School Life Vs. Home Life: A Tale of 2 Diets

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With the holiday season in full swing our busiest (and possibly most stressful) time of year often brings us back to our roots and the comfort of home sweet home. As a student, making the transition from living at school to spending time home for breaks literally seems like existing in two completely different worlds. Each place is so unique with different daily schedules, different company, responsibilities, and challenges. After returning to school from Thanksgiving break the impact that these key differences have on my diet and general wellbeing became starkly obvious. I found, among other things, that when eating at home I generally eat more balanced home-cooked meals where as at school I tend to reach more for “quick fix” carb-dense foods.

Our diets are undoubtedly influenced by our surroundings and while I always chalked up less favorable eating at school to restricted availably of certain foods, its clear that added stress of courses as well as peer-influence which normalizes the typical junk food laden “collage student diet” also play a big part in altering my appetite. In this way, actual and perceived nutrition is constantly affected by multiple aspects of our environment. These factors essentially determine the feasibility of healthy eating (or how possible it is for you to adhere to a certain eating pattern) as well as the likelihood of healthy eating (weather constant influences in an area generally support or test an ideal diet).

Acknowledging the ways in which different places can sway our eating habits is therefore a huge step in creating a strong, healthy lifestyle. By recognizing specific challenges an environment presents we can begin to make small adaptive changes to our behavior there. When healthy food is not provided at work, for example, we can plan on bringing a few meals from home. Some times we can best improve our diet by simply making healthy eating more natural and enjoyable wherever we find ourselves.

I know when I’m weighed down by stress and work at school even just taking a day to catch up on sleep and relax can often do away with an otherwise mounting craving for junk food and chocolate.

How do keep your diet strong in different locations?

Stick It! : Making Healthy Habits Survive the Test of Temptation and Time.

(Source)

It seems we all know people who are at the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to health and fitness. There are the 3-gym trips a day, veggie-munching fitness freaks and the "I know I should.....but" population. The health fanatics are on the "highway"; always going, always conscious. In contrast, those who find excuses are stuck in the city gridlock; they start up a lot but they never get further than a block with a new healthy habit before braking.


So what puts some people on the highway and other in the city? And more importunity where is the entrance ramp?!?


Generally we answer this by putting the "highway" people on a pedestal: assuming they are just more iron-clad and driven by nature. This is simply not true. While there is some evidence that suggests self-regulating food (among other) choices is inherently easier for some people, chances are most people that are on the "highway" aren't there for the sole purpose of being the healthiest person they know. That is, they have a constant motivation for staying healthy that makes the idea of maintaining healthy lifestyle less of a chore. In fact, it becomes more like an enjoyable center of their life. This is what keeps the highway people consistently healthy; eating well and exercising has essentially become woven into their daily routines, hobbies, social groups, and jobs.

Finding and embracing health-related activities and interests is therefore essentially the on-ramp to a highway lifestyle. Luckily, that doesn't mean you need to start training for a marathon today, or ever for that matter! The key is to find something you genuinely ENJOY. That could be a recreational sport, some personal time spent walking each day, or perhaps even a weekly trip to the farmer's market. Whatever you find, so long as it gets you moving, eating well, and feeling good: own it! Take pride in your new habits and remember that this change isn't about surviving x-number of weeks in some detested boot camp workout program. It's about creating your own version of a happier, healthier lifestyle.

So what healthy activities do you enjoy most?

(for me it's simply spending a morning preparing some farm fresh samples of local food at the market!)

 

Love Beets !!

Admittedly, beets have become a bit of a new food obsession. Not only have they been linked to improved athletic performance by some recent research, when cooked right they actually taste great!

Although they may seem like a bit of an undertaking when you approach a dirt coated bunch lying in the market, I have finally found a somewhat manageable strategy for preparing your own beets on a "no time" type of schedule.

Step 1: Cut off the root like top and just a small portion of the bottom of the beets (the part that can have a long tail still growing like a carrot).
Step 2: Scrub your beets with a brush under running water.
Step 3: Wrap em up in tin foil and bake them at 375 degrees for about an hour or until they are tender all the way through.

And then you have deliciously sweet roasted beets wrapped conveniently in their own little foil pouch so you can save em in the fridge and pull them out as you need them (like when you want to throw together a quick salad with roasted beets, swiss chard, and tomatoes!) 




Have you tried cooking with beets? Whats your favorite way to serve em up !? 

Cherry Sunflower Muesli

Make It!! 

-Combine about 1 cup old fashion oats, 3/4 cup milk, 1/2 cup vanilla flavored yogurt, and 1/2 cup fresh or frozen cherries in cereal bowl.

- Cover and let soak overnight. 

-Top with a tablespoon of sunflower seeds and honey. 

- Enjoy!! 

