faulker053

Tuesday With Marla Gotta love her attitude! Why bother? That’s what I thought. I worked hard on making changes, and in spite of my efforts, here’s the bland response I got from my doctor in this letter: “Your A1c is fine. Your lipids are high. LDL 105, HDL 46, Triglycerides 167. Stay on the statin. Continue to work on your diet and exercise.” If we hadn’t already discussed these results together, you and I, I would have just blown it, food wise.” What’s this all about, you’re wondering? Let me fill you in. Marla has been working with me for about 8 months. She presented to me with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and obesity. And her A1c, the blood test that gives a picture of blood sugar control over a three-month period, was just about out of range when she first came to see me. But most distressing to her, was her relationship with food, her struggle with binge eating disorder. Her emotional triggers were real, and life continues to have its share of stressors. So what happene...

Ready to take control? You, my readers, are a diverse bunch. Some of you are overweight, perhaps higher than your usual and healthy weight. You struggle to have balance in your eating—to eat what you’d like, and to learn to eat just enough. Others maintain their weight in a healthy range, yet grapple with these very same issues. Just because you may look fine, doesn’t mean you’re not challenging yourself to improve your relationship with food. You, too, may be working on legalizing foods, moving from a diet mentality. Many of you are underweight, as evidenced not only by the scale, but by your body’s function—your low heart rate, body temperature, or hormone levels, resulting from inappropriate weight loss, food restriction or over-exercise. You too may be trying to release yourself from the grips of disordered thoughts and behaviors around food, whether or not it is visible to those around you. Yet as diverse as you are, it seems most everyone gets challenged around holiday and social...

My lunch on a hike in Switzerland Organic, whole grain, natural, unprocessed. These words carry visions of ideal diets, of pure and clean eating, of good health.  US News and World Report’s recent article    summarized the healthiest diets, from The DASH diet at the top of the list to The Paleo near the bottom. A panel of experts reviewed each plan for safety and nutritional value—then ranked the best down to the worst plans for health and weight control. Here’s a brief summary of a few of their findings—with my interpretation added. You didn’t think I’d let this pass without putting in my two cents, did you? DASH diet Never heard of it? Not surprising, unless you, like me, have high blood pressure. DASH, an acronym for Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension is shown to be as effective against hypertension as medication, when compared side by side in studies. Its key elements are large quantities of fruits and vegetables, and inclusion of three low fat dairy products dai...

20 years to construct Chateau de Chambord, Loire Valley, France I know you’re impatient. Everyone’s impatient—you are not alone. We want change to have already happened. And we want to be done with the struggle of eating—eating enough, not eating too much, eating just right. We want to be free of the rules and the thoughts, but are reluctant to invest the effort and time to enable it to happen. We make change, but it never seems good enough, and when it seems to be going along just fine, we fear we’ll slip up—and maybe we do. Quick fixes allure us, offering such promise. But this is not about quick fixes. I’d like to wave my magic wand and make it all better. I do have a magic wand, but I’m saving it for when all hope is lost. And really we haven’t reached that place. I’ve never built a house, but this analogy has crossed my mind many times. And you know once something is in my thoughts it’s challenging for me not to share! Railroad house, Swiss Alps Consider building your house It sta...