18, and 105 million Americans are harboring a life-threatening blood-sugar disorder.

As with any addiction, the sugar situation will only worsen barring drastic intervention and widespread lifestyle changes. Consuming too much sweet stuff is lighter fluid for Type 2 diabetes, and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that by 2050, the disease, in its full form, will inhabit as many as one in three U.S. adults. Add in the far more numerous pre-diabetics, and you may be hard-pressed to find anyone with healthy glucose metabolism by the middle of the 21st century.

Many of these blood-sugar cripples won’t be capable societal contributors. They may be little more than sugar smack-heads. They’ll bankrupt our healthcare system with their chronic fatigue, dialysis treatments, amputations and the numerous other diabetic complications. A society with such an overwhelmingly diabetic population will no longer be viable economically, a much scarier prospect than that predicted in the dystopian novel, “Brave New World”, where addicts merely crave the comparatively less harmful Soma and then go do their assigned tasks.

Most Americans keep right on eating and drinking boatloads of sugar because, after all, they’re sugar junkies. I witnessed this phenomenon when I saw my father for the first time in 20 years in early 2008. He was lying in a hospital bed looking nearly cadaverous. His entire right leg had been amputated; his teeth had disintegrated amidst swollen gums. Despite this wretched condition, his mood brightened only when orderlies wheeled in a meal of mashed potatoes (along with chicken) and fruit, both of which quickly convert to glucose in the bloodstream. His fix had arrived. He was dying of diabetes, and yet his “caretakers” were still pumping him full of diabetes-friendly carbohydrates.

What’s more, my father openly longed for the bottle of root beer that was stashed away in a cabinet across the room, a scene I describe in “Sugar Nation”: He still indulged this diabetic’s poison even knowing that too much sugar cost him part of his body. This scene reminded me of a drug addict who has seen his life destroyed by the substance he can’t refuse. Only the worse off he becomes, the lousier he feels, the more he craves the very thing that sentenced him to this hell on earth.

How can the white stuff that kids and adults alike sprinkle on their cereal have this narcotizing power? Researchers at Princeton University have studied the effects of sugar on the brain chemistry of rats, and what they’ve found is that their subjects exhibit all the effects of heroin addiction. Sugar does this by triggering the release of the feel-good brain chemical dopamine in the section of the brain normally associated with addictive behaviors. The dopamine release produces a drug-like “high.” Yet the brain adapts. So it takes more of the substance—in this case, sugar—to produce the same effect.

According to lead researcher and Princeton psychologist, Bart Hoebel, PhD, “Our evidence from an animal model suggests that bingeing on sugar can act in the brain in ways very similar to drugs of abuse.”

Lessening the sugar stimulation only makes the body want more dopamine. Remove the substance altogether, and the sugar abuser experiences physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms. The body is addicted. Twinkies aren’t classified as a controlled substance, but for the glucose intolerant, perhaps they should be.

But there’s more to it in the case of my father and the rest of us who have reactive hypoglycemia, an underreported pre-diabetic condition in which blood sugar spikes in response to a heavy carb load. Then the pancreas overreacts by secreting too much insulin, too late, like an over-eager rookie cop coming across a crime scene after the fact. This insulin response drives blood sugar below 70 milligrams per deciliter, making your body crave quick-energy sugar not just for pleasure but also for survival. At this point, it’s not just your brain that’s craving glucose; cells throughout your body demand it, too.

I’d challenge anyone to find a drug whose effects are more powerful than a blood sugar drop from 160 to 50 in half an hour—the scale of my descent on a glucose tolerance test when I learned that I was pre-diabetic. Before I learned to avoid the sugar trigger, fatigue didn’t set in gradually; it hit with a whoosh. I felt as though I’d been shot by a tranquilizer capable of taking down an elephant in the wild. I’ve never taken narcotics recreationally, but I have used Vicodin after surgeries, and the feeling of that drug reminded me of a carb-induced blood-sugar crash. If that prescription pain med came in the form of a jelly doughnut, rather than a pill, you’d have some idea of the hold sugar had on me during childhood and throughout much of my adult life.

The good news is that there are simple rehab solutions to sugar addiction. I know, based on personal experience. Breaking the cycle means avoiding crashes. To do this, you need to eat protein, healthy fats, and fibrous vegetables for breakfast, a meal normally stocked with simple sugars and other fast-acting carbohydrates. Know the code names that are used to disguise sugar on food labels: dextrose/maltodextrin, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, honey, maple syrup, molasses, sucrose and xylose. Avoid the foods whose packages list them. Better yet, switch from packaged to whole foods. Exercise daily, which not only helps usher sugar out of your bloodstream, but also produces good-vibe brain chemicals of its own, called endorphins.

