 Good afternoon and welcome. I'm Pat Parazzini, Director of Alumni Engagement Regional Chapter Development for Fairfield University and I am so thrilled to be able to bring this presentation to you via Zoom. In my position here at Fairfield, I have the pleasure of working with alumni from across the country, coordinating with chapter leaders and volunteers to host events that keep alumni connected to and engaged with the university. We have nine regional chapters from Boston to Washington DC alphabetically and from Boston to San Francisco geographically. So I hope to meet you all in person at an event in your local area in the very near future. Before I introduce our esteemed guest presenters, I would like to go over the format of the lecture today. It is a PowerPoint slide presentation and our guest lecturers will be speaking to those slides. Some of you have already submitted questions and there will be a time at the end for our panelists to answer. If questions arise about a point in the presentation, please type them via the chat function on this Zoom and I will relay them to our guests. And please make sure your video and audio capabilities are turned off. So today I have the great honor and pleasure of introducing our three nutrition educators and two students. Dr. Kimberly Dowdy is a visiting assistant professor and director of the public health program in the Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies. He received a BS nutrition and dietetics, a master's degree in public health and a PhD in public health nutrition. Prior to joining Fairfield University this January, Dr. Dowdy was a researcher at the Yale Griffin Prevention Research Center for many years where she studied effectiveness of school-based obesity prevention initiatives and impact of dietary interventions on cardiometabolic risk factors. Her current interests are in maternal and infant health and breastfeeding promotion. Mackenzie Gordon is the current campus dietitian for dining services. She received a BS in nutrition and dietetics and a master's degree in nutrition and dietetics and previously held a clinical position at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Mackenzie works with the student community on campus to develop healthy relationships with food through individual counseling, food allergy support, and accommodations, sports specific presentations, weight management, and assorted eating. She's been working as the campus dietitian for the past four years, building strong relationships with the Fairfield community and will be transitioning to a teaching role in the Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies with the new doctorate in clinical nutrition. Her specialties are food allergies, culinary nutrition, and helping those with disordered eating patterns develop healthier relationships with food. Janet Heiser is a registered dietitian and a visiting assistant professor and director of the doctorate in clinical nutrition program in the Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies. She has her master's degree in occupational and adult education. Prior to joining Fairfield University, Ms. Heiser was a clinical nutrition manager and dietetic internship director for Compass Group at Danbury Hospital. Our students, Natalie Gammer is a rising senior at Fairfield University with a major in psychology and minors in communication and women, gender, and sexuality studies. She's currently a member of the honors program, a resident assistant, and a member of the College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Advisory Council. After graduation, she plans to continue her education at law school in the hopes of pursuing a legal career. Daniela Recchia is also a rising senior and her major is finance at Fairfield. She and Natalie were recently studying abroad in Florence, Italy, and both our students had to return home at the start of the spread of the virus. Daniela has always had strong love for food. However, it wasn't until she was older that she transformed this passion into a cleaner and healthier version. We grew up competitively dancing, which she has been able to continue as a member of Fairfield's dance fusion team, which she uses as a means of staying fit and active. She has been able to rely on her clean eating and fitness to help guide her through the current situation. Welcome to all of you. I will now pass the baton to Dr. Dowdy and she will begin our presentation. Just going to share my screen so I can pull up the PowerPoint. All right, can everyone see this okay? All right, I'm seeing some nodding good. Okay, thank you for the introduction, Pat. So to give you all a quick overview of what we have planned for this hour, I'm going to start us off by highlighting the relevance of nutrition and physical activity during the COVID pandemic, and then share some strategies for making your home a healthy food environment. Then Mackenzie will tell you about intuitive eating and Janet will wrap up the information sharing portion of the discussion with some ideas for being physically active during quarantine. Then we'll hear from our current students, Daniela and Natalie, about their experiences and how they're applying what they've learned recently in a nutrition course at Fairfield this semester. Finally, we've received a few questions ahead of time that we will respond to and we'll take any additional questions you have. So why are we even talking about nutrition