HEALTHY LIVING--JACKIE WATERS ON DEALING WITH CHRONIC PAIN

Photo Credit: Brett_Hondow, Pixabay

Jackie Waters returns today with suggestions on how to deal with chronic pain.

Enjoy Life Again and Ease Chronic Pain with Simple Lifestyle Changes

By Jackie Waters

If you suffer from chronic pain, you know how debilitating it can be. Chronic pain causes physical, mental, and emotional difficulties. You often feel frustrated and angry, and at times you may feel hopeless and as though you’ve lost control of your body and life. However, simple lifestyle changes can help ease chronic pain and make leading an enjoyable life a real possibility.

Keeping a Tidy Home

Deep cleaning your home can be physically exhausting and difficult for chronic pain suffers. Hiring someone to tackle the deep cleaning tasks can be helpful. They can drop by once a week, bimonthly, or once a month to help. In between deep cleans, you can follow a few simple tips to keep your home tidy and help you go longer between deep cleans.

Never leave a room without making it better than how you found it. Even just taking an item that doesn’t belong in that room and putting it where it belongs can make a difference. Try to incorporate five-minute cleaning breaks into your day. Wash a few dishes or run a load of laundry in those five minutes. Keeping on top of the dishes is helpful. Put dirty dishes in the dishwasher immediately, and run it as soon as it’s full. Also, unload when it’s done.

Likewise, rather than letting laundry pile up for “laundry day,” wash a load of laundry as soon as you have a full load. Laundry isn’t really a difficult task, but letting it pile up and having to do six loads in a day makes it overwhelming. Wipe the toilet and bathroom sink down at least once a day for another five-minute task that will make a big difference. Keep a bottle of cleaner or a container of cleaning wipes in your bathroom so you can easily do a quick wipedown during a bathroom break.

Be tenacious about getting rid of stuff or not allowing it in the house to begin with to help control the clutter in your home. Having too much “stuff” contributes to a messy house. Once a month, go through your house and fill a bag to donate to charity. Also, don’t let papers pile up; when you check your mail or empty your kids’ backpacks, immediately recycle the unimportant stuff and file the important papers and bills. Try to have several areas that you keep consistently clean and free of clutter. Most people develop clutter on their dining room tables, the kitchen counters, and the bathrooms. Find your clutter areas, and work to keep them clean.

Treating Your Body Well

Exercise can be difficult if you suffer from chronic pain, but you don’t have to perform strenuous exercise to get the benefits of working out. For example, walking and swimming are low impact and have significant health benefits. Yoga is also great exercise, especially for people with chronic pain.

Yoga gently stretches and strengthens muscle and joints, helping to alleviate chronic pain. It builds endurance and balance, and also helps lower stress levels. Stress makes chronic pain worse, regardless of the original cause of the pain, because it makes the body tense and nervous. Some yoga moves can be intense, so stick with positions that fall into your personal range of comfort and ability. “The breathing component of yoga might be just as helpful to ease chronic pain as the movement and stretching,” suggests Health.com.

Diet is equally as important as exercise. Experts say chronic pain sufferers can benefit immensely from a diet change that focuses on consuming mostly vegetables. “Patients who follow strict vegan or Mediterranean diets have seen a complete turnaround in their pain symptoms,” says the Cleveland Clinic. Whether you follow these diets strictly or use them as inspiration to eat healthier, it can make a dramatic difference.

Integrating regular exercise, controlling stress, and eating healthy foods all work together to reduce inflammation and ease chronic pain, while minimizing the need to take medications, which can become addictive. Maintaining a clean home can help control stress and even provides a little exercise. Likewise, yoga and other low-impact exercises can provide a workout while lowering stress. These simple modifications can make life easier and help alleviate chronic pain so you can get back to enjoying life with less pain.

HEALTHY LIVING--GUEST AUTHOR SCARLETT WEST

Aspiring paranormal romance author Scarlett West is in the process of creating a vampire series set in Europe and the United States. Learn more about Scarlett and follow her writing journey at her website. 

