If you’re ready to start a makeover to slim down and give your body the nutritional boost it needs, consider a pantry makeover. The March 2011 Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter provides great ideas. Listed below are ideas for items to add to your pantry or use as replacements for less healthy counterparts:

Barley: Good for your heart and for lowering unhealthy cholesterol levels, barley packs plenty of fiber and nutrients. Add to soups or stews or serve as a side dish.

Beans: A rich source of protein and a good source of B vitamins, beans are a hearty, healthy food. If you eat the canned variety, you can reduce nearly half of the sodium content by draining and rinsing the beans.

Brown rice: Made of whole grains, brown rice is a healthy and satisfying staple. Unlike its counterpart, white rice, brown rice lowers your risk for diabetes.

Canned fish: Albacore tuna, canned sardines and canned salmon are packed with heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Tuna packed in water is best. If you make tuna salad, remember to go easy on the mayonnaise (or switch to low-fat mayonnaise).

Canola oil: Canola oil contains an ideal mix of unsaturated fats that promotes heart health. Canola oil supplies the body with essential fatty acids.

Cooking spray: As a no-calorie alternative to oil, cooking spray works well when you need just enough oil to prevent sticking.

Cornstarch: As an alternative to flour, cornstarch works well for thickening soups and sauces. A teaspoon of cornstarch is relatively low in calories (10) and adds twice the thickness of flour.

Dried fruit: Dried fruit makes a great snack or a nutritious topping on cereal or yogurt. Blueberries are particularly healthy. Check the ingredients and avoid dried fruits that contain added sugar.

Green tea: Packed with healthy antioxidants, green tea also produces feelings of satiety. Drink a cup or two with meals to suppress the urge to overeat.

Hot sauce: Hot sauce is great for adding flavor to food without adding calories or sodium. Check the label to make sure the sodium content is low.

Lentils: Quick, easy and nutritious, lentils are a good source of fiber, protein, iron and potassium.

Low-sodium chicken stock: Many recipes call for chicken stock. Make sure you use a low-sodium brand.

Nuts and nut butters: A good source of protein, fiber and omega-3 fatty acids, nuts are often avoided because of their high calorie content. In moderation, nuts make a healthy snack.

Oatmeal: Oat groats and steel-cut oatmeal are the most nutritious, but even the quick-cook variety is chock-full of good ingredients.

Olive oil: Olive oil in vinaigrette makes a great substitute for bottled salad dressings. Add vinegar and a little Dijon mustard for a tasty vinaigrette.

Popcorn: Literally popping with antioxidants and loaded with fiber, popcorn makes a healthy snack. Remember to go easy on the salt.

Powdered egg whites: As a substitute for liquid egg whites, powdered egg whites are an excellent low-calorie, low-fat source of protein.

Quinoa: A healthier substitute for rice, quinoa makes a great side dish.

Sugar substitutes: Choose from a variety of zero-calorie sugar substitutes to satisfy your sweet tooth without adding pounds.

Vinegar: Red-wine vinegar contains only one milligram of sodium per tablespoon and no saturated fat. A caloric bargain, vinegar has only three calories per serving. Add to salads or your favorite dish.

Whole-wheat flour: Whole-wheat flour can be substituted for bleached white flour (up to one-third) in most recipes. For lighter baked goods, check supermarkets for whole-wheat, white and whole-wheat pastry flours.

Whole-wheat pasta: Stock up on this healthy alternative to white pasta. Substitute whole-wheat couscous for white rice.

Wild rice: Although some varieties of wild rice take extra time to prepare, quick-cook varieties are now available. Heat the quick-cook versions in boiling water or microwave for a nutritious and wholesome side dish.

The average American consumes 35 percent of his or her calories from SoFAS—solid fats and added sugars. Your pantry makeover can move this number down for you and your family, and the lower number will help trim surplus pounds. This list of ideas will turn your pantry into your ally in looking and feeling your best during the summer days ahead. And if you’re cooking for family members, they’ll appreciate the pantry makeover as well. Imagine the compliments when the new, trimmer you shows up in your new bathing suit!

