“It’s Time to Retire The Pyramid.”
Tuesday’s Natural Health: The Food Guide Pyramid is outdated. The Power Plate is the best (meat-free) answer. Check it out at http://bit.ly/b3RFwm
BBQ Meat? No way: BBQ Tofu? Yum!
Monday It’s Vegan Night! An all-American, stick to your ribs BBQ Tofu and mashed potatoes meal at http://bit.ly/c9IU2y
Welcome to VegMoms
Raising a vegan or vegetarian child? For kid-friendly vegan recipes, health news, inspiration and more check out my new site for VegMoms: http://bit.ly/cJuKC5
The Skinny on Sleep
Tuesday’s Natural Health: How many hours of sleep do you get on average? For most people, even those of us who pride ourselves on living a healthy lifestyle, the answer is: Not Enough. But even a minimal lack of sleep has been linked in some studies to both obesity and a higher risk of diabetes. Just three nights of staying up too late and getting up too early increases insulin resistance, according to an article in Psychology Today (pg. 54, Jan-Feb 2010). Even worse, it’s not easy to make up for late nights. PT reports that insulin activity doesn’t rebound even after four days of sleep recovery. And people who are tired tend to eat more, adding to the problem.
The lesson here for those of us who try to eat a healthy, plant-based, meat-free diet is that maintaining a healthy weight — and overall health — is about more than just what we eat. Cutting sleep hours, not making time for at least a little exercise and letting stress run wild in our lives can lead to health problems almost as readily as eating fast food five times a week can do for omnivores.
I’m a mom of three young kids, I have two jobs and work a lot of late nights at my computer, so I know how hard it is to manage the demands of work and life and still find time to sleep. But I also know it would be a lot harder to walk around checking my blood sugar many times a day and using an insulin pump. So I’m going to make more effort to get at least six (maybe some nights 7 or 8?) hours of sleep every night this week. How about you?
