Wellness - Newsday's guide to healthy living

By Mary Ellen Walsh

“Seventy percent of how you age is completely within your control,” says renowned cardiologist, Dr. Mehmet Oz. “The other 30 percent is hereditary.”

As a health expert on Oprah’s television and radio shows, as well as the Discovery Channel, Oz maintains his practice as Director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Integrated Medical Center at New York Presbyterian- Columbia University. He took time from his busy day to talk to Wellness about YOU, the
biology behind belly fat and diet U-Turns. “In order to lose weight and successfully keep it off, you need to become a world expert on yourself,” Oz says. “Knowledge about your fat storage and fat burning system will help in your “waist management.” The 46-year-old, who has maintained the same weight since his college days, keeps his own energy level high throughout long days of surgery by following his own advice. Oz exercises daily doing Yoga, playing basketball or working out on the elliptical trainer. And, he eats right. “My wife Lisa is a vegetarian and makes great, healthy simple meals. We always cooked fresh foods for our four children as they were growing up,” Oz recalls, adding that his daughter Daphne recently wrote her own “best selling book,” The Dorm Room Diet (Newmaket Press) in which many of his wife’s recipes are included. (View some at newsdaywellness.com).

The second book of the YOU series, written by Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen, YOU on a Diet: The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management (Free Press) outlines the intricacies of the human body in user-friendly terminology. In this book, Oz and Roizen (a professor of anesthesiology and internal medicine, and chair of the Division of Anesthesiology, Critical Care Medicine, and Comprehensive Pain Management at the Cleveland Clinic) emphasize dieting smart not hard.

“Your optimum waist size should be about half your height. The more inner tire tube weight or belly fat (called the omentum) that you are carrying, the more stressful your life is,” Oz says. As you overeat, your body can’t process it so it spills over into the belly fat. The average person has about 2,500 calories of carbohydrate reserves stored in the liver. The liver takes every chemical in your body and processes it by binding it to a protein, metabolizing it into energy for your body to use. In the rest of our bodies, we have approximately 112,000 calories stored in an energy bank account of fat. If you are at your ideal weight range, that adds up to approximately 14 pounds of fat.

When we are stressed, we release human steroids as the hormone cortisol. Your omentum clears the cortisol steroids from your bloodstream, but “turbocharges” the ability of the omentum to store fat, causing that bigger
waist pouch.

THE BIOCHEMISTRY OF HUNGER

MOOD
FOODS

Research has shown that specific personality traits push us towards certain types of foods. What do your favorite foods say about you?

If you reach for tough food, like meat, or hard and crunchy foods, you may be feeling angry. If sugary foods are your thing, you could be depressed. If you want soft and sweet foods, like ice cream, you could be anxious. Salty foods indicate stress. Bulky, fill-you-up foods like crackers and pasta—lonely or sexually frustrated and if you grab anything and everything, jealously.

Excerpted from You: On a Diet by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. Copyright c 2006 by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Oz Works, LLC. Reprinted by permission from Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster.

Women are all too familiar with the roller coasterlike mood swings hormones can induce prior to menstruation. But many don’t realize that hormones are also the central character in the battle to lose weight. When you eat sugar, it stimulates the release of serotonin with insulin on board helping the serotonin get to your brain. This makes you chemically “high” and feeling good. Then, when these levels decrease, you come down, craving simple carbohydrates to feel good again, continuing the vicious cycle.

To really understand, Oz goes deeper within our brain to explain how the hypothalamus drives human behavior involving our appetites for food, thirst and sex. We were designed to prevent starvation with ghrelin, a hormone that sends a signal making you want to eat. The hormone leptin makes you feel full and satisfied. It’s a fight between your brain chemicals and has little to do with willpower.

“In dieting, your main objective is to keep your feel-good hormones level, by eating complex carbohydrates, such as whole grain foods, so that you’re in a steady state of satisfaction and never experience huge hormonal highs and lows that make you crave,” says Oz. By eating specific healthy snacks and/or drinking water, you can maintain these hormones.

Oz explains chemical and biological foundations for feeling satisfied within the three appetites in our satiety center. Sometimes though, we’re looking for something much deeper to soothe our souls. Oxytocin, another hormone, makes us calm and elevates self-esteem. As the chemical nitric oxide, which makes you feel hopeful and optimistic, only lasts a few seconds—you need to continually stimulate your body as well as soul. This deeper restless longing and need for nitric oxide makes people fill that emptiness with food as a temporary self-medicating drug. Studies prove that Oxytocin levels increase through human interaction and touch emphasizing the importance of finding a substitute for food through a hobby, career or family.

