Inside and Out

Healthy approaches to diet and exercise for your 2023 resolutions

By Al Parker | Dec. 24, 2022

Every January, millions of us promise to get behind the two most popular New Year’s resolutions: eat better and get fit. While we can’t be your spotter at the gym, Northern Express did talk with two northern Michigan experts to get their advice on how to achieve these elusive goals, once and for all.

Make Smarter Food Choices
Fad diets are out, folks. (And often rather dangerous.) Eating right is no longer about drastically restricting food intake or treating carbs like the enemy, but instead about consuming what’s right for your body right now. That’s the approach Certified Holistic Nutritionist Anne Baker of Lake Ann takes to help people with chronic health issues reclaim their good health.

“Food is information the body uses,” says Baker. “Every time we ingest food, it either helps nourish our body or acts to drive up inflammation, which ultimately leads to disease. Most chronic health issues are preventable. While we can’t yet alter our genes, everyone can reduce their risk of developing a chronic disease by being smarter about their food choices.”

She tells us there are three “pillars” that have a direct impact on health and longevity: diet and nutrition, environmental factors and toxic exposures, and lifestyle choices, including exercise, stress and your sleep/wake cycle.

You can optimize your health and reduce risk by eating an anti-inflammatory diet, according to Baker, so identifying and removing inflammatory foods will help improve your ability to digest and absorb nutrients.

What causes inflammation can be different for different people. As a first step, Baker recommends keeping a “diet log” for a couple of weeks, noting how you feel physically and emotionally. It can help identify problem foods that should be eliminated, including anything deep-fried, soft drinks, high sodium snacks and packaged foods, hydrogenated oils, sugar, candy, and commercially prepared baked goods.

Other items to avoid include highly-processed foods like packaged deli meats and products with long lists of additives, such as artificial coloring and flavors.

Go Green
What should you be eating instead? In a word: veggies.

“Most Americans get enough protein but don’t consume enough leafy green and non-starchy vegetables,” says Baker. “Even most vegans don’t consume enough vegetables because they rely on a carb-heavy diet. Vegetables are naturally high in vitamins and minerals…I advise my clients to aim for seven to 10 servings [a serving is ½ cup] of vegetables every day.”

Baker says it helps to think outside the cereal box when it comes to typical breakfast foods. That goes for lunch and dinner, too.

“Soups and stews, wraps, egg dishes, for example, can be eaten for any meal,” she says. “For those who dislike or cannot tolerate eggs, it’s perfectly fine to eat a leftover dinner meal for breakfast. Leftover vegetables are great on a salad and can be added to omelets or wraps, and starchy vegetables can be made into quick blender soup by adding in some broth.”

She recommends batch cooking and freezing entrees and sides to help maximize your food budget and cut down on meal prep time. “Pick two or three entrees or sides to batch cook on weekends or a day off work and freeze some of what you cook,” she advises. “Do this twice a month and replenish your freezer. That way you always have something home cooked in your freezer to build meals around.”

Reclaim Your Health
Baker began eating a diet based around organic whole foods and medicinal herbs in her early teens. She read everything she could find about holistic nutrition and kept up with it for years.

“Once I hit my mid-40s, I felt like my body was falling apart,” she recalls. “I was experiencing excruciating migraine headaches several times a week. They were so bad that they forced me to take time off work. I had constant nagging low back pain, chronic constipation, rosacea, and such serious fatigue, I would literally fall asleep sitting up in a chair. Eventually I found out I had chronic fatigue syndrome and was diagnosed with precancerous cells during a routine checkup.”

Baker reclaimed her health by applying everything she had learned in her study of nutrition.

“My health improved by focusing on making simple lifestyle changes and by finding the right mix of foods, herbs, and targeted supplements that fit my specific health needs,” she recalls. “This is now called BioIndividual Nutrition. In making these changes, I repaired my leaky gut, rebuilt my immune system, and decreased my risk.”

So what’s her favorite comfort food or treat?

“Soup is my go-to cold weather comfort food,” she says. “One of my favorite soups to make is chicken tortilla soup made with homemade bone broth. My warm weather favorite is all the seasonal fruit grown locally.”

Baker helps others on their wellness journey by finding and addressing the cause of their problems while avoiding prescription medications that just treat symptoms. Her therapeutic nutrition plans are built around “safe” foods, targeted nutrients, and lifestyle changes to bring the body back to health. She works with people across North America through virtual phone appointments and is currently accepting new clients.

Find more at nourishholisticnutrition.com.

Get Moving
Exercise is another area where we’ve been programmed to believe we have to meet a certain standard or conform to a specific mold. If you’re not doing high intensity interval training first thing in the morning or running at least two or three marathons a year, you’re a couch potato, right?

Wrong. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that each week, “adults need 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity and 2 days of muscle strengthening activity.” That breaks down to about 20-30 minutes a day, which is certainly a commitment, but not quite the challenge of training for a marathon.

Their definition of moderate-intensity physical activity includes walking, water aerobics, and even mowing the lawn. (Perhaps they’d give us Michiganders points for snowblowing the driveway, too.) In fact, the CDC’s biggest recommendation is “move more and sit less,” and that’s a resolution we can all get behind.

Take the Healthy Habits Challenge
A good place to start? The folks at the Grand Traverse Bay YMCA are eager to help you make 2023 your best year yet with their Healthy Habits Challenge Series ($80 for members, $120 for community participants).

It’s a series of six-week holistic health challenges designed to improve your body, nutrition, and movement. You’ll learn (or relearn) the important components of a healthy lifestyle, and the series begins and ends with essential fitness testing, so participants can track their transformation as it unfolds. By using habit-tracking, you’ll be encouraged to engage in healthy behaviors that will turn into lifetime habits.

“The Y is a place where all are welcome to create community,” says Liz Bloom, senior director of membership and wellness. “We’re less about resolutions and more about healthy habits.”

This is good news, as New Year’s resolutions aren’t known for lasting for a year…or even much more than a month. A University of Scranton study found 23 percent of people gave up on their resolutions after a single week, while a OnePoll survey found the average person sticks with their resolutions for just 32 days, making February 1 something of a notorious date.

At the Y, at least, it seems easy to make exercise goals stick with dozens of group classes available weekly, ranging from swimming to pickleball to yoga to weight lifting. Members also have opportunities to work with staff to enhance their wellness journey or pursue one-on-one instruction.

Bloom says some of the most popular classes include Strength Train Together, a high energy barbell class; Enhance Fitness for active older adults; and Aqua Fit in the pool for an all-around low impact workout.

Other upcoming options include: Exploring Yoga and Meditation; Mastering Suspension Training; Introduction to Strength Training for Teens; and free programs like the popular community breakfast offered the first Friday of each month.

Visit gtbayymca.org for details.