Carbs: Five Reasons We Crave Them

Wait! Before you think I’m a carb extremist who will tell you not to eat them, let me share a little about myself. I eat well to feel well and like to eat a balanced diet.

I believe carbohydrates, including some junk food, have a place on our plates. My mom always warned me not to follow fad diets, but rather try to eat all the colors of fruits, veggies, whole grains, and the like.

Carbohydrates are yummy and emotionally satisfying. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but sometimes they can take up too much room in our diet and contribute to health problems. I will give examples of why we crave them and how to get back to balance.

I am not suggesting we eliminate them completely, unless we have valid health reasons why we might need to do so.

Allergies and Sensitivities

We often crave foods we are allergic or sensitive to. For example, many people have a sensitivity to gluten or wheat and not know it. Nutritionists sometimes ask what we crave the most. Pasta, bread, cookies, and foods like that might be on the list. It’s odd how the body functions, but we may be allergic or have sensitivity to the very food we gobble up the most.

What’s the difference? An allergy is when our body has a real attack to something we eat, like hives, anaphylaxis, and swelling. A sensitivity could include various kinds of digestive disturbances or nasal congestion.

So how do we find out if we have a sensitivity/allergy? The cheapest way is to do an elimination diet preferably with the help of a nutritionist or other person guiding you. Another way is to do allergy testing through a Naturopath or doctor. Professionals who know about nutrition and food are the best kinds of people to help with a problem like this.

Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency

Sometimes, the reason we want those carbs is because we lack certain vitamins and minerals in our body. If we round out our diet and make sure we include them, our carb interest may diminish.

Examples of nutrients we may lack: chromium is a mineral that can be taken as a supplement to lower food cravings. We can also include it in our diets by eating fresh fruit, green beans, ham, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cheese.

Other vitamins and minerals we may need are calcium, nitrogen, and B-vitamins. We find those three in milk products, leafy greens, brown rice, fish, black beans, lentils, salmon, and bell peppers.

Eating the rainbow is important!

Candida Overgrowth

Say what? We have bacteria, good and bad, different kinds of yeasts, and viruses floating around our body all the time. One of the main places these life forms hang out is in our gut. Candida is a form of yeast that becomes overgrown like a crazy patch of weeds, but in the body.

How do we know we have it and what can we do about it?

Symptoms can include regular fungal infections on the skin and throughout the body, digestive problems, difficulty focusing, depression/mood swings, and guess what else? Always craving carbs and sweets because Candida feeds off those to reproduce. And because our immune system is mostly housed in our gut area it is important to get hold of something like this so we don’t develop more severe problems later.

To rid our bodies of Candida we can reduce/eliminate sugar and carbs from our diet for a month, take probiotics, Pau D’Arco teas/tinctures, and/or caprylic acid. Usually those herbal remedies come in capsules.

Hormones

Yes, those grand old hormones that follow us around our entire life might affect our hankerings. PMS and menopause are times when women can feel more of a need to eat those carbs, but unfortunately, they can also make our problems worse. Make a sad face.

I don’t feel qualified enough to talk about how to solve these issues except to make one suggestion. Sometimes women don’t find a solution with medical treatments. My personal experience, and those of women I know, is that herbal treatments can be very effective for balancing hormones. You would need to find a qualified herbalist to help with these issues, but I wanted to point it out in case some readers had never thought of this before.

Feeling Stressed and Tired

For some of us, this is the story of our life, to be stressed and never rested enough. In the long run, this can take a toll on our bodies and emotions. We reach for carbohydrate filled foods because they lift our moods, including serotonin, one of the “happy chemicals” in our brains.

Taking time for self-care is important, including sleep and balanced foods. Also, if we are going through something, caring for our emotions and finding solutions to our problems can be helpful. If there is no solution, at least doing something positive and loving for ourselves can make a difference.

