Author: Dr. Julie

Thanks to Oregon’s liquid sunshine all of April and May, it is June, and I am just getting my tomatoes planted. While we don’t have a huge garden, I do enjoy fresh home-grown vegetables.

You know that’s the SECOND tenet of OWW HAND Nutrition: Eat your vegetables.

I remember it by noting that when you hold up your index and middle finger to form the number two, it looks like the Roman numeral for five which is a V.

V stands for Vegetables. The first arm of the V represents 5 cups. The second arm of the V represents 5 colors.

I encourage people to eat at least five cups and five different colors of vegetables every day and at least. This is the target, I explain. I can hear my Aunt Mary Ann, and most of my patients, and myself 10 years ago. “Five cups of vegetables!!! That’s an awful lot!!”

I get it. Veggies have not been big part of the standard American diet in the last fifty years, except maybe for iceberg lettuce, hot house tomatoes, pickles, and onion perhaps.

But with a little forethought, 5 cups of veggies are not that difficult to prepare and eat. For example, this morning I spent five minutes prepping my lunch.  I grabbed 2 cups of greens from the spring mix container, grated ½ cup orange carrot, roughly chopped ½ cup of red bell pepper, ½ cup of zucchini, 1 cup of purple cabbage, on top of which I sprinkled ¼ cup walnuts, and drizzled lemon juice and a tablespoon of olive oil. Voila! In no time, I had a beautiful bowl of colorful bounty with 4 ½ cups and 5 colors just for lunch.

Why is eating a rainbow of colorful veggies so important?

Veggies give you a great big bang for your buck. And not only do they have the nutrients our cells need to function well, but they also have the fiber our colon needs to feed healthy gut bacteria, create precursors for neurotransmitters, keep things running smoothly, and actually decrease the number of calories absorbed.

To avoid pesticide residue, I use EWG’s Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen to guide my organic veggie purchasing when I am not able to go to a local farmer’s market or have run out of my home grown produce. Organic tends to be more nutrient rich, too. If the minerals aren’t in the soil, due to industrialized over farming and consequent artificial fertilization, then they cannot get into the plant

EWG’s 2022 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce | Clean Fifteen

If you have insulin resistance you want most of your veggies to come from above the ground. Generally, above ground vegetables have less starch. Less starch lends to less breakdown to glucose, less rise in blood glucose, less release of  insulin, better blood sugar control,  and more digging into energy storage.

One more tidbit about veggies. Eat them first, not last like I did all my growing up years. Eating vegetables not only stimulates the stretch receptors in your stomach but stimulates the nutrient receptors as well, both of which signal your brain that you have the food you need, so you can stop eating.

Some of us don’t like veggies because they were served steamed, mushy, gushy, and basically dead when we were kids. Create a new experience. You don’t have to love all vegetables but determine to find some you like. Experiment with grilling, roasting, sautéing, raw. Toss some herbs and spices and healthy fats on them like walnuts, pumpkin seeds, avocado, olive oil, or grass-fed butter. If you don’t like broccoli, try broccolini. If you don’t like cauliflower, try cauliflower rice. Get creative. Make a goal. Incorporate one new vegetable or vegetable recipe every month.

Five cups. Five colors.  What do you have to lose?

My mom grew up with her three siblings in the house where their mother was born on Castialia Street in Bellevue, Ohio, the same town where her grandfather and great grandfather ran a successful furniture business on Main Street for more than half a century. Briehl roots run deep in Bellevue and a majority of the family tree has blossomed there.

Mom had been in the habit of visiting her sisters at least once a year. Circumstances beyond her control constrained her recent travel, Covid, of course, but also her husband’s medical conditions. After the second death in our family, however, she felt compelled to return. She was going to see her sisters, and nothing was going to get in her way.

The grand plan was for me to travel with her to Ohio while my siblings took care of details in Texas. None of us kids really wanted Mom traveling alone. Admittedly, she is in excellent health at the young age of 82 and I would not call her frail. But at 4’9” and 105lb sopping wet, she might get swallowed up in the masses of people moving through the DFW airport scurrying to their connecting flights.

Reality quickly set in when I saw the cost of air fare, that it was double the price since the last time I flew to Ohio, and add on top of that a side trip to Texas to pick her up? Yeah, it wasn’t going to happen.

