TIPS

        Weight management: Losing weight is the easy part. Making sure it stays off is the key to successful weight management.

        Netty Levine, a registered dietitian at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Nutrition Counseling Center in Los Angeles, shares these tips for keeping your weight at a healthy level:

        • Plan before you shop, and keep a list of foods to buy on your PDA or refrigerator.

        • Skip high-calorie beverages such as sodas, juices, smoothies and blended coffees.

        • Fill up on fiber, such as fruits and vegetables.

        • Dilute salad dressings with plain vinegar or lemon juice, and always order dressing on the side.

        • Try a month of alcohol-free dinners to control calories. A glass of wine has about 100 calories, and alcohol can lower your blood sugar and make you hungrier.

        • Fill half your plate with steamed or raw vegetables, a quarter of the plate with low-fat protein and a quarter with low-fat starches. Choose fruit for dessert.

        • Walking one mile burns 100 calories.

        • Make summer count by walking, running, cycling or swimming out in the wonderful weather.

        • Gardening burns calories and lets you add fresh fruits and vegetables to your diet.

        • Take the stairs.

        • Play hard with your children, grandchildren and pets.

        • Establish realistic, flexible, short-term goals.
       

SHELF HELP

        Sugar therapy: So who hasn't reached for a candy bar or bag of chips after a bad day? In Calm Energy: How People Regulate Mood with Food and Exercise(Oxford University Press; $27.50) by Robert E. Thayer looks at how and why we “self-medicate” with food, and how we can create healthier behaviors for calm energy and break the emotional eating habit.

SITINGS

        Click here: Want to know what your HDL level means, or what your target heart rate should be? Check out www.planetkc.com/exrx/Testing.html for a slew of fitness tests, tips and tools geared at getting your numbers back on the “healthy” side of the chart

NUTRITION

        Fat facts: Mayo Clinic Women's Healthsource says it's time Americans got the good, bad and ugly facts on fat:

        • A gram of fat has 9 calories, compared to four calories per gram of carbohydrates or protein.

        • Differences in chemical structure — how the hydrogen, carbon and oxygen molecules are arranged — make some fats healthier than others.

        • Saturated fats (red meat, dairy products, coconut and palm oils) are saturated with hydrogen, and consuming them can increase your cholesterol and your risk for heart disease.

        • Monounsaturated fat (olive and canoloa oils) and polyunsaturated fats (some vegetable and fish oils) have less hydrogen, and eating them might lower your cholesterol when they're substituted for saturated fats.

        • Trans fat comes from adding hydrogen to vegetable oil, thickening it and making it less likely to spoil. But trans fat can increase blood cholesterol and decrease HDL (“good” cholesterol), so it can be just as harmful as saturated fat. Trans fat usually isn't listed on food labels but is in many processed foods, including chips, crackers and cookies.

        • Too little fat — less than 10 to 15 percent of your total daily calories — can be just as bad as too much, because it can lower your HDL levels.

        Contact Peggy O'Farrell by e-mail: pofarrell@enquirer.com, phone: (513) 768-8510; fax 768-8330.

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