What’s Your Holiday Game Plan?

First we need to understand that a properly functioning digestive system is crucial for health. Do you realize that the food you eat affects not only your stomach, but also your energy level, and your cognitive (brain) function? So if you are laying around after the big meal, feeling pretty lethargic and wishing you hadn’t eaten so much, it may not be how much you ate, but what you ate. 

Food choices also affect such chronic conditions as Fibromyalgia and Arthritis. How? Foods that are processed, refined, or synthetic can cause an inflammatory response in the body, and inflammation is at the root of pain disorders such as these conditions.

In future newsletters we will discuss more aspects of digestive function, but right now let’s look at how we can make some better choices, since “ABC” stands for A Better Choice. Now, does this mean we can’t eat any “fun foods?” Absolutely not! There are some great-tasting alternatives out there, and we can help you identify what they are and where you can buy them. Just remember that food is to our body as fuel is to our vehicle. If you put clean, high- octane fuel, free from impurities into your gas tank, it is more likely the engine will perform better. 

So here are some tips:   

1). Be active earlier in the day. Go for a walk or work out. Sometimes we get so busy with all the food preparation that we don’t rev up our metabolism.

2). Drink a few glasses of water before you eat the main meal. This will fill  you up a bit and decrease your stomach capacity so you don’t eat as much.

3). Take a smaller portion to start. Have you ever gone to the salad bar at a restaurant and seen a person fill their plate so full that the cherry tomatoes are falling off the mound of lettuce?! By going back more frequently you will be expending more calories as well.

4). Watch the “additions”. Does the sweet potato need to be floating in butter? Worse yet, do we need to add those mini marshmallows? How about “drizzling” the gravy instead of “drowning” the meat? Do we really need to add the whipped cream to the pumpkin pie? Better yet, how about a home-made fruit pie? By making it yourself, you know exactly what’s going into it, and fruit tends to be less fattening, as well as better digested in a large meal.

Happy Thanksgiving! I encourage you to give thanks to the One who was in mind when this holiday was originally established, ... and don’t let anybody pull the football out from under you!

Dr. Nabzdyk is a holistic physician with over 18 years experience. He owns and operates ABC Wellness & Rehab, providing individualized nutritional coaching, acupuncture, and chiropractic, as well as hormonal and allergy testing. Call (815) 609-7735 for more information or visit us at www.abcwellness-rehab.com