We settled on visiting at the same time. I found reasonably priced tickets on a red eye to Detroit, which as it turned out, was closer to Tiffin, where my cousin, Jennifer, lives. She graciously picked me up at 0 dark 30 am. Bleary eyed and bushed, we joined Mom who had arrived safely the previous day and was already refreshed and relishing time with her sisters. There she sat on the couch giggling like a school girl. I should have known she would be fine.

We had a lovely time. Like a line from HMS Pinafore, I saw my three aunts, my remaining uncle, most of my cousins and most of my cousins’ kids. As it happens with people you love, we picked right up where we left off. We toured their new homes sharing in their future plans. We visited their old homes stepping into and cherishing the past. I closed my eyes and was ten years old again, snitching a second piece of Aunt Mary Ann’s Texas sheet cake which she brought to every Thanksgiving dinner. There was lots of laughter. And a few tears.

We visited the graveside with Aunt Flossie where the memorial stone for my Uncle Walt was newly set allowing the finality of death to sink in. I reflected upon life’s twists and turns that take us away from our family and place of origin and the twists and turns that bring us back.

We drove by Jennifer’s childhood home on Gunther Street where I had spent at least one week practically every summer in my grade school days with Jennifer and her brothers, Chris and Kevin. I remembered playing games in their basement, calling Time and Temp to see if it would be warm enough to ride our banana seat bikes to the local pool for a swim, running around with sparklers in her back yard, walking uptown to the Cherry Festival, and walking back home with lips stained and bellies aching from eating oodles of cherries, not to mention cotton candy and vinegar drenched French fries.

Those were the good old days. And these were the people I had broken bread with back then.

A few days prior to my Ohio departure, I chatted with my cousin about trip details. She inquired about any food allergies or sensitivities I had. Apparently, Mom told Aunt Joannie I was gluten free or did not eat bread. I chuckled. I guess I have become more high maintenance with my personal food rules. I own that. I called Aunt Joannie to put her mind at ease. “I will eat whatever you put in front of me.”

The food was delicious. (Shout out to PeeDee who hands down, grills the best deer steak you have ever tasted.) But being with family, that was the real treat. There is just something about sitting across the table sharing a meal with people you love and who know and love you, the extended family you grew up with and with whom you made memories.

I was asked to offer grace before one of our many meals together and found myself overcome with emotion. It is a wonder to hold the present and the past together in the same moment, giving space for joy and sorrow and gratitude and longing, feeling the loss of those who have gone before us and at the same time being so thankful for those who remain. All while sharing a meal.

I pondered the tempo of our meals. Nothing forced or rushed. All in due time. I found myself effortlessly putting my fork down and breathing. Why would I rush this? We had all the time in the world to spend this time together.

Breaking bread with the people you love. Life does not get better than that.

It had been two years since I had attended a live medical conference. When I found out the OMA conference was to be held in Atlanta, I was thrilled. I’d get to connect and network with other specialists in Obesity Medicine in person, something that energizes me and keeps me going. And I would be able to spend time with my son, Jacob, who lives and works in Atlanta. Getting to see him in his space would be a real treat.  

The conference proved extremely beneficial, providing up to date information from articulate speakers expounding on the latest research regarding obesity, plenty of review and reinforcement of what we at Oregon Weight and Wellness are already doing, encouragement that this is truly difficult work, that weight recurrence happens, that there is underlying physiology, that the work is necessary and worth it so stay the course, OWW.

I am always curious about what kind of food will be served at medical conferences. As customary, breakfast and lunch were served buffet style on platters with fancy cards written in cursive, eloquently describing their contents. Quinoa salad with radicchio, pine nuts, capers, and olives. Gluten-free, vegan lentils with farrow and lemon. All of the food was minimally processed, whole, real, heavy on the fresh vegetables and fruit and delicious. It was difficult to stay on my intermittent fasting regimen. Kudos to the caterers.

The beverages, however, left me incredulous. Of course, they had water, and coffee, and tea. But what do you suppose held the spotlight?

Coca cola.

Cans upon endless cans of ice-cold sparkling coke, diet coke, and sprite stood stacked on tables that flanked the four corners of the grand room. I wondered if this was a test. To see if even obesity medicine doctors who have the most understanding of the physiology of sugar addiction and pathway to insulin resistance and weight gain would fall prey to the seductively sweet taste of soda.

Then I figured out that Atlanta is Coca Cola capitol of the world. Anyway, that’s where Coke’s headquarters are. Two blocks from the hotel that hosted the conference was the Coke Museum where, at the end of the tour, you get to sample upwards of 34 different kinds of soda from all over the world.

No wonder.

