Know Your Numbers

Healthy eating starts with a PLAN, and all good plans start with an OBJECTIVE. If you don’t know what your personal health objectives are, start with a visit to your doctor. Know your numbers.

What is your weight? Your blood pressure? Your blood sugar? ( Your blood sugar levels will give you some indication as to whether you might be heading for diabetes). Have him or her check your cholesterol levels, (for heart health), your iron and B-12 levels (especially if you are tired all the time), and your bone density (to avoid osteoporosis).

Once you know these details, you will know how to start crafting an appropriate eating plan for YOU and YOU ALONE. You will know if you need to lose (or gain) weight, avoid sodium, cut down on sugar and refined carbs, or watch out for saturated fats. You will be able to make the choice between red meat or fish, lettuce or kale or spinach, and you will understand which vitamin supplement to take to get extra calcium and B vitamins if you need them.

And then there are things that your doctor doesn’t need to tell you. Like, how’s your digestion? Is your skin too dry? Do you look and feel your age? Sometimes these are a question of WATER. Yes, water. You might be dehydrated!

OR, you might not be getting enough FIBER in your diet, which could account for that bloated, sluggish, BLAH feeling (hence that old expression, “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”. Trust me, it is true! And pears work, too!)

Back to something I said above, about needing to lose or gain weight. Yes, some folks actually need to gain weight!! , hard as that is to believe. Some of them are children, especially small, active children, and athletic teenagers, who don’t eat right. This is also true of teenaged GIRLS, who are often convinced that they need to starve themselves to “fit in”. You, as their Mom, need to make sure that they get the nutrition they need. It can be hard to do this when you, yourself, may be trying to lose weight. But, as I said above, it all starts with the numbers. So take your kids to the doctor, and figure out what their health objectives are, along with your own.

One more thing. Pay little or no attention to “diet plans” that you find in the latest issue of fashion magazines, Oprah, or wherever. Those are created largely to sell the magazine, and have nothing to do with YOU. How could they? The writer knows nothing about your personal health numbers, which is what you should go by. Nothing else.

Certainly, pay no attention to the many fad diets, which have been around forever, it seems. The cabbage soup diet, grapefruit, steak-and-tomato diet, the cookie diet, “master” cleanses, and the latest trend, the GLUTEN FREE diet. The only reason for this last one, in my opinion, is if you have celiac disease. It should not be a trend, it should be prescribed by your doctor if you have severe digestive issues and other health problems that warrant such a drastic regimen.

So, just go to your doctor, figure out your numbers, and take it from there. Consult a good nutritionist, or e-mail me at donna.white790@gmail.com . I can help.

Happy Eating!