and physical activity right now when prevention of COVID-19 is clearly the most pressing public health problem? Well, it might not seem like nutrition and exercise are the most important health behaviors to focus on at the moment because they're not going to prevent transmission of the virus, like hand washing and social distancing will, but forgetting about health eating healthfully and being physically active during this time would be a big mistake. For one thing, we know that several chronic conditions linked to diet and physical activity such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and hypertension significantly increase the risk of mortality from COVID-19. So we should also be focused now on preventing those conditions. Additionally, it seems that people may be finding it more difficult to eat right and exercise while staying home. Now, we don't have any studies yet to demonstrate this empirically, but anecdotally, it certainly seems to be the case. You've probably seen a lot of these funny memes floating around about the quarantine 15 and about people gaining weight because all there is to do at home is eat. So it's actually a great time to think about eating more healthfully and staying active. Now that we've established why this is important, let's talk about how you can optimize your diet and exercise habits during this strange time. Mackenzie is going to talk to you shortly about intuitive eating. What I'm going to share with you is strategies for creating an environment that supports intuitive eating and makes the healthier choices easier to make. And these strategies come from applying what research tells us about external factors that influence our eating behavior. These external factors can sometimes override or overpower our internal signals that tell us when to eat and how much to eat, making it a lot more challenging to eat intuitively. So if we want to eat in an intuitive way, in a mindful way, we need to make sure that we have the right food environment around us. So some of these factors are related to the characteristics of foods themselves. One factor is how energy dense or nutrient dense of food is. Foods that contain a lot of nutrients in a small serving are considered nutrient dense. While foods that contain a lot of energy or calories per serving are considered energy dense. Some foods are both energy dense and nutrient dense. These are things like nuts and seeds and fatty fish. These foods contain a lot of calories but also contain a considerable amount of vitamins, minerals, fiber, and or essential fatty acids. So we still want to have those foods in our diet in moderate quantities. But the foods that we want to limit are the ones that are energy dense without being nutrient dense. These are things like butter, bacon, sugar, and alcohol. And these are all what we call empty calories because they provide calories but not a lot of other nutrients. So they also are very easy to overeat because we don't really feel that full when we eat them. So these foods tend to promote weight gain and they can also contribute to nutrient inadequacies because they take the place of healthier foods, more nutritious foods in our diets. So we want to try to limit the energy dense, low nutrient dense foods. On the other hand, there are foods that are highly nutrient dense without being energy dense. So great examples of these kinds of foods are fruits and vegetables. They usually have a lot of vitamins, minerals, and fiber and relatively few calories. So these are the foods we want to eat more of. These help promote a healthy body weight because they're difficult to overeat compared to the other types of foods I just talked about and they help us feel full. So choosing more of those is a good strategy. In this image on the right, you can see how a meal comprised of nutrient dense foods like fresh fruit, raw red peppers, a sandwich with whole grain bread, some lean turkey or chicken it looks like there and lettuce would be much more filling and more nutritious than a relatively small portion of cheese crackers that contains the same number of calories. So that's what we're talking about when we're saying more nutrient dense, less energy dense foods. There are also other factors about foods that influence how likely we are to overeat them. Foods in a solid form tend to be more filling than liquids. For example, eating a whole orange is going to be more filling than drinking a glass of orange juice. Also of the three macronutrients, protein appears to have a greater effect on satiety or how full and satisfied we feel after a meal. So a food that contains some protein is likely to stave off hunger longer than one that doesn't have any protein. Finally, fiber slows stomach emptying, keeping us full longer and helping to prevent large spikes in blood sugar that can later nosedive and make us feel hungry and then crave something else to eat. So choosing foods with more fiber is another good strategy. And these foods are things like fruits and vegetables again, but also whole grain products, beans, nuts and seeds. Now outside of food composition, the portion size of a food and the variety of foods we're exposed to at any given time can also influence our eating behavior. Research has shown that people tend to eat more of a food when it is served in a larger portion. So reducing portion size, especially for those empty calorie foods, is a good idea. And on the flip side, you can increase