Pumpkin growers throughout the U.S. are reporting smaller and fewer pumpkins this year. Cool, wet weather during the spring and growing season have resulted in losses due to rot/fungus and late ripening - both this year and last. What does this mean for you? Possibly more difficulty finding that perfect pumpkin and higher prices on canned pumpkin used in pies and breads. But don't write off your pumpkin recipes if the shelves at your supermarket are bare. Pumpkin is packed with healthful nutrients (see Nutrition Facts highlighed below) and warrants a second stop, especially since many only eat it this one time a year.  

Pumpkin Nutrition Facts¹
(1 cup cooked, boiled, drained, without salt)

Calories 49 Protein 2 grams Carbohydrate 12 grams Dietary Fiber 3 grams Calcium 37 mg Iron 1.4 mg Magnesium 22 mg Potassium 564 mg

Zinc 1 mg Selenium .50 mg Vitamin C 12 mg Niacin 1 mg Folate 21 mcg Vitamin A 2650 IU Vitamin E 3 mg

Looking for a good recipe with pumpkin? Here are some links:

• Cooking Light's Pecan Topped Pumpkin bread (includes video)
• Food Network's Pumpkin Pie - Slimmed
• Rachel Ray's Whole Wheat Pumpkin Pasta (watch your portion; this one's not low-cal!)
• Better Homes and Garden's Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

¹University of Illinois Extension: Pumpkins and More; http://urbanext.illinois.edu/pumpkins/default.cfm.

As a reader of the Stand Up and & Eat blog, you have likely gotten a tip or two or twenty that has helped you be more physically active or eat better.

Now we need YOUR help!

According to a recently reported survey¹, only one-third of U.S. adults know how much physical activity is needed to get health benefits. That’s simply not enough. Granted, awareness of the guidelines doesn’t guarantee that people will meet actually meet the recommendations. But it is a first step (pun intended) to getting people to move more.

Researchers interviewed 2,381 people in representative sample of American adults. The asked two questions: 

• “How many days a week of physical activity or exercise are recommended for the average adult to stay healthy?”
• “On those days, how long should the average adult be physically active to stay healthy?”

The survey was done in 2005, before the new physical activity guidelines were released*. So at the time, the “correct” answers to the questions were 5-7 days and 30 or more minutes, respectively. Only 33% got both questions right. Most (86%) got the duration question correct but only 57% gave the right frequency answer. Older people were more likely to know the physical activity recommendations and women were 70% more likely than men to give correct answers to both questions. As might be expected, people who already were meeting the recommended amount were 40% more likely than sedentary people to know the exercise guidelines.

According to the study’s authors, “[There is a] need to develop more creative, coordinated, and consistent campaigns to promote national physical activity guidelines.” We at The Cooper Institute have been spreading the word about the benefits of physical activity and the physical activity guidelines for decades. Obviously, we need to do more. So do others. Including you. Here are our whacky ideas to promote awareness of the current physical activity guidelines*:

• At the end of a flight, have airline pilots state, “Thanks for flying with XXX Airline. Now that your feet are on the ground, walk for 150 minutes this week to improve your health.”
• Put a sign on the side of your car that reads, “I’m driving now but I walk 150 minutes per week to stay healthy. Ask me how.”
• Have Katie Couric sign-off the CBS Evening News with, “Have a good night and a healthy life with 150 minutes of physical activity a week.”
• Print on the dollar bill, “Invest in your health – do 150 minutes of physical activity each week.”

What are your ideas – whacky or not – for spreading the word about the physical activity guidelines?

* At least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physicla activity per week.

¹ Bennett GG et al. Awareness of national physical activity recommendations for health promotion among US adults. Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise. 2009;41(10):1869-1855.

With a little over a week until the trick-or-treaters show up at your door step, you've probably started to think about making the trip to the grocery store to buy bags of candy. Or, if you're like me you'll be making a second trip to the store because your family already ate the candy that you bought to hand out! While I've vowed to not by trick-or-treat candy ahead of time next year, or to buy candy that my family doesn't like, I've also decided to buy calorie-free treats on my second shopping trip. My husband thinks it's just mean to not offer a bowl full of savory snacks to the kids in the neighborhood, but I actually remember going out of my way as a kid to stop by the few houses that handed out stickers and other small toys. I even remember the line outside the dentist's house that handed out toothbrushes to every kid!

