1 Look for the basic foods known to be essential in a healthy diet.Calculate your average daily intake by taking your totals and dividing them by the number of days you kept your food record. For example, if you’ve tallied seven fruits over a four-day period, you’ve consumed an average of 1.75 pieces of fruit each day (7 ÷ 4 = 1.75).Use a chart like Table 4-4 to track what you eat.TABLE 4-4 Recording What You EatFoodsRecommended Daily ServingsNumber of Servings You ConsumedFruitMedium piece or ½ cup2Vegetables, non-starchy½ cup3Starchy vegetables½ cup3Breads or cereals1 slice or ½ cup2Whole-grain breads or cereals1 slice or ½ cup3Lean meats, poultry, or fish3 ounces2Egg or cheese, low-fat*1 ounce*1Milk (skim, ½%, 1%) or yogurt1 cup2Water or other Nonsweetened beverage1 cup8* You don’t need foods from this category every day.
2 Look for extra foods that contribute calories but don’t contribute significant nutrients.There are no recommended servings in this category so you just need to record your daily intake. Be honest in this assessment. Research indicates that the Western diet can contain more than 50 percent of refined and processed foods. These foods count as carbs and provide calories, sugar, and fat, but no significant nutrients.Use Table 4-5 to record your intake.TABLE 4-5 Recording Your Refined and Processed FoodsServing SizesNumber You ConsumedChips, 1-ounce snack sizeCookiesDessert, cake, pie, pudding, ½ cup or 1 pieceIce cream or other frozen desserts, ½ cupSoft drink, regular, 8 ouncesMeals away from homeFast-food mealsHamburgerCheeseburgerFried fish or fried chickenBurritos or tacosFrench fries, regular sizePizza, 1 medium sliceBiscuits, 1 mediumRolls, 1 mediumGravy, ¼ cup
3 Answer the following questions about your food intake:Did you meet the minimum servings for the basic foods in Step 1?Did your intake of the foods in Step 2 equal or exceed your intake of the foods in Step 1?Can you replace some of your Step 2 choices with Step 1 choices?Are you starting to get the picture of your food habits?Step 2 food choices are okay if you’re meeting your intake of the basic food groups and if your weight is in the normal range. If you’re physically active, you can handle more Step 2 foods than people who aren’t very active.
Determining your level of activity
Being active in today’s environment doesn’t come easy. Advances in the modern age have decreased the opportunities for exercise. Streaming services, video games, the Internet, smartphones, televisions, and so on have all pulled people indoors and gotten them sitting down. But your body is designed for physical output. You have large muscle groups in your legs, arms, back, chest, and abdomen, and smaller but very important muscles in your organ systems like your heart and lungs. If your muscles don’t get the workout they’re designed for, your whole body suffers.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) published its 2nd edition of Physical Activity for Guidelines for Americans in 2018. These recommendations for exercise are a mix of moderate-intensity aerobic activity at least 150 minutes up to 300 minutes per week and muscle-strengthening activity at least two days per week:
Moderate-intensity aerobic activity is any activity that gets your heart beating faster counts, such as, biking, swimming, gardening, or even walking the dog.
Muscle-strengthening activity is activity that makes your muscles work harder than usual such as lifting weight, wearing ankle weights, or working with resistance bands.
If those activities are more than you can do right now, then do what you can. Even 5 minutes of physical activity has real health benefits.
This recommendation stems from studies that indicate that physical activity is linked with even more positive health outcomes than researchers previously thought. The good news is that the exercise can be cumulative — you don’t have to get in 30 minutes or one hour all at once. The recommendation means you have to look for opportunities throughout the day to be more active. Taking the stairs, parking farther away, walking to a coworker’s desk rather than sending an e-mail, and walking short distances rather than driving a car are just some of the ways to build more exercise into your day. (You can find more on this in Chapter 22.)
Less than 30 percent of American adults are sufficiently active in their leisure time to achieve health benefits. Thirty-one million Americans aged 50 or older aren’t physically active at all. Even light activities such as standing or walking around the house are better than no activity at all. If you aren’t very active, start gradually and build up.
Look at the following categories of activity and mark the one that comes closest to describing how you spend your week. Unless you’re in the active or very active category, plan to up your exercise by one level:
Sedentary: Watching television, driving a car, sitting at work, playing video games, sewing, reading, writing, texting, or talking on the phone. No program of regular exercise.
Light exercise: Ironing, dusting, doing laundry, loading/unloading the dishwasher, preparing and cooking food, walking 2 miles per hour for 10 to 20 minutes three to five times per week.
Moderate exercise: Dancing, gardening, doing carpentry work, mopping/scrubbing, bicycling, jogging or walking at 3 miles per hour for 20 to 40 minutes three to five times per week.
Active: Heavy work, aerobics, tennis, skating, skiing, racquetball, brisk walking at 4 miles per hour for 30 to 60 minutes three to five times per week.
Very active: Bicycling 15 miles per hour, running 6 miles per hour, swimming, or participating in martial arts, for 45 to 60 minutes three to five times per week.
Discovering the effects of stress
Stress is unavoidable, but it can be good or bad. Normal transitions in life like getting married or having a baby bring about stress. A job promotion that calls for a move to a new city brings about stress. Other kinds of stress can bring prolonged responses. An unpleasant coworker or difficult job situation is there every day. You have to manage a decrease in your finances every day. Significant stress events like the death of a spouse or child never fully go away. Stress is part of living.
ALCOHOL: MODERATION IS THE KEY
Many people drink alcohol at some point in their lives. Some only drink during social occasions and others may have an evening glass of wine. Moderate alcohol consumption of no more than one drink per day can offer some heart benefits. The following figure shows what qualifies as a drink. However, the benefit is not so great that a nondrinker should consider drinking alcohol. About one-third of individuals who drink alcohol will develop problems with alcohol. Drinking problems can increase your risk of serious health problems (both physical and behavioral) and accidents or injuries.