The new Canada’s food guide is now more than ‘just about the food we eat’ and I feel it deserves some respect for the progress that it has made.

The food guide has come a long way since it was last updated and personally, I’m pleased with the changes and hopeful that even more positive changes will continue to be made.

Historically, Canada’s Food Guide was heavily influenced by the Industry Lobby and was something that many nutritionists (including myself) felt we had to work against.

Now with the recent changes to the food guide, it feels like we’re getting much closer to being on the same page.

Previously, our food guides haven’t done a whole lot to improve eating behaviour.

Our Country is eating more junk food and processed foods than ever, and our food guide didn’t help with that.

Canada’s new food guide was just released last week, and it’s different than any of its previous versions.

I feel there is still progress to be made, including more of an emphasis on healthy fats, since they are essential to our health and well being, so I encourage you to always do your own research and empower yourself and your family with education.  

That being said, these are the changes that I'm pleased to see in Canada’s new Food Guide:

1. They listened to feedback and had the right objective

• With this new food guide, Health Canada took feedback from citizens and used it to create the new version. 
• They put citizens over industry profits. As a nutrition professional, who is also Canadian, it’s refreshing that the food industry was not invited to the table to shape Canada’s new food guide. I believe that a lot of the food industry will be very upset about this, however, I’m happy to see that the government put the health of Canadians first. 
• These changes will affect our schools and hospitals. I'm hopeful to see the changes over the next few years, where the recommended beverage of choice will now be water, instead of juice or chocolate milk (both of which are known to promote tooth decay and contribute to diabetes).

2. It includes help with changing eating behaviours
There are many other factors that we know affect people’s food choices and the new food guide offers helpful tips that were previously not included.

Things like the following healthy eating habits:

• Be mindful of your eating habits
• Cook more often
• Enjoy your food
• Eat meals with others
• Use food labels
• Limit foods high in sugars, sodium, and saturated fat
• Be aware of food marketing

These are all things that us nutritional professionals teach on a regular basis, so it’s so nice to see our country’s food guide now reinforcing what we’ve been teaching for years.  

3. It is simpler and more practical to implement
The new guide focuses on an overall healthier pattern of eating, instead of specific servings (this is easier for us since we don’t carry around measuring cups with us.)

The new focus is so simple. It says at meals to aim for:

50% fruit/vegetable,
25% whole grains, and
25% protein (dairy, meat, and alternatives)

* As a personal note, I would really like to see an emphasis on healthy fats, which right now, are only touched on when you tab to the second page.

They’ve also included a “Tips” button which includes helpful topics such as:

1. Meal planning, cooking and healthy choices
2. Healthy eating anywhere
3. Life stages

I have a question for you. Do you feel it will be challenging for you to aim for half of your plate being fruits and vegetables?

Do you know that only 1% of North Americans are eating the required fruits and veggies each day that are required for healthy living?

As always, I would love to hear your comments. Let me know what you think about the new food guide!

Until next time,

​May Anne
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Admittedly, I used to have a love/hate relationship with exercise, but I’ve actually come to enjoy it now and that is because I choose to do exercises that I enjoy, and I leave the rest.  

(Don't feel like reading? No worries - just watch the video above!)

Really, a lot of my exercise comes from daily movement and isn’t just for the sole purpose of working out.

By that I mean, I take my son to the park and we play baseball or soccer, I go for family hikes, I take my dog out for walks, and I even make my house cleaning into a workout! (Can you picture me doing squats as I clean the shower walls?) 

Some of my body movements are from actual intentional exercise but a lot of it is from just being intentional about getting my body moving with things I enjoy!    

It’s important to understand WHY exercise is an essential component of healthy living or weight loss program, and HOW it will increase its effectiveness by helping you to tone up, strengthen your bones and speed up your metabolism, which will help you to lose weight more quickly.    

While 80% of weight loss is what we eat, exercise is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle and plays a really important role in weight loss as well.

Benefits of Exercise:

• Weight Loss,
• Increases Metabolism,
• Boosts Mood,
• Improves Libido,
• Boosts Energy,
• Clears Your Mind,
• Speeds Removal Of Toxins,
• Reduces Risk Factors Of Many Diseases,
• And that’s just to name a few!  

You don’t have to join a gym or buy fancy equipment. Incorporating movement into your daily living is easier and less complicated than you might think.

Getting your body moving four to five days per week for at least 30 minutes will do wonders.

As I mentioned earlier, finding something you enjoy is key. If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t stick with it. You can start small and gradually increase the time and intensity.
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The picture below features one of my absolute favourite ways to get my body moving - hiking in nature with my family (this was during our summer vacation in Gaspe, Quebec last month.)