Photo: ajft on Flickr.

For sheer versatility, oatmeal is hard to beat. Besides serving as a hearty breakfast cereal, oatmeal can be added to meat loaf or baked in cookies, cakes, bread, muffins and scones. Oatmeal can also be ground in a blender to create oat flour that can be used as a coating for fish or chicken.

Oatmeal is credited with numerous health benefits. Regularly consuming oatmeal lowers cholesterol levels and reduces the risk of heart disease. Oatmeal also enhances the immune system’s response to infection, stabilizes blood sugar and lowers the risk for type 2 diabetes. Particularly for postmenopausal women, oatmeal lowers the risk of breast cancer. Oatmeal is also tolerated by individuals who cannot tolerate wheat because of celiac disease. And for the calorie conscious, oatmeal is a bargain: one cup of cooked oatmeal contains 159 calories.

Also see: The New American Diet

For convenience’ sake, you may want to use instant oatmeal. If you have the time, however, consider preparing steel-cut oats, which are whole-grain oat kernels that have been cut rather than rolled. If you soak steel-cut oatmeal, you can reduce the cooking time, usually to about 30 minutes. If you make a large batch, you can divide the oatmeal into one- to two-person servings that can be reheated in the microwave for use on busy mornings.

Cooked oatmeal can be stored in a loaf pan and refrigerated. Once set, the oatmeal can be sliced and fried on a hot griddle. The fried oatmeal tastes a bit like popcorn and is particularly good with jam, syrup or brown sugar.

My favorite recipe is Buttermilk Pancakes with Oatmeal. Besides being hearty, the pancakes are crunchy and have a wonderful, nutty flavor. Whenever I have guests with hearty appetites (like teenage boys), I make this recipe.

Buttermilk Pancakes with Oatmeal

2 cups Bisquick

1 cup instant rolled oatmeal

3/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups buttermilk (add more if mixture is too thick)

1 egg (or egg substitute)

1 tablespoon oil

In a large bowl, mix all of the ingredients thoroughly by hand but do not overmix. If the batter is too thick, add more buttermilk. If the batter is too thin, add more oatmeal. Pour the batter (about 1/3 cup for each pancake) on a hot, oiled griddle. Flip the pancakes when their tops are bubbling.

For a variation on this recipe, reduce the buttermilk to one cup and instead of adding the oatmeal to the batter, sprinkle the oatmeal on the bubbling pancakes while cooking. Once flipped, the pancakes will brown with a crispy, oatmeal topping.

Bon appétit!

P.S. Do you have an oatmeal recipe to share?

Photo:  TheCulinaryGeek on Flickr

Also of Interest

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• Join AARP: Savings, resources and news for your well-being

See the AARP home page for deals, savings tips, trivia and more

Is Mindfulness the Latest Fad? Are the Benefits Too Good to Be True?

Would you be skeptical if I told you that without taking a pill or seeing a therapist, you could lower your blood pressure, raise your self-esteem, experience equanimity in the face of stress, improve the quality of your sleep, reduce chronic pain, get greater enjoyment from eating even while eating less, increase your energy and make better decisions? That you could be happier and see the world around you more positively?

The practitioners of mindfulness make these and other remarkable claims—and their claims are not without merit! Research is pouring in from a variety of disciplines, such as neuroscience, psychology, medicine and business, validating these significant benefits of mindfulness. (You can find a comprehensive publication database here.)

What exactly is mindfulness? Some describe mindfulness simply as “moment-by-moment awareness.” Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, best-selling author of Wherever You Go, There You Are, describes mindfulness as “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment.” Bodhipaksa’s straightforward definition is my favorite: “Mindfulness is the gentle effort to be continuously present with experience.”

Anyone who is willing to practice the gentle art of being present has the key to unlock the benefits currently being validated by research. The question then becomes where and how to begin. Here are three options:

1. Study a dog. Dogs are great practitioners of mindfulness, according to Jonathan Kaplan, PhD, author of Urban Mindfulness: Cultivating Peace, Presence, and Purpose in the Middle of It All. Besides being nonjudgmental (dogs think their owners are great no matter what kind of bad hair day they are having), dogs live only in the present moment. What happened a few minutes ago is of no concern, and tomorrow does not exist. Clearly, a dog is a sound role model for staying in the here and now.