the portion sizes of foods that you'd like to eat more of like fruits and vegetables. Research has also shown that the greater the variety of foods available, the more we tend to eat. So this is one of the reasons why we tend to overeat at buffets and parties where there are lots of different kinds of foods to choose from. Now people aren't really going to buffets or parties right now, but we can still use this information to modify our home environments. For example, when you're making a meal or ordering takeout, select a limited number of foods, an entree and one or two sides, for example, instead of an appetizer, an entree, two sides, and a dessert. You can also limit the variety of foods that you have in your home, at least for those foods you'd like to reduce your intake of. For example, if you find yourself eating a lot of salty snacks, just keep one type of salty snack in your pantry rather than multiple choices. So those are some ideas related to variety. Right, besides characteristics of the foods we have available, other aspects of our environment can influence what we eat and how much we eat as well. One is how easily accessible a food is. So I laughed when somebody joined at the beginning of this and mentioned that she put a dish towel over her pantry because this is exactly what I'm talking about. So how accessible a food is and its proximity to us, how convenient it is to eat it, all influence our eating. For example, there's some evidence that people are less likely to eat from a bowl of M&Ms if it's just a little farther away from them than if it's closer to them. And on the flip side, making healthier foods more proximate and more visible may increase intake. So one study found that people consumed the most apple slices and carrots when they were placed in clear bowls and therefore visible and in close proximity. So at home, you might want to make healthy foods more visible and convenient and make unhelpful foods less visible and less convenient. For example, you could keep a bowl of fresh fruit on a table or desk where you spend a lot of time. You could also wash and cut up different fruits and vegetables that you might snack on, keep them in clear containers where you can see them every time you open the refrigerator door. In your pantry or cabinets, keep the healthful foods towards the front where you can see them, where they're easy to reach, and keep the less healthful foods where you can't easily reach them or where you can't see them. So you have to really go out of your way to find them or put a dish towel over them. Now, you may have heard that serving food on smaller dishes can help prevent overeating, but the evidence is actually mixed on this. Some studies have found no effective dish size on intake. However, I'm including it here because it's still probably a good idea because serving food on smaller dishes can serve as a cue to be mindful about your hunger because when you get to the bottom of your bowl or when you've cleaned your plate, you have to stop and think about whether you want more versus if you have a large portion on a large plate, you might just continue eating regardless. There's also consistent evidence though that distractions, TV in particular, but also driving, listening to music even or playing a game, are associated with increased food intake. This is probably because these distractions divert our attention away from our food so that we're less able to notice how we're feeling physically, so are we feeling full yet or not, and we don't experience the pleasurable feelings associated with eating so we feel less satisfied. And then we either eat more or we want to eat again a short time later. So what we want to get in the habit of is removing these distractions from meals and snacks and try to just focus on eating. Along these same lines, social factors can influence our eating habits. So just the presence of other people can serve as a distraction just like the TV can. I think we've all experienced this. We might be at a busy talking to people at a social occasion, having a good time and we're just mindlessly snacking on a bowl of chips that's out or drinking, mindlessly drinking, refilling our glasses of wine without paying attention because we're just so caught up in the social experience. Now this is another thing that's not really happening so much right now, so this should help us stay more mindful when we're eating. But other people influence us in other ways as well. So studies show that we tend to mimic others eating behaviors. So if we are around people who are making healthful food choices, we're more likely to make healthful food choices and vice versa. So the implication of this for quarantine is you're going to be more successful in making healthier choices if your whole household is doing it. So you might want to try to get the other people in your household on board if they're not already or at the very least make sure that they are aware of your goals and how they can support you. So now I'll turn it over to my colleague Mackenzie who will tell you about mindful and intuitive eating. Everyone, how are you? So I'm going to really talk about mindful intuitive eating and on the slide it's a little busy but it has all the 10 principles of intuitive eating on the left side and then if you look on the right it'll talk, we're going to talk a little bit through each point about the hunger and fullness scale. I'm sure all of us have found