Be concerned if you are a woman with a waist measurement over 35 inches, or a man with a waist measurement over 40 inches. This is where the risk factors spike. And your BMI doesn’t seem to matter it is these waist numbers that are controlling everything.

A new study of middle-aged people that carry their excess weight around the waist and belly are 3 times more likely to suffer from dementia in their 70’s and 80’s. One theory is that waist fat releases toxins associated with the plaque that builds up in the brain. (The Journal of the American Academy of Neurology).

Dementia is pretty scary but so are the other diseases associated with belly fat. They are: heart disease, breast cancer, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, high blood pressure and stroke.

Stress can increase belly fat. The hormone cortisol regulates carbohydrate metabolism and blood pressure. Cortisol is released when we are stressed boosting your energy by producing glucose. Stress keeps glucose production high. The body converts excess glucose info fat and stores it in your mid- section for quick access by the body.

Slowing metabolism can also increase belly fat. As your age goes up your metabolism slows down and the amount of fat in your body slowly increases. This can start for men around 30 years old. And for women who have never had a belly fat problem you may have one after menopause. As we age we must adjust our diet and exercise routines.

The good news is that 99% of people will lose their belly fat first. To lose fat you must burn more calories than you eat. So reduce those calories and bump up your activities to whittle that waist down to size. 

A small scale study showed women eating around 1600 calories per day and ate monounsaturated fats at every meal lost weight, lowered total cholesterol, lowered LDL cholesterol, raised HDL cholesterol, and lost inches around their middle. They lost MORE inches than those that followed the same calorie restrictions but did not include monounsaturated fats. So, don’t necessarily cut all fats from your diet when losing weight just the bad fats. Monounsaturated fats include: olive oil, avocado, cashews, sesame seeds, and pistachios.

HYDRATION
Bottled Water – carry it everywhere. Whether flying or driving bottled water is your friend. If you are traveling by car fill a cooler with bottled water and take it with you. Water the no calorie, stomach filling; digestion cleaning fluid is your best friend when on the road. Your digestive system will probably be compromised when traveling so give your body the benefit of lots of water.

If you are flying you really need to take some bottled water with you. Airplanes are dry and you will get thirsty. One in six airplanes is flying with unsafe drinking water. So after you get through security go get a couple of bottles of water to consume during your flight, do not trust the airplane water.

It is also a good idea that whenever you get to your destination, assuming it is not your mom’s or grandma’s house, stock up on some healthy drinks to keep in the hotel or condo. Do not rely on pop out of the vending machines. No good will come from soda.

EXERCISE ANYWHERE
Stay at hotels with an exercise facility, many even have a trainer on staff. Before you even get to your room ask to be shown the exercise room or hotel pool. Now you will know where the work out facilities is located and be more likely to get some exercise in. In order to make this work you must pack clothes for working out and swimming, do not let that be your excuse to not exercise.

If you are staying somewhere without facilities you can do some things in your room. Such as, pushups, squats, use the hotel chair for triceps dips, and no elevators only stairs to your room.

At the airport don’t use the people mover and take the stairs not the escalator. You can also use the time before your flight to walk the airport and get in at least a mile. If you carry your luggage while walking that will also be strength training.

If you haven’t already, check out our workout.healthstatus.com. These are online workout videos that you access via your computer and can help you get in a workout while traveling. 

SMART FOOD CHOICES

Remove temptation. Call ahead and ask the hotel management to remove the minibar from your room. If they won’t do that, tell them you do not want the key to the minibar left in your room. This will help you avoid temptation.

Avoid mindless munching. There are often long waits at the airport with the new requirements to get checked in and the Cinnabon smell is very tempting. You are looking at a whopping 813 calories if you indulge. If you absolutely can’t pass a Cinnabon up at least share with someone. So if you are driving or flying and need to munch pack some power bars, nuts, baby carrots, or fruit. These choices are much healthier alternatives.

Avoid fast food. Fast food while you are driving seems like a good idea because you can eat and keep moving on down the road but the calories are outrageous and not nutritious at all. Below are some links that you may want to research to find choices on these popular fast food menus that won’t completely train wreck your health.

Burger King    http://www.bk.com/nutrition/PDFs/NutritionalBrochure.pdf

McDonalds     http://www.mcdonalds.com/app_controler.nutrition.index.1html

Wendy’s         http://www.wendys.com/food/pdf/us/nutrition.pdf

KFC     http://www.yum.com/nutrition/documents/kfc_nutrition.pdf

Taco Bell     http://www.yum.com/nutritional/documents/tb_nutrition.pdf

Practice portion control. Business dinners and tourist attractions can really sidetrack your healthy eating choices. You don’t always have control of where you will be eating or what you will be served when traveling. But you can control how much you eat.

Rest your digestive system. Try and give your digestive system 12 hours not digesting, for example, no food after 8 pm if you plan to breakfast at 8 am.

THE WAITING GAME

Here is my favorite way to kill time while waiting in an airport. Take advantage of the massage chairs. The cost is reasonable, the benefits to be loose and relaxed before you are crammed into those tiny seats is priceless. This is a great stress reliever and a wonderful treat for your muscles.

SLEEP

Get a good night’s sleep. This can be hard to do when you travel but research has shown that sleep deprivation increases appetite. And evidence is starting to mount that sleep loss is a risk factor for obesity. So pack your own pillow, get the temperature in your room between 60 -65 degrees, make it dark and quiet, and get the rest you need. 

Armed with some of these ideas you may be able to keep your exercise and healthy eating continuing when you hit the road.