2. Read a book, specifically, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definitive work, Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. Besides articulating the theory of mindfulness and sharing the remarkable stories of how his patients are benefiting from its practice, Dr. Kabat-Zinn also provides a detailed program to help readers begin their own journey “along a path that ultimately leads nowhere, only to who you are.”

3. Try a gentle experiment in mindfulness. Marty Cottler, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in teaching mindfulness in Grass Valley, California, recommends a three-minute practice for beginners:

At least once a day, check in with yourself. Intentionally pause for 10 seconds while you become aware of your breathing. Don’t try to change how you are breathing. Breathe naturally but with awareness.

For the remainder of this exercise, cast your eye-gaze downward to minimize visual distractions, and if possible, close your eyes and proceed.

Next, for approximately 60 seconds, move your attentive awareness from the top of your head down throughout your body to your toes and back up to the top of your head. As you scan your entire body, note areas of unpleasantness and pleasantness, such as tense shoulders or a full belly.

For another 60 seconds, focus your attention on your breathing at one of the following locations: your nostrils, lips, chest or belly. Practice awareness of your breathing at the part of the body you selected as your focus. Your attention will wander. Notice this and gently escort your attention back to awareness of your breathing at your selected body location.

For one more 60-second interval, practice being attentive to whatever grabs your attention: internal or external sensations as well as inner feelings and thoughts. Just notice—don’t chase after any of these sensations, feelings, or thoughts.

Lastly, open your eyes, raise your gaze, reestablish your connection with the outside world and carry on with your day. After following this routine for a few days, ask yourself if you are notice any difference in your daily experience.

We can easily lose track of our sense of self given the pressure of an increasingly hectic world where we are continuously bombarded with information and demands for instant decisions. Mindfulness is a way to cope—and even thrive—in this environment.

Steve Goodier, a Methodist minister and founder of an online support system, sums up the joy of practicing mindfulness in his motto, “Wherever you are, be there. If you can be fully present now, you’ll know what it means to live.” Echoing this theme, Dr. Kabat-Zinn says that mindfulness is neither a philosophy nor a religion; rather, it is “a way of being, a way of living your moments and living them fully.”

What greater loss could we experience than dying without ever having been alive? And what better gift could we give ourselves than to be present during our numbered days, to live each moment fully? Be assured that in whatever time I have, my goal is to show up and be present.

Photo: midnightrook on Flickr.

Life in the high-speed lane seems to make rapid decision making a valuable skill. In contrast, the inability or unwillingness to respond instantly to the bombardment of demands for decisions—whether they involve a meal order or the appropriate response to an email—is a sign of weakness.

At a time when pressure for rapid action is accelerating, Kevin Cashman, leadership developer and author of The Pause Principle: Step Back to Lead Forward, argues that quick decision making leads to mistakes and inefficiency. His conclusion about the limitations of time-pressured decisions due to a sense of time poverty—that feeling of having too much to do and not enough time—confirms the adage that when we act in haste, we frequently find ourselves repenting in leisure.

Cashman’s insight is no less true in our personal lives than in our work lives. Whether at home or on the job, pressure for on-the-spot action can play havoc with a competing value—that of being mindful during each passing moment. Researchers have found that mindfulness leads to a host of health benefits that range from a strengthened immune system to improved relationships. But more relevant to the topic at hand, mindfulness leads to greater competence in decision making.

But in a fast-paced, complex world where the demand to respond is increasing, how can we press the pause button? Here are five constructive ways to stop the clock when important decisions have to be made:

1. Consult others. Query colleagues, friends, family and teammates to gain insight into others’ perspectives. Gather information widely and listen to contrary viewpoints.

2. Assess possibilities and their implicit risks. Consider the consequences of alternative courses of action and think through various responses to worst-case scenarios. Consider the consequences of postponing the decision making.

