“Is coffee good for you?” asked my Uber driver
Tag: diet
Most Weight Loss Programs Don’t Work, Hopkins Study Says
There are a whole lot of companies out there that are happy to provide proprietary diet guidelines in exchanged for your hard-earned money. How to choose between them? Recent research out of Johns Hopkins, which compared 32 different weight-loss programs, might help.
Moving the Goal Posts: Catching Up with Molly Shattuck
Molly Shattuck has grabbed the attention of Baltimoreans ever since becoming – at the age of 38 with three young children – a Baltimore Ravens’ cheerleader, the oldest in NFL history.
We watched her appear on the reality television show “Secret Millionaire” in 2008, as she and her mother, Joan, lived for a week on “welfare wages” and passed out checks totaling $1 million to needy residents of a small town in rural Pennsylvania. Three years later, she released an exercise video and started a website called Vibrant Living, showcasing a healthy-lifestyle approach that she lives and advocates. Now, the recently separated wife of former Constellation Energy CEO Mayo Shattuck has written Vibrant Living, the book. (Available at mollyshattuck.com and amazon.com.)
Weight is A Heavy Topic With Grown Daughter
Dear Whit:
Our daughter “Emma” has been out of college for a few years and is in her late 20s, so my wife and I don’t have much influence over her anymore. She has a job and a boyfriend about 2 hours away from us and sees us maybe five or six times a year, usually vacation time for her and during the holidays.
What’s bothering my wife and I is that Emma has been putting on weight steadily since college and is getting noticeably heavy (at least to us). Her mother and I both know that nagging doesn’t work, but my wife especially thinks that this weight gain is worrisome, and to tell the truth I’d like to see my daughter the way she used to be. Is there anything we can do besides telling her how we feel?
Discouraged Dad
Dear Discouraged:
What do you have in mind? Ground her if she doesn’t listen to you? As you say, you “don’t have much influence over her,” so recognize that you are not going to be able to get Emma to change her habits. What you can do is to maintain contact with her via email, or phone, or whatever is her transmission device of choice.
Diet Coke Makes You Fat, Johns Hopkins Says
Last week I posted about a Johns Hopkins study that indicated that a jolt of caffeine can help out with long-term memory. My poison of choice is coffee (mmm, coffee!), but I figured given the parameters of the study that any other caffeinated beverage would serve just as well. Black tea? Sure! Diet Coke? Why not?
Well, now I can tell you why not: Another set of research out of Johns Hopkins shows that overweight adults who drink diet soda aren’t actually cutting down on their calorie consumption. That’s because they tend to overcompensate for the calories “saved” by drinking, say, a Diet Dr Pepper instead of a regular Dr Pepper, and eat more at their next meal.
Fall Into A New You With Move. Eat. Be.
We all want to feel good. We want to feel healthy and energetic, and at peace with our bodies. But all too often we end up reading magazine articles about a radical new diet, or the latest study that shows everything we thought we knew about nutrition was wrong. With so much information out there, how do we discover what really works? How can we know what will work for us? After all, everyone’s body, interests, and personal history are different. So why waste time on one-size-fits-all wellness? That’s the idea behind this month’s Holistic Wellness workshop led by Joanne Frederick. With an individualized approach to personal wellness, Frederick helps participants dispel the fads and myths and get in touch with their own ability to be their very own personal health and wellness champion. Sound like a huge relief? Yeah, we thought so.
Kale and Potatoes: Baltimoreans Embrace Vegetarian Cuisine
It hasn’t always been easy being a vegetarian in a meat and crab cake town like Baltimore.
“Twelve years ago, you’d be lucky to find maybe one soy milk in the grocery store,” says Baltimore vegan Aaron Ross. “Now even chain stores have choices — sometimes even whole aisles dedicated to vegetarian options.”
Along with the growing number of choices for the herbivore consumer, Ross points to more evidence that vegetarianism is gaining currency: Baltimore City last month became the first “Meatless Monday” public school system in the U.S. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is one of the partners in the effort.
Baltimore’s soul may still be made of meat and crab cakes, but the city has seen more vegetarian-friendly restaurants, groups, and activities springing up around town. They include Liquid Earth in Fells Point, Mount Vernon’s Land of Kush and One World Cafe in Charles Village.
What We Can Learn from the Fells Pt. Candy Bar Thief
On New Year’s Eve last Monday, a few minutes before eight p.m., a 40-something man–5’10”, 170 pounds (read more at The Baltimore Sun)–strode through a Royal Farms in Fells Point tossing boxes of candy bars into a bag he’d brought from home.
“Are you stealing that?” asked the slack-jawed clerk.
“Yes,” replied the bold, weapon-free thief, who stole $180 worth of candy and still remains on the potentially sugar-spiked run this week.
An employee stood in his exiting path, but he merely pushed her aside. My semi-serious question for the guy: Did you perhaps intend to stop eating candy on January 1, and therefore binge wicked bad on 12/31?
The Baltimore Ravens are the NFL’s Heaviest Team
“You have to wonder whether age is catching up to them,” an ESPN blogger wrote about the Baltimore Ravens defense earlier this year. In a sport where most players’ professional careers only span a couple of seasons, the Ravens have several players with more than a decade of experience. At 37, Ray Lewis is practically old at 37. (Kidding. Mostly.) But the Ravens are hardly the oldest team in the NFL. They are, however, the fattest.
This Week in Research: Apolitical College Students; Fat Pregnant Rats
In this series, we look at the newest findings coming out of our area’s top research universities. We’ve got some great minds in Baltimore — let’s learn what they’re learning!
A presidential election is a big deal, needless to say… except, that is, in the minds of today’s college students.