Other Brief Tips:

Eat protein first thing in the morning. Even if we don’t have a big appetite, a small, protein rich yogurt, a hard-boiled egg, or another item can help. This sets us up for the whole day so we crave carbs less later on.

Keep healthy snacks on hand. Veggies and fruits dipped in almond, cashew, or peanut butter; bags of nuts or other trail mix; cheese sticks; or other goodies can make a difference. Maintaining even blood sugar levels during the day is important so we don’t have energy crashes and sudden urges to eat foods that aren’t so great.

Indulge. Yes, I believe it is good to eat something junky and enjoy it. I don’t want to beat myself up for eating junk food.

And like anything else, all we can do is our best. Also, with all of these suggestions, please follow your own discretion and do what’s best for your health plan. I’m only sharing information that I find helpful.

GUEST AUTHOR REBECCA J. CLARK ON A HEALTHIER DIET

Contemporary romance author Rebecca J. Clark is also a personal fitness trainer. Her nonfiction book The Checklist Diet is the same basic, no-nonsense information she’s been teaching her clients for the past 13+ years. When she’s not training, teaching, working out, or deciding whether or not she really needs Cheetos, you can find her in her office penning her latest romance novel. Learn more about Rebecca and her books at her website.  

Baby Steps to a Healthier Diet

Are you one of those people who keeps meaning to start a diet on Monday or the first of next month or some other date in the future? If so, why wait? Why not start improving your diet right now?  

When I say “diet” I just mean the way you’re eating. I don’t want you to go ON a “diet” because that infers that you’ll eventually go OFF it. Instead, start incorporating some simple changes into your life that you can follow indefinitely.

Here are some good habits for a healthier diet:

Eating Your Fruits & Vegetables

Make a big salad and have it with lunch and/or dinner three times a week.

Cut up a bunch of raw veggies every Sunday, and strive to finish them by Wednesday. Then cut up some more and finish by Sunday. Repeat.

Use vegetable purees (baby food is a great way to do this) in your everyday foods. Like adding pureed carrots or sweet potatoes into your spaghetti sauce, or adding pureed spinach into your meatloaf, or pureed cauliflower into your soup.

Have a fruit smoothie each morning to start your day. Add a handful of spinach and you’ll never even taste it. I swear.

Reach for a piece of fruit and a handful of nuts for your afternoon or evening snack.

Cutting Back on Junk Food

Before reaching for junk food, ask yourself if you really want it. This might sound silly, but sometimes the simple act of stopping and asking yourself that question is enough to stop you.

If you “must” have junk food, eat just one portion. Look on the package—it’ll tell you what one portion is. Eat it and enjoy. There’s no use eating junk food if you’re going to feel too guilty to enjoy it.

Make sure you have healthy snacks on hand. If all you have on hand is junk food, guess what you’ll reach for? Yeah.

Tell yourself you can have X servings of junk food a week. How many is X? Depends on how much you’re eating now. If you’re eating junk food every day, cut back to every other day. If you eat it several times a week, cut back to twice a week.

Cutting Back on Alcohol

First, let me tell you what a “healthy” amount of drinking is. For women, one drink a night is fine. For men, two drinks a night is good. If you drink more than that, I’d strongly suggest you start cutting back. I don’t want to be preachy, but I care about your health. More than that amount is bad for your health and your waistline. Alcohol is empty calories. Your body doesn’t metabolize it well. So any excess will go to your gut or your butt. You really don’t want a Beer Butt, do you?

So...if you’re drinking more than you “should” – and only you know the answer to that – start cutting back just a little at a time. Cut back from three drinks to two. From two to one. From every night to three times a week. I had one client recently who dropped eight pounds just from going from drinking three glasses of wine a night to one glass a night.

Drinking More Water

If you’re even slightly dehydrated, you won’t feel your best. You might be tired, or get headaches, or feel bloated, or have a scratchy throat, or be depressed. Or all the above. Your body also won’t digest food as well.

