This morning I did a keynote for a Childhood Obesity Conference at the Mesa Convention Center. One of the great thing about it was meeting people that are truly engaged and passionate about addressing the obesity problem in innovative ways in Arizona.

Here’s one innovative resource I think you’ll love: www.SpacesToPlay.org, a great website that provides links to play spaces throughout Maricopa County. Listings include parks, public golf courses, skateparks, dog parks, basketball courts, ball fields, tennis, swimming…well you get the idea.

Each listing includes maps, details, amenities - just about anything you need to know to play in Maricopa County. So what are you sitting around for???

Arizona, well known for its deserts and rapidly expanding population, is also home to some of the country’s most incredible hiking. There are over a hundred miles of trails within Phoenix’s city limits alone.

Literally in our back yard is South Mountain Park, the largest municipal park in the country. It would take almost all day to hike the 15 miles end to end. There are numerous shorter side trails that offer a variety of scenery, views and level of difficulty. There’s something for everybody.

For the last ten years I’ve hiked in South Mountain one to five times a week, mostly Telegraph Pass. I considered writing a description that would compel you to try it out for yourself but the truth is I’m just not all that sure I want all of you out there.

Suffice it to say, within just a few hundred steps, you’ll find yourself in the middle of the desert with only occasional glimpses of pink tiled roofs to remind you that you’re so close to home. Ok, ok. If you want more details and maps, you can look them up yourself. 

What you won’t find on that website is a description of the other hikers that have discovered this treasure. It isn’t a parade like some of the trails in the middle of Phoenix, but unless you’re the first one in or the last one out, you’re bound to cross paths with some of them. Many are regulars and though I don’t know their actual names, they are a familiar and welcome part of my hike.

First Timers: They carefully gaze at the map at the base of the trail. You’ll overhear them saying something like, “A mile and a half one way doesn’t sound too bad.” And it’s really not. The first mile is mostly flat - and the first half mile is even paved. It’s that last half mile that gets you. Skip it the first few times if you want.

Alone But Not Lonely: These hikers fall into two subtypes – those who appear deep in thought and those who scale the mountain to whatever beat their i-Pod is pumping out. Either way, they seem to be enjoying what may be the only hour to themselves all day.

Coffee Klatch: These women travel in twos and threes and hike early before work or after their kids are safely on the school bus. You’ll hear just snippets of their conversations as you pass, like “My boss was caught…”, “The entire cheer squad…”, and “…goes great with Sauvignon Blanc.” Beats spending four dollars at Starbucks.

Couples Connecting: Steeling away to plan the day or catch up when it is over, these pairs have found a great way to keep their bodies and their relationship in shape.  

Fitness Buffs: Easy to spot wearing sports bras and expensive heart rate monitors, these are runners rather than hikers. You’ll spot them gracefully flying down the mountain, barely skimming the rocks as they rush to make it to their 7 a.m. spin class.   

Melting Woman: It isn’t the heat. This woman seems to weigh another pound less every time I see her. I just had to tell her how much I admired her as we passed. She gave me a broad smile and tossed back, “Only another 30 to go!”   

Senior Warriors: These gray-haired marvels in wide-brimmed hats ward off advancing age with their weekly, and in some cases daily, treks up the mountain. They put most 30- and 40-somethings to shame. They always say hi and something about what a beautiful day it is. I silently promise myself that I’ll still hike when I’m their age too.

Doggy Bag Lady: This one is very rare. She doesn’t own a dog but takes ten or so doggie doo-doo bags from the stand and picks up other people’s dog poop as she walks. I thanked her one day and she simply said, “I’m just doing my little part to make the world a better place.” And a better place it is, indeed.

You’ll also pass photographers hoping for a smog-free view of the Valley from the top, backpackers training for a Grand Canyon rim to rim and mountain bikers that have to carry rather than ride their bikes up the steepest parts (I still haven’t figured that one out). You’ll see lots of dogs, a home-schooled child out for P.E. and an occasional cross country team. You probably won’t see a rattlesnake; I’ve only seen four in my hundreds of hikes - but I’m always on the lookout.

And you’ll probably see me. I’ll be the one with the dog, gabbing with my girlfriend, connecting with my husband, or by hiking myself deep in thought. If you say hi, I’ll say hi back.

Michelle

http://www.michellemaymd.com/meet-michelle.shtml

Yesterday I confessed that I had become a bit of a wine snob. I’m not proud and I’m certainly no sommelier, just grateful that I’ve discovered the similarity between the enjoyment of both wine and food in moderation. 

Here’s my take on the essence of wine tasting and the Mindful Eating Corollaries:

Step One

Wine Tasting: Pour your wine in a clear, stemmed glass, filling it only halfway or less so there’s room to swirl.