Mue-WHAT!?

I love oatmeal. It offers more fiber, less sugar and better satiety than boxed breakfast cereal. Not to mention it's quite a bit cheaper to make in the long run and allows you to make a new variation everyday!

I also love hot weather. Swimming, suntan, shades, I really don't need to explain this one.

I do not, however, love hot oatmeal on a hot day.


Luckily, for or the summer months, there is no better solution than Muesli! (pronounced mew-slee) which is basically cold oats soaked with milk, yogurt, and your choice of flavorings. Best of all you make it the night before you plan on eating to let the oats soak up all that good stuff so its ready to go when ever your done with your morning swim, run, ride, coffee, or graceful roll out of bed.

Have you tried Muesli yet? What varieties have you dreamt up?

Delicious Grilled Vegetables

Quick, Tasty, Healthy Summer Side Dish! 

Do IT !! 

- Gather some Peppers, Zucchini, Onions, Brussels, and Parsnips. (plus any other veggies you love!)
- Toss em in some Oil, Salt, Pepper, and your choice of herbs or spices (I used a little Garlic, Paprika, and Parsley)
- Pop em on the grill in a grated pan or roast em off at about 345 degrees in the oven until tender!

What is Nutrition? : A New Experience, A New Outlook.

Source: blog.foodnetwork.com

            After spending the past few months interning at a collegiate level athletic training table I have seen an entirely unexpected side of sports nutrition. Until this point I have held certain ideals of what foods and styles of eating are nutritious or healthy. It’s not surprising, then, that I was quickly struck with the harsh reality that what college level athletes should eat and what they actually eat are often at opposite ends of my perceived nutritional spectrum. The first few days of my experience I watched in awe as dishes like mac and cheese and deep fried okra were passed to players amidst simplified signs providing generalized nutritional guidelines. How were we fueling athletic performance when every other bite for these players was so far from the “wholesome” and “clean” athletic dishes I had learned about and envisioned for so long? Why didn’t the menu consist more exclusively of items like baked seafood, steamed vegetables, and whole grains? In short, I was quickly met with the realization that players would simply never eat most of these foods voluntarily. Rather than push the athletes toward other (even worse) food choices, I learned our establishment simply worked to make food the athletes liked as best we could.

            As I spent week after week cringing at endless comfort foods flowing from our kitchen I began to grapple with the same persistent question: If the fare we produced at the training table seemingly threw nutrition to the wind what were the athletes getting out of their time here? Was it just another meal? Or was there some other real benefit I simply failed to see?

            My answer came not in a single moment of clarity as if with the lighting of a proverbial bulb, but rather gradually, throughout my experience as my perspective on the world of food and nutrition changed. Coming in to my internship I had a very narrow view of athletic cuisine: food was to be used nearly exclusively as fuel for performance. After all why risk missing any competitive benefit of eating the healthiest diet one can? With this mindset I must say I was quite disappointed to discover that the food I would be cooking for our athletes was far from my definition of “nutritious”. I began to look for a silver lining in our seemingly fundamentally flawed operation and took notice of the signs hanging throughout the dining room. Reading through them it dawned on me that while most of the information seemed commonsense and oversimplified to me, for someone that never studied in nutrition they could provide a very effective guide to the role of different foods and nutrients in an athlete’s body. I listened as players with plates full of barbeque ribs made a point to ask for vegetables because they “still needed a green level food [the color code for most nutritious] on their plate”. I began to see that while our small dining hall for college athletes wasn’t serving whole grains and lean seafood; we were providing something perhaps even more beneficial to our guests. Our athletes were learning, slowly but surely, the nutritional value of different foods and how they could affect their performance. I realized that fundamental concept of diet structure they learned here may especially help later in their career, as athletes need to become more vigil and protective of their bodies to keep up with increased training demands at an older age. Not only did the time in our small dining room help impart that basic understanding of nutrition upon our athletes, but also seemed to build a stronger sense of community between the teams. As they ate they laughed, shared, and worked on the part of a team that can’t be coached, they developed camaraderie.

As my time at my internship dwindled, I no longer saw fattening food being passed to indifferent athletes. Rather, I watched as these teams learned, ate, and built bonds beyond the playing field. From this I have certainly gained a new perspective and with it a new scope for this blog. Nutrition is personal, and therefore never good or bad, nutritious or un-nutritious definitively. Food, rather, is enjoyment, comfort, a tool for performance, and even a reward for a hard day’s work. As such, our diets can clearly affect us in many ways both physically and emotionally. It’s time we move forward from the strict lines of what’s “fattening” or not and toward a better understanding of the intimate interactions between food and our lives, health, and happiness.

Nutritional is personal; unique to our own goals and lifestyles. How does food impact your health and happiness?