More on walking

What a lovely day for a walk in northern Michigan!

In case you need more incentive to get out and take a stroll, check out this article listing eight ways walking can benefit your health. Some of these may be new to you.

I know that I'm particularly blessed to live in a spot friendly for walkers. My neighborhood has sidewalks, pleasant tree-lined streets, and trails by several bodies of water within a couple of blocks of my house: Grand Traverse Bay, Boardman Lake and the Boardman River. I can also walk to downtown shops, the best movie theater in the world, and numerous excellent local eateries. The only downside is winter, when the sidewalks are clogged with ice and snow and walking can be hazardous. Then, I put cleats on my boots and slow down a little.

Hopefully, your neighborhood is conducive to walking, but if not, check out local parks or trail systems. If all else fails, pacing around your house is better than sitting all day. Even with my walk-friendly neighborhood, I resort to this sometimes when the weather is bad, and I always pace when I'm on the phone.

For anyone contemplating relocation, you can use this nifty website to scout out your proposed new home's walkability.

Meetings with friends and food!

Now that I've deposited one child at college and established the other in another year of high school, my schedule is settled enough to begin the dinner/lunch meetings promised in the welcome post.

The dinner meeting already has been happening with a couple of test subjects for a few weeks. The time for that is set at 6:30 p.m. on Mondays at my house. I have room for two or three more, so let me know if you're interested in that.

For those who prefer a lunch gathering, I'm thinking Tuesdays at noon may be a good time, but if another day or time would be better, let me know. It would be a quick, express lunch chat and we could start on Sept. 24.

Food will be light, nutritious, and nearly always vegetarian.

Obviously, this is a hyper-local event. I'm a decent cook, but I'm not good enough to warrant a trip from Russia! Distant readers, I'll post menus, recipes and all of the good suggestions from the meetings.

Portion control

Of all the potential villains to blame for humanity's expanding waistlines, restaurants have so far been pretty low on the totem pole, with the exception of the universally reviled fast-food chains.

Restaurants can be fabulous and worthy of their high approval ratings. Eating out is fun and relaxing. The food may be expertly prepared, and someone else will be doing the work, including the clean-up. What's not to like?

Yet, with more and more meals being eaten in restaurants, we should probably consider what's on those plates. The short answer: way too much.

Restaurant owners say they serve gigantic portions because customers believe large portions offer more value. If a table of four people were to split one restaurant serving, that might be true. Certainly I've been served plates in restaurants that could've come pretty close to feeding my family of four. But usually, few diners are splitting plates with their table mates.

I've tried to get in the habit of bringing my own take-out container when dining at a restaurant, and when I remember to do this, I immediately put about half of my food in it as soon as it's served. When I'm not prepared, I have to rely on restraint, which can be challenging with tasty food before me.

What are your strategies for eating out?

Striiv to walk more

Never underestimate the power of peer pressure. Sometimes you can harness this pressure as the wind in your fitness sail.

I've been using the Striiv device and mobile app for several months, but recent updates to the system have increased its effectiveness, largely due to the motivation of not disappointing strangers in cyberspace.

The new "Relay" feature is simply ingenious. It's an optional mini-game that has two people walk a total of 200 steps, passing a "baton" between them after each 50. So, I start a relay race, walk 50 steps, and the app passes the baton to my partner, who walks 50 steps and passes it back to me. The partner can be a pre-existing friend or, lacking that, it can be a "wildcard" -- a random Striiv user.

What this boils down to is that sometimes I'm sitting on the sofa reading and I get a message on my phone that someone is passing me the baton. So in the middle of a paragraph, I get up and walk 50 steps because "Lou A", whoever that may be, is waiting on me.

If Dr. James Levine is correct, these little interruptions to my sedentary ways may turn out to be the magical cattle prod of weight loss. Dr. Levine, a professor of medicine at the famed Mayo Clinic and author of Move a Little, Lose a Lot, suggests the crucial factor in weight management and other fitness markers is how often a person moves, rather than intensity of exercise. In other words, it may be that simply staying out of the chair for most of the day is more effective than an hour on the treadmill.