Mindful Eating: Serve your food on a plate rather than eating it out of cartons, bags, or other containers that are destined for the dump or that prevent you from fully seeing what you’re putting in your mouth. And if you’ve got too much food to see the plate, you’ve probably got more than you actually need.

Step Two

Wine Tasting: Notice the color and viscosity of the wine. Swirl it gently in the glass then put your nose in and sniff deeply to appreciate the aromas that hint about the terroir and winemaking process used.

Mindful Eating: Notice the colors, textures, and aromas of your food. Take a moment to express gratitude for the food on your plate and everything it took to get it there.

Step 3

Wine Tasting:  Sip a small mouthful of wine. Swish the wine over your tongue and open your mouth slightly as you inhale, bringing the aromas into the back of your nose.

Mindful Eating: Put a small amount of food in your mouth and set your f ork down so you can focus on the bite that is in your mouth rather than the next one. Chew your food thoroughly as you breathe to bring the flavors up to the back of your nose where much of the “taste” of food actually comes from.

Step 4

Wine Tasting: Mentally describe the flavors, identifying subtleties, similarities to other familiar flavors, and noting how the wine complements or detracts from any food you’re eating. 

Mindful Eating: Be aware of the flavors, textures, and temperatures of your food. See if you can identify the ingredients and notice how they layer to create new flavors.

Step 5

Wine Tasting: Spit out the wine if you’ll be tasting several wines in a row so you don’t dull your senses or cross that invisible line between enjoyment and intoxication.

Mindful Eating: DON’T spit out the food! Instead, take small servings and small bites to pace yourself so you don’t cross that invisible live between enjoyment and misery.

Food and Wine Lovers’ Tip: Taste and eat with attention and intention - attention to the experience and the intention of enjoyment without having to pay the price of excess.

Wine Lovers’ Tip: Maintain a healthy weight by enjoying food MORE. Eat the same way you taste wine. (Open a bottle tonight and tell everyone you’re on a new diet!)

New Zealand and Australia are known for their outstanding “new world” wines. We weren’t in the heart of wine region in either country but we managed to find some interesting tasting rooms for a little ”practice.”

One tasting room was built in an old mortuary (I know, that should have been our first clue). They served old (I don’t mean aged) wine in little plastic communion-style cups. The wines had creepy names that bore no relation to the grapes that gave their life for us. The wine maker, a retired chemist, said, “Making wine is easy.” I whispered in my husband’s ear, “Making good wine - now that’s the hard part!”

It dawned on me that sometime during the 15 years since I quit drinking white zinfandel (not that there’s anything wrong with that), I had actually learned to appreciate good wine. I’m no expert but I know what I like (and it isn’t usually served in plastic). So how did I become a wine snob?

The same way I became a foodie: one taste at a time.

By simply deciding to be attentive to what I am eating (and drinking), I’ve become much more aware of the aromas, flavors, textures of food. More importantly, I’ve become much more connected to the experience and its affect on my body. Just as I know that there’s an invisible but very real line between enjoyment and abuse of wine, there’s a similar line that many people cross with food.

That is a simple but profound lesson that has allowed me to enjoy food more while eating less. I am no longer dazzled by large portion sizes or distracted by packaging, health claims or other attempts to lure me into eating marginal food (any more than the wine cellar viewed through the hole in the floor where they used to raise the casket could distract me into believing the wine was worth drinking!).  

Tomorrow I’ll share the steps for wine tasting and the corollaries in Mindful Eating.

We flew to Brisbane, Australia then drove to Maroochy River where we rented a fully furnished apartment in the house next door to my sister-in-law’s home. It was great to have a kitchenette so we could fix our own breakfast and the snacks of our choice and a private space to relax between activities.

The houses were about halfway up a steep road with a “yield for kangaroos” sign at the bottom. Though I never saw a kangaroo on that road, my two+ mile morning walks revealed incredible views of the Maroochy River, the Pacific Ocean and the farmland far below.

Even when I’m staying at a hotel in the middle of a city for more than a day or two, I ask the concierge for a walking map. I have a lot of friends that hit the hotel treadmill but when possible, I prefer to get my exercise while I explore the area outside on foot. I always feel more connected and refreshed for my presentations or meetings.

Travelers’ Fitness Tip: A vacation or travel for work is a good time to take a break from your usual exercise routine. Walking, jogging, or hiking will give you a flavor for the area while bumping up your stamina and calming your mind. If that’s not possible (because of safety, weather or time constraints), try a new piece of equipment in the hotel fitness facility, find a nearby yoga studio, or do a few minutes of floor exercises in your room. The return on your investment will be huge.

Our culture’s obsession with weight has led to an unhealthy attitude about exercise. This attitude is often self-defeating because most people have been taught to think of exercise in terms of how many calories they’ll burn to make up for the food they eat.