Have a bottle or glass of water with you at all times: at your desk, on the coffee table, in the car.

Create reminders for yourself to drink your water. For instance, if you watch a lot of TV, drink half a cup every commercial. If you spend a lot of time at the computer, set a timer to go off every 30 minutes and drink half a cup. If you’re driving, every time you stop at a light or stop sign, take a few chugs. If you’re driving long distance, every time you approach an exit, take a few chugs.

Buy yourself a really cool water container. You’re more likely to reach for water if it is in a container you like. Sounds silly, but it’s true.

Keep an 8 oz. glass of water on your nightstand. Drink it as soon as you get up, before even getting out of bed.

Have 8 oz. of water with every meal.

It’s all about small changes. Pick one or two things you want to change and focus on those. When those become habit, pick one or two more things. Keep going until you’re eating a healthy diet most of the time. That’s right, I said “most of the time.” Life’s too short not to enjoy the occasional cheeseburger or Cheetos.

The Checklist Diet

Are you confused by all the contradictory diet information out there? Do you just want a simple and easy and FUN way to lose weight and improve your diet? Do you like making lists? Well, look no further than The Checklist Diet. 

No more counting points or calories. No more depriving yourself of your favorite foods. No more dealing with hunger pains, because guess what? On The Checklist Diet, if you’re hungry, you get to eat! How cool is that? 

This is the last diet plan you’ll ever need, because it’s not a diet. Diets are meant to go on and off of. This is a way of eating you can stick with for life because it’s so easy, it’s so basic, and it’s so fun.

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HEALTHY LIVING WITH JANICE--POWERHOUSE FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

photo by Masparasol

Watercress? Who knew?

The buzzword in healthy eating over the last few years has been “superfoods.” But what exactly is a “superfood”? Actually, it’s a marketing concept. However, there are some foods that are really, really good for us. Research has shown that certain foods over time are associated with a reduction in cancer and other diseases. We know there are foods we should eat and foods we should stay away from or eat sparingly. But fads come and go. So how do you choose?

Researchers at William Paterson University have come up with a list of “41 powrhouse fruits and vegetables” which are ranked by the amount of 17 critical nutrients contained in them. Foods were scored by their fiber content as well as various vitamins and minerals deemed vital to public health. The study was recently published in a CDC journal article. Topping the list was watercress, followed by Chinese cabbage, chard, beet greens, spinach, and hickory.

Fruits ranked a lot lower than vegetables. The highest-ranking fruits were red peppers (yes, peppers are really a fruit,) pumpkins, tomatoes, and lemons. Even more surprising, blueberries, which we’ve been told for years are really, really good for us, didn’t even make the list. Neither did cranberries and raspberries. This is because although these berries are rich in phytochemicals, which are non-essential nutrients that have protective or disease prevention properties, there’s no uniform data on food phytochemicals or recommended consumption levels. The scores in the study are based solely on nutrients.

If you’d like to see the complete list, you can find it here. 

HEALTHY LIVING--GUEST AUTHOR LESLEY DIEHL & THE CHOCOLATE-FILLED DONUT DIET

photo by Pbj2199

Mystery author Lesley Diehl retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in upstate New York where a shy ghost serves as her literary muse.  In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office, and gators make golf a contact sport.  Learn more about Lesley and her books at her website and blog. 

The Chocolate-Filled Donut Sleuthing Approach to Losing Weight

(This diet won’t kill you!)

Don’t be put off by the protagonist in my newest cozy mystery, Murder Is Academic.  Sure, Laura Murphy, college professor, has a lot of degrees, but at her stage of life, they don’t mean a lot when she spends so much time plunging her head in the freezer to corral her hot flashes. And she notices something else.  She can be described as a short, voluptuous blond whose best asset according to herself is her chest and narrow waist, but a look in the mirror tells her something is going south.  Could it be that a combination of being a woman of a certain age and all those chocolate-filled donuts are catching up with her—  metabolically-speaking?