​When I hike, I get it all - fresh air, sunshine, exercise, nature AND time with my family - Bonus!
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Here are some other great ideas:

• Walking (parking the car further away from work, walking on your lunch break, walking the dog, taking the stairs instead of the elevator/escalator)  
• Yoga,
• Cycling,
• Jogging,
• Swimming,
• Sports,
• Racquet sports,
• Aerobics class,
• You get the idea!

The main thing is to find something you enjoy – so you stick with it! 

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You also want to choose some weight-bearing exercises to strengthen your bones. A benefit to this is lean muscle mass speeds up your metabolism, which helps with weight loss.

Even after your workout is over, you’ll continue to burn calories because of the increase in muscle.  

If you’re worried about looking bulky – don’t. Basically, if you can lift the weight you’re using 10 times in a row, you’re only going to tone your muscles and not bulk up.   

Here’s your ACTION TASK: Choose an activity (or more than one) from the list above, or use your own ideas, and get your body moving 2 days this week. You’re going to gradually increase that to at least 4 days/week.   

If you’re like me, you’ll need to schedule it in your agenda, and give it the same level of importance (or higher!) as paying the bills.  

Whenever we do something for ourselves, for some reason, it’s the first thing that gets set aside when anything seemingly more important comes up. Do you see this happening in your life? If so, make sure you read this blog post about why it's essential to put yourself on your to-do list. 

So, expect that to happen and when you see that happening, take note of it, and make sure you rearrange your schedule so that exercise and the time needed to prepare your foods is a priority.

You’re worth it and when you take the time to take care of yourself everyone around you benefits.

When you feel better about yourself and you’re giving your body and mind what they need physically, emotionally and nutritionally, others are going to notice a shift in your mood and your attitude and it’s going to affect your relationships for the better.

After you watch this video (or read this post), I want you to share in the comments below what exercises you’re choosing to get your body moving this week!

Until next time,

May Anne xo

Almost all of the women I see in my practice want to look and feel better than they do right now, and a lot of them either focus on food OR exercise, but not always both.

The thing is, being in optimal health is 80% nutrition and 20% exercise, so if you want 100% results, you have to do both.

Today I’m going to cover the nutrition aspect of working out. Fueling your body with good nutrition at all times is important. However, it's especially important when you’re being physically active.

The ideal meals or snacks prior to a workout would be ones that include a complex carbohydrate.

Examples of these would be things like Banana Bread Overnight Oats (see recipe below), greek yogourt with berries or fruit with nut butter.

After a workout, your body will require protein and carbohydrate to support recovery.

We consume carbohydrates to replenish our depleted muscle glycogen stores. Protein is consumed to provide the needed amino acids that will help build muscle and bones. The current research has shown that consuming a snack or meal that contains both within the first two hours after a workout is optimal.

Dr. David Phillips, M.D., tells us, “Complete by Juice Plus+® shake mix stands superior to other protein shake mixes on the market today because it’s a clean-burning, macronutrient-rich, plant-based drink.

The primary plant protein, non-GMO water-washed soy, is a complete protein which means it contains all of the essential amino acids necessary to build muscle as well as maintain other vital bodily functions.” In addition, this product provides a good source of complex carbohydrate from whole plants.

Don’t have the shake? Simple snacks such as hummus with crackers and nut butter with fruit are other options.

Think of antioxidants as the good guys that fight the oxidative stress in your body. Throughout the Shred10® program that I’m currently running, we encourage fruits, vegetables, and berries, which are some of the best sources of antioxidants.

However, the reality is we often don’t consume enough in our daily lives. This is why I take Juice Plus company’s Garden, Orchard, and Vineyard capsules which provide similar benefits to my body in a convenient and easy way. These products are never meant to replace what we should be consuming from fruits and vegetables, they are only meant to bridge the gap.

The last thing I want to mention is to drink plenty of water, especially if you’re exercising in the heat.

Being active increases your needs due to fluids lost through sweat. If you don't replenish the water loss, you can become dehydrated. Dehydration affects both your mental and physical performance and can lead to impaired coordination, inability to make appropriate decisions, a greater rise in body temperature, and cardiovascular strain.

Always begin your exercise activity well hydrated. Drink at least half your body weight in ounces daily, and increase as necessary with exercise, and sip on fluids during your activity.

If you want to be included in an upcoming Shred10™ or have questions about what the Shred is all about, just send me a message HERE.
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Many people think that making healthy choices means restrictions and giving up their freedom. I challenge you to think the opposite way. Watch my video to hear why. 
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​Join me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. 