ourselves opening the refrigerator, going into the cabinet, trying to find snacks even though we're not physically hungry but we may be doing this out of boredom, we may be avoiding a project that we're supposed to be working on. So really trying to find a balance in there and really identify where those physical hunger cues are coming into play and where those emotional and I'm going to kind of touch on about five of the 10 principles of intuitive eating. If I hit them all we'll be here all day so I'm only going to talk about five of them but these are really the most important ones and that I really think that we're all kind of struggling with a little bit. So the first one is honoring your hunger. This is really where that physical and emotional cues come in so physical hunger I always talk about is from the neck down, you're physically feeling it maybe in your stomach you may be getting a little irritable, you may be snapping at people and you're just really ravenous and you want anything and everything and emotional hunger is really from the head up it comes on really quickly like rapid fire one second you'll be working and then all of a sudden I need a snack right now and head into the kitchen or maybe your home office is in the kitchen which makes it a little bit more difficult. So really trying to figure out where you are on that hunger scale. So if you look at the hunger scale it's broken down from one to ten. One is like completely famished you will eat anything in sight you don't even care if you like it or not and number ten is I always talk about think that's kind of the feeling that you get around Thanksgiving dinner you're so full you feel like you could just like explode almost and a lot of times when we ignore those hungers those hunger cues it really drives our body to overeat and that's really where we go from that number one to number ten and when we consistently ignore our body signals of getting hungry and kind of just shutting it down let me just keep working or maybe you're out and about and don't have time to stop it's a little different right now but kind of just constantly ignoring those hungers those hunger cues we really mess up our bodies intuitive eating cycle we're all really born intuitive eaters but as we grow older through restriction and rules that maybe have given by teachers or parents or family friends of oh you can't eat that don't eat too much or clean your plate I hear this a lot when I do individual counseling with people and I really try to get out where their kind of rules around food were brought up if they were part of a family where you had a cleaner plate or if dessert was really used as a reward in your household these really mess with our hunger and fullness cues because we're cute to oh you have to you have to finish your plate to be able to be full or you have to eat everything on there to be able to be full so really kind of messes with those intuitive eating cues and the next one that kind of really goes into respecting your fullness so as we're eating you really want to kind of tell and really be in tune with your body and what are those fullness cues for you I really talk to my patients about when you sit down to eat a meal try to pause about halfway through the meal depending on if you plated your meal if maybe you're significant other it did or maybe somebody else in the household or even when you're going out to dinner or ordering food you may get everything kind of in one container so really kind of pausing halfway through to identify where you are in that that fullness scale are you around a four and starting to feel those signs of kind of being physically full to like a four to a five or are you around a six to kind of being satisfied you're no longer hungry um so you really kind of want to gauge where you are and I usually try to do halfway through the meal because that gives you kind of a good baseline and maybe that's when you want to stop eating and save that food for later on a lot of people I counseled they're really afraid of not finishing their plates whether it be from something that they grew up with or we hear there's people starving in the world you have to finish your plate it's really a big cue for people to always finish their plate no matter what so really trying to pause halfway through kind of identify where on that hunger and fullness scale are you and as you do this a few times you really you really try to retrain your body to intuitively eat and really pay attention to what your hunger and fullness cues are is it I feel satiated I feel really good about or is something missing in my meal do I need a little bit more maybe you finished your plate and you're still a little bit hungry maybe you just didn't put enough on your plate but really pausing throughout the meal really helps you identify how much your body needs to eat and that really goes into our next principle which is discovering the satisfaction factor of food food is something that is meant to be enjoyed so many times when I'm counseling I really hear people kind of talk about the fear of food and different foods are afraid of eating and it's really kind of finding those foods that you really enjoy eating and they're going to offer you a little bit of a balance in there and that's where that pleasure and satisfaction comes in and Kim really talked about some of the external environment cues so where you're eating you really want to eat in a conducive