Blog Category: Weight Loss and Healthy Eating

We have spent the last month looking at some different eating styles and plans:

• The Standard American Diet
• The Mediterranean Diet
• The New Nordic Diet
• The Okinawan Diet
• And just for fun: how a 127-year old French woman ate!

It is fascinating to me that people groups located so far from each other in very different climates and cultures can have basic principles and practices in common among their healthiest members. I guess it shouldn't be surprising - God made us all and equips our environments, regardless of how different they may seem, to allow us to live well if we choose!

So far, we have been to America and reviewed the Standard American Diet (SAD), Southern France to visit Madam Jeanne Calment and the Mediterranean Diet and Norway to visit some reindeer and check out the New Nordic Diet. The last stop on our world tour is Okinawa, Japan.

Okinawans are another group of people who are known for living a really long time. Okinawa is an island about 400 miles south of mainland Japan and is considered to have a sub-tropical climate.

According to Wikipedia, there are 34 centenarians (people living to 100) per 100,000 people - more than three times the rate of mainla...

In this week's blog post, we are going to look at something called the New Nordic Diet. The New Nordic Diet is actually relatively recent (thus the word "new" in the title!). It was developed to incorporate foods found in the Nordic Regions into a healthy eating plan.

Research into this type of eating/diet has shown improvement in:

• Blood lipid panels (risk of heart disease)
• Improved insulin sensitivity (risk of diabetes)
• Blood pressure
• Weight loss

The easiest way to think of the New Nordic Diet is to take the Mediterranean Diet and move it 1200 miles north! Now, obviously some thi...

The Mediterranean Diet is named, well, because it reflects what the people in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea eat!

According to the Mayo Clinic, the Mediterranean Diet emphasizes the following:

• Plant-based foods (fruits and vegetables)
• Whole grains, legumes and nuts
• Olive oil and canola oil, instead of butter and margarine
• Herbs and spices instead of salt
• Eat more fish and poultry, less red meat and "sausage"

Interestingly enough, it isn't all about what you eat! It may also be about other lifestyle factors - namely, getting a lot of exercise and eating with ot...

The oldest person ever documented was a French woman who was 122 years old when she passed! Her name was Jeanne Calment. She was born in February 1875 and died in August 1997. She remembered the Eiffel Tower being built and she actually met Vincent Van Gogh! Almost as fascinating as how long she lived was her lifestyle:

• At 85, she took up fencing.
• She rode her bike until she was 100.
• She continued to walk until she was 110.
• She smoked two cigarettes a day until she was 117.
• She used a lot of olive oil.
• She drank Port wine.
• She ate two pounds of chocolate per week.

So, ...

If you read last week's blog, you know that we just began a summer series on Nutritional Transformation. This week, we are going to look at the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.). This will lay the ground work for looking at four templates on how to approach healthy eating.

Does food really "evolve"?

Much of today's scientific literature, including the field of nutrition, assumes that humans have been around for 50,000 years or longer. It is not the intention of this blog to debate evolution versus creation (there are much wiser minds than mine that have done that). I personally am a Christian wh...

This week's post is going to introduce you to our summer blog series on transforming your nutrition (and possibly your life)! A tall order for sure!

Attention to nutrition has been a part of my (Dr. Doug) life since I was about 13. One day, my mom came home (it was just her and I in the house at the time), and said it was time to get healthy and start eating better. In one fell swoop, she replaced my Trix with granola, hamburgers with chicken, white bread with wheat bread.. and hey, what happened to the chips and ice cream? I wasn't worried about what we ate; I was just fine with all the food ...

Last week, we talked about the devastating effects that chronic inflammation can wreak on your body. Today, we are going to discuss what foods you can add to your diet to help battle inflammation and help you feel better all around!

According to Harvard Health Publications, here are a few examples of anti-inflammatory foods to include in your diet:

• Tomatoes
• Fruits (strawberries, blueberries, oranges and cherries)
• Nuts (almonds, walnuts)
• Olive oil
• Green leafy vegetables (spinach, kale and collards)
• Fatty fish (salmon, mackerel, tuna and sardines)

You can also add in herbs a...

Inflammation plays a vital role in the human body's immune response - without it, we would not be able to heal. According to Medline Plus, the body's inflammatory response occurs when tissues are injured by bacteria, trauma, toxins, heat or any other cause. When your cells are in distress, they release chemicals to alert the immune system, which sends its first responders (inflammatory cells) to isolate the foreign substance or heal the tissue. As these events unfold, blood vessels leak fluid into the site of the injury, causing the telltale swelling, redness and pain.

However, when inflammati...