Tag Archives: Behavior Change

Cancer Prevention Starts with Goals

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http://www.dreamstime.com/-image26386669It’s Colorectal Cancer Awareness month and for this cancer — along with many others — we know that moving more, eating nutritious foods and staying lean are important for reducing risk. Most of us live busy, fast-paced lives with habits that have been established over a lifetime, so it can be hard to figure out where to begin. Have you ever said “I’ll try to go to the gym more” or “I’ll try to eat less dessert”? By saying I’ll try you are already giving yourself an excuse to not follow through.

That’s why setting concrete goals can be really helpful. Let’s say your general goal is to be more active. That goal is vague, and won’t hold you accountable or allow you to measure your progress. Turning that goal into a concrete SMART goal will make it more achievable.

SMART stands for:

  • Specific: A specific goal describes exactly what you must do to reach your goal. What will you do to be more active?
  • Measurable: A measurable goal allows you to track your progress. How often will you be more active?
  • Achievable: A goal can be as high as you want it to be, but make sure you know it is possible. Will that type of activity be something you can do now? If not, maybe start with something smaller and aim to work up to running a 5K, for example.
  • Realistic: Goals should be realistic considering your resources and time. How can you fit your goal into your budget and schedule?
  • Timely: Give yourself a specific time frame to reach your goal. When do you aim to reach your goal by?

Now let’s return to the original goal: to be more active. Turning it into a SMART goal, you might say: “I will take the stairs instead of the elevator at work 3 times per week over the next month.” Write down your goal and put it somewhere you’ll see it often, like on your fridge or next to the computer at work. When you reach your goal set a new one – continue to challenge yourself as you make accomplishments!

What is your SMART goal for cancer prevention?

Sonja Goedkoop, MSPH, RD, is a clinical dietitian at the Massachusetts General Hospital Weight Center. She has a passion for promoting a healthy lifestyle and reducing obesity through improved nutrition and physical activity.

Weeniwinks & 100 Years of Nutrition, Part 1: Nutrition Advice

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Physical Culture 300wAmericans have been trying to make sense of food, nutrition and what a healthy diet is for at least 100 years. And throughout, health professionals (and others) have given advice liberally. How has that advice changed?

Certainly, we know much more about diet and cancer prevention. Even just 30 years ago most people did not believe the idea that what we eat would affect our risk for cancer. But now AICR has specific, evidence-based recommendations for cancer prevention.

We also have more powerful information and evidence for how foods and nutrients affect our health in other ways, both short-term and long-term. We understand how to treat diseases related to diet much better – like celiac disease and diabetes. We also know more about nutrition in illness recovery.  And as we learn more about genomics, metabolomics and other omics, we can address individual needs and improve personalized diets for disease prevention.

Yet, even with all the research and new discoveries, we still struggle with helping people take nutrition knowledge and put it into practice on their plates. Today’s barriers to healthful eating include supersized and ever abundant overly processed foods. We advise getting back to basics – eating more vegetables, fruit, whole grains and legumes.

So what might we have seen for nutrition advice 100 years ago?

One book that may give us a glimpse, published in 1924 book, is called “Physical Culture Food Directory.” The author, Milo Hastings, was an American inventor, author, and nutritionist. He also invented a snack for children, called Weeniwinks, based on natural grains and no sugar. I don’t know how typical this book was for the time, but it’s interesting to see parallels to today’s popular nutrition books through his words.

On making nutrition more understandable:

“It has been my job to translate scientific facts and theories concerning human food and its relation to health and disease into a form…most understandable…and useful to the general public.” (A job description recognizable to the modern dietitian.) Continue reading →

Friday Focus: Physical Activity and Colorectal Cancer Prevention

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Sneakers_dreamstime_14295723As we enter the second week of a month devoted to Colorectal Cancer Awareness, let’s focus on one crucial aspect of prevention about which far too many Americans remain unaware:

Namely, that moving more matters hugely. The evidence is clear: Being physically active is powerfully protective against colorectal cancer.

Unfortunately for the increasingly sedentary American populace, the inverse is also true: Being inactive — as most of us are — makes colorectal cancer more likely.

That urgent message is not being heard, according to the AICR 2013 Cancer Risk Awareness Survey [PDF]. In fact, awareness that the lack of physical activity is a cause of cancer plummeted from a high of 45 percent in 2009 to 36 percent in 2013, the steepest decline in the history of the survey. Continue reading →