Topics:

The New American Plate
The Truth About Age-Related Weight Gain
Six Ways to Beat Fatigue
Stuffed Fish Fillets Recipe

The New American Plate

Take a look at your plate. How does the food you eat affect your body’s ability to fight disease? How does it affect your weight? Simply by looking, thinking and making a few adjustments, you’ll find yourself eating both for weight management and long-term health.

First look to see if the porportion of food is right. As a rule of thumb, plant-based foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans should cover at least two-thirds of the plate. Meat, fish or poultry should cover no more than one-third.

This guideline reverses the traditional American plate and treats meat as a side dish or a condiment rather than the main ingredient. It can be as simple as preparing your favorite brown rice or grain mix and topping it off with steamed green beans, carrots, yellow squash and two or three ounces of chicken. Many studies show that this plant-based diet helps to reduce cancer risk.

After checking proportion, the next step is to look at the size of portions on your plate. America is experiencing an obesity epidemic. Fifty-five percent of all Americans are overweight. At the same time, the portions on American plates have grown larger and larger.

Visitors from other countries express amazement at the amounts of food heaped on our plates. Foods adopted from foreign cuisines-such as the croissant, bagel or quesadilla-double or triple in size. Meanwhile, fast food outlets feature huge “value meals” and “supersizes.” Even table-service restaurants have swapped the traditional 10 1/2-inch plate for a 12-inch plate.

A good way to assess the actual size of the portions on your plate is to become familiar with USDA’s standard serving sizes. Then, fill a measuring cup with the specified amount and empty it onto a clean plate. Make a mental note of how much of the plate is covered by this standard serving.

Now ask yourself how many of these standard servings go into the portion you usually eat. Portion size should depend on actual need. A person who sits at a desk all day may need only one cup of cereal in the morning. A person who runs five miles a day may need two or three.

If your weight is too high, start by reducing the number of standard servings in your regular portions. Make sure you reduce the amount on your plate gradually to avoid hunger pangs. Each small change adds up to a substantial difference over time.

The Truth About Age-Related Weight Gain

Is weight gain an inevitable part of growing older? It certainly seems so. Overall, one of every two American women is overweight or obese. The age related upward drift is clear: Among women in their twenties, one-third are overweight or obese. The proportion jumps to just over one-half among women in their forties and nearly two-thirds among women in their sixties and seventies.

“Overweight” doesn’t just mean a few pounds. For a 5’4” woman, overweight translates to 145 to174 pounds. Obese would be defined as 175 pounds or more for this same woman. Being overweight is associated with a myriad of health problems, including type two diabetes, hypertension, gallstones, and osteoarthritis.

What’s behind this mid-life obesity? There’s no question that our all-American lifestyle, which encourages eating more and moving less, doesn’t help. It is also important to recognize that our metabolism plays a crucial role. The truth is that our basal metabolic rate (BMR), the rate at which our body uses energy (calories) to stay alive, typically decreases as we age. This metabolic slowdown is caused by aging-related changes in our body composition.

After age 30, we lose muscle mass each decade. Starting at age 40, the average woman loses six to eight percent of her muscle mass per decade. This lost muscle is replaced by fat.

Muscle burns calories even at rest, but fat does not. As a result, replacing muscle mass with fat means that the number of calories we need each day drops as well, not catastrophically, but enough to make a difference over time. This makes it all too easy for us to take in more calories than we burn, and the pounds creep on.

The good news is that it’s possible to reverse this trend. However, doing so requires making a real commitment to exercise. There’s no question that we need to watch what we eat; calories always matter. Dieting alone won’t solve the central issue: an increasingly sluggish BMR. Moreover, dieters who don’t exercise often lose muscle mass along with the fat, only adding to the BMR problem and almost guaranteeing that the lost weight will return.

What kind of exercise is best for avoiding midlife weight gain: aerobic exercise or lifting weights? You really need both. You can’t just do one or the other.

It takes cardiovascular exercise to burn calories during the actual time you exercise; but it takes muscle mass to burn calories throughout the day and only resistance training can put back the muscle mass.

How much exercise is enough? The recommended amount is 30 minutes of moderate activity on most days of the week, but that’s just the bare minimum for basic health purposes. Recent studies suggest that to lose weight and keep it off, you need to rack up considerably more activity than that. On average, people who have lost weight report that they burn about 2,800 calories per week in exercise.

If that seems like an impossible task, remember that this covers all activity not just formal exercise sessions. Every bit of activity counts, from taking the stairs at work to weeding the garden and walking the dog.

With strength training, the general recommendation is to do two to three sessions per week, with a day off between each session to give your muscles time to recover and repair. If you don’t care for lifting weights, you may want to try yoga or Pilates mat classes. Both use the weight of your own body to provide resistance.

However you choose to blend formal aerobic exercise, strength training, and just plain getting up and going, remember: The more you add in resistance training, the easier it is to manage mid-life weight gain.

Six Ways to Beat Fatigue

We’ve all occasionally hit that midday slump, but if this is a regular occurrence for you, or if you feel tired most of the day, it’s time to take action. Our stressful, hectic lives can run us down. These nutrition and lifestyle tips will help you have more energy and better health.

Get moving. When you’re out of energy, exercise is probably the last thing on your mind. Yet studies show that physical activity whether it’s a light stroll in the park or a fast paced bike ride-actually reinvigorates.

“It’s time to go on a diet - I went for a walk and got
grass stains on my bottom and I never sat down.”

Stuffed Fish Fillets

Fish is the richest source of omega-3 fatty acids or “good fats” that fight inflammation, boost immune response, and may protect against cancer. The typical American diet contains only small amounts of omega-3’s. As a result, it’s a good idea to eat more fish! This is a unique way to serve fish that is also attractive.

1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chicken broth, fat removed
3 cups (3 oz.) packaged unseasoned stuffing mix (cube type)
1 tsp. dried sage
1 tsp. dried thyme
1 lb. fish fillets
1 tsp. paprika

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium saucepan, combine onion, celery and broth. Simmer, covered, on low until vegetables are soft. Add stuffing and seasonings. Mix well until blended. Place a heaping tablespoon of stuffing on each fish fillet. Roll the fillet around the stuffing and place seam side down in an 8” x 8” pan that has been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. Sprinkle with paprika. Bake for 20 minutes or until fish flakes easily with a fork.

Yield: 4 servings
One serving: 1/4 of recipe
Per serving: 197 calories
19 grams carbohydrate
25 grams protein
2 grams fat
Exchanges: 1 starch, 3 lean meat