Here’s Laura’s so-easy, chocolate-filled donut approach to getting back in shape.  You can eliminate any one of the steps, although the results won’t be as radical.

First, try an exercise program.  Oh, sure you say.  Everyone recommends that.  But this one is different.  Laura and Annie, her best friend decide to enter a fifty mile canoeing race, although neither of them had tried the sport before.  The first day on the water they discover the dead body of the college president shoved under a pile of gravel at a bridge construction site.  You may want to just skip this last part.

Next you should extend your exercise program to include a variety of activities, not simply one.  Laura discovers dinner with a hunky biker dude can result in more than messed up hair from the wind.  It can result in messed up hair from a night spent in bed.  This is a highly recommended part of the diet regimen.  Don’t skip it.

On to the next part of the plan in which Laura investigates the murder of her president and gets herself into all kinds of trouble, but all the running around is a kind of exercise (see step two above, variety in your exercise program).  Another unexpected benefit of this is she also creates trouble for others, some of them people at the college she doesn’t really like.  Here is where you give yourself permission to be annoying to others you find annoying.  It doesn’t burn calories per se, but it is satisfying. 

Snooping a la the Laura Murphy approach results in a diminished appetite for donuts while maintaining an excellent appetite for the biker in her life.  If you think this part of the diet is easy, you should be forewarned that too much snooping can make the killer angry and lead to attempts on your life.  Take on this part of the plan only if you’re either a good runner or really smart.  Laura can’t run, but she’s pretty smart, smart enough to outwit a killer.

Once your weight has stabilized at the desired level of maintaining a zealous interest in the biker guy or any man of your choice, and the bad guy has been caught because of some clever, rigorous sleuthing, you may begin the donuts once more.  You didn’t really think you were going to give them up forever, did you?  That’s why it’s called the chocolate-filled donut approach to dieting.  Duh.

A final note: Taking up chocolate-filled donuts again will result in weight gain, so like Laura, you’ll have to find another murder to solve.  Laura does, and it’s called Failure Is Fatal.  In this one, the bad frat guys give her a real run around.  Expect Laura to be positively slim at the end.

Murder is Academic

Laura Murphy, psychology professor, thinks there’s nothing she likes better than coffee and donuts on a summer morning until she says yes to dinner with a Canadian biker and finds herself and her date suspects in the murder of her college’s president. Laura’s friend, the detective assigned the case, asks her to help him find out who on the small upstate New York college campus may be a killer.  The murder appears to be wrapped up in some unsavory happenings on the lake where Laura lives.  A fish kill and raw sewage seeping into the water along with the apparent drowning suicide of a faculty member complicate the hunt for the killer.  And then things become personal.  The killer makes a threatening phone call to Laura. With a tornado bearing down on the area and the killer intent upon silencing her, Laura’s sleuthing work may come too late to save her and her biker from a watery grave.

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HEALTHY LIVING WITH JANICE—GUEST AUTHOR L.B. JORAMO

Have you ever felt the need for change? L.B. Joramo did, and she’s here to tell us about it today. Learn more about her at her website. 

I worked in the health and fitness business for sixteen years before I packed it all in and went back to school for my Master’s in US Military History; my area of concentration is the American Revolution. I had been planning to quit for several years, since my ultimate goal was to actually make a living at my writing, and my early “retirement” couldn’t have come at a better time. Before I quit my business, I partly tore my rotator cuff again and strained my groin. I could barely walk, let alone lift anything with my left arm. Obviously, I was doing something wrong, but what it was, I could have cared less, since I didn’t have to work out for my job anymore. I was elated!

For the next three years I became more and more sedentary. Hey, I was a part-time Master’s student, hence a lot of sitting while I read, and was actively pursuing getting published with my writing—even more sitting. And with my injuries, I didn’t mind sitting more. I really didn’t mind, but my body did. I started to gain weight, but what disturbed me the most was my mood. I was sad more often than I ever had been and agitated. I just thought it was because I was having such a struggle with getting published, but it was more, much more, than that.

