7 - 2018 - Dr Libby

Confused about food labels? Four things best ignored on packaging.

June 18, 2019July 27, 2018 by Dr Libby Weaver

When we walk into a supermarket, we are exposed to a huge amount of marketing. Everything from shelf placement to the colours and the words on food labels are designed to convince us to make a purchase, whether that is in our best interests or not.

While it is essential that we choose mostly real, whole foods – that is, foods that typically don’t come in packages – I understand that it can be convenient and, at times, more realistic for us to buy some packaged or processed foods. But with the enormous amount of food products available these days, it can be difficult to know which ones to choose.

Not all processed foods are created equal. While there are, unfortunately, many processed foods that are virtually devoid of nutrients and therefore don’t serve our health in any way, there are some better options that are based on nourishing, whole food ingredients.

Buying hummus is a good example. Some hummus brands may contain additives, preservatives or poor-quality ingredients that you might not feel comfortable consuming. Yet there will be other brands that just contain the whole food ingredients you would use if you were to make it yourself, so these would be a great choice if you wanted to buy it ready-made.

Although some of the information on food labels can be very helpful, such as the ingredients list and the Nutrition Information Panel, other information on the packaging – typically on the front of the product (prime real estate!) – can be confusing or even potentially misleading.

Here are some examples of things to ignore on food labels:

97 PERCENT FAT FREE (OR 98 PERCENT OR 99 PERCENT…)

If you lived through the low-fat era, you may still be (consciously or unconsciously) gravitating towards products marketed as “low-fat”. Having a low fat content does not make a food nutritious – this claim on food labels is often added to products that contain a bucketload of added sugar, such as low-fat sweetened yoghurts and lollies. A low-fat diet isn’t ideal for most people – the body needs nourishing fats from whole food sources.

NO ADDED CANE SUGAR

Reducing added sugars from the way we eat is becoming more popular, which is great. But some food products have “no added cane sugar” written on the front of the packet. The key word in that sentence is “cane”. Cane sugar is just one of myriad different added sugars, so this doesn’t necessarily mean the product is sugar-free. It is just cane sugar-free. Always check the ingredients list and/or the Nutrition Information Panel on food labels for more detailed information.

LOW GI

The GI (glycaemic index) of a food is a measure of the speed at which it increases blood glucose levels. This relates specifically to how quickly the carbohydrate in the food is digested and absorbed in the body, however it doesn’t take into account the total amount of carbohydrate that is eaten, which is what has the biggest impact on blood glucose levels. Having a low GI score doesn’t guarantee it is a nutritious choice – it is possible for a food that is high in sugar to have a low GI if it is also high in fat, as dietary fat slows down how quickly foods are digested.

NATURAL INGREDIENTS

While it sounds promising, “natural ingredients” is quite a vague claim and it doesn’t necessarily mean that the product is nutritionally balanced. Snack bars containing mostly dried fruits tend to contain natural ingredients, but they can still be a highly concentrated form of sugar. This claim is quite common on food labels so it’s good to be discerning about the choices you make. It would be better, for example, to choose a piece of fresh fruit over a fruit bar.

To best support your health, choose mostly real, whole foods – the ones that don’t need a label to tell us they’re a nutritious choice. And if you buy some processed foods, do your best to disregard the marketing and check the ingredients list instead.

The Side-Effects of Fast Living

June 18, 2019July 5, 2018 by Dr Libby Weaver

There are some periods in our life that are unavoidably busy. We might have multiple deadlines, an influx of unavoidable commitments or it’s school holidays and we’re trying to juggle between kids and work. But what happens if that busyness never subsides?

For far too many people these days, everything is urgent. Busyness has become a badge of honour and we feel guilty if we take even a moment’s break. To add another layer on top of this already burdened cake, many women feel an intense pressure to be all things to all people.

This relentless urgency and perception that there is not enough time, combined with a to-do list that is never all crossed off and a striving for ‘perfection’ in everything we do is driving significant health consequences. Not to mention nigglingly persistent symptoms.

These challenges are the side effects of fast paced living! Yet, for many people, they are simply accepted as part of modern day life.

It might be considered normal to get headaches each week or to feel exhausted at the end of the day, normal to get bloated after eating or experience recurring menstrual problems or debilitating menopausal symptoms.

These things are common – but they are never normal.

Here’s a list of symptoms that are linked to living a fast-paced life:

Feeling tired but wired or just generally exhausted
Poor sleep patterns or waking up just as tired as when you went to bed
Quick to overreact
Feeling overwhelmed often
Sugar cravings
Regular and recurrent issues with your menstrual cycle
Short, shallow breathing
Poor short-term memory
Easily panicked
Difficulty relaxing
Feeling as though you couldn’t live without coffee
Irritability or mood fluctuations
Digestive or elimination complaints
Recurring headaches
Ageing faster than your years
Beauty (such as skin, hair and nail) challenges

Really, any health challenge or symptom we are experiencing, is likely to have more of a chance to subside if we slow down our living pace.