The “Slow Food” movement started in Italy 17 years ago and currently has 70 chapters in the United States. It promotes shopping for fresh foods from local farms and markets. The buzz words they use are: local, seasonal and sustainable.

The “Farm-to-Table” movement promotes the eating of foods grown locally, relying on seasonal produce for your food, and buying food at local organic farms and markets. I don’t see much difference from the “Slow Food” movement.

A CSA or Community Supported Agriculture is when members pay upfront for a share of a local farmer’s harvest.   A local farmer will sell so many shares, members then equally share that week’s harvest, usually paying lower prices for the produce. Members also benefit by enjoying absolutely fresh products because they were just harvested that week. The farmers benefit from the upfront money to help them with planting costs. There are some down falls to this system, weather being one. You never know when a drought etc. will hit wiping out crops and you don’t get your membership fee back. And your choices are limited to what your farmer can grow in your area and what has ripened for harvest.

Let’s look at the benefits:

Fresh Food – It doesn’t get much better than out of the ground or off the tree and into your hand. No middle man processing, no picking early and letting it ripen while in transit. No nutrients lost while in lengthy transport. Better taste. 

Organic – Most local farmers are able to grow vegetables with methods that don’t bury loads of chemicals in the ground. Less pesticides and chemicals are better for you and the earth. 

More Variety – 8% of all farms = 68% of all agricultural production. These large agri-business farms often plant fewer varieties of foods for example producing only tomatoes that travel well or can maintain a long shelf life. Local farms often grow many varieties of produce, resulting in more selection for you.

Building Community Connections – When you support a local farmer by buying direct you are putting more dollars back into your local community. The farmer can charge more when selling direct than when he sells to a middleman that then must increase the cost in order to make a profit, consequently the farmer makes more money. And you the consumer can spend less to get good quality produce because you don’t have to pay the middleman mark up. A monetary win for everyone.

Saving Fuel – 1500 miles is the average distance food in your grocery store travels. That is a lot of transportation. With local grown there are very little energy costs with processing and transporting. (With fuel prices what they are, don’t blame your grocery store for the rise in costs of goods). 

There is a downside:  You drastically reduce some of the best foods on the planet by limiting yourself to your growing area. Isn’t one advantage of our transportation systems the ability to bring food from anywhere around the world right to your front door? In winter in the Midwest I don’t want to be limited to root vegetables. And who wants to give up Hawaiian Pineapple, Maine Lobster, Alaskan Salmon, Greek Olives or Brie from France? We are global food shoppers and we love ethnic foods that can only be found in countries far from home.  

I think there is room for both global foods and local foods. Find a balance in your area between the farmers’ market and the supermarket and all of us win.

Stomach noise is normal. Scientist even have a name for it, borborygmi. Everyone is producing stomach noise some of us are just louder than others. With a stethoscope you can here stomach noise on everyone. Digestion is noisy.

Every one to two hours your digestive juices sweep through your digestive tract to clear out anything that is in there. This can cause gurgling. When you are hungry and haven’t eaten for a while, your stomach is completely empty so when these digestive juices flow through your digestive tract there is no food to help muffle the noise. That is why people will say “you must be hungry” when they hear your stomach rumble. You actually may not be hungry at all just empty at the moment.

Your stomach and intestines digest and move food through the digestive tract by contracting. Digestion is a muscular activity that squeezes and retracts to move that food along. All these contractions moving fluid and food through your system can cause rumbling and growling. Along with all that food and fluid your system also has air in it which can add more noise to an already noisy system.

Swallowing air and eating things that your system finds particularly hard to digest can add to your digestive noise. So try and breathe through your nose normally and stay away from foods that you have trouble digesting. 

You should not be concerned about your stomach noise or embarrassed. Bloating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or constipation may be telling you something is wrong. These are not normal and you should talk with your doctor. If you have these symptoms you may be suffering from gastroenteritis, IBS or Crohn’s disease. But if it is just noise you, like me, are perfectly normal.

Functional foods have been around since the 1920’s when we started adding iodine to salt, then we had vitamin D added to milk and enriched flour for baking. Today we have Echinacea added to corn chips and herbal teas with every kind of health claim possible. You can hardly look at a packaged product on the grocery store shelves and not see some health claim on the packaging. The FDA began approving health claims in 1993 but very few claims have been given FDA approved. If you want FDA approval for a health claim you must have clinical studies that back up your claim. Food manufacturers are getting around the FDA approval process by making vague claims, such as “promotes a healthy heart” or “benefits a healthy lifestyle”. 95% of all functional foods have not been clinically tested; their claims are unsupported by clinical data.

The danger in all of these claims is that the public is being lead to believe that processed functional foods will make up for poor nutrition choices. You cannot supply your body with all the vitamins and minerals it needs by eating fortified corn chips, fortified cereals or vitamin enhanced drinks. Functional foods often emphasize a few nutrients to the exclusion of others, creating improper balance of nutrients. Your body needs a variety of nutrients in order to remain balanced and keep your cells and systems functioning and healthy.

Foods that are truly functional are whole foods, raw fruits, veggies, whole grains, nuts, and beans that provide nutrients in a way that is recognizable to your body. These foods offer a complete balance in nutritional value while in their natural state. Whole foods are absorbed easily, nutrient rich, promote health and are a natural source of vitamins and minerals. And a wide variety of whole foods will provide your body with the most balanced nutrition.

Don’t be confused by the manufacturer labeling. The most beneficial foods for your body are the natural foods that you find in your grocery store. Remember the less packaging and the more natural a product is, the better it is for you; those are the true “functional foods” that provide the most health benefit.