3. Distract yourself. Let your subconscious mind work on the matter while you go for a walk outdoors, take a nap, play a game or listen to music. Solutions emerge when we create the space for them to surface.

4. Seek perspective. Will your decision be remembered five years from now? One year from now? Next week? Step back to consider what is most important now and in the future.

5. Prepare to learn. Accept your limitations. Some decisions will not turn out as hoped for, but all outcomes, even the adverse ones, are potential opportunities to learn.

One of the most precious gifts we can give ourselves is to be present in our own lives. Demands will appear and recede, but whatever our circumstances, we don’t have to live in a state of time poverty. (How ironic that in the midst of abundance of material possessions, time is our scarcest commodity.) Indeed, our task remains constant and timeless. In the face of the pressure to act, we need to remain present and mindful, confident in the knowledge that only in this way can we make the best decisions—whether large or small.

Photo: Adcuz on Flickr.

As the fourth child, I was up against some serious competition with my taller siblings. Although I was only a second grader, I was expected to dribble the ball down the court and, if passed the ball, shoot a basket and make two points.

Early on, my efforts fell far short of the mark. But I remember the encouraging remarks from my father. He would tell my sibling opponents that “she almost made it” or that “she was closer this time.”

I loved being coached. I loved the competition. I loved getting better. But in truth, I did not love missing the shot. I hated losing, yet I loved the idea that there is always another game—another chance to make the shot.

Such was my introduction to team sports—a love of which, after 60-plus years, has yet to dim. Of course, I had to take a break for a few decades to work and raise a family, but at last I’m back on a team—except the team plays tennis instead of basketball.

I’m not alone in my longing for the joy of team sports that I enjoyed in my youth. In a Los Angeles Times article titled “Back in the Game,” Martin Miller explains that “a cultural emphasis on the benefits of exercise, improving medical techniques and technology, and a strong desire for a sense of community are helping to create and sustain a vigorous team-sports network for older Americans.” Miller adds, “With nearly 21 million baby boomers expected to reach age 50 in the next five years, the over-50 leagues are poised to expand by leaps and bounds.” Miller also mentioned some of the revised rules for seniors sports that take into account aging bodies.

I can personally attest to the significant benefits that this remarkable return to team sports provides:

• Health: Who can argue that exercise doesn’t improve your health? Researchers have found that seniors who engage in team sports live longer than their more sedentary, isolated counterparts. Researchers have also found that brain health, especially the functions involving information processing, is enhanced by exercise.

• Discipline: Setting a goal and working consistently toward achieving that goal teaches personal discipline. Once you fall madly in love with a sport, you will constantly try to improve, whatever your skill level or age.

• Resiliency: After you’ve lost some closely fought games, you realize that the ability to pick yourself up after losses and begin anew is essential. There’s always the opportunity for do-overs; there’s always the prospect of getting better and competing again.

• Team-Building Skills: At some point, you realize that your talents and skills, however essential, are only part of the talents and skills needed to win. You respect your teammates’ contributions, just as your teammates respect yours. You also learn to set goals, make decisions, communicate, resolve conflicts and solve problems—a good set of skills to acquire, whatever your age.

• Teachability: To be coached, you must be teachable. That is, you must trust the direction of another who has your best interests at heart. Learning and applying lessons is also a valuable skill.

• Friendship: When we compete, we strengthen our relationships with our teammates—and sometimes with our competitors as well. We develop enduring relationships because we remember the occasions, whether we won or lost, in which we challenged ourselves and met like-minded folks.

How else could you explain, for example, the explosion in the number of Granny Basketball leagues in the Midwest? The National Sporting Goods Association reports that “the “number of women 55 and older who play basketball at least 50 times a year has grown from 16,000 in 1995 to nearly 131,000 a decade later.” Wow!

• Body-Mind Connection: Participating in a team sport forces us to exercise our minds as well as our bodies. To compete and win, we must integrate our body with our brain. We have to be mindful of our level of conditioning and simultaneously plot our strategy while dealing with our emotions.