Yet, think about this. If you’re running around at a million miles an hour constantly focused on what you need to get done, do you think you’re going to feel as though you have time to address some of these issues?

It’s more likely going to feel overwhelming and unmanageable—just another thing to add to the ‘to-do’ list.

The irony is, the antidote to those fast living side-effects is often slowing down itself.

When you start to slow down, time begins to match pace with you; a sense of spaciousness arrives in your day that you previously couldn’t feel.

When you go to an island they tell you you’re on “island time”. You might have experienced for yourself how the island inhabitants seem to live at a much slower pace and you naturally begin to match this pace while you’re there.

Sure, you might not have deadlines or commitments while you’re away, but you can harness this principle of ‘island time’ by learning to slow down.

Here are some suggestions to get you started.

Check your priorities

At the end of the day, we are busy with what we say yes to. What you spend your time doing will show you where your priorities currently are. Are they in line with the kind of life you want to live? If not, it doesn’t mean you need to quit your job or some other big change to make a positive impact on your health and wellness—simply start taking small steps towards living more aligned with what you want to prioritise. Often this involves considering our boundaries as well because more often than not we’re busy saying ‘yes’ to things because we are uncomfortable saying ‘no’.

Check your perception of pressure and urgency

If someone pulls out in front of you on the road, there’s a need for urgency in your response. Too many people live as if everything requires this level of urgency. It doesn’t. Think of true urgency as a matter of life and death. Of course there are going to be deadlines and requirements that need to be done in short spaces of time. But whether we see these things as ‘urgent’ and put pressure on ourselves as a result all comes down to our perception.

Let yourself enjoy what is already around you

When we are caught up in ‘doing’ we miss the beauty that exists in simply being alive. We don’t pause to enjoy the infectious laughter of our child at play or pay attention to a majestic full moon as it rises up over the horizon. The simple act of pausing to enjoy these things can help you to slow down the pace of your life—and enjoy it more.

Schedule in time for rest

If you’re so busy that you can’t imagine finding any room for downtime—put it in your schedule. Many people rely on their calendar to keep them up-to-date with what’s next on the agenda, so why not add yourself in there? Even if it’s a week or a month in the future, pop it in—and make sure you keep this vitally important appointment with yourself.

Preventing Illness or Disease

June 18, 2019July 5, 2018 by Dr Libby Weaver

For many people, it takes a health crisis to wake them up to make changes to their lifestyle choices. But by this time, those health problems may be incredibly challenging to address. Some may even be irreversible, with only improvements, not a cure, possible.

A far better approach that often gets forgotten is prevention. What you do now paves the way for your health and wellbeing into your future.

Imagine your destiny is like a set of parallel lines. Envisage railway tracks if you like, although they are going to be railway tracks that can cross the ocean! These railway tracks are leaving the top of South America and are on a direct path heading south to Chile.

If you continue to make the choices you make today, you will end up at that destination.

Let the left railway track represent your life with no changes and your right track represent your life with some subtle, sustained changes that you make to your choices.

The compounding effect of making small incremental changes sees your new destiny initially shifting by one degree. Yet continue that new track out into the future and the left and right tracks will be metres apart. By changing your relationship with food, by addressing how you eat, drink, move, think, breathe, believe and/or perceive, your right track (your new destiny) ends up in a completely new destination than where your left (old-paradigm) track would end up.

Small, sustained incremental change can make an enormous difference to your quality of life and long term sustainable, excellent health.

Here are some small changes you can make today to help prevent the onset of health challenges in the future.

Eat more whole real foods

I know I rabbit on about this a lot but it’s incredible how well the body responds when we nourish it with the nutrients it needs to thrive! You don’t have to eat perfectly, it’s not a case of all or nothing – each moment is another opportunity to nourish yourself. Sometimes you might choose not to and that’s okay. Remember that it’s what we do most of the time that comprises our health, not what we do occasionally. So focus on eating whole real foods, with an emphasis on loads of colourful plants, but give yourself permission to eat foods that may be less nourishing occasionally as well.

Reduce your intake of caffeine

Only you know if you consume more caffeine than your body can handle. For some, it takes removing caffeine altogether to identify if it is impacting on their wellbeing. It’s not until we stop drinking it that we can feel the difference in our sense of calm, our energy consistency, our busy mind or our anxious feelings. If you suspect your body is already feeling stressed, consider your intake of caffeine. Cut back to one per day or eliminate it for a period of time and notice the difference in your body. It doesn’t have to be a forever decision, just give yourself some time to identify how your body is responding to this powerful stimulant.

