Author: Ashley Wentworth
National Nutrition Month ® was created by the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics as a way to learn more about nutrition and incorporate healthful habits into our lifestyles. Each March the Academy chooses a theme for National Nutrition Month ® and provides information and helpful tips related to the theme.
This March, the focus is “Fuel for the Future.” According to the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics, this theme “highlights the importance of fuelling our bodies at every age and eating with the environment in mind.”
As a Registered Dietitian, I am enjoying this pick. It reminds us to focus on getting enough food to nourish ourselves, something I find most people struggle with. A lot of messaging around nutrition is confusing, rigid, or proclaims, “The less, the better!” This can leave us hungry, irritable, hyper focused on food, and can erode our relationship with food and trust in our bodies. Adequate nutrition is a great step towards a healthful lifestyle.
The sustainability aspect of this theme is a great sentiment as well, encouraging us to leave our environment better than we found it. Prioritizing sustainability can be great for some, but can create a hyperfocus on food choices and can also be expensive and inaccessible for many of us. Making intentional, sustainable food choices often requires financial resources, time, and energy. Many of us do not have the capacity to participate in these options as resources are limited, we do not have many options for food shopping, and we need to choose low cost foods to maximize the volume of food we can buy—especially with the current increase in costs of living. We can also get too wrapped up in these practices as well. If you are only allowing yourself to eat sustainable options you may risk inadequate nutrition and obsessive food thoughts and behaviors.
The Academy also provides some tips to try out during the month to help us apply the theme to our everyday lives:
Each of these tips can make a big difference in your budget, time, food choices, and relationship with food. I personally use every one of these suggestions in my nutrition choices and planning, as well as in nutrition counseling with my clients.
If you’d like to start implementing any of these tips:
National Nutrition Month® also aims to bring awareness to the role of Registered Dietitians.
Registered Dietitians (RD), also called Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDN), are food and nutrition experts. Registered Dietitians have completed a specific, accredited curriculum for an undergraduate degree, completed a supervised practice/internship, and passed a national registration examination. We also must maintain continuing education requirements throughout our career.
This extensive training allows us to work in many different fields to:
Registered Dietitians are credentialed practitioners that have met certain qualifications, and participate in required continuing education to maintain their credentials. Per the Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics, “A credential is a professional qualification — like MD for doctors or physicians — that lets the public know that the practitioner is a trained expert. In nutrition and dietetics, the credentials for trained experts is RDN and NDTR.”
The “Nutritionist” title is not credentialed, meaning that there are no qualifications to meet to acquire this title, so in essence, anyone can call themselves a Nutritionist.
Note: All Registered Dietitians are Nutritionists, but not all Nutritionists are Registered Dietitians. Be sure to get health and nutrition information from a credentialed source. Much of the current nutrition information in the media is anecdotal and not based on scientific evidence.
I hope these nutrition tips were helpful! Enjoy National Nutrition Month®!
Ashley
Today is International Day of Women and Girls in Science. This special day is observed on February 11th each year to raise awareness for gender equality in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM. Despite the needle moving forward in regard to gender equality in the STEM fields, the presence of women is still severely lacking.
Author: Ashley Wentworth
You've probably seen the headlines or heard the news stories about inflammation inside our bodies. This can be a tough concept to grasp, because you can't necessarily see the inflammation. It's not like a cut that becomes inflamed with infection or a sprained ankle that's swollen and inflamed. But there are signs of chronic, internal inflammation if you know what to look for.
Chronic Inflammation
Acute inflammation is a very normal reaction that takes place in your body when there's been an injury or illness (like that sprained ankle or when you have a virus). It's simply your immune system's way of removing something in your body that is harmful or just shouldn't be there.
Chronic inflammation, however, is another story.
Sometimes, the body is unable to overcome or repair the damage. This can lead to the body slowly building up an internal inflammatory response that can last months or years. Scientists now believe that inflammation is behind many diseases, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, allergies, COPD, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer's, irritable bowl disease, and arthritis.
So while you might not be able to see signs on the outside of the body, there can be signs and symptoms that you experience as a result of chronic inflammation, including:
Stop Fanning the Flames of Inflammation
The good news is that you can calm the inflammation inside your body.
Lastly, chew on this. Turmeric (curcumin) has been shown to have major anti-inflammatory properties. But here's the thing. It's difficult to get enough of the curcumin that's found in turmeric to really make a difference in inflammation. That's why we've packaged it in a yummy gummy (sorry, couldn't resist that rhyme haha). We include black pepper in our formulation, because our bodies absorb curcumin better when it's combined with black pepper.
While it's impossible to fully avoid inflammation, it's important to start taking control of it where you can. Include daily self-care--no matter how small--as practicing consistently is what produces progress. Here's to you mom! xo
Author: Carrie Myers
In the last post, we discussed what stress is (like you needed that lesson haha) and what it does to your health. We also talked about some simple ways to manage your stress. In this post, we look at the root causes of your stress and how to dig them out.
Getting to the Root of It
Stress-relieving techniques are necessary and absolute lifesavers sometimes (lifesaving for you…and your kids!). But for chronic stress that just isn’t going away, it’s important to figure out the real root of it so it can be dealt with.
Start by asking yourself what your major sources of stress are. Go ahead—list them out.
Next, choose one of these sources. Ask yourself what exactly about this stressor is stressing you out?
For example, if your work is stressing you out, what exactly about your job is the problem? The actual type of work? A co-worker? Your boss? The pay? The hours? The commute? What?
Once you’ve narrowed down this root, let’s uproot it!
Can you…
Change your perception of the stress? This is like the “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure” phenomenon. What stresses one person out, another let's roll off her back. Sometimes when we get rolling in that stress mode, we allow everything to stress us out.
Is this thing really worth you stressing out over…including the effect it’s having on your health and your family? How can you change your perception of it? One way is to look at the lessons you’re learning from it. What pearls of wisdom can you take from this situation? Offer up some gratitude for these lessons!
Change your reaction to this stressor? There’s a difference between reacting and responding. When we react to a stressor, it’s that knee-jerk, emotional reaction. There is no thought to the reaction. It’s automatic and usually emotionally-fueled.
A response, however, is more thoughtful. You take a little time to take that deep breath (hello, parachute…). This gets some of that lifesaving oxygen to your brain so you can make a more rational response.
When you’re faced, for example, with a continuously irritating, cranky co-worker (or family member...) (your saber-toothed tiger), 1. Take a step back (physically and/or figuratively), 2. Take a deep breath, 3. Respond.
If this person is used to your knee-jerk reaction, by responding instead of reacting, you might be surprised at the response you get back from them! Hey, a little shock value never hurts (the shock coming from them expecting you to freak out on them...but then you don't)!
Take action. Let’s say you’ve tried letting things roll off your back (changed your perception) and you’ve changed your reaction (way to be responsive!), but the stressor persists and you can’t take it any longer. What action might you need to take?
In the case of your job, do you need to look for a new one? Is there a conversation that needs to happen with your supervisor? Do you need to ask for more money? Do you need to transfer to a different department or shift?
Here’s the thing to remember: there are ALWAYS options, even when it feels like there are none! They might not be ideal for the long-term, but they can act as stepping-stones to get you out of a current situation and headed to where you want to be. You just have to be willing to get creative, brainstorm possible solutions (stepping-stones), and take action.
Here’s to less stress! xo
