Peter Bregman and I spent 3 days last week working on the premise of our diet book. As eagle-eyed, elephant-memoried FitFam blog readers will recall, the title changes almost daily (I wish the blog changed daily!).
The concept we (well, all right, mostly Peter) came up with was the idea of "Eating Against the Odds." There's a giant system out there that makes it easy and OK for us to eat junk, and feed junk to our kids. Keep Reading…
Peter Bregman called me yesterday to tell me about an article in the September 18, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, about the neuro-psychology of financial decision-making. He said there were a number of concepts very key to our understanding of health behaviors as well, specifically those related to doing things that involve delayed gratification.
One example is the "Christmas Account" many banks offer. Check out this deal: a zero-interest account with a penalty for early withdrawal. Woo-hoo!
Yet it's a popular option, despite the fact that it makes no "rational" sense. Why? Keep Reading…
It's coming…! For many parents who commit to transition to a healthy family lifestyle, Halloween is the first big challenge that seems bigger than they are.
Let’s get a little ridiculous for a moment and compare junk food to heroin. Both are harmful (the larger the quantity, the more harmful, but even small amounts are bad for you) and both are addictive. And both junk food junkies and heroin addicts tend to move around in environments where consuming the substance in question is considered normal.
So you manage to break free of the addiction. You make major strides in getting your kids off the stuff too. Then comes a ritual where they and all their friends are going door to door, holding out bags and getting large amounts of it for almost no effort. The ritual is reflected in school, in the media, in conversations with friends, and a lot of it is really fun. Dressing up, being creative, meeting the neighbors; it’s a mostly positive experience, except for the addictive and harmful substance at its core.
What do you do?
Here's an interview and Q&A session with Greg Lynn Weaver, Spiritual Director of the PeaceWeavers. The topic: "Peaceful Parenting When You Feel Like Wringing Their Necks."
Greg Lynn answered questions about:
This call is not for the faint-hearted. The "s-word" is used three times, and Mother Teresa is described as "ballsy." Greg Lynn is not a mountain-top theorist – he’s living in the real world, and his language is real as well. His gentle and compassionate style and great sense of humor can help us remember what’s really important as we go through the impossible and wonderful task of raising children.
Turn on your computer speakers, and you can listen right now to a 5-minute excerpt of the call, in which Greg Lynn helps a member explore her question about expressing anger toward her kids:
The entire call is available as a CD (and soon as an electronic transcript).
Every so often I see a news report about the "Negative Calorie Foods" diet. Basically, it suggests, certain foods take more calories to chew and digest than they provide. Celery is often given as an example. After eating a few sticks of celery – plain, of course, not slathered in mayonnaise or peanut butter or whatever else – you're thinner than you were before, or so the theory goes.
My neighbors, who belong to the local Rotary Club and are active in a project to end world hunger, showed me the following remarkable statistics:
In the US every year, we spend
For a total of $405 billion annually (That's billion with a "B").
It turns out that the drug acetaminophen – which causes carpal syndrome just from being typed – can ruin the liver. It’s not just in Tylenol, but also Excedrin, Midol Teen Formula, Theraflu, Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold Medicine, and NyQuil Cold and Flu, Vicodin and Percocet.
Basically, we’re talking about the all-American medicine cabinet.
Do you want your kids to grow up fit and healthy, or overweight and prone to cancer, heart disease and diabetes?
What a stupid question, right?
Keep Reading…