Eat to Live - Ellen Coleman, MA, MPH, RD, CSSD

I spent my lunch hour today with an interesting presentation by Ellen Coleman.  Ellen Coleman, author of "Eating for Endurance" and "Ultimate Sports Nutrition", had some good tips to remember when taking a look at your diet.  She noted the extreme importance of having significant amounts of exercise to maintain our health.  At minimum 30 minutes per day on "most days" which she states is 5 days per week. 

She stated that as we age, in order to maintain our weight we need to do approximately 60-90 minutes per day on an average of 5 days! 

Additionally, she stressed the importance of having a daily food log of what you are eating and the portions that you are eating.  A good rule of thumb to keep you on track is to go for nutrient dense food.

Keep your plate colorful and increase the fiber and/or protein to give you satiety. Go for the actual fruit instead of the fruit in juice because of the increase in fiber to give you a sense of fullness.

The benefit of being a competitive athlete is that you have more "discretionary calories", where as most of us only have about 100-300 calories an athlete can choose to have the ice cream or Starbucks frap without hesitation.

Although a lot of this is second nature to me, I couldn't help but look around the room to those in attendance and see the "ah ha" moments that were being created.  If you're not sure if you should have something, ask yourself.  Be real.  You most likely know if what you are having is really necessary or if you are just eating it for a fix or because of convenience.  If something would have more than 2-3 ingredients total in it's food label, it probably is not a great choice and you can do better.  Not to mention the 1 or 2nd ingredient should always be the food that you are hoping to consume!  If it's something else, it's processed so try again.

Eat to live, don't live to eat. 

Enjoy yourself but there is no need to plan your life around when you will be consuming your next meal - only exception would be a bodybuilder who is trying to increase their size and eat around the clock to maintain size.