So, we can change our fate. We know what to do to prevent this epidemic that will cripple us as individuals and as a society. But the question is: Will we take action before it’s too late?

Jeff O’Connell is the editor-in-chief of Bodybuilding.com and the author of “Sugar Nation” (Hyperion, 2011).

Photo credit: Dave Hoffman

Natural Sweetener Smack Down: Agave

Human beings are built with a taste for sweetness – it’s in our DNA. We crave sweetness because mother’s milk is sweet, and we’re programmed to crave sweet carbohydrates so the human species will survive. When we were all still living off the land, hunting and gathering in the wilderness, sweet foods were safe to eat – poisonous foods are generally bitter.

In the last 200 years, humans have gotten really good at growing crops that can be made into sugar. The cheap, abundant bags and bottles of sweetness have led us into a dire health situation. Americans get most of their calories from sweeteners. They also get many diseases from added sugars. Sugar isn’t bad, it’s just that we tend to eat too much of it.

The current epidemics of diabetes, heart disease and obesity are directly linked to humans’ recent ability to produce huge amounts of refined carbohydrates from corn, sugar cane and, to a lesser extent, maple trees, honeycombs and cacti. But some sweeteners make life interesting, food taste good and birthday cake delicious.

It gets confusing when we try to wade through all the conflicting information about how much sugar is safe to eat, which sweeteners are healthier and which ones are dangerous over time.

Now, let me start by saying that I don’t think you’re going to keel over if you have a cup of coffee with two packets of white table sugar. But do that three times a day for 20 years and you’ll start to see some health problems develop.

I do my best to use more natural sweeteners. “Natural” and “unprocessed” are loaded terms. By “natural,” I mean less processed and as unrefined as possible. I try to use sweeteners that are made from plants and are only slightly cooked, dried or crystallized using as few steps as possible. If I can’t understand the process it took to create something, I’m less likely to eat it. I also avoid sweeteners that were made in a lab or chemically derived like Splenda, aspartame, saccharin, high-fructose corn syrup and so on.

That being said, I love a good dark chocolate or a creamy rice pudding and I’m only human after all – so I do enjoy desserts. I just eat a lot less sugar than I used to, and I feel better now than I did in my early 20s.

So, I’m putting together a series on natural sweeteners to help people understand the benefits, drawbacks and uses of the different options lining the health food store aisles.
The first contender had a meteoric rise to fame in the health food world since its introduction in the last 10 years, but is currently experiencing a negative backlash.

Agave, alternatively known as “agave nectar” and “agave syrup,” comes from cactus native to Mexico. If you took that same syrup and fermented it, you would eventually get Mexico’s other famous liquid, tequila.

In small doses of less than a teaspoon, agave was believed to have little effect on blood sugar levels, and was thought to be safe for diabetics. However, people rarely use less than a teaspoon of sweeteners, and there are other factors that should give diabetics pause. Agave is also very high in fructose – about as high as high-fructose corn syrup. Since all that fructose is hard for your liver to metabolize, anyone with liver issues should avoid using agave as their main sweetener. Fructose elevates triglycerides and gets stored as body fat. So if you have high cholesterol concerns, avoid agave.

Agave isn’t made from corn, which is a common food allergen. Also, high-fructose corn syrup has been shown to contain traces of mercury from the processing facilities where it is produced. Unlike other metals and trace elements (copper, zinc) you don’t need any mercury in your body! Now the Corn Refiners Association is trying to get permission from the federal government to change labeling laws so high-fructose corn syrup can be labeled as “corn sugar,” which would be much more appealing to consumers. Corn sugar – sounds safe and friendly, doesn’t it?

So when it comes to using agave, I prefer to use it in small amounts for recipes that need a good liquid sweetener that doesn’t add extra flavor. Maple syrup is often too maple-y, and brown rice syrup is too thick for some recipes. I like to add agave to my Iced Teeccino Latte in the summer, and here’s my recipe for this delicious caffeine-free beverage

Iced Teeccino Latte
-2 tablespoons Teeccino or 2 Teeccino bags
-2 cups unsweetened rice, hemp or soy milk
-2 teaspoons agave
-1 cup ice

Place the ground Teeccino in a tea strainer and set in a tea pot or 20 ounce mug.

Pour the milk in the pot or mug and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. The milk will absorb the flavor of the Teeccino while chilling.

Remove the pot from the refrigerator and remove the tea strainer.

Pour the steeped Teeccino milk into two glasses. Add 1 teaspoon agave into each cup and stir well to melt the agave.

Add ½ cup ice to each cup and serve chilled.

For more information on optimal living, visit http://deliciousvitality.com/.

Photo credit: elena’s pantry