• Fun: Perhaps most importantly of all, being on a team is fun! That’s why we use the expression “playing tennis” or “playing softball.” Who doesn’t love to join a good game?

Looking back, I can see that competing on a team has been a major influence in defining my character. Resiliency taught me to pick myself up and start anew. I learned the importance of being coachable, and outstanding mentors have made a huge difference in my career. I also learned the importance of teammates, whether the mate is my husband or a colleague.

Whether you enjoy badminton, basketball, baseball, boccie ball, softball, volleyball, swimming, pétanque, pickle ball, rowing, table tennis or some other team sport, go for it! The benefits can be enjoyed, whatever your age. Indeed, the rewards are timeless.

Are you ready to get back in the game?

Photo: Joe Duty on Flickr

Also of Interest

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You don’t need to be around adolescents very long before you realize that their brains work differently from those of adults, especially senior adults. What the youthful brain lacks in judgment and stability, however, is compensated for by its speed of learning and memory recall.

But what if, through a simple flip of a molecular switch, we seniors could have it all? That is, what if we could retain the judgment we’ve acquired through lifelong experiences while returning our brain to its youthful malleable plasticity? What if we had a youthful brain that enabled us to quickly learn new languages and tasks? One that would allow us to remember where we put the car keys?

The National Institutes of Health funded in an effort to find ways to help adults recover from brain injuries and relearn basic tasks, such as reading and walking.

Get Your Brain in Shape! Think faster, focus better. Brain Fitness. It’s free to start.

In pursuing this goal, Yale School of Medicine researchers, led by Stephen Strittmatter, Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology, identified a key genetic switch for brain maturation. The Nogo Receptor allows adolescent brains to mature into adult brains. When the researchers blocked the function of this gene in old mice, the old brains returned to an adolescent level of plasticity. The mice learned new, complex motor tasks more quickly than their mature counterparts did.

According to Dr. Strittmatter, if we similarly manipulated the Nogo Receptor in the human brain, this research “suggests we can turn back the clock in the adult brain and recover from trauma the way kids recover.” Flipping this molecular switch may give us the best of both worlds—a youthful ability to learn and remember combined with an adult ability to remain steady and stable.

The first application of this research may be on stroke victims in an effort to speed rehabilitation. As we peer into the next decade, what a remarkable world of discovery and insight awaits us, whatever the age of our brain.

Photo: CollegeDegrees360 on Flickr

Do these claims sound like science fiction? Not at all, according to David Sinclair, a geneticist who heads the Lowy Cancer Research Centre’s Laboratory for Ageing Research at the University of New South Wales. Dr. Sinclair, who is currently based at Harvard University, anticipates that antiaging drugs will be available by 2018.

Through his research, Dr. Sinclair has found that a single enzyme, SIRT1, “is switched on naturally by calorie restriction and exercise, but it can also be enhanced through activators.”

Resveratrol, found in red wine, contains a naturally occurring activator. So to keep the doctor away, in addition to eating an apple a day, we should drink a glass of red wine with dinner.

To jump-start the antiaging nature of this enzyme, Dr. Sinclair and his associates have developed synthetic drugs that are 100 times more potent than the amount of resveratrol found in a glass of wine. Through their efforts, 4,000 synthetic activators have been identified, and the three most promising drugs are currently being tested on humans.

In animal testing, overweight mice that were given potent synthetic resveratrol “were able to run twice as far as slim mice and they lived 15 per cent longer.”

The superior athletic performance of these mice raises profound questions about how humans would perform given the same synthetic activator. (For openers, we might need to raise the bar for awarding Olympic medals.)

Once the antiaging drug becomes available, the potential applications are mind boggling. Initially, the drug might be used to target type 2 diabetes, but the applications don’t stop there. Dr. Sinclair believes positive implications exist for a variety of diseases associated with aging, from cancer to cardiovascular disease, from Alzheimer’s to cataracts and from Parkinson’s diseases to osteoporosis. Research has led Dr. Sinclair to conclude that “ageing isn’t the irreversible affliction that we thought it was.”