So what are some zero-calorie options that won't cost you more than candy? Here are some suggestions. Please share your own!

• Plastic insects, ghosts, skeletons, or animals
• Stickers
• Halloween-themed pencils/pens
• Temporary tattoos
• Halloween bracelets or rings
• Bouncy balls
• Plastic vampire teeth/fangs
• Sugar-free gum
• Bubbles
• Whistles or noisemakers

Still set on shelling out something sweet? Well, then make sure that you don't munch on more than one or two and that you get rid of all the candy before night's end. Here's a sampling of the nutrition facts for some popular snacks:

Fun/snack size Snickers - 72 calories each

Fun/snack size Baby Ruth - 85 calories each

Fun/snack size M&Ms - 90 calories

Fun/snack size Butterfinger - 100 calories

Eat one of each (~350 calories total) and you'll need to walk briskly for over an hour and a half to burn them off!

The picture above is a scene of calorie burning in action. It was taken at the start of yesterday's Denver Marathon in which over 10,000 people participated.  Let's do the calorie burning numbers.

Say the average race time was 4 hours and 16 minutes, the same as last year's Denver Marathon.  That comes out to about a 9.5 minute per mile pace.  At that intensity level, the average runner burned about 13.4 calories per minute.  So each runner yesterday burned about 3,430 calories to transport their body along the 26.2 mile route. For comparison purposes, a person who slept in for the duration of the marathon would have burned only 325 calories.

Now the numbers get really amazing.  Let's assume that everyone who started the race, finished (we know they didn't but let's just assume).   Ten thousand runners times 3,430 calories burned by each is equal to 34,300,000 - yes that is millions - total calories burned!!

Another way to look at it is that it takes a calorie deficit of about 3,500 calories to lose one pound.  So the Denver runners burned enough calories yesterday morning to lose nearly 10,000 pounds of body fat.  Not bad for a morning's work, eh?  Add to these impressive numbers the millions of additional calories burned and thousands of pounds lost as these marathoners trained for this event.

In the Stand Up and Eat blog we often talk about doing small amounts of physical activity for health and calorie burning benefits.  For people who are sedentary and unfit, this is a good goal.  For people who can and want to do more physical activity, there are additional calorie burning and health benefits.  And when we can mobilize tens of thousands of people to do extraordinary levels of physical activity, the sky's the limit on calories burned.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently launched a new initiative, 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food,' to reconnect the people who purchase and prepare foods (consumers) with the farmers who produce it. With the vast majority of Americans living in suburban and metropolitan areas, so few people know how their food is produced and where it comes from - before the grocery store!

With this new initiative, three online tools were released by the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion:

1. Growing a Healthier You: Nutrition From the Farm to the Table. This web page provides facts about specific fruits, vegetables, and other foods as well as recipes, menus, and food safety tips. Users can also search the farmers market database to find locally-grown produce.

2. MyFood-a-pedia. With this tool, users can quickly access nutrition information for over 1,000 foods.  Enter a food you've eaten to find out how many ounce- or cup-equivalents from each of the food groups you consumed, as well as total calories and "extra" calories from solid fats, added sugars, and alcohol. To find out how much, total, from each food group you should eat each day for health and weight maintenance you can use the MyPyramid Plan tool.

3. 10 Tip Series. Here you'll find easy-to-follow, printable tip sheets on important topics like, 'Cutting Back on Salt and Sodium' and 'Being a Healthy Role Model for Children.'

The USDA hopes that these tools, along with others that come out of the initiative will get more people talking about food, where it comes from, and how to make healthy choices.

Talk about a blast from the past.  I was going through some files and found a paper I wrote when I was in graduate school 26 years ago.  The title was, “The No-Diet Method for Weight Control.”  Here are the key concepts from the paper.