environment a lot of us these days are probably maybe working through our lunches or eating at our desks or maybe your kitchen counter has become your desk so it's no longer that safe place where you can kind of eat and enjoy and take a break from work so really trying to find a space that's not near work not near a tv but really an enjoyable environment right now I've been trying to go and have my lunch outside as much as possible just to try to take that mental break away from everything away from who is ever in the house and kind of just get outside and get some fresh air and it really provides a nice calming environment for me when we eat either in the car or while we're working a lot of times our our brain is so focused on what we're doing that our brain and our stomach are unable to communicate with each other and it kind of blocks that communication and a lot of times that's when we end up overeating or we're not as satisfied as with what we're eating and it also becomes more of a negative relationship that you begin to have with food because you're working while you're eating it's not enjoyable anymore you lose out on a lot of those pleasures that food provide us whether it be kind of thinking back on a warm memory if you had prepared something from maybe that your grandmother used to make or if you ordered out from a restaurant that you really love and it kind of really takes away from those those feelings and helping you feel satisfied so really kind of finding those experiences and really understanding where you are on that hunger and fullness skill and you really want to get to that that satisfaction level um and that really brings us into our next one which is cope with your feelings without using food right now in the past few months I think everybody's stress levels and anxiety has completely been heightened and a lot of times that's when we will use food as comfort but it's really trying to find different ways to in different coping mechanisms to kind of help you feel a little bit better so if you're somebody that is really anxious right now or is triggered really easily um anytime something stressful happens at work or if a project isn't going great a lot of us go towards those high fat high sugary foods and really trying to kind of take a mental break maybe go for a walk step outside and then kind of come back and be like where am I right now is this more of an emotional trigger that's wanting me to have this barb chocolate right now or go for these salty snacks right now it's really kind of finding that balance and once you use a different coping mechanism to deal with your stress or your anxiety level really try to see where you are on that kind of hunger and fullness scale maybe you do need a little bit of chocolate to kind of calm yourself and it's okay to use food in those environments but you really just want to make sure that you have another coping mechanism in place so that your sole reliance isn't on food because a lot of times when we don't use any coping mechanisms and we're only using food it triggers an emotional response in our body and then after we eat the food we really i'll use french fries as an example um if you eat a bunch of french fries because you're so stressed out and then all of a sudden you start to feel in a really negative way oh my gosh i can't believe i ate all those french fries i feel so bad and it really continues this negative cycle where if you kind of were able to take a little bit of a break maybe go for a walk go outside maybe sit with your dog for a little bit read a book take just that mental break whichever works for you and kind of come back you notice that you feel a little bit better and a lot of times you won't need that food to cope with the problem that's going on because you have a clear head you're able to kind of identify what's next the next part i'm going to talk about is exercise and really kind of owning in on feeling the difference of exercise um and how it feels to exercise and really what it does for your body so many of us right now here all the time on my instagram on facebook from patients is i have to lose weight i have to start exercising i'm not moving enough i'm at home i really need to start going up for walks and doing this and doing that and a lot of times when we build up this stress level of all these different things that we should be doing we're not really focusing on what the exercise is going to provide us so really try to own in on patients is really identify what type of exercise do you enjoy doing and really focus on what it does for your body does it help reduce your stress level does it give you more energy does it maybe help your mood a little bit i notice a lot if i don't go an exercise or don't take the dog for a walk for a few days i really start to get a little bit more irritable um and i'm not as happy so really exercise has that effect on me where it really gives me more energy i feel a lot better i'm completely happier instead of focusing on oh i have to lose weight i haven't been moving enough it really brings on a negative feeling of i have to do this versus this is what this is doing for my body and now janet's going to really talk about all those different options that we have that we can be doing at home um with all the different environmental items that are there either walking outside and she's going to really cover all of those okay thank you mckenzie so kim can you just advance the