I'll experiment with this theory and report back later. Gotta go. Pam is waiting for me to grab the baton.

See you in September

This blog will be on hiatus for a few days while I pack my oldest off for another year of college and my youngest back to high school. Look for the next update soon after Labor Day.

My domesticity blog has a new post, if anyone wants to read it.

Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!

Hydrate

One near-universal piece of advice given to weight watchers is to drink more water, with the typical recommendation being about 64 ounces a day. And those who live in dry climates, where dehydration is a concern for everyone, may need to go beyond a half-gallon a day.

Nutritionists and weight loss coaches say people often confuse hunger with thirst, and some suggest first drinking a glass of water and waiting 15 minutes when feeling hungry.

But does "water" have to be water? The answer depends on who you ask.

My research on this question has led me to the conclusion that some flexibility exists in satisfying the 8 glasses per day rule. Sadly, this flexibility does not extend to alcohol; beer, wine, and vodka martinis are certainly liquids, but they are dehydrating, not to mention highly caloric. You may need to drink even more water to counteract the diuretic effects of the alcohol.

I've seen mixed reports on coffee. Although many of my older diet books marked it as a villain and required any consumption of it to be offset with additional water, some more recent findings say it may be counted in your daily water tally. I've decided to split the difference and consider it neutral.

I'm counting tea, particularly green tea. I wrote about this on my foodie blog a few months ago, so click that link if you want to know more.

hydration station

To those fond of those much-maligned fizzy beverages, consider investing in a sodastream or similar device. I bought one earlier this year on the recommendation of several friends and the request of my daughter, who loves soft drinks. Although you can purchase packets of syrup that attempt to imitate popular beverages, I prefer creating my own flavors. The internet has countless recipes for flavored syrups, with or without sugar, but one of my favorite fizzy drink concoctions is just adding a squeeze of lemon and a couple of drops of stevia to the carbonated water.

If I'm feeling slightly more enterprising, I'll make a fizzy version of doogh, a refreshing Persian drink of yogurt and mint. I whiz a little yogurt, salt and mint in the blender, and then add about an equal volume of fizzy water.

Herbal teas, or tisanes, also are an excellent option for getting your water. Most groceries have a decent selection of herbals, and you may have some plants in your yard or garden that are tea-worthy. Deborah Madison's Vegetable Literacy book, which I can't stop recommending, has some suggestions for tisanes with parts of the plant you may have been discarding (such as fennel fronds).

With so many creative, easy and tasty options available for keeping hydrated, this can be one of the most enjoyable opportunities for improving one's healthstyle.

Cheers!

Educate

Information on weight loss is not in scarce supply. The problem for those who are making an effort to lose weight and/or improve their health through diet and exercise is getting slammed with information, so much of it conflicting, that confusion and paralysis can set in.

New books on weight loss featuring the latest greatest plan hit the shelves at dizzying speed. Most offer a promise that if you can just give up this thing or start doing that thing, you will feel better and the pounds will melt away.

My collection of such books:

Over the years, I've given up fat, severely restricted carbs, eaten grapefruit at every meal, given up all animal products, given up grains, and consumed large amounts of coconut oil. Not at the same time. And most of these efforts lasted only a few weeks, except for vegetarianism. 

The only common message I've found in these books is to avoid junk food. None of them have a plan involving the supersize menu at the drive-up window, and the jumbo bags of chips and bottles of sugary drinks are universally chastised. Opinions vary on everything else.

Beyond frustrated at trying to reconcile all of these differing recommendations, I decided to improve my ability to evaluate health advice. I took an online nutrition course offered by the University of California at San Francisco. By no means did this six-week class make me an expert; rather, it inspired me to continue learning. I've since completed a course on food and sustainability, I'm working on one about nutrition and physical activity, and I'm excited about a course on the Nordic diet that begins in a couple of months.

Don't worry, dear blog readers: I'm not suggesting you all sign up for nutrition classes! I'll report back any relevant information I learn. Although if any of you are inclined to sign up for a class, let me know and we can make a study group.