• The extra weight we tend to put on as we age is due to a gradual decline in metabolism which occurs because people lose muscle mass.  A drop in metabolism means a drop in total calories your body burns each day.
• People lose muscle mass as a natural part of the aging process AND because they usually are less physically active as they age.  So being a couch potato as an adult is a double whammy with regard to total calories burned in a day. 
• People don’t usually balance their calorie burning decline by reducing their calorie intake.  This leads to a calorie imbalance.  That is, the extra calories that are not burned are stored as body fat.

The “no-diet” solution I proposed back in 1986 was to maintain one’s youthful level of physical activity over time or if one was inactive, to get active.  Here is what I suggested.

Incorporate more ways of putting exercise into your everyday life:

Walk to work and other places whenever possible.  Get off  the bus or train a few stops from your destination and walk the rest of the way.

Take the stairs instead of the elevator.

Prop up the back tire on a bicycle and pedal away while you watch TV.

Do more vigorous physical activities such as jogging, aerobic dance, swimming, and strength training each week to burn off more calories and to help retain or even build muscle mass.

Does this stuff sound familiar?  It ought to.  It is precisely what fitness and health professions tell people today.  In fact, these are several of the key concepts on which the federal physical activity guidelines and  Stand Up & Eat web site are based.

What is the point of dragging you down memory lane with me?  To point out that the basic principles of physiology have not changed in the last quarter century – or the last couple of millennia for that matter.  No matter what new gadgets, gizmos, books, programs, and what not we develop to combat the growing obesity problem, weight management still comes down to calorie balance through regular activity and moderate food intake.

Are you as or more physically active today than you were 26 years ago?  If so, how have you stayed active as you have aged?

Healthy People 2010 is a set of disease prevention and health promotion objectives for the nation to achieve from 2000-2010. Created by scientists, Healthy People 2010 identifies a wide range of public health priorities including heart disease and stroke, cancer, diabetes, nutrition and overweight, and physical activity and fitness. Individuals, groups, and organizations are encouraged to integrate Healthy People 2010 into current programs, special events, publications, and meetings and use the objectives to monitor changes over time.

As 2010 is quickly approaching, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other government organizations are beginning to assess whether the Healthy People 2010 objectives have been met. And in some cases the results aren't looking good!

The State Indicator Report on Fruits and Vegetables, 2009 was recently released by CDC. The chart below shows the Healthy People 2010 objectives for fruit and vegetable intake as well as the current statistics on consumption.

*Assessed from fruit and vegetable survey items included in the 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS; adults aged ≥18 years).
** Assessed from fruit and vegetable survey items included in the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS; adolescents in grades 9-12).  

To see how your specific state is doing, click on the:

Adult Fruit and Vegetable Consumption Maps
Youth Fruit and Vegetable Consumption Maps

The report also highlights three key policy and environmental areas that need to be addressed to boost consumption.

1. Healthier food retail - supermarkets and grocery stores need to stock a variety of high-quality fruits and vegetables; only 8 states have a policy for healthier food retail improvements in increase the number of full-service grocery stores, increase the availability of healthier foods in small food stores, and promote healthier foods through point of purchase messages.

2. Availability of healthier foods in schools - only 1 in 5 middle and high schools offer fruits and non-fried vegetables in vending machines, school stores, or snack bars; and 21 states have a policy to support farm-to-school programs that increase access to produce and teach children about agriculture and nutrition. 

3. Food system support - 20 states have state-level food policy councils, or agencies and community organizations that look at access to fresh produce and make recommendations about policies and programs including farm-to-school programs, community gardens, farmers markets, and availability of fresh produce in supermarkets.

Summer has gone and fall is blowing in.  For many parts of the country that means more rain and often an excuse to retreat to the dry comfort of the couch.  But if you prepare both your body and your mind, you can be an all-season exerciser.

Prepare Your Body

Unlike the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz (she was the one who melted when Dorothy threw a bucket of water on her, remember?), you’re not going to melt if you get wet.  Still, you don’t want to miserable.  Let’s start at the top.

Wear a cap with a bill or brim.  This will help keep the rain out of your eyes or off your glasses.