Ever heard someone give themselves permission to indulge their sweet tooth just because they just had a great workout?  It’s a common excuse, and I've been guilty of it myself. Many people believe that because they exercise, they’re in the black as far as their calorie input/output. But in reality, this sort of thinking is a sure road to failure. Most people with a lean body and a 6-pack didn’t get that way by rationalizing their way to the dessert buffet.

Many people have no idea how many calories they take in on an average day, often severely underestimating when asked to take a guess at it. But they also overestimate the number of calories they burn.  The truth is, 30 minutes of the best boot camp in town will not cancel out that burger and fries!

This isn’t to say that I believe counting calories is the way to long-term, healthy weight loss. Not at all. Different foods tend to affect your hormone levels, metabolism, hunger and appetite differently.

For example, eating 100 calories worth of donuts will not diminish your hunger as effectively as eating 100 calories from apples.

Therefore, a donut will more than likely make you overeat later in the day, cause cravings, irritability, fatigue and a loss of focus. But this whole talk of focusing solely on calorie counting for weight loss is a whole other blog post! I'll touch more on that another time. 

Do the math
As an example of how easy it is to eat more than our body needs, let’s look at the hard numbers.  An average, moderately intensive workout will burn 300-400 calories in about an hour.  That’s an hour of hard work with plenty of sweat and hard breathing.  

Now say on the way home from the gym, you decide to grab a couple of donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts.  After all, you’ve earned it!  In the 3 minutes it will take you to put away two chocolate frosted cake donuts, you’ve consumed 720 calories. All your hard work is wasted, plus you’ve provided your body with several hundred extra calories to store as fat!

Or maybe you just want to grab some pizza and soda with your family for a quick, easy dinner.  You consider the 600 calories you burned running on the treadmill for an hour today (at 10 miles per hour—that’s a really fast run for a really long time!), so you eat 4 pieces of pizza and a coke.  No problem, right?  

Wrong.  You just downed 900-1,000 calories in about 10 minutes!

Is it really worth it?

Face the facts
The bottom line is you simply can’t out train a bad diet.  If you try to spar a bad diet with exercise, the exercise will lose every single time.  The only way to lose weight and get that lean, sexy, healthy body that looks great in anything (or nothing) is to eat a healthy diet AND exercise.
Your weight loss is driven by diet and maintained by exercise.  Only then will you begin to see the fat melt away.  Exercise builds muscle and can rev up your metabolism, but you won’t lose weight if you continually eat more than you can metabolize.

This is not to say that exercise is not important.  It is!  In fact, according to Barry Braun, associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst,  

“When you look at the results in the National Weight Control Registry, you see over and over that exercise is one constant among people who’ve maintained their weight loss.” 

If you try to spar a bad diet with exercise, the exercise will lose every single time. 

Want to keep the pounds off?  Exercise!  Exercise is crucial.  And you must combine it with a balanced diet if you want to shed pounds.

Start smart
Have you been trying to out exercise your diet? Don’t be discouraged; many of us have been guilty of this.  It’s time to rethink your weight loss strategy.  Try the following tips to start fresh and recreate your body!

• Plan, plan, plan.  The only way you are going to get control of your diet is to plan ahead.  Do not let yourself get hungry with nothing healthy prepared to eat; your willpower will plummet and you will reach for a snack that will set you back.  Keep food ready in your refrigerator that you can grab and heat quickly.  And don’t leave the house without cool water, nuts, fruit, whole grain crackers and cheese.  
• Lift weights. When you start losing weight, you must protect your muscle.  If you begin to lose pounds without adding in weight lifting, you will likely lose up to 25% of your muscle mass.  Also, after an intense weight lifting workout targeting at least 3 big muscles, your metabolism increases for up to 39 hours after you are finished.  And repairing that muscle tissue after lifting requires energy!  Energy=calories burned.
• ​Get some accountability.  We’ll strike this note again and again:  you need a partner or support of some kind.  Remember, the single biggest determiner of your fitness success is whether or not you have an accountability partner.  Find someone to trade food journals with and report on how you are doing with your willpower.  

You need both exercise and a healthy diet to be lean, strong and healthy.  Don’t neglect either one!

​Wishing you health & happiness, 
May Anne xo

​P.S. I've just finished up creating my 6-Week Slim-Down Program for Moms, and am looking forward to sharing it with you very soon! Stay tuned!

​If you have any questions or comments, please send me an email at [email protected].

​Join me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, where I'm always hanging out and posting healthy daily tips for looking and feeling your best!