Welcome to the brave new world!

Photo: exosomatics on Flickr

The aging process also brings social and emotional losses. As we age, parents and older relatives die, leaving us feeling orphaned and adrift. Some of our friends grow frail and die. And the loss of a spouse is a particularly hard blow. Perhaps most devastatingly, some of us outlive our children. Grief and sadness are normal reactions to these losses, and we cannot dismiss these feelings as trivial.

Without question, the physical and emotional losses that accompany aging are difficult to cope with. Even more worrisome is the loss of mental acuity. A diminished or disappearing sense of self is a common fear among seniors.

The fear is well founded. “In the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability, with depression and anxiety accounting for a significant percentage of the disorders,” according to Professor Barbara J. Sahakian, FMedSci at the University of Cambridge Department of Psychiatry and the Medical Research Council/Wellcome Trust Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute. And based on her research, Professor Sahakian asserts that 40 percent of the individuals with dementia are unaware of their condition.

Get Your Brain in Shape! Think faster, focus better. Brain Fitness. It’s free to start.

But all is not lost! Here’s the good news: The notion that mental acuity inevitably declines with age has been debunked by researchers’ discoveries on the neuroplasticity of the brain. Indeed, old dogs can learn new tricks. The adult brain can be rewired throughout life if we are willing to practice these four successful aging strategies:

1. Exercise your body. Exercise may be as close as we will come to finding the fountain of youth. Besides lifting our spirits, staying physically active improves our ability to plan, focus and shift quickly between tasks. Working out also triggers a “positive and energizing outlook” that may improve memory and decision-making skills. And exercise encourages the growth of new brain cells (a process called neurogenesis). Researchers who’ve studied the link between exercise and mental acuity report that “maintaining an intellectually engaged and physically active lifestyle promotes successful cognitive aging.”

Our bodies are forgiving. Even if we haven’t exercised regularly for years, it is never too late to start. And it is never too late to enjoy the benefits of exercise. As one researcher succinctly reports, “Older adults who participate in fitness training and physical activity benefit from significant improvements in their brain structure and function.”

Seniors in record numbers are participating in sports from archery and badminton to basketball and bowling, from racquetball and softball to swimming and tennis. And age is not a barrier. George Blevins and John Donnelly were over 100 years old when they competed in sporting events for bowling and table tennis, respectively.

2. Engage with others. However community is defined, being a respected and valued member of a community helps keep us mentally sharp. Engaging in activities with others—visiting friends and family, attending church, dining out, traveling, doing volunteer work or being involved with charitable groups—is an antidote for loss of mental acuity. Strong ties to others can even increase longevity. After reviewing nearly 150 studies on longevity, researchers concluded that “stronger social relationships were associated with a reduced risk of death of 50%.”

3. Express your talents. Mother Teresa of Calcutta is quoted as saying, “The world is hungry for our help and our love.” In the second half of life, we have the unique opportunity to bring our authentic and wholehearted self to our chosen tasks and build our legacy. Dr. Paul Ward, a researcher and consultant on purposeful living, says, “Finding something to live for is an essential requirement to a happy and fulfilling life,” and this sentiment is no less true for seniors than for those beginning their careers. We don’t have to write a bestseller or become a Pulitzer Prize winner; rather, we simply need to bloom where we’re planted. And Margaret Mead tells us that “if you associate enough with older people who do enjoy their lives, who are not stored away in any golden ghettos, you will gain a sense of continuity and of the possibility for a full life.”

4. Experience the moment. Resolve to live in the here and now. Give attention to each passing moment. Ignore distracting thoughts and become mindful of what you are tasting, feeling, smelling, hearing, feeling and seeing. When you go for a walk, look around. Enjoy nature in all its glory.

Researchers tell us that by hitting the mental pause button, by stepping into the present moment and by becoming more mindful, we slow the aging process. In one study, researchers measured telomeres, which are bits of DNA protein at the end of chromosomes, in women ages 50-65. The length of telomeres tells how fast a person is aging.

