Category Archives: Changing Behaviors

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Healthy Reminders For Breakfast

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The Health-e Thoughts Text Messages available for free on my website, www.InsightsForHealth.com, focus on 11 aspects of your daily life where your habits need to change in order to achieve healthy weight loss.  I gave you an overview of them in my previous post, Introducing Health-e Thoughts Text Messages – To Help You Change!  Today I want to talk a little bit about the At Home Breakfast Health-e Text Messages.  These are designed to let you schedule text message reminders to help you stay on track to eat healthy breakfasts.  You will get one daily text message at the time you schedule them for as long as you like.  They remind you of some of the tips for eating a healthy breakfast right when you need them!

How Do You Schedule Them?

That’s very simple:

  1. You need to go to www.InsightsForHealth.com and Register to become a member.  That is absolutely free at this time.  Make sure that you correctly enter your cell phone number, select your cell phone carrier and click OK to give us permission to send you text messages.  Remember, applicable text message charges from your cell phone carrier will apply.
  2. Once registered, Log In to the Members Only section.
  3. Then select Health-e Texts from the menu on top.  You’ll be taken to a page that describes the service and has a list of the various kinds of Health-e Texts you can send yourself on the left.
  4. Choose At Home Breakfast from the list on the left & just select the start & stop dates, the time you want to receive your daily text and your time zone.  Click Save & you’re done.  You’ll start getting your breakfast Health-e Texts on the day you chose.

View Your Health-e Text Schedule or Change Your Mind

You’ll also notice two selections at the bottom of the menu bar at the left, one will let you view your schedule of Health-e Texts and the other will allow you to delete any you choose.  You’re in control.

I hope you try these out and I’ll be looking for your feedback!

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

Introducing Health-e Thoughts Text Messages – To Help You Change!

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Even before you start your weight loss plan it quickly becomes clear that things will have to change for you to become successful.  You need to change your habits surrounding buying, preparing and eating foods as well as make changes to increase your activity to burn more calories.  So changing habits or behaviors is fundamental to any weight loss program.  Perhaps a more accurate way of putting this is that you need to substitute healthier behaviors that bring about weight loss for your usual unhealthy ones.  You don’t just stop a habit or behavior, you replace it.  Until these new behaviors become automatic you will need to consciously remind yourself to substitute them for your old habits.  You will need to use tricks to help you remember.  With time it will become easier, but when you first start you will need all the help you can get. 

With that in mind, I developed a web site to help support anyone in their journey to reach a healthier weight.  It is www.InsightsForHealth.com and all its tools are free.  It has many features to help you in your quest, and I’ll describe them in more detail in future posts.  But perhaps the one most useful to use when you are trying to remember to substitute your new healthier habits is Health-e Thoughts Text Messages.  These are text message reminders that you schedule yourself to help you change some common unhealthy habits.  They cover:

  •          At Home Breakfast
  •          At Home Lunch
  •          At Home Dinner
  •          Exercising At Home
  •          Healthy Eating When Out Of Town
  •          Exercising When Out Of Town
  •          Eating Out
  •          Grocery Shopping
  •          Morning Snacks
  •          Afternoon Snacks
  •          Evening Snacks

For example, if you find one of your greatest weaknesses involves eating unhealthy evening snacks, you could set up text reminders to occur at certain times in the evening for as many days as you want.  Then around the time when you are ready to open that bag of chips you would get a text to help you resist that habit and substitute a healthier one. 

Click here to read more details.  If you want to try Health-e Thought Text Messages, just follow the steps to register and in a few minutes you’ll be able to schedule these helpful text reminders to help you make those healthy behavior changes. 

Remember, while we don’t charge a fee for this service, any applicable text message charges from your cell phone carrier will apply.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

Decoding Nutrition Labels

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Nutrition Label - Whole Wheat Penne PastaAt your grocery, one of the most beneficial things you can do to assure your weight loss success is to read the Nutrition Labels of the foods you consider buying. Let’s talk a little about the kind of information that these labels provide.

The example shown here is from a box of whole wheat penne pasta. The first thing to notice is the definition of Serving Size since all the other information is related to 1 serving. Here we see that 1 serving of this pasta is 3/4 cup. It also tells us that there should be approximately 8 servings in this box of pasta. All the other information is based upon 1 serving, so if you eat 1 serving of this pasta, you will consume 210 calories and 15 of those calories are from fat.