Address those niggling symptoms

If you’re experiencing digestive complaints or bloating, PMS or menopausal symptoms, recurring headaches or general fatigue this is your body trying to communicate to you that something isn’t right. These symptoms are not normal; they’re not a side effect of modern living – they’re a sign that something within our body needs to be addressed. Investigate them, bring curiosity to each symptom and begin to take notice of what’s happening when they appear for you. For some of you, seeking professional advice may be of benefit. Others still may know deep down what needs to change and are just avoiding it. The reality is, if you don’t address these symptoms now, they’re most likely to only get louder and more challenging. Prioritise your own health and take action today.

Incidental movement

Notice I didn’t say exercise? While of course, exercise counts as movement, science is now telling us that the cumulative effect of sitting throughout the day—even if we do spend 30 minutes exercising—almost outweighs the benefits we might get from those 30 minutes. Movement is vitally important to our health and our experience of energy. Yet far too many people avoid it. We drive around the carpark looking for the closest park even though there are plenty along the far end, we stop on travellators instead of walking, take the elevator instead of the stairs, push a trolley instead of carrying a handful of groceries. Get up throughout your day (a few minutes every hour) and look for opportunities to increase your movement instead of reducing it.

Be gentle with yourself

Too many people are their own worst critic. We speak to ourselves in ways we would never speak to other people, saying the unkindest of things inside our own head. What kind of internal environment do you think this breeds? Our internal dialogue has a powerful impact on our biochemistry and drives emotional responses that affect the choices we make on a daily basis. Be so gentle with yourself. Bring curiosity to your choices and behaviours instead of judgement. You open to learning something when you are curious and block this possibility when you judge. Observe the language you use inside your own head and make a concerted effort to eliminate harsh and critical judgements.

Is It Just Lousy Genes?

June 18, 2019July 5, 2018 by Dr Libby Weaver

Do you ever wonder if you were just given lousy genes? We’re told that our genetics plays a pivotal role in our health picture — for example, that ultimately it’s genetics that’s responsible for our body shape and size or whether we will develop a particular illness or disease.

You’ll often hear someone say, “my mother had that so I must have inherited it from her.”

And while it is true that our genetics do play a role in many aspects of our health, epigenetics teaches us that it is what we do with our genes that matters. According to epigenetics you have the ability to control the expression of your genes, meaning you have the ability to control to what extent you “inherit” certain health conditions.

Until fairly recently, science suggested that the genes you inherit from your parents are the most common way to inherit risks for diseases like some cancers and heart problems. But researchers are starting to pay closer attention to what leads genes to express themselves and I love it, because it puts you back in the driver’s seat of your health.

Because, let’s face it, when you believe something is genetic (and very few health conditions are 100 percent the result of your genes), do you feel like there is anything you can do about this?

No.

So, you spend your life living in the cloud of false belief that you have to put up with your health picture, when there may be numerous paths you could take to resolve a particular health challenge.

As scientists started to learn that DNA alone does not define our health destiny, more focus has been driven towards understanding this layer of genetic inheritance or potential – epigenetics.

Epigenetics plays an important role in determining what our DNA blueprints become. Epigenetic changes can be created by exposure to things like smoking, environmental pollutants and nutritional factors, as well as lifestyle behaviours.

Essentially it is our environment that has the ability to switch our genes on or off which, of course, has significant implications when it comes to turning on or off the genes relating to disease.

Furthermore, researchers have demonstrated how it is possible to pass on these epigenetic changes to your children. So how you eat, drink, move, think, breathe, believe and perceive literally has the ability to influence your genetic blueprint and that of the next generation. It is truly mind-blowing.

This is particularly exciting, as we used to hear of people who were likely to have inherited disease risk factors feeling completely disempowered by their luck of the draw. We have moved from feeling “trapped” or “defined” by our genes to being empowered that the lifestyle we lead can literally alter the expression of these genes.

The power is well and truly within our hands, or perhaps more accurately, on the end of our forks. The foods we choose and the nutrients they contain literally have the power to flick the switch on our genes. Do your best to consider that with the choices you make on a daily basis.

I’m pleased to let you know that I have a new book due to be released in late August that will be relevant to women of all ages. And if you missed it, earlier this week we announced my upcoming Spring tour throughout New Zealand and Australia called The Hormone Factor. I created this event as I want every woman to truly understand and appreciate how the female body works and the steps to take to better support their hormonal systems in this busy world of ours. You can read more about the tour below.

Take such good care of you.

With warmth,

Dr Libby x

Confused about food labels? Four things best ignored on packaging.