So the answer is, Yes. Doctors drink soda. I found myself more than disappointed, I was disgusted, shaking my head, and wondering why, thinking that if I could rule the world for a day, I would wipe soda off the face of the earth.

Atlanta was in full bloom and gorgeous. The weather was perfect for walking outside. In addition to exploring fun restaurants and quaint neighborhoods which Jacob has discovered during his tenure in Atlanta, I had the pleasure of meeting several of his friends. I must say I was quite impressed. Every one of them, including Jacob, of course, was intelligent, accomplished and at the same time authentic and genuinely kind. Honestly, it gave me hope for our future.

Jacob’s buddy, Kieffer, said something I thought was quite profound. We were strolling through a redeveloped neighborhood when I made a comment about some carelessly discarded trash I  had to step over.

“People being people,” he said. I looked at him inquisitively. “People be people,” Jacob echoed.  Perhaps it was the way they said it that gave me pause. No condemnation. No criticism. No comparison.  Their tone left no questions. While they were not in the habit of throwing trash on the sidewalk, they did not consider themselves better or worse than the person who did.

People be people. It’s why doctors drink soda. It’s why I drank soda, up to 72 oz of diet coke a day, for several years, until I was ready to change. And, like a reformed smoker, I found myself quick to judge others who I think should know better. And leave it to a young person to expose my judgment and bias, even if unknowingly.

We talked about bias during the conference, more specifically bias against people who carry extra weight, even more specifically the bias against obesity that occurs in the medical field. Doctors got honest and vulnerable and stayed in a very challenging conversation. I wanted to believe that I am not biased in a way that hurts people. But I flunked this litmus test: When you are seated on a plane and the person walking down the aisle is carrying extra weight, what is your first thought?

Do I show the same compassion for people outside of my office as inside? Am I the same person? God knows I want to be. Jesus, help me to be.

Thank you, Jacob, for showing me a lovely time in Atlanta, and showing me a better way to people.

I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal entitled The Death of the Diet (page R8 Thursday, January 2022).

The author describes the frustration of people who are sick of dieting and tired of failing. They are sick of being shamed for carrying excess weight and tired of the culture’s narrow picture of health which has been strung up in a beach body string bikini, BMI of 21… or less.

I get it. Health is more than BMI. Fad diets do not work.

I get it because I hear it every day from the clients we serve at Oregon Weight and Wellness.

I get it because I have lived it.

I was fourteen when I began my dieting career. Looking back, I was not even overweight. My BMI was 22. But I thought I was overweight because I was short waisted, had more muscle and more hips than my friends at the time, and therefore looked stockier than their taller, lankier, drink of water bodies.

Let’s see. My first diet was the cabbage soup diet. Remember that one? And all the weight loss it promised? I was sure I could be successful because there was a half a cup of vanilla ice cream on day three or something like that.

Well, little did I know, I hated cabbage soup. So that diet lasted all of two minutes.

Over the years of eating the Standard American Diet, bereft of essential nutrients and loaded with unessential antinutrients which made my cells unwell, I experienced slow steady weight gain, crossing back and forth into the overweight BMI category through my 30s and camping out there by age 40.

So, I did what every normal, red-blooded American does: counted calories, overly restricted, and started hating life.

I wanted rules and I wanted results. Immediate results. Thank you very much. Whatever the diet gurus who promised the most results at the time said to do or buy, I did it. If they said eating fat made me fat, I cut out fat. I bought low fat bars and shakes and meal replacements complete with pictures of the skinny woman I would magically become if I bought that particular brand.

I recall a visit to that haven of all nutrition knowledge, that emporium of rapid weight loss gimmicks: Wal Mart.  As I stood in line, my cart loaded with the bars and supplements and artificially sweetened candies, a friend I hadn’t seen in 20 pounds strolled up behind me and made small talk. How have you been? How are the kids? As she was rifling off the usual questions, I could see her eyes darting back and forth looking at me then looking at the items in my cart. With her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed, she held back her true questions. I felt humiliated. I never made that mistake again.

I never made that mistake again because the next trip I made for dieting fare was to the Wal Mart 30 miles away in a town where I did not know a soul.

I tried Slim Fast, Atkins, South Beach, and Weight Watchers. I tried challenges at work, at church, at home.   And up and down and back up went my weight. Up went my weight and down went myself image.

In 2014 I listened to a lecture by Dr. Robert Lustig which changed my life. Among other concepts, he introduced me to the idea that a calorie is not a calorie. And American calories have been hacked.