slide thank you okay so we really can't talk about nutrition without talking about physical activity calories in and then calories out so the benefits of physical activity are really twofold there's the physical the benefits of physical health and then there's the benefits or of mental health or emotional so everyone has a proportion of muscle and fat in their body and women have roughly 12 percent more body fat than men so for for males the average body fat is about 18 to 25 percent and for women it's 25 to 32 percent and there's some factors that um are associated with this as we age we tend to lose more muscle mass and have more fat so a person who exercises over time they will begin to increase their muscle and decrease the fat proportion of their body and the more muscle that you have the higher your metabolic rate or the rate of which you burn calories is so that's where we get the increase in metabolism for the one of the physical benefits of activity physical activity speeds up metabolism for hours and even days and can raise a person's rate at which they burn calories for up to 15 percent so in essence if you exercise on a regular basis and you are sitting there watching tv with with your friend who does not exercise in essence you're actually burning more calories doing the same sedentary activity as that other person so just exercising isn't a one time increases the calories but it actually increases your metabolism over time uh there's also the risk the um the it reduces the risk of chronic diseases so according to the cdc there are 10 leading causes of death in the us four of which are associated with diet and exercise and this being heart disease cancer stroke and diabetes so as as we know and i think this is widely publicized is that physical activity will help with those um chronic diseases then as far as emotional health so according to the american psychological association the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a psychological crisis the enormity of living in isolation changes in our daily lives job loss financial hardship grief grief over death and loved ones and not being able to see loved ones and physical distancing have the potential to affect the mental health and well-being of many there has been with the pandemic an increase in anxiety panic attacks depression risk for suicide steep sleep deprivation as well as stress so studies indicate that physical activity is effective in decreasing these exercise increases blood circulation to the brain which improves the physiologic reaction to stress another hypothesis is that physical activity includes distraction self-efficacy and improve and improve self-esteem in your handouts we have a table and it's from the american college of sports medicine and its guidelines on the types of exercise duration and frequency and it lists how often you should do strength training or um aerobic exercise and the duration so this is the gold standard and you know how many can actually follow that to a T we're not really asking for that really the take home message is that any exercise is better than no exercise so even in a particular day we know that you're working at home and and sometimes I feel working at home is that you just never really get away from it so you're working all day and then um you tend to eat dinner and then you work more at night and then you find yourself going oh my goodness you know I don't have any time to exercise they only have about 10 more minutes and I have to do whatever it is that you have to do but it's better to do some form of exercise for those 10 minutes than not at all no it's not ideal but certainly not using that as an excuse and saying okay 10 minutes is 10 minutes also exercise does not have to be strenuous or require you to be sweating profusely to reap the benefits it's very important to exercise at your fitness level so what might be a good exercise for you might be walking where for somebody else it may be to do a triathlon so you have to look at what your fitness level is walking is an excellent form of exercise it only requires a good pair of shoes doesn't require any expense expensive equipment and it will require you with many health benefits handouts also that we have for you we have listed many online platforms to assist you in many different virtual exercise programs and as you're probably aware all of there's so many different companies that typically charge for some of these applications they're either giving it away for free during this time or at a reduced rate and there are so many so many different varieties of exercises that they offer and they include yoga there's strength training there's zumba there's really anything for any any type of exercise there's also information on how to sign up for a virtual road race so if you are that type of person that you are missing you know you typically this is the time of year when everybody's signing up for their five k's and getting out there well you can still do that it's a little bit different platform but there still is that competitive edge so we have some information on that as well what's important is to vary your exercise regimen if you were just doing one type of exercise that could be a little bit tedious and boring and you may not stick to it so I think that the handout will give you some a lot of really good ideas to kind of give different types of exercise for you to keep you engaged so just to end I'd like to