When you use exercise to earn the right to eat or punish yourself for eating, it leads to negative feelings about exercise. This interferes with your ability to truly enjoy your food, knowing that you’ll have a price to pay. This is also why many people find it difficult to discover and maintain an enjoyable, sustainable exercise habit.

I feel so strongly about this that when I speak to health care professionals about effectively promoting healthy lifestyles, I urge them to never talk about weight and exercise in the same appointment. I want them to send a clear, positive message to their patients and clients about the value of fitness no matter what they weigh!

As part of breaking free from yoyo dieting a decade ago, I stopped exercising to manage my weight. Now I live an active lifestyle because I can and because it feels good. Our trip demonstrated just a few of the reasons exercise has become such a natural part of my life.

• I had major surgery just two weeks before our trip but I recovered quickly and easily. Other than being unable to lift anything over 10 pounds for eight weeks, I didn’t need to change any of our plans.
• Not being allowed to lift anything heavy made me realize how much I usually appreciate being self-sufficient when I travel – hauling suitcases out of the trunk, jogging through the airport with my carry-on to make a tight connection, and lifting bags into the overhead bin without asking for help from some guy.
• I didn’t think twice about walking through airport terminals, hotels, restaurants, or malls.
• I loved seeing the entire Australia Zoo on foot without feeling exhausted at the end of the day
• I’m no Steve Irwin (The Crocodile Hunter) but at least I could easily crawl around in the grass to pet the kangaroos.
• When the 16 hour time difference affected my sleep, 15 minutes of yoga before bed relaxed my body and my mind.

Travelers’ Fitness Tip: Take an honest look at why you exercise—or more importantly, why you don’t. If you have negative feelings or associations about it, focus on the benefits – increased energy, stamina, strength and flexibility. Then do something active that feels good, even if it’s only for a few minutes. Do it again most days of the week until you begin to crave the good feelings you get and start noticing how much easier it is to do everything you want.

(If this is your first visit to my blog, you’ll find posts about practical, non-diet weight management. Throughout July I’m participating in a Blogathon with a dozen or so other great bloggers. This post is a continuation of Food Lovers’ tips based on my family’s recent travels.)   

To get to our next stop, Brisbane, Australia, we flew from Kansas City to Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand, then on to Brisbane. That was 24 hours of travel and four airports. I had packed a baggie of nuts and dried cranberries but we never needed them.

We ate at a deli-style restaurant near our hotel before we went to Kansas City International. It was a good bet that we’d have more options and spend less money. We ordered salads and sandwiches but decided to skip the tempting cookies knowing there would be lots of opportunities for treats ahead.

We arrived at LAX with six hours and one more meal before our next flight. We walked from the domestic to the international terminals then around the terminal and through all the shops until we felt hungry. We would be doing a lot of sitting once we boarded our plane so there was no point to sitting at the gate.

Our flight wasn’t until 10pm and we knew that we would be served “dinner” a couple of hours after take-off. Planning ahead, we decide that a small veggie pizza was the perfect light meal a couple of hours before our overnight flight. Besides, when traveling, we try to get our vegetables in wherever we can.

Once on our Air New Zealand flight, we settled in to watch a movie. Each passenger has their own console and we thought it was funny that between the four of us, we chose four completely different movies. No wonder it’s so hard to decide what to get from the movie store at home!

“Dinner” was served at midnight which was actually 6 pm at our destination. Although I wouldn’t usually eat in the middle of the night, this midnight snack helped us begin the process of resetting our internal clocks to our new time zone. Already a little bit hungry and knowing breakfast was at least eight hours away, we ate a surprisingly decent airline meal served with a complimentary glass of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. Even the tortellini, the vegetarian entrée we requested for Elyse when we made our reservations, was pretty good.

The hot (ok, warm) breakfast was a welcome end to a fitful and uncomfortable night’s sleep. (Sorry; I don’t have any good tips for sleeping sitting up.) Our breakfast hinted at the differences in eating habits of other countries; it would have been unusual to find beans, mushrooms, and tomatoes for breakfast in the U.S.

We arrived in Auckland at 6am for a short layover before our flight to Brisbane which, not unexpectedly, served breakfast again. The muffin and generic fruit came at the perfect time, over three hours since our last “breakfast” but it felt like we were simply eating our way around the world.

Food Lovers’ Travel Tips: Eating while traveling presents two challenges on opposite ends of the spectrum – not enough food or too much. Be sure to check with the airlines to find out what meals (if any) are included so you can adjust what and how much you eat before you take-off. Plan ahead by keeping nonperishable healthy snacks on hand. Nuts, dried fruit, granola or protein bars, whole grain crackers, and single pack tuna all work well for long flights, unexpected layovers or unappealing airline food. Don’t bother carrying chips, candy and other snack foods; they’ll just call your name to be eaten even when you’re not hungry.