Wear a water-resistant and windproof jacket and pants.  Be wary of waterproof.  Yes, water won’t be able to get in but it also usually means that the heat and moisture your body produces when you exercise won’t escape efficiently.  That can lead to overheating and at the very least, being extremely uncomfortable with soggy clothes.  I also recommend wearing water-resistant and windproof pants because the rain that drains off your jacket will end up soaking your thighs and knees.  Not fun.

Water wicking fabric is what you want next to your skin.  Look for clothes that tout “moisture-wicking” “dry release,” “dri-fit” or similar descriptors.  They are made of synthetic fabrics that pull the sweat moisture away from your skin and let it evaporate better.  This helps you stay at a comfortable temperature in hot or cold weather.  

If it is rainy and cold, sandwich a layer between your jacket your base layer for warmth.  Again, choose a water wicking fabric.  Vests work well because they keep your body core warm but aren’t too restrictive or bulky.

On your feet, go for wool-blend or moisture-wicking socks.  Wearing cotton will lead to wet feet and increased risk of blisters. 

As for shoes, skip the leather and go for synthetic material.  It will be lighter when wet and it will dry much faster.  Better yet, have two pairs of walking/exercise shoes so that you can switch off while a wet pair dries.  To speed drying, stuff wet shoes with newspapers or paper towels.  Also, make sure you have a good tread on both pair of shoes. 

Prepare Your Mind

Okay, now you know how to dress for physical activity success in the rain.  You still have to get out the door.   And that starts in your head.

Keep your goals in mind.  Think about how skipping your physical activity for a day or two or more will affect your progress.  If you don’t  have a physical activity goal, make one right now.  Here’s a link to an earlier blog that will help you.

Rain is not going to hurt you.  C’mon.  Wrap your head around the fact that getting wet is not harmful.  But wait for lightning storms to pass and be mindful of slick conditions such as leaves or mud in your path. 

Make it child’s play.  Find puddles to splash in (watch out for deep holes though).  Dance around light poles like Gene Kelly did in the movie, "Singing in the Rain."  Laugh and giggle at your silliness.  There is something very cleansing and freeing about accepting and enjoying Mother Nature in all her forms.  

People have lots of reasons (aka excuses) for not being physically active when raindrops fall.  Yes, you could be active inside.  But these strategies will help you live with and love the rain.

How do you keep rain from wrecking your physical activity plans? 

As online weight loss programs (e.g., eDiets, weightwatchers.com) continue to grow in number and popularity, researchers are already moving on to the next technology - podcasting. Podcasting, or audio files for a portable music player or computer, have been around for about five years. Podcasts differ from the internet in that they are very portable and don't require users to be literate or able to process/understand written information.

To test whether weight loss podcasts can produce significant weight loss, researchers at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill randomized 78 overweight study participants to receive 24 episodes (15 to 20 minutes each) of a currently available weight-loss podcast or a weight-loss podcast based on constructs from the social cognitive theory of behavior change including expectations (for weight loss), building self-confidence (for changing weight-related behaviors), and increasing knowledge (about how to lose weight and change behaviors).¹

At three months the "enhanced" (social cognitive) podcast listeners lost an average of 6.4 pounds whereas the "control" (currently available) podcast listeners only lost an average of 0.7 pounds. Participants in the enhanced group also reported greater increases in fruits and vegetables and a greater increase in the number of days engaged in vigorous physical activity compared to the control group.

What was interesting is that the majority of participants in the study reported listening to the podcasts at home (while sitting) most often, followed by in their office and at work (while sitting at their desk). Only 13% reported listening while walking or exercising. Thus, future interventions may need to do more to encourage participants to take advantage of the portability of podcasts.

All in all, weight loss podcasts can produce weight loss, but ones that are based on behavior change theory seem to be more effective. Thus, if you are considering enrolling in a weight loss program with podcasts ask if it addresses things like the importance of achieving a healthy weight; what to expect from trying to lose weight; goal setting and tracking weight, calorie, and physical activity behaviors to increase confidence; and basic knowledge about how to lose weight, exercise, and make lasting dietary changes.

¹Turner-McGrievy, G.M. (2009). Pounds off digitally study: a randomized podcasting weight-loss intervention. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 37(4), 263-269.