You see, I know the science behind why our bodies do what they do. I knew better than to sit around with two injuries. The quickest way to heal is movement--gentle, consistent movement. The best way to lose a few pounds is movement. I’m sorry diet industry, but it’s been proven over and over again that diets don’t work. Activity does. Besides, what the diet industry really doesn’t want mainstream Americans to know is:

1.) being overweight does not mean you are unhealthy—the stats show that a person who eats more healthy meals and consistently moves, yet is overweight, will live longer and have less diseases than a thin person who does not eat the same kind of healthy meals or move regularly. And,

2.) most people are overweight by their standards, which might not be accurate or even scientific. All my male clients were 20, 30, sometimes even 40 pounds overweight, but none of those pounds were fat. All of my guy clients were fine with that. With my female clients it was more difficult to talk about the scale, because many women valued their sense of self with the number on that scale. And that broke my heart.

However, many of my women would open up to the idea that muscle did weigh more than fat. We would do a science experiment, where I would cube an inch of butter and an inch of steak, and the steak would sometimes weigh three times more than the butter, especially lean steak—in other words, pure muscle. The only way to get that muscle was to move.

I’m a realist, as well as a very sedentary person now. I do not, nor have I ever, thought you had to work yourself until you’re purple in the face to gain muscle. And don’t get me wrong, I do love a challenging exercise class, where I end up dripping sweat. But that’s me. Everyone has different emotional needs, so why not have different physical needs too? Some people move all the time, yet never work up a sweat, and they have great muscles and cardio health to prove it. Some people, like me, will want to burst with energy and lift weights and or do power yoga until sweat streams off us. Both these kinds of examples are proof of movement and people being active, and they are both right for those particular people.

We’ve been studying exercise for a long time, and the one thing that has been proven over and over again to work for people is doing what they like consistently. That means, when I was a trainer, I would have to think outside the box for training my clients. One of my clients actually liked cleaning, and I helped her set up her own organization of cleaners to help people who are diagnosed with a fatal disease. She cleans all day long, happy as a Jay bird, gets fit, and does it all for a great cause.

Another client of mine was a preacher’s wife, and for the longest time I couldn’t find anything that she loved so much that she would want to do it every day. Until I found strip aerobics for her. Yep, my client, the preacher’s wife, knows how to have a good time, and her husband has no complaints either.

The point is that exercise should be some activity that is fun and something you look forward to doing almost every day. My problem, before I quit, was that I had forgotten that, and was just working out because it was my job. As a consequence, I started to listen less and less to my body as I was moving, and that’s how you get a couple killer injuries.

Listen to your bodies, move as often as you can—during commercial breaks, get up and dance for me, lend a hand to your neighbor when they’re sick, show your kids how terrible you are at the hula-hoop, but the most important rule of exercise is to have FUN! Find something you find completely exhilarating and do it as often as you can! 

Our bodies will adjust and want something else to do soon enough, so then it’s your job to find that something else that is incredibly fun for you to do. It’s a journey, like so many other things, and I guarantee you will not only discover so much about your body, but yourself too. I’ve been privileged to watch my clients change, adjust, and grow, and now it’s my turn to do the same. I hope you’ll join me! Let me know what you like to do for exercise, activity, or movement, whatever word resonates with you?

The Immortal American

As black clouds gather for America in 1775 Violet Buccleuch transforms from simple colonial farmer to become the Immortal American.

While Boston roars with protests, Violet Buccleuch fights to survive. The lone provider for her mother and sister, Violet knows that soon enough she must surrender to the only option a woman of 1775 has: marriage.

For two years she's delayed a wedding to Mathew Adams, her fiancé. He’s loved her since they were children, and Violet knows he will be a good husband. But he’s gone and committed the most dangerous mistake a man can make: He’s introduced her to his friend, Jacque Beaumont, a Frenchman and a spy, a dark, dangerous man Violet can’t stop herself from wanting.

