Tag: heart-healthy grocery shopping list

A doctor discovers the heart-smart joys of eating vegan

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Dr. John Henning Schumann, who blogs at the always-intriguing Glass Hospital, is a general internist and medical educator at the University of Oklahoma School of Community Medicine. This year, he made a personal New Year’s resolution to become a vegetarian. Or a ‘mostly vegetarian’, as he calls it.

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but with young children who love meat and don’t have the broadest palates, I think it’s important to feed them protein any way I can get it in them. Having passed 40, I’ve finally realized that I can no longer eat what I want with impunity. Further, as a doctor, I believe in practicing what I preach, and my legs could no longer straddle the gap between action and rhetoric.

“That, and I hit 192 pounds on the gym scale.  Continue reading “A doctor discovers the heart-smart joys of eating vegan” →

Here’s your basic heart-smart grocery shopping list

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments


Lose 10 Pounds in 10 Days! Drop One Dress Size a Day!

Rapid weight loss can be so quick and easy – if you believe all those fad diet advertising claims. A fellow heart attack survivor, for example, tells of losing nine pounds in the past five days. She has accomplished this feat, she explains, thanks to a miracle diet she heard about while watching the Dr. Phil show on television.

Phil is always a font of reliable evidence-based health information. (I’m kidding about that last part, my heart sisters).

She was so inspired by this TV interview with a telegenic, fit and very convincing young author of yet another miracle diet book that she went out and bought the expensive best-seller, and says she is now “thrilled” with her resulting nine-pound weight loss results. She does confess, however, that she’s already had to “cheat” on the strict diet a few times in the past five days, and is “struggling” to stay on it so far, but she still seems thrilled nonetheless.

Trouble is, strict weight loss diets typically result in regaining that lost weight – and more.  Continue reading “Here’s your basic heart-smart grocery shopping list” →

Mediterranean Diet: it’s all Greek to me

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 4 Comments

food woman pizza hands

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

The heart-healthy Mediterranean diet is not actually a diet – at least, not in the Celebrity-Endorsed, Bestseller-List, Miracle-Weight-Loss, Before-and-After-Photos, Dr. Oz-Featured, Fad Diet sense of the word ‘diet’.

In fact, according to The Journal of Nutrition, even the term ‘Mediterranean diet‘ (implying that all Mediterranean people eat the same) may be misleading.  The countries bordering the Mediterranean basin have different diets, traditions and cultures. The Mediterranean diet could more accurately be called the ‘Greek diet’, or – even more accurate – the Greek diet before 1960. Continue reading “Mediterranean Diet: it’s all Greek to me” →