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Why Nutrition Is Important with Dr. Susan Vickerman

Dr. Susie Vickerman has been a family medicine physician at Colorado Mountain Medical for over 25 years. As part of the Vail Health Wellness Series event on April 3, she discussed eating for the household and the “why” behind choosing healthy foods. Her goal is to empower you to make the right decisions about the foods we eat. 

Why is nutrition important? It is the foundation of our overall health and wellbeing.
 
There are constantly new recommendations on nutrition coming out through social media, podcast, friends, which makes it hard to know "WHAT should I do?"
 
Many of the chronic diseases that we face today are due to poor nutrition, the western diet, and processed foods. Conditions like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, dementia--all are impacted by nutritional choices. You can all use nutrition as a preventative resource so that you do not end up with these medical conditions, and if you have these medical conditions please think of nutrition as "just as important" as the medications that you may have been prescribed.
 
We are all here this evening to learn more about how to look at nutrition through a different lens and Elevate our health through nutrition. Nutrition is more powerful than any of the prescription medications out there.
 
Tonight we are here to talk about Nutrition as a lifestyle, not any particular diet. Picking a theme/vision of how you want to eat-and then trying to build around that is what can create success.
 
Throughout our talk this evening you can pick up different tips and ideas on how to create your own vision of nutrition that works for you.
 
One size fits all does not work, we are all unique:   how a person's metabolism works, the different health challenges they may face and the caloric need that an individual's lifestyle requires are all different
 
It is important to ask yourself why you are eating:

• Am I hungry?
• Is it just time to eat?
• Am I bored?
• Am I stressed?
• Do I actually need nutrients and do I need to eat to survive?

 
We are often eating due to patterns that have been in place for years--frequently these are emotional patterns:  we feel an emotion  and we soothe ourselves with a certain type of food: carbohydrates, sugars, salty foods, alcohol- often processed foods. It is important to begin to understand the emotional connection between food and why we choose the foods that we do. Once you have this understanding you can begin to make some adjustments and changes in your choices to better align with your Nutritional goals/vision/theme.
 
As you move forward in developing your personal theme/vision for your nutritional lifestyle it is important to be realistic and look at what will work for other members of your family. You want to avoid being in a situation where you are creating your own meal and then meals for others in the family. This ends up being a lot of extra work and can be a barrier to success. You can create a healthy meal that has vegetables, carbohydrates, and protein-which works for everyone in the family.  Then individuals can decide how much of each type of food they want on their plate.  You might choose only vegetable and protein, where your growing children might need a bigger portion of carbohydrate in addition to the vegetable and protein. Your family will eat what is available in the house--you can slowly up level the nutrition without your family members even noticing. Think of nutrition over the week, not the over the day.
 
Another big question: What should I be eating?  What is healthy?  These are good questions, and everyone has a different opinion.

Start with some basics:

• Eat whole foods - these are foods that are in their original state and look the same as when they were harvested.
• Try to avoid ultra processed foods - it is necessary to eat some processed foods, pick and choose where you have them in your diet.
• Read labels and look for products with 5 or less ingredients.
• Try to avoid unhealthy oils/fats (see our event handout).
• Avoid high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) - it is hidden everywhere.
• Focus more on vegetables (wide variety of colors) and protein - make an effort to weave this into each meal. It is much easier to get fruit and carbohydrates (you rarely need to focus on these to get them into your diet).
• PROTEIN is an area that most individuals are lacking in - you need protein in order to build muscle and drive your metabolism. As an individual ages the muscle mass decreases so it is even more important as people age.

In Summary:

• Choose a theme/vision for your own personal nutrition lifestyle (and stick to it).
• Ask yourself frequently WHY you are eating and does it align with your theme/vision?
• Empower yourself by knowing that you have the choice in your nutritional decisions.
• Don’t beat yourself up over your choices -- acknowledge your successes and gain momentum!