David's Guide to Healthy Living

Since some of you seem to think that I'm a healthy guy, in today's post I plan to exploit that misbegotten belief and dole out advice on healthy living. There is no rhyme or reason to the topics I've chosen to cover here, so don't expect any.

Salt / sodium

The salt in your diet is slowly and silently taking its toll on you. Even though it hasn't (so far) received the attention of other "killers" like cigarettes and drinking-and-driving, this doesn't mean you should ignore it much longer.

Since facilitating a session with Cardiologists and Nephrologists on the subject of hypertension (aka high blood pressure) about ten years ago, I have tried to minimize my daily salt/sodium intake. If you eat the way I do, you know that's like trying to minimize the amount of air you breathe (which I don't advise).

Back then, I implemented some changes in how I eat - and they were good changes. I'm not nearly as good today, but some things have stuck:

• No extra salt-shaker salt on anything I eat. Ever. I get more than enough in the restaurant or fast-food or grocery-store prepared foods I consume. My body was used to tasting salt, instead of food. Now I taste food. Give it a week or two and you won't miss it (okay, maybe a month).
• I choose from amongst the many equivalent grocery store items I buy based on which has the lowest sodium content (and fat, calories, carbs, etc. of course). If I buy a can of tuna, for example, I check the labels for the various brands and variations - and am always amazed at the range of sodium content. None are good, but some are much better than others. This is a dead easy no-brainer way to immediately cut down on sodium. But pay attention to serving-size because sometimes the manufacturers accidentally mislead you.
• In general, I am aware of the amount of sodium in everything I eat (again, by reading labels). Soup is a killer. Even the soup that I think of as bland is full of it. Bread is a shocker. Anything canned, processed, or preserved always comes with big sodium numbers. And so on.
• I have adopted the belief that if I eat out even once in a given day, I'm already over the daily limit I should have in my diet. A plain 12-grain bagel at Tim Horton's, for example, consumes about 30% of my daily limit all by itself. It doesn't mean I don't eat out; it just means that the rest of the day is about cutting my losses. (To see Tim Horton's Nutrition guide - again only for example - click here: http://www.timhortons.com/ca/pdf/nutrition-guide-can.pdf).
• Really the only chance I ever have of staying within my daily limit is when I/we cook at home. If I use an ingredient from a can, I rinse and strain it before adding it to whatever I'm making. When I cook vegetables, I steam them and add nothing (you'll be amazed at how good they taste once you've weaned yourself off of the extra salt). When making a sauce or a stew or a chili - by the time I've added all the herbs, there's little or no need for salt. It's not hard, but it does require discipline and enough time to cook instead of always eating out or buying fast grocery store meals.

The Globe and Mail had an article last week with a sodium calculator. It will give you an idea of just how much you're consuming currently: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health-navigator/how-much-salt-do-you-consume-in-a-day-you-may-be-surprised/article9477552/. Or go straight to Project Big Life here: http://www.projectbiglife.ca/sodium/#.UToi_Rw4v94.

Exercise

I run, and when I can't run, I treadmill or I ride a stationary bike. I don't do it as often as I like, and sometimes I can't do it because I'm busy or injured or sick. But the important thing for me was that I just started doing it one day instead of waiting any longer (about 12 years ago).

If you're not already doing something, find time in your weekly calendar that you can commit to something modest and just get started. If it isn't fun in some way, find something else because you won't stick with it. I joined Canada Get Fit to start my running career and just stayed with it until my body accepted that this was happening. Today, I wouldn't say I'm addicted, but not going for a run always makes me feel guilty and sad.

If you want, you can proactively find out how to prevent injury and how to optimize the impact of whatever exercise you choose. Or you can do what I did, start running, and learn about the injuries as you encounter them. That makes it more of an adventure.

Snacking and Treats

Here's the only really hard part (I think). It's one thing to start running, or feed yourself a healthy meal. It's a very different matter to constantly ignore the little boy (or girl) who was programmed by your parents to reward yourself for good behaviour with a treat or to nibble on a great big bag of greasy chips while watching TV.

Does this sound familiar?

• "I've been good this week...I can afford to get some pad thai at lunch".
• "Salad at dinner was great. Boy, am I a good person. I think I'll have a nice bowl of ice cream to celebrate my righteousness."
• "I think I'll have 2 or 3 of those big old greasy chips in the cupboard. No harm, I only ate half my french fries at lunch. Hmm...according to the nutrition label, a single serving is actually 10 chips. I'll have 10. Some of these are broken - I can probably have 20."

I'll give you two tricks that have helped me with snacks/treats:

1. Things that are deliciously sweet or salty should be enjoyed in the mouth. That's where your taste buds are. Eat slowly, savour the taste in your mouth, then grudgingly swallow it down when you have fully enjoyed the sensation on your tongue. If something is less tasty because it's - God forbid - nutritious, eat fast and get it all down before the taste kicks in. Don't forget to chew.
2. To avoid in-front-of-the-television snacking, I eat an orange. But I eat the orange very, very slowly. I spend about an hour or longer meticulously cleaning the remnants of the peel from the rest of the orange before I start eating it section by section. By the time I'm done, the snacking window has closed.
3. I close off the food portion of my day by flossing. Again, in front of the television, I do the flossing ritual slowly and meticulously. After all that work, I don't even think about eating anything else before bed.

Warning: While these tricks may extend your life, your spouse may seek to shorten your life so he or she doesn't have to spend another day with his or her nut-bar, orange-peeling, flossing, slow-eating spouse.

Poutine and Energy Drinks

Some people I know swear by poutine and energy drinks as key components of healthy living. To them I say, pish posh.

Poutine is why we haven't heard any threatening noises from French Canada about Separation lately. They have implemented a brilliant strategy of infiltrating the rest of Canada with poutine. When we're all fat and lethargic, they will invade. Much faster than the machinations of separation.

Energy drinks are obviously evil and they don't try hard to hide it. We can wait until several more years of research to find out just how evil, or just cut to the chase and stop drinking them now. Either way, aren't the energy drinks pointless if you're eating yourself into a state of torpor with poutine?

Disclaimer

The advice offered here is for entertainment purposes only and does not represent the beliefs or practices of its Author. The Author does stand by his feelings about poutine, but does not actually believe French Canada is planning to invade. Furthermore, the Author does not actually spend hours on the couch at night meticulously cleaning oranges and his teeth. That would just be weird.