The researchers compared the length of the telomeres in women who engaged in mindfulness with the length of telomeres of women who reported a tendency to engage in wandering thoughts and concluded that “people who reported as being more focused in the present moment had longer telomeres.” Moreover, “a more focused mind also leads to less cell ageing whereas a wandering mind accelerates biological ageing.”

Brown University researchers recently documented the underlying neurophysiological mechanism that explains two powerful benefits of mindfulness—more effective chronic pain management and lessened depression—that could be particularly useful to seniors.

Dr. Marty Cottler, a psychologist who trains his clients in mindfulness, says, “Even as our bodies inevitably age, our brains and minds can help us rejuvenate. Our natural and normal tendency is to drift off into thinking about the past and the future. With gentle effort, we can guide our attention back to the present. By practicing the simple skills of compassionate-mindfulness, of being aware of whatever we are experiencing in the present moment with an attitude of acceptance, this moment and then this next moment, we reinvigorate ourselves.”

The myths about inevitable mental deterioration with aging are falling by the wayside. Instead of being put out to pasture at age 65, seniors are increasingly playing diverse roles in society as workers, family members, business owners, caregivers, volunteers and consumers.

Even the notion of how long humans can live is being challenged. In her book, 100 Plus, futurist Sonia Arrison predicts that we are entering the “golden age of aging.” Arrison argues that this generation is on the cusp of living longer, healthier and more fulfilling lives and that the first person to reach 150 years of age is already alive. If her prediction is correct, we’ll want more than ever to keep our wits while aging.

Photo: Liz Henry on Flickr.

This declaration is based on a large-scale study, reported in the January 2013 issue of the International Journal of Obesity, conducted by researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Tufts University in the United States and the University of Murcia in Spain.

Researchers followed 420 individuals who enrolled in a 20-week weight-loss program in Spain. The individuals were divided into two groups: early eaters and late eaters. Early eaters ate a Mediterranean-style lunch before 3 p.m., and late eaters ate their lunch after 3 p.m. During this meal, about 40 percent of the day’s calories were consumed.

The study revealed that late eaters lost “significantly less weight” than early eaters and lost weight at a slower rate. Late eaters also had lower insulin sensitivity, which is a risk factor for diabetes.

In reaching this conclusion, researchers took into account the total calories consumed, energy expenditure, amount of sleep and other variables. Since there were no significant differences between the early eaters and late eaters in these variables, the researchers concluded that the time of the meal was the determining factor for weight-loss success.

Frank Scheer, PhD, MSc, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, was the senior author of this study, and his conclusion suggests how we can apply this insight in our daily routines: “Our results indicate that late eaters displayed a slower weight-loss rate and lost significantly less weight than early eaters, suggesting that the timing of large meals could be an important factor in a weight loss program.”

Folk wisdom has a bad reputation for offering contrary advice. For example, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” contradicts “Out of sight, out of mind.” And “Opposites attract” disputes “Birds of a feather flock together.” But in this case, Grandma’s advice to eat a hearty breakfast, a solid lunch and a light supper is spot on. Researchers tell us that to improve our chances for successful weight loss, we need to eat our biggest meal midday rather than consume the traditional calorie-laden evening meal.

Photo: stevendepolo on Flickr

1. You save on groceries.

2. You lose weight quickly.

3. You get to play hooky. Once friends learn you are sick, no one wants you to attend a meeting or a party. And you don’t feel a trace of guilt for abandoning your exercise program.

4. You don’t have to make excuses for wearing your pajamas at 2 p.m.

5. You can manipulate expressions of sympathy from your friends.

6. You can catch up on your reading.

7. You can persuade your spouse to wait on you hand and foot.

8. You realize that, however important you think your work is, the world gets along just fine without you.

9. You don’t have to prepare meals or do housework.

10. You aren’t tempted by the hamburger or pizza commercials on television.

Don’t get me wrong. I would much rather have avoided this unpleasant drama. But since the flu is my fate, I intend to take advantage of the situation. Who knows? I may even spend a few extra days in bed just for the fun of it.

More on the flu can be found here.

Photo: spcbrass on Flickr