As Stanly pointed out, although my son Tyler seems to effortlessly eat exactly what he needs, most of the rest of us need to conscioulsy override or work with our Clean Plate tendencies. For example, at Jack Stacks, Owen and I decided to split a platter that included smaller portions of several of their most popular meats and side dishes. When it came we found it hard to believe that one person could eat it all but the waiter insisted they do!

You’ve probably heard lots of advice about cutting back on portion sizes; the tips section below outlines some specific strategies for doing just that. However, my best advice is to shift away from thinking about portions in terms of calories (an external measure that can result in feelings of deprivation) to thinking about them in terms of how you’ll feel (an internal measure that results in positive feelings).

In other words, it’s not about being good, it’s about feeling good. How many times have you ruined a fabulous meal by eating so much that you felt stuffed and miserable afterward?

I love to share meals with my husband, my daughter, or my friends. I call it “co-ordering and co-eating.” The meal is more of a shared experience; we get more variety and just the right amount of food, usually for less money. And the big bonus is that we feel comfortable and energetic when we’re through.

Food Lovers’ Restaurant Tip: Portion sizes at many restaurants are large enough for two – think of it as “Two for the price of one.” You can share an appetizer or a salad and split an entrée; you can order two entrees and have some left to take home; or you can share an entrée and a dessert. If you don’t want to share with someone, get your to-go container before you start eating and put some aside for another meal. You’ll get to enjoy it all over again!

Kansas City is legendary for their BBQ so we went to Jack Stack on our last night. This turned out to be a bit of a challenge because my almost 14-year daughter Elyse has been a vegetarian for almost two years. Known for prime meats, they didn’t have any vegetarian entrees so Elyse chose from appetizers and side dishes – mostly potatoes. I guess we wouldn’t have expected meals for carnivores at a vegetarian restaurant, would we?

Food Lovers’ Restaurant Tip: The lesson here is that no matter what your dietary preference is, you can make any menu item your main meal. Sometimes an appetizer or side salad is all you need. Most restaurants will also allow you to make side dish substitutions so you can create the meal you really want.

Once in awhile, even a wonderful dessert can make the perfect meal. I know it’s not the healthiest choice but face it, since your weight is determined by calories in versus calories out, having dessert for dinner when you really, really want it beats having dinner AND dessert! Just don’t make it a habit.

My travels began with a three day meeting of the American Academy of Family Physicians Commission on the Health of the Public. Nice opportunity to consider my OWN health while discussing issues and initiatives important to the American people!

Since we had nearly three weeks of travel ahead, I decided to try to stick to my usual eating habits as much as possible when possible and save my “eating for fun” for when it mattered. I held my breath as I surveyed the breakfast offerings. All too often conference breakfasts consist of just Danish and coffee. That always struck me as odd since they need attendees to be alert and productive all the way until lunch. Luckily at this meeting there was a nice spread of other breakfast choices each day including eggs, fresh fruit, cereal and skim milk so that meal was easy.  

They did an equally good job with lunches – salad with chicken one day and pasta with a nice tomato-based sauce loaded with vegetables the other. Even the dessert was a light angel food cake with strawberries. However, it’s still easy to overeat at conference banquets unless you stay conscious. They serve warm rolls with butter while you’re waiting to be served. They spoon way too much dressing (if you don’t say “enough!”) on your salad topped with croutons, cheese and bacon. The servings are usually too large, especially the inexpensive fillers like pasta and rice. And the icing on the cake (literally) is some type of dessert (though I love it when it’s already on the table rather than surprising me with it when I am already full!).  

I don’t know about you but that’s way more than I usually have for lunch. So why would we suddenly throw our common sense out the window? Because meetings and conferences are loaded with triggers for overeating. You sit through long meetings so you may subconsciously feel like you’ve “earned” it. Then suddenly there’s all this free food just sitting in front of you. When you become distracted by socializing or networking during the meal, you lose track of how much you’ve eaten.

Meeting Tip: The key to handling the abundant food at meetings and conferences is to remain selective and mindful. Don’t abdicate the responsibility for how you’ll feel all day to the meeting planner or hotel staff who selected the menu. Choose the items and the portions that nourish you rather than mindlessly eating whatever is offered. That doesn’t mean “Don’t eat the roll and butter.” It means decide consciously. If you eat the roll, all the pasta they serve you, AND all of the dessert, how will you feel in an hour? Probably uncomfortable, drowsy, and foggy. But don’t worry; you’ll probably wake up in time for the afternoon cookie break!

For more, read my article “Three Questions to Make the Perfect Food Choice Everytime.”