leave you with one of my favorite quotes and that quote is make time and not excuses okay so now what I'd like to do is we're going to ask our two students Daniella and Natalie some questions they recently came back from Italy unfortunately the world of beautiful food and people riding bikes all day long they had to come back on campus and we we had them in our nutrition course this past semester and we just have some questions to them so I'm going to start with Daniella so did you find the timing of taking the fundamentals of nutrition course during the the quarantine to be beneficial and if so why so when we were suddenly getting sent home from Florence um I was devastated just like everyone else and when I arrived home that's when I began to feel confused and worried about everything that was going on I was unsure if my credit and my courses were being carried over if I was continuing this semester on Fairfield's campus or not and if my internship for the summer was canceled but with the main like question really being what do I do now and after being home and feeling like I had absolutely nothing to do food almost started to feel like it was the highlight of my day and sign out like I am a big foodie but as quarantine restrictions began to be more seriously enforced I began to have this mentality that like I can't be so hard on myself since I am um like depriving myself well I am being deprived of so much right now that I shouldn't do it through too and over time just like everyone else I was making my banana bread and my sisters and I were making desserts all the time but I started to feel worse and I wasn't even working out a lot because I stopped before I left my trip so it was right around then I actually started the fundamentals of nutrition course and this course it made me more aware of what I was putting into my body that exercising at least or only 20 minutes a day does make a difference and that during a pandemic we do have like the option to better our body and make it stronger so let's say like fight off this virus so the more research I did and the projects I completed my interests really grew and I changed my whole quarantine routine as my diet became cleaner and I started to exercise daily and yes this is easier said than done I sit on the couch and I feel like my refrigerator is staring at me but it's going for the apple instead of like the two cookies that I found to be beneficial and what kept me going was I was noticing the positive effects it was having um my mood changed my body changed and this routine in this interest um became a good distraction for me during a time like this great thank you so much so I have one more question for your daniella so one of the assignments in the nutrition course was to have the students do a diet analysis assignment where they wrote they write down everything that they eat and drink for three days and then they evaluate it based on calories protein fat vitamins and minerals so daniella what did you find out about your own diet that was surprising from this analysis so this diet analysis broke down the meals like you said over the course of two days which I found interesting because I was able to see my levels for vitamins minerals carbs protein and one thing that surprised me was just like most americans um my potassium levels and sodium levels my sodium I was consuming too much of it and potassium I wasn't um getting enough of it so from here I learned ways and specific foods I can include in my diet such as simple foods such as spinach bananas broccoli that will increase my potassium levels and this may sound silly but I never realized before this assignment how much I overestimated my fruit and vegetable intake I grew up being told like I couldn't eat the dinner table unless I eat all my greens without really understanding how beneficial they really are and when looking over my vitamin and mineral breakdown it was because of the slack of certain vegetables and fruits that some levels were low and I like obviously too much of anything is bad but I am more cautious to make sure I include like spinach in the morning with my eggs and making to make sure I receive my daily dose of vitamin E which was something I was missing and something so simple just like sitting outside every day for 30 minutes and receiving vitamin D I'm just now more cautious of things that's great thank you so much okay Natalie did what you learn in class about physical activity and energy balance help you with maintaining your activity level during this quarantine yeah I'd say definitely this helps we often hear people like say that they're scared of calories and they view it more in negative light but this course let me view in a more positive light as it's really just energy that gives your body the fuel it needs and that the foods we put in our body they improve our performance with our various activities so for example with the physical activity I really learned how exercising just a few times a week even by just walking can make such a huge difference overall on my body my health my mentality and just my outlook on things and it's made me especially in quarantine focus more on maintaining my physical and mental health through walking and I even like changed my parents lifestyles and my siblings as well because they started to exercise more like already talking about with food like the people around you can really impact the way you eat food and I feel that exercise