Monthly Archives: May 2016

Eating healthier doesn’t have to be stressful and you don’t have to make a lot of changes all at once.  Changing too much, too quickly, can feel overwhelming and it can be a darn good excuse not to ever want to start at all! But what if you begin with some small changes that aren’t so painful? Just think about making the best choice you can, wherever you are.

Let’s look at your morning cup of coffee. Let’s say you hit Starbucks on your way to work in the morning. I can hear you now...”Don’t mess with my Starbucks!” Just hear me out. Maybe you’re the one who loves, loves, loves, a daily Carmel Macchiato (contains 33, count em’, grams of sugar). How about a White Chocolate Mocha? (59 grams of sugar). Maybe you’re trying to be good, so you order green tea for the beneficial antioxidants. Tazo Green Tea Frappuccino, (63 grams of sugar). Holy moly!

Don’t look at the calories...look at the grams of sugar! And remember...four grams of sugar equals one teaspoon of sugar. So, your Tazo Green Tea with 63 grams of sugar contains just under 16 teaspoons of sugar!!! Yikes--a little coffee with your morning sugar?!

But you love and depend on your coffee in the morning...so now what? Try ordering your coffee black or with steamed half and half, milk, coconut milk, or almond milk (the coconut and almond milk at Starbucks contains sugar so use it sparingly). Or order an espresso or latte but make sure it’s unsweetened. You can sweeten it as much as you want with a little stevia (carry it with you) and sprinkle cinnamon and nutmeg on the top if you’d like. If you want something cold, try an iced coffee.

For those of you who haven’t tried stevia, it comes from a plant that is native to Paraguay. It doesn’t raise blood sugar or contain harmful chemicals and it's much sweeter tasting than sugar, so start with a very small amount, taste, and then add more if you’d like it sweeter.

“Well, wait a minute, you’re thinking...I thought you said we weren’t going to make this stressful. You’re trying to take away something I love!” Don’t think about never again being able to have a Carmel Macchiato... but instead of drinking five of them a week, try treating yourself to one on the weekends...or one on Monday morning (that’ll help get you out of bed)!  Eventually you’ll become more aware of how the sugar makes you feel. Try to eat, or in this case drink, healthfully the majority of the time...and treat yourself now and then.

If you drink your coffee at the office, do you ever use those cute little non-dairy creamers? Those little creamers typically contain high fructose corn syrup (worse for you than sugar), partially hydrogenated oil (nasty trans fats), and other synthetic ingredients. Not so cute after all, huh? It’s a much better choice to have organic half and half or milk, or unsweetened almond, coconut, or cashew milk.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think!

Spring is here and temperatures are warming up.  Finally!  That means sun, fun, and well…fewer clothes.  It won’t be long before it’ll be time to put away long sleeves and jackets and get out the sleeveless tops and shorts.  That may sound exciting to some of you but not if you’re unhappy with the way your body looks and have been strategically hiding those extra pounds under long pants, big shirts, and loose jackets!

If this describes you, what do you do?  Well, one option may be to move to a colder climate.  🙂

Or, you could start a drastic diet, give up everything you love to eat, and spend long hours sweating at the gym.  In a sense, you would be punishing yourself for the extra pounds you’ve gained and whipping yourself into shape.  You may be trying to psyche yourself up for it right now.  But first you should probably finish the ice cream, because it’s going to be a very long time before you can eat anything even remotely good.

How appealing does that sound?  Not!

It takes a lot of mental energy to get motivated for drastic change like that and it may work for some people, but it sounds like torture to me!  What if you just eased in instead?  It would be like waking up naturally in the morning and stretching lazily, as opposed to getting jolted out of a good dream by an obnoxious, loud alarm.  I know what I’d choose!

The process of losing weight doesn’t have to be painful.  And if it is painful you probably aren’t going to stick with it very long anyway.  If you ease into eating healthfully with some changes that are doable, it will take all of the stress out and you’re much more likely to stay the course.  It needs to be a choice you’re making rather than something you feel forced to do.  And it’s all about changing how you think about the whole process.  It’s your body and you’re the only one who’s in control of it.  You get to decide.

Join me next time and we’ll look at some small changes you can begin to make.