Chapter 1

Talking Total Body Wellness

In This Chapter

Setting the stage for your Total Body Diet

Combining mind and body in your wellness plan

Understanding how to reboot your lifestyle for health and happiness

So, you want to embark on a lifestyle change that can promote health, well-being, and the quality of your life? The Total Body Diet offers a road map for a healthy mind and body by identifying nutrient-dense foods, ways to eat more mindfully, and keys to getting regular physical activity.

How can what you eat affect your total body health? Numerous studies have shown that a healthy pattern of eating has been linked to reduced risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, cognitive decline or dementia, and premature death, among other health benefits. Plus, research into physical activity shows benefits of improved flexibility, strength, mood, focus, and productivity.

Here are some key principles of the Total Body Diet:

• Choose foods that are minimally processed (prepared without large amounts of added sugar, salt, and fat). Minimize the additives you eat by checking labels and preparing foods at home with herbs and spices instead of a lot of salt, sugar, and fat.
• Balance your daily eating plan with fruits, vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins (either animal or plant protein), and lowfat or fat-free dairy products.
• Drink water mainly. Limit your consumption of beverages like regular soft drinks, alcoholic beverages, coffee, and tea.
• Prepare meals and snacks at home. You'll save calories with portion control and get less salt, added sugar, and solid fat.
• Eat slowly and savor your food. You'll reap the health benefits of mindful eating, which can help with the management of weight, type 2 diabetes, appetite, and cravings.

The Whole Picture of You

Before you can begin to make changes in your lifestyle, knowing where you are in your journey toward total body health and wellness is important. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Why do I want to make changes now? What is my goal?
• How ready am I to make this change? If it helps to quantify your readiness, rate yourself on a scale from 1 (not ready at all) to 5 (very ready).
• Am I willing to try new, healthier foods?
• Do I want to get more active or change my physical activity?
• Do I understand that change is a gradual process that takes time, patience, and daily action?

Think about your answers to these questions. If you're ready to change your lifestyle and create lasting changes, you're in the right place. It may take some time to get in the right frame of mind and find the motivation to power forward.

Getting into a wellness state of mind

The way you think about your health and wellness plays a role in the action you take toward living a healthier lifestyle. If you prioritize your health, you'll develop what I call a wellness state of mind, or a permanent healthy mindset. You'll think first and foremost about making the healthiest choice at the moment when it comes to food and physical activity. Instead of falling prey to unconscious eating and drinking, your new wellness mindset will help you become more focused on and conscious of your choices.

Wellness is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Your wellness is unique to you, and it takes time to develop a wellness state of mind. It doesn't happen overnight. Be patient. Understand what you want and where you're starting from right now.

Tuning up your muscles

Regardless of your age or gender, your body and mind benefit from movement. According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, there is strong evidence that regular physical activity can help to decrease the risk of early death, cardiovascular disease, stroke, high blood pressure, weight gain, and depression among many other health benefits.

There are three key ways that physical activity benefits your total body wellness:

• Overload: Placing physical stress on your muscles, bones, heart, and lungs allows them to adapt to greater capacity and makes their function more efficient and stronger.
• Progression: Continually increasing your activity level, which overloads your body's systems, increases your fitness levels to enable you to keep doing more.
• Specificity: The type of activity you're doing benefits the specific body part that is doing the work (for example, aerobic activity works the cardiovascular system).

So what does this mean? If you aren't currently active, start slow and progress to a higher level slowly to build up your strength and stamina (the ability to sustain the activity for longer periods of time). For example, if you're new to activity, start with walking instead of running. When you're comfortable walking longer distances, start working in a little jogging at a time (a minute here or there, then two minutes, and so on). Creating small fitness goals to fine-tune your muscles gradually will lead to big results with persistence.

The Total Body Lifestyle

Embracing a healthy way of living for permanent, lasting changes is vital for creating improved health and wellness. The Total Body Diet is about adding beneficial foods, creating new behaviors, and fostering a sense of responsibility to improve the quality of your life. Think about the value you're adding to your life by reaching your health goals - whether it be weight loss or maintenance, reducing disease risk or managing current conditions, improved strength and flexibility, getting better sleep, or reducing stress.

It's beyond dieting - it's about living

This is not a typical diet plan, in which weight loss is the end all and be all. The Total Body Diet teaches you how to live with a greater awareness of how what and how you eat affects your mind and body for the better. It puts you on a path for greater understanding of how to navigate daily food choices, create more structure in your life, and eliminate the excuses that stand in your way to make significant health changes.

How do you get beyond the dieting mentality of eliminating certain foods? Many people struggle with the dieting mentality, so the foods they eliminate become taboo and may become the object of cravings as they're deemed "off-limits." This restrictive thinking makes food less enjoyable, too.

Balance is important. If you can, eat whole, minimally processed foods most of the time. Think about fueling your body with nutrient-dense food to keep your blood pressure, blood sugar, and waistline in check.

It's about changing your lifestyle! The Total Body Diet uses lifestyle as the first therapy to achieving wellness, health, and vitality for life. If you change your everyday behaviors and way of living, you'll see positive health outcomes above and beyond your dreams.

Making healthier food choices

Making healthier foods choices is challenging - even when you know what the better choice is. A 2014 Gallup poll asked Americans about their consumption habits and found that more than 90 percent of American adults try to include fruit and vegetables in their daily diets. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's State Indicator Report on Fruits and Vegetables (2013) reveals that American adults eat fruit a mere 1.1 times per day and vegetables only about 1.6 times per day.

Let's face it - you're bombarded with a myriad of food choices every day. In fact, according to Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, by Brian Wansink, PhD, we make more than 200 decisions about food every day! Many of these choices are mindless - unless we tap into a more conscious, mindful way of eating.

A trip to the food court in your office building offers you a daunting number of food choices - from salads to soups to burgers and fries to pasta. What do you choose? Are you on automatic pilot and pick whatever sounds good at the moment? Or do you go there with a plan, with your sights set on making a healthy choice, which includes vegetables, fruits, lean protein, lowfat or fat-free dairy, and whole grains? It may sound simple, but without a plan, your healthy eating intentions can get easily sidetracked. So, what do you do? Set boundaries and create a healthier path.

Setting boundaries to create limitless possibilities

Every relationship in your life - including your relationship with food - thrives better with boundaries. If "anything goes" in a friendship, marriage, or relationship with a co-worker, that relationship can get out of control and unhealthy. Your needs may be ignored, taken advantage of, and minimized, if you don't clearly establish limits.

You may find it hard or easy to set boundaries, but whatever the case, knowing the importance of having limits with food is important to building a healthier relationship with food.

In the psychology world, personal boundaries are defined as the physical, emotional, and mental limits we establish to protect ourselves from being manipulated, used, or violated by others.

Here are seven simple steps to setting boundaries with food:...