Then Violet’s life is shattered--brutality, death, and the threat of debtor’s prison surround her. Both Jacque and Mathew come to her aid--one man rescues her farm, the other rescues her heart. As the Battle of Concord rages at her door, Violet is entangled between her loyalty to Mathew, even as she's drawn further into Jacque's shadowy, mysterious world – perhaps a world from which there's no return.

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HEALTHY LIVING WITH JANICE-HOW TO BURN MORE CALORIES

If you’re like millions of others, one of your New Year’s resolutions was to lose weight. Have you? Here’s a handy tip to help you burn more calories with very little effort. 

We’ve all heard that drinking a glass of water before each meal fills us up and helps keep us from overeating. One recent study also found that 16 ounces of water increased metabolism by 30%. But here’s where it gets really interesting—cold water increased metabolism even more. So drop a few ice cubes in that glass of water to burn, baby, burn—calories, that is.

HEALTHY LIVING WITH JANICE - SUPERFOODS

From time to time we’ve talked about superfoods here, those foods that give you extra energy, help you lose weight, or even possibly ward off cancer. Today health editor Janice Kerr adds a few more foods to the superfoods list. -- AP

Anastasia, have you ever eaten kefir? It’s a creamy drink that’s not only rich in calcium, it’s a probiotic. That means it aids in healthy digestion and also pumps up your immune system. You can find kefir in the dairy section of most supermarkets. Because it has a slightly tart taste, blend it with berries or add a drop of vanilla extract.

When choosing berries to add to your kefir, consider black raspberries. This fruit is not only low in sugar and calories, it’s high in fiber, folate, and vitamin C. But best of all, guess what the  phytochemicals in black raspberries do? Nothing short of causing cancer cells to commit suicide. How cool is that? 

HEALTHY LIVING WITH JANICE - SIZE MATTER, AND SO DOES COLOR

Are you trying to lose weight and having trouble doing so? Here are two tricks you should try when it comes to eating less:

First, use a smaller plate. Have you noticed that over the years, not only have we super-sized our food choices, we’ve also super-sized our dinnerware. If you’ve bought new dishes over the last few years, you know what I mean. The cereal bowls, dinner plates, and dessert plates are all much larger than they used to be.

We tend to fill our plates when we serve ourselves. Use a smaller dinner plate or bowl, and you’ll fill it with less food, thereby eating less. And don’t worry about leaving the table hungry. You won’t miss that extra food. It’s a psychological thing going on. You’ve cleaned your plate; you’ve eaten enough.

According to the Small Plate Movement, you can drop 18 pounds over the course of a year just by reducing the size of your plate.

Another tip that works is to change the color of your dishes. A study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that people ate more when eating food served on a plate of the same color. So if you’re eating vanilla ice cream, don’t put it in a white bowl, and keep that chocolate cake off dark brown or black plates.

Great tips, Janice! Readers, what are some of your dieting tips? Let's hear from you. -- AP

HEALTHY LIVING WITH JANICE - GUEST BLOGGER, KATIE BRIND'AMOUR

Katie Brind’Amour is a freelance writer and food aficionado eating her way through Columbus, Ohio one delicious dish at a time. When she’s not busy trying to identify the perfect combination of chocolate and wine, she writes on health, nutrition, pregnancy, and friendship for Elance clients and on her personal blog . -- AP

Eat to Beat the Winter Blues

There’s something about beef stew, chicken noodle soup, buttery golden biscuits, potatoes, cocoa, and pie (not all at once, though!) that scream “winter comfort food” to me.  I basically gravitate toward warm, delicious, fatty, starchy foods to make me feel cozy and satisfied during the long winter months, and I have a feeling this is the case for many people out there.  After all, Thanksgiving is about stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie – not carrot sticks, salad, and rye bread!