U-TURNS

Let’s face it! We all fall into the junk food abyss at times. For some, it’s a permanent home. But, according to Oz and Roizen, it’s the way we think about dieting that creates a paradigm of failure. Diets are based on shame and guilt, setting people up to fixate on food and not lose weight. To lead a successful, healthy life and enjoy longevity, avoid shame and guilt. “The harm isn’t in making the first bad food mistake,” says Oz. “It’s feeling bad and guilty about falling off the perfection diet and not knowing how to deal with it. It’s okay to stray,” he reassures. “It’s not okay to go off the cliff into self-destructive eating.” To avoid this, Oz wants you to adopt the YOU-Turn Mantra:

“At the next available moment, make an authorized YOU-Turn—and get back on the right road.”

HERE ARE SOME HELPFUL TIPS TO FOLLOW:

Slowly chew your food.
Eat 100 percent whole grain foods—complex carbohydrates.
Drink a glass of water before a meal.
Eat a handful of walnuts (if you arenot allergic). It slows down yourbody’s processing system.
Exercise at least 30 minutes, fivedays a week.
Plan to fail, Oz and Roizen advise,but create a three-step contingencyplan that includes these elements:
1. Mental say the YOU-Turn mantra 10 times.
2. Physical do a yoga pose or hippie stretch (found in the book).
3. Nutritional Keep baby carrots, celery or any crisp vegetable or apples on hand — great anti-stress foods.

“It’s about dieting smart and not hard,” says Oz ending the interview as he is summoned into surgery. Reiterating one last thought, he advises, “Start with simple changes by eating 100 calories less a day and keep hormones levels balanced for proper waist management.”

Mary Ellen Walsh is a freelance writer from Syosset who now snacks on soy nuts and carrots as a way to balance her hormones.

Dr. Oz Shares His Family Recipes

Lisa’s Great Gazpacho
4 servings (about 1 cup each) 120 calories per serving

1 can (28 ounces) crushed or diced tomatoes, undrained
1-cup tomato juice
1 cup each: diced (1/4-inch) red or orange bell pepper, unpeeled cucumber
1ž4 cup finely chopped red onion
2 green onions, finely chopped
1 bunch cilantro leaves, chopped
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 dashes (or to taste) hot red pepper sauce
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper (optional)
Optional garnishes: chopped fresh parsley, diced avocado

Place all ingredients except salt, pepper, and garnishes in a large bowl and combine. Coarsely puree about half the mixture in a blender or food processor and return it to the bowl; stir well. Season to taste with salt and pepper if desired. Refrigerate for a least 2 hours and up to hours and up to 8 hours before serving. Garnish as desired.

Hot Wild Salmon
2 servings—384 calories

2 wild salmon fillets with skin (about 4 ounces each) or salmon steaks (preferably line-caught)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
1-tablespoon wasabi paste
1ž4 teaspoon turmeric

Prepare grill or preheat broiler. Brush skinless side of salmon with combined ginger, wasabi paste, and turmeric. Grill or broil 4 to 6 inches from heat source 10 to 12 minutes without turning, or until salmon is opaque in center. Serve with Rock Asparagus.

Rock Asparagus
4 servings—38 calories per serving

1 pound asparagus spears, rinsed, dried, and trimmed
1-teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt, to taste (optional)
1ž4 teaspoon each: dried thyme, oregano, basil, and black pepper
Optional garnish: diced tomato

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Toss the asparagus in a 13 x 9 baking dish or a shallow, 3-quart casserole pan with the olive oil, kosher salt if desired, thyme, oregano, basil, and black pepper. Arrange asparagus in a single layer in the dish. Bake uncovered 12 to 13 minutes for thin asparagus or 15 to 18 minutes for thick asparagus, or until crisp-tender. Garnish with tomato if desired.

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They lost 125 lBs!

Come meet our 2008 Countdown to Wellness winners at NAVEL EXPO, Sunday, Oct. 26, from noon to 12:45pm, at the Huntington Hilton in room F. The 3 winners will share their healthy lifestyle tips and answer your questions. No registration required. Visit navelexpo.com for more information.

Enter the 2nd Annual Countdown to Summer Wellness 2009 contest.

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