I came to understand that the Standard American Diet that I was eating from the time I left my parents’ house and lived on my own was not really food. It was ultra-processed, hyperpalatable, brain hijacking chemicals and food like substances. OK not all of it, but over 50% of it was. This standard American diet I was eating for years had caused my cells to become dysfunctional and caused me to be hungrier, overeat, and gain weight.

With dieting, I went from the frying pain into the fire. My brain could never escape the overstimulation of sugar, artificial sugar, salt, or seed oils that were scientifically engineered into the diet foods in order  to make them taste good or at least good enough to have the appearance of a reasonable  substitute for the pizza or whatever I was craving at the time but was white knuckling to avoid.

So why was I still feeling so deprived? Why was I never satisfied?

Because packaged, processed  food whether part of a diet or not, never satisfies. It can’t. It is not designed to satisfy. It is designed to make me want more. And I was in its grip.

Having dieted for over 35 years, at almost 50 years old, I rediscovered what I really wanted. Freedom.

Freedom from the clutches of processed food and freedom to be able to choose the real food that heals and not harms.

Why is that so hard?

Because I have been conditioned by a culture to want to eat the foods that don’t serve me well and ultimately are harmful to my health. Afterall, “ I deserve a break today.” “ I can have it my way. “I can have my cake and eat it too.” When I eat what I have been brainwashed to think I want to eat, my body does not function properly. And I might not gain weight right away, but I will eventually. Everybody will. Nobody can eat packaged food and stay healthy even if they have a normal BMI.

Without the tainting of the standard American diet, my brain and body want real food.  

That is the truth that sets us free.

Real food. Real food like beef and salmon and eggs. Like Brussel sprouts and kale and cabbage. Like avocados and olives and walnuts. Like berries and lentils and brown rice.  It has taken me eight years to get my brain back, my intuition back, my health back. Oh, I am far perfect in my food choices, but I have retrained myself to prepare, eat, and enjoy real food again.

Real food satisfies because it takes time for it to break down in the stomach, so it naturally reduces the hunger hormone made in the stomach. It takes time for the micronutrients to be absorbed in the small intestine, for the small intestine to release messages to the brain instructing the brain that it is full and satisfied.  Real food establishes a healthy gut microbiome which is essential for immune function, mental health, and weight regulation. Real food does all that and more. It sets you free from dieting.

Do you want to be free from dieting? Get out of the frying pan. And stay out of the fire.

At OWW, we offer an intuitive eating group and we help you learn how to want real food. To find out more, give us a call 971-273-7143

Well, I did it! I managed to wait until the last day of the year to write a final post for 2021. I can procrastinate with the best of them. I blame it on our recent snow. It was enchanting, mesmerizing and held me in an end of the year trance.

But what a year it has been. Our team at OWW has embraced the ongoing challenges of 2021, recognized opportunities, and made great progress.

We continued to use the online platform for our lifestyle groups with newly board-certified health coach extraordinaire Rachelle at the helm. With our growth in clientele, we needed an additional coach. Meghan Handy stepped up to the plate, is now leading some of our groups as well as building her own one on one coaching practice.

Rachelle and I started live streaming! We have a regular spot on Mondays at 12:30 on Facebook and are talking through Michael Pollan’s Food Rules chapter by chapter. It is light-hearted and fun but informative. We also have an occasional special guest which we always enjoy.

Many of you know, I had a scare in July with a post op complication requiring blood transfusions and a longer recovery time. Grateful for modern medicine, I was also impressed with how quickly my body lost muscle mass and strength. (No, this did not translate to weight loss; I gained fat!). No fair.

Practicing a little of my own medicine, I upped my protein and added strength training. Because I don’t push myself very hard, I hired a trainer to help me get back in the game. Having someone right there with me, not just showing me but telling me what to do, then adding constructive corrections, made all the difference.

While I was experiencing my own improvements, it became very clear that we needed a formal movement option for our program. I know we make SMART goals around activity and the coaches help implement them, but I wanted to do more.

Dr. Heidi organized an excellent zoom presentation about movement by a physical therapist to get us started. But with the ongoing and ever-increasing anxiety and stress from the seemingly never-ending pandemic, and understanding that learning new things is hard enough, let alone trying to incorporate new learning when chronically stressed out, first we needed to find a way to help reengage the parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest system.

Enter Melissa Hedstrom with her yoga program. Now before you decide that there is no way you would ever be flexible enough to put your leg behind your head, let me tell you that is not what yoga is. The movements in yoga help to build the foundation to access the healthy healing changes and behaviors we want to have and make. 

