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(Today’s entry is a guest post by Missy Hawthorne, RN, CSCS)

It’s five PM and your work day is finally coming to an end!  The stress of the day is still with you as you get into your car and start home. The highway is at a standstill and so there is no break from the stress. As the road begins to open up, you realize, a drink is starting to sound pretty good.

How do you handle stress?  Does the stress of your day make you want a beer, wine, or cocktail to relax?   Or perhaps your doctor has prescribed an antidepressant?  Or if you are a smoker, maybe you just can’t wait for that first cigarette when you leave work.   I don’t have to tell you that smoking isn’t good for you and we need to keep our alcohol intake at moderate levels.

So what can you do to more effectively shake off the stress of the day?  Exercise.  Not only is exercise a good stress reliever, it has even been found to be effective against the depression that can come as a result.

Researchers have found that exercise can work at least as well against mild to moderate depression as any other treatment, including drug therapy. Previous studies have suggested that exercise programs can take weeks to improve depression, stress and/or anxiety, but a new study showed that even a single workout can provide immediate benefits in boosting the mood of the severely depressed.1

A study at Duke University Read the rest of this entry

Who should see the movie “Food, Inc.”?

Well, if you eat, you should probably see it.

Here’s the movie trailer. I’ll give you my review in the next few days.

UPDATE: For some reason youtube won’t let you embed the trailer any more, so to see it just go HERE.

~Dave

So, just under two weeks ago I wrote about how I was starting to make an effort to eat less meat.

No, I wasn’t saying I was going vegetarian or vegan. I’m not a big fan of labels anyway, so even if I do turn into a vegetarian, I’m probably not going to call myself that.

I just believe in eating healthy, whether I choose to eat meat or not.  And the more I read about factory farming, and what actually happens to our food before we see it, the less I want to eat meat.

Basically, a lot of what I’ve learned has kinda grossed me out. Hormones, antibiotics, e coli, feces, dirt, bugs, abuse, and other sorts of nastiness all tend to make that steak seem a bit less appetizing. Of course, when you don’t know that stuff, you tend not to think about anything other than that nice juicy steak on the plate. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your perspective), once you do know these things, you can’t really look at it the same way any more.

You can’t unring a bell.

So anywho, in the past couple of weeks I’ve eliminated red meat. No steak, no burgers (I used to eat ground bison), no pork. Haven’t really had any deli meat either.  I’ve maybe had a few bites of chicken.  Seafood is still on the menu though, including haddock, salmon, shrimp, and scallops.

I’ve eaten a lot more vegetables, and I already did pretty well in the veggie department. Grilled eggplant is probably one of my favorite foods at this point, and things like zucchini, portabello mushrooms, & onions are great on the grill and can easily be the basis of a meal.

I eat a lot of Read the rest of this entry

So, no I’m not a vegetarian.

At least not yet.

Who knows? Maybe some day I will be, maybe not. But I am making a conscious effort to eat less meat these days.

Now, I have lots of friends who are vegetarian or vegan, and there are lots of different reasons for going with that type of lifestyle:

• religion
• animal rights
• belief that it’s healthier
• just don’t like meat
• against factory farming practices
• etc.

Read the rest of this entry

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So by now you know that I think it’s worth it to buy organic food whenever possible.

But, I realize that sometimes it isn’t possible or economically feasible for some folks to do that on a regular basis.  So, the next best thing is to try and go organic with the foods most likely to be contaminated in pesticides, and get non-organic version of foods with the least amount pesticides.

Here’s 2 lists for you:

Read the rest of this entry