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Resolve to Un-Diet

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By: Eve Lahijani, M.S., R.D. UCLA Residential Life Nutrition Health Educator

Dieting to lose weight is among the most popular resolutions of every new year. Unfortunately however, 95-98% of the people who go on a diet with the intention to lose weight – either don’t lose weight at all – or if they do lose weight, they eventually gain it back, and usually with additional pounds and even more obsessed with food.

Furthermore, despite our past ‘failure’ with diets, many of us return to them year after year to achieve our weight loss goals. Each time the weight is not lost or finally regained we blame ourselves. This frustrating pattern can be repeated indefinitely until we feel hopeless and defective for being unable to simply weigh less!

After all, how hard can it be, right?

The truth is, it is not your fault!  Diets don’t work, they actually set you up to fail!  That is, dieting itself causes food obsession, cravings and binges – which usually results in weight gain!

Here are some of the reasons diets suck:

·  Restrictive mentality: feeling deprived triggers the survival mechanism that backfires in the form of binges.

·  Denies enjoyment: feeling guilty for eating can make it difficult to savor meals leaving us unsatisfied at best, causing us to eat even more.

·  Encourage disconnect between body & mind: following arbitrary diet rules alienates us from our body’s inherit wisdom.  Those who get good at ignoring hunger are also good at ignoring fullness and are more likely to over eat.

·  Loss of power: following rules and regulations set by the The Diet is not natural, enjoyable or sustainable.  The inner rebel comes out and has you do the exact opposite of ‘the rules’!

·  Avoids the issue: for many, eating may be due to stress, boredom, loneliness, excitement, etc – dieting makes food more emotionally charged – so you are more likely to eat emotionally if you restrict food!

**Ugh, it’s all so crazy making!… And solvable 🙂

So this year instead of going on a diet learn how to:

•  Make conscious food choices that are supportive and satisfy YOU!

•  Enjoy food, tune in to every bite so you can finally feel satiated (and easily stop eating)!

•  Reconnect to your body’s wisdom to know exactly when, how much and what to eat!

•  Redeem your power and finally be in control of what you eat!

•  Face the issues by distinguishing between physical hunger and emotions – and address each of them accordingly!

By mastering the above points weight will naturally adjust to what is right for you! Not to mention all of the other benefits that come along with eating consciously – including, improved wellness, better focus, increased energy, less medications, enhanced enjoyment, etc!!

**Warning: making peace with food may make you happier, activate inner peace and cause spontaneous joy**

Happy Eating!

Eve

See this blog post, and many others, by Eve at: https://www.vitamineve.com/

Influencing the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2015

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By: Janet Leader, MPH, R.D. 

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), established jointly by the US Department of Agriculture and Health and Human Services, drives the policies behind federal food programs and nutrition education.   While many of us wish the DGA would be more specific, more progressive and a little less industry-influenced, this is what we have for now.  Before 1980, there were no national guidelines at all.

As a nutrition advocate, I asked the question:  how do we influence the next DGA in 2015?  This is the challenge I put to students in CHS 130, Nutrition and Health.

A little background:  Every five years, the DGA is reviewed and updated, a process that takes almost two years.  According to their website, the government “appoints a Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) consisting of nationally recognized experts in the field of nutrition and health. The charge to the Committee is to review the scientific and medical knowledge current at the time. The Committee then prepares a report for the (HHS and USDA) Secretaries that provides recommendations for the next edition of the Dietary Guidelines …”

The DGAC provides a public comment website, open to everyone. This is how the students worked together to influence the next set of policies.  Working in small groups, they selected issues they felt passionate about and wrote opinion papers.  Topics included:

·  Requiring industry to fortify non-dairy milks (nut, soy, rice) sold in schools with vitamin D

·  Encouraging the promotion of vitamin D to African-American populations of child-bearing age

·  Establishing a behavioral strategies section in the DGA to provide helpful ways to implement recommendations

·  Requiring the integration of nutrition education into the national Common Core standards for education

·  Reducing sugar-sweetened items sold in schools, based on the California model

·  Using the DASH diet to influence food package labels

·  Adding water to the My Plate model

Over the next few months, you will see some abbreviated versions of these papers in the Eat Well blog.  Or, you can go to the DGA 2015 website to see them online.

Be on the lookout for the 2015 edition of the DGA to see if they were successful!

Discover Dig at UCLA

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By: Ian Davies, 4th-year Undergraduate at UCLA studying Environmental Science and GIS

Every Sunday at around 12:30, students gather at a little plot of land tucked away in the back of Sunset Rec. They pass through a modest bamboo fence, arm themselves with shovels, watering cans, and hoes, and descend on the fourteen vegetable beds and surrounding fruit trees.

This motley crew of undergraduate and graduate students might not look like a gardening collective, but their volunteer work helps operate the largest student garden on campus. Dig at UCLA: The Campus Garden Coalition, is a group I help run which repurposes underutilized spaces on campus into productive fruit, vegetable, and herb gardens for student use. None of us were experienced gardeners when we began. Rather, we were experienced eaters brought together by a mutual interest in food policy and the worrying disconnect between consumers and food production.

The result is delicious and educational. In the warm weather, we feast on fiery-colored tomatoes and curiously-shaped summer squash, while in the winter we enjoy dark leafy greens and root vegetables.

We nourish our minds as well as our bellies. We host workshops on gardening techniques, offer tours of our garden space, and transform our modest plot every week into a space for discussing food and sustainability.

Caring for own my food from vulnerable seedling to harvest has conferred a deeper appreciation for the farm systems which feed us all. I’ve also realized that for all of us, a little ingenuity can transform even the most cramped spaces into urban gardens, be it an apartment balcony or a bathroom windowsill. Gardening may not have been the easiest hobby to pick up at the beginning, but I’m happy to say I’ve found a life-long passion that I love sharing with others.

Dig at UCLA meets every Sunday at 12:00pm in the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center. No experience necessary! Visit us online at http://digucla.weebly.com to keep up with the latest updates, including the upcoming construction of a new community garden at Hershey Hall.