When strength, confidence, and balance come to the body through yoga, movement, alignment, breath, and relaxation, it directly influences the mental emotional health. Therefore, we are more likely to make those healthier choices and behaviors as the mind and body are more balance. Blood flow, lymph drainage, immune systems, vagal tone, brain waves all improve and increase likelihood of accessing change. It’s fascinating for sure and has been a great add to our wholistic approach to wellness.

We have seen our patients’ hard work pay off in improved health. Throughout the year, we celebrated so many wins and victories. Not only have they lost an average of fourteen percent of their starting weight (WHICH YOU MAY NOT REALIZE IS MORE THAN THE AVERAGE WEIGHT PROGRAM), more importantly, they have seen improvements in cardiovascular risk factors, decrease in fasting insulin levels, enjoyed more restorative sleep, decreased pain, increased mobility, better overall sense of wellbeing,  even stopped some prescription medications, including insulin.

Yes, it has been a great year. And we are not resting on laurels but have made big plans for 2022.

To start off we will be at the Salem Health and Wellness Expo on Saturday,  January 8^th . Come by our booth for a free body composition analysis, or sign up for a free 15 minute coaching session.

Meghan will continue our core group in January while Rachelle will add a lifestyle pillars group, focusing on group style coaching. I will contract with the trainer I mentioned adding this as an option to individualize our program to your needs. Meghan is creating a monthly newsletter to include regular updates, inspire and encourage. We really want to invest in our patients, strengthen the foundation of our services, and enhance the OWW experience.

And we have some BHAGs. For those of you not familiar with the term, that is Big Hairy Audacious goals. I hesitate to mention them for the same reasons you may hesitate to make goals: fear of failure, ridicule, pride. Let’s not let that stop us. We can work together to overcome those barriers and make 2022 the best year yet!

I give lots of advice about how to navigate scenarios that present challenges for healthy habits. Travel and caregiving are two. Have a plan. Take a cooler with healthy food for the car or plane.  Delay desserts. Indulge in fun ways that don’t involve food. Self-care is not selfish, and on and on. Easy for me to say.

Recently, I had the opportunity to practice what I preach on both counts.

My husband and I traveled to Oklahoma City in late September. Though it may not be a common vacation destination, it is where we had arranged for Kenny to undergo a hip replacement. Why Oklahoma City? Believe it or not it was one third the cost. (A topic for another conversation.)

Consistent with his usual frugality, my husband arranged our accommodations at one of the lesser expensive hotels, complete with handicapped facilities as recommended by the surgical center.

We flew in at midnight, scooped up the rental car, and GPSd our way to the hotel. Exhausted from trip, cramped airplane, claustrophobic masks, and in anticipation of surgery, we were looking forward to a comfortable, clean room and good night’s sleep. Unfortunately, this hotel delivered neither.

It was dark. It was dank. It was dingy. Instead of being greeted with that chemical clean smell, we were met with eau de ashtray. Obviously, the previous inhabitant smoked cigarettes and lots of them. Despite our disappointment, we started unpacking.

I stared at myself in the mirror as I brushed my teeth over the small, stained sink. You can do this. My inner self was mustering up the determination to tough it out for the sake of my husband. It’s for a short period of time. You’ve survived worse. There are people who would be over the moon to be out of the elements. This is what your budget can afford. I took a deep breath of the stale air and choked. My commander in chief chimed in. You will be disagreeable, depressed, and depleted trying to cheer yourself up every day. Not to mention, you will stink, and your clothes will stink, too. If you are going to care for your husband, you must care for yourself.

I walked out of the bathroom and  made eye contact with my husband who was seated on the bed deep in thought. Before I could get one word out, he blurted, “Babe, we are not staying here.”

I could have cried; I was so relieved.

Well, we did stay there that night. But stinky clothes in tow, the next morning we scooted out and scouted out one of the other locations on the list. Yes, they had availability. And to our surprise, the price was not much different. We made our way to the room and opened the door cautiously optimistic. It was like we died and went to heaven. Not just a bed and bathroom. But a suite with a kitchenette. We could cook our own food. Do our own dishes. Our home away from home would be comfortable. I did some quick math in my head and calculated the price difference of the rooms along with the cost of eating out every day compared to making our own meals. We may actually save money by being here.

Note to self: in the future when planning a week away, get a room with a kitchenette.