The appeal of filling and fattening foods during colder months is perhaps a biologically programmed weakness, but in modern times it would be tough to argue that this does us any sort of favor.  (At least, ever-widening hips and a bulging belly don’t exactly meet my definition of a gift from the universe…)

Luckily, Mother Nature has something in store for those of us with less desire to store fat and more interest in staying trim despite the holidays and never-ending onslaught of flavored coffees and flaky, buttery cookies.  She gave us foods to get us through winter in an entirely different way.

In fact, there are a whole slew of healthy foods that can actually improve your mood and get you through the cold months with more energy, better health, and a sharper mind (http://www.helpfordepression.com/slideshow/lifestyle-changes/10-foods-boost-your-mood).  Sign me up!

For those of you who are health junkies, the fact that salmon is one of these super foods should be no surprise.  Dietitians and health nuts have long been singing the praises of its healthy fats for brain development, but its nutrients can also improve your attitude and help beat mild depression by increasing levels of serotonin and certain hormones that help regulate mood and memory. 

Eggs are another delicious food that supply a number of important vitamins for your foggy winter brain, of which Vitamin D and B12 help improve your mood – just be sure to eat the yolk, as the egg whites don’t contain equally beneficial amounts of these brain-boosting nutrients!  Unless you already have high cholesterol, there is no need to avoid the yolk, which can provide a healthy source of fat and protein to give you a slow release of energy throughout the day.

Think green!  Spinach and other dark leafy green vegetables are powerhouses of magnesium, folic acid, and antioxidants, all of which can improve energy levels, reduce fatigue, and help you better manage the stress that comes from buying exactly ten thousand holiday presents.  This protective level of magnesium is also found in bananas, which also contain high levels of potassium and tryptophan as well as many vitamins and minerals.  So instead of sugared dates, try snacking on a banana to improve oxygen flow to your brain, reduce stress, and even help you sleep.

And speaking of tryptophan and improved sleep, remember that your Thanksgiving turkey has plenty of health perks as well.  The tryptophan that helps your mind relax is paired with melatonin in turkey, which encourages your body to relax.  Even better, the tyrosine contained in turkey can help you achieve better energy levels and triggers the release of dopamine and norepinephrine in your body, which improve your reaction time and may help boost your motivation.

For those of you who love nuts, breads, and even fruitcakes, remember that whole grains and walnuts can also be lifesavers during the winter.  Whole grains – like oatmeal and whole wheat bread as well as other high-fiber foods like legumes and some vegetables – can help deliver a slow and steady dose of glucose to your brain, keeping your energy stable and giving your thyroid gland the selenium it needs to keep your mood controlled as well.  Walnuts may go one step further and help prevent mood swings by zapping away mild depression, anxiety, insomnia, and irritability (can you say, “miracle food?”) 

If anxiety and frustration are your problems, try drinking a glass of milk with those walnuts or bananas.  Milk can increase your body’s ability to absorb important vitamins and minerals from the food you eat while pumping you full of mood-boosting whey, magnesium, protein, and healthy carbohydrates. 

Last, but certainly not least, comes dark chocolate.  Hooray!  This is perhaps the best news of all for those of us searching for a healthy replacement for snicker doodles.  Besides the benefit your blood vessels get from the antioxidants found in dark chocolate, the phenylalanine delivered in bars with 70% cocoa or more are believed to boost levels of dopamine in the brain, flooding you with happy feelings and the very happy realization that winter doesn’t last forever.  

If all else fails, think positive (www.healthline.com/health/depression-alternative-treatments)!  As a chronic daydreamer, it’s comforting to know that imagining myself at the beach while eating a salmon and spinach salad is officially a healthy activity with the added perk of beating the winter blues. 

So go ahead, indulge this winter – just be sure to indulge in the feel-good foods that satisfy your natural urge to glut yourself and provide a natural and healthy dose of happiness and energy!

Thanks for the great tips, Katie! I’m off to dip a banana in melted dark chocolate and roll it in walnuts. Yum! And it’s good for me! -- AP