As you continue looking at the label you’ll see the content of Fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Carbohydrate and Protein. Two of the kinds of fats are listed separately, Saturated Fat & Trans Fat. These are the two kinds of fat that you should avoid as much as possible because of their association with heart disease. In this example they are 0, so we know that the other kinds of Fat, Monounsaturated or Polyunsaturated must account for the 1.5 grams that are contained in this food. Another positive for this food is the absence of Cholesterol & Sodium. The Carbohydrate content is somewhat high at 41 grams.  For a 1200 calorie meal plan, the recommended Carbohydrate intake is approximately 150 grams.  That 3/4 cup contains a lot of complex carbohydrates, since the Dietary Fiber and Sugar components are relatively small at 5 and 2 grams respectively. For a person who has an elevated amount of triglycerides in their blood, lowering their Carbohydrate intake will also improve their triglyceride level.

Finally, you can see that the Protein content is 7 grams and that this pasta contains some Calcium & Iron. The percentages that you see are the percentages of the daily recommended values where known for each of these for someone on a 2000 calories meal plan. So, since most people who are trying to lose weight have a recommended daily caloric intake less than 2000 calories, these amounts actually represent a greater percentage of the recommended amounts for them.

As you can see there is a lot of information on these labels to help you make healthier choices.  And isn’t that what eating healthier is all about?  It will take time for you to use this tool as you make your choices, but it will be worth it.  Before you know it you’ll know exactly what to look for and how to use the information to help you reach your goal.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

Shopping Healthy

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You can’t eat what you don’t have in your refrigerator or pantry.  This obvious truth is the foundation for developing and using a meal plan that will help you attain your weight loss goal.  Since food shopping is so critical for your success, I have listed a few tips to help you when you head to the grocery:

  • Make A List & Stick To It – Shopping smart starts with planning. Before you go to the grocery, make a list of the foods you need to get. By sticking to the list you will avoid making poor food choices.
  • Don’t Shop Hungry – Another tip is to avoid going food shopping when you are hungry. You are more likely to impulsively buy high caloric, unhealthy “junk” foods then. So take your list after you’ve had a meal, and you’ll be more likely to make healthier food choices
  • Read Nutrition Labels – Comparing nutrition labels is most helpful in choosing between one or more similar products or among brands of the same food. If you have high blood pressure or heart failure, you should minimize your sodium intake, so you can use the information on the Nutrition Labels to choose foods with lower Sodium content. If you have a high level of cholesterol in your blood, use the information to choose those foods lower in Cholesterol, Saturated Fat and Trans Fat to lower your blood cholesterol as well as your risk for heart attack and stroke.

Since knowing how to read Nutrition Labels is so important to choosing the healthier foods, I’ll talk about that in the next post.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob

Obesity & Health

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There are a number of reasons why people choose to lose weight.  Some of the most powerful motivators are often very personal, such as wanting to look more attractive to one’s spouse and put the zing back in their relationship.  Beyond these, there are definite health benefits to lowering your BMI into the normal range.  So if you are on the fence about whether to lose weight, the following might help you make up your mind.

Being overweight or obese increases the risk of developing many diseases and conditions including high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, high cholesterol levels, high triglyceride levels, osteoarthritis and gallbladder disease. It even increases the risk for endometrial cancer, breast cancer and colon cancer.

During pregnancy, obesity increases the risk of death for both the baby and the mother and raises the maternal risk of high blood pressure by a factor of ten. The woman who is obese during pregnancy has an increased risk of gestational diabetes and problems with labor and delivery. The infants of these obese women have a higher birthweight which leads to a higher rate of cesarean section with its higher rate of complications. These infants often have low blood sugar which can lead to brain damage and seizures. In addition, these infants have a higher risk of birth defects.

The attainment of a normal weight can lower these risks. A report from the Surgeon General stated that an overweight individual can reduce their risk of heart disease even by just losing 5-15% of their body weight. So there is definitely hope to improve your health risk.

A Simple Formula

Being overweight or obese is due to an energy imbalance. More calories are eaten or consumed than are used in the activities of the body. To lose weight you must do the opposite:

Formula For Weight Loss: Calories Out (Activity) > Calories In (Food Eaten)

Body weight is the result of heredity, environmental factors and individual behaviors. While you can’t change your heredity, you can alter your environment and your individual behaviors. That is where your power lies. You’ll lose the most the fastest when you eat less and burn more. So, an exercise regimen is an important part of the formula. After being cleared by your doctor, you will need to build up your routine, but it will be worth it!  In addition to helping you lose weight, exercise provides other health benefits including improving your cardiovascular fitness.

For Your Health – Dr. Bob