The surgery went smoothly. He had an overnight at the surgery center and was home by noon the next day. We were accompanied with several contraptions: a walker, a machine that compresses the legs to prevent blood clots, and an ice machine. It had been some time since I had waited on someone hand and foot. Water, pain meds, adjust pillows, meal prep, disrupted sleep to attend to needs that pay no attention to time of day.

It gave me a much better understanding of what many of my patients, many of whom are caregivers, go through not just for a week but every day. And it was challenging to attend to my own needs, to keep my usual routine going, let alone his.

My wins:

I found our favorite grocery store and bought real food. I did not buy junk, did not buy fast food.

I walked on the hotel tread mill every day.

I weighed myself on the scale in the hotel gym.

I allowed myself to buy water because the tap water did not taste good.

I kept my zoom appointment with my trainer.

My challenges:

I reverted to cream in my coffee ( I had been drinking it black to get a true fast)

I reverted to three meals/day and ate when my husband ate rather than following my recently adopted intermittent fasting pattern. I ate out twice.

I did not sleep well.

I only exercised half my usual time. And I sat. A lot.

I did not accomplish the work I brought or read any books.

I was not 100% in any category, food, activity, sleep stress management. Was I a failure? When I arrived home and looked at the number on my scale, I had a choice to make: Feel guilty and beat myself up for not being 100%. Or give myself grace.

In my experience, the former never leads to productive changes. But the latter allows me to examine the experience with honesty, ask good questions, and gain clarity.

Feeling guilty and beating myself up spirals down into an abyss of unhealthy choices. And that’s doubly hard to recover from . Giving myself grace helps me get back on track and more readily reclaim healthy habits.

Guilt or grace. What is your impetus for change?

Rachelle and I are having fun using Michael Pollan’s book, Food Rules, as a springboard for our 12:30pm Monday live conversations posted on Facebook .

The chapters are short, simple, and to the point. The concepts are readily understandable and for the most part, common sensical and non-controversial.

Chapter 1. Eat food. Of course, this begs the question: what is food? And this is a  fair question. Because we have been calling food like substances “food” for several generations now, some people may not know what real food is. The rest of the book helps people understand the real food concept.

Chapter 2 -Don’t eat anything your grandmother would not recognize as food.  

This is a particularly interesting chapter as I consider what I have learned about the evolution of food and the food industry in the United States. I think we would have to go back to my great, great-grandmother from the late 1800s though, to find people eating 100% whole and real foods. Processed foods crept into our food system about the turn of the century when people moved from the country, where they were growing and eating their own foods, to the cities where they bought food brought in.

With little to no refrigeration and no regulation of foods, products emerged to cover the taste of spoiled real foods. Heinz catchup is a case in point. According to what I learned from the History Channel, it was Henry Heinz who labored tirelessly to create a tomato paste to cover the taste of rancid meat. And it was also Henry Heinz who “lobbied for new food safety regulation so his competitors could no longer sell similar products with dangerous additives, even sending his son to meet lawmakers in Washington, D.C. His efforts were instrumental in the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act which passed on June 23, 1906, and eventually became the FDA.”

The mid-day meal, also called luncheon meaning “thick hunk” (as in thick hunk of meat) used to be the largest meal of the day.  Once people started working in factories, they were not able to go home for this meal, so they brought their smaller lunch to work or bought it from the street vendors. The evening meal transitioned to the largest meal.

How has all this change in our culture, in our food, in our government agencies, etc. impacted our weight and health?

Historical tidbits like that fascinate me. Maybe because I am a questioner and wonder how in the world we got here? How did we ever come to think that refined muffins and cereal and bagels could replace good old free-range eggs and vegetables as health food? How did we become convinced that the pristine white Crisco that comes in a silver can from an oil plant was better for us than the tallow or butter from a real cow that ate real grass plants? When I walk through a grocery store today and eighty percent of what is packed in the shelves and aisles is processed and ultra processed, I wonder how did we stray so far from real food?

Was it marketing or misinformation or maleficence? Or maybe all the above?  Of course, it is a complicated question with complicated answers so many different forces at play.

But it is no wonder that we are so unhealthy with so many chronic diseases including heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

We may have many opinions about how we got here, but we all can agree that we are not in a great place health-wise. And hopefully we can agree that food, real food, has the unique ability to nourish, and protect, and heal and restore our health. At Oregon Weight and Wellness, we teach people what real food is and how to make small steps to improve the quality of their food. Because when it comes to our health, we believe that real food RULES!

Please join the conversation, on Facebook, on Mondays at 12:30pm.