the same way when you're surrounded by people that exercise or even do it as simple as going for a walk that really helps the way other people feel motivated to go and in my own house specifically like people especially my ancestors have had issues with cardiovascular health high cholesterol weight and like other cognitive capabilities and walking something as simple as a few times a week for 30 to 40 minutes can really have an overall impact on your health in a positive way and just by knowing from the course what the tips and tricks that I learned and it went into my family is definitely going to make a positive difference in the long run great thank you and what do you think your diet would have been different if you were not restricted to home yeah I would say my diet would definitely be different if I was in Italy I already like when I when I was going to Italy I was like I'm gonna gain 20 pounds it's basic we're all gonna eat pizza gelato pasta all the good stuff the carbohydrate heavy foods so when I came home I was about the same it was only there for a month so I was about the same weight as when I left so I expected that but when I got home I noticed a difference between how I was eating here versus what versus at school when I cook for myself since we're cooking as a family in my house we all eat together at dinner time we often make big portions and I find myself overeating a lot and eat and not like ignoring my satiety signals saying that I'm that I'm sorry the the fullness signals that I'm full and I just keep going and going because I see so much and we put so much on our plate because my mom usually scoops it and serves it to me and my sisters versus where it's school when I cook for myself I just make sure that I'm hitting all the essential nutrients it like it's a cohesive meal but it's making sure I'm hitting everything and I make just enough for dinner and enough for a lunch portion the next day so I don't have to cook so I make sure it stops that I have enough for the next day so I definitely notice that that's a difficult difference because I have such a higher caloric intake here because we have plenty for days of leftovers so I'm just mindlessly eating more so than I would be if I wasn't restricted to home but and like they say that oh when you're eating at home like the meme before that Miss Dowdy showed where like the person was saying eating at home is supposed to make you lose weight but then it's myth because everyone's constantly binge eating or just snacking all the time which is so difficult because like you were saying before my work station is literally downstairs on the kitchen island with my sister so we're constantly surrounded by food someone's cooking something I smell that smells kind of good I want to snack on that too right now so it's definitely been difficult during quarantine being home okay well thank you so much both of you we really appreciate that and it seems like you got a lot of really good information from the nutrition class that makes me very happy you too thank you thank you we did um get a few questions when um folks registered so I'm going to ask to all ask our educators those questions um at this time uh the first one have you ever considered going vegan why or why not I'll take that one um so vegan has become a lot in I think the past 10 years it's really kind of growing in popularity if you go into the grocery store you'll see every type of non-dairy milk that's available so there's a lot more alternatives and there's a lot more health benefits that we've been noticing when I talk about with students and we talk about going vegan I really try to promote kind of slowly moving into that direction if that something that you're interested in I don't recommend using it for a weight loss regimen just because there are so many ways you can do vegan eating wrong if you think about it there's so many foods that are unhealthy that are vegan so one would be like french fries if you think about french fries those are something that is naturally vegan but if you're eating that in an excess amount because you're trying to avoid eating red meat it really doesn't balance itself out in that sense so really trying to go more of a flexitarian route and kind of trying to choose less meat every day so a lot of times in the dining hall for students and faculty and staff on mondays we do a meatless monday so it's really about choosing less meat so you have all of that control is put into your hand so you have the control of how much meat you want to put on your plate how much animal products you want to do so kind of gives you the choice to be more of a flexitarian and if maybe that's the day that you really want to bulk up on fruits and vegetables that's kind of the healthier way and the more balanced to really find that balance in there and with going vegan there's some nutrients that you really want to make sure that you're getting into your body one would be iron and b12 so those are two of the vitamins that are not in a lot of plant foods and if the absorption rate of it is a little bit lower so really trying to find the balance in different mixing and matching different foods to maybe to make sure that you can absorb a lot of the nutrients in there and then I think there is a little bit of misconception on this so really not trying to go the most restrictive way that you can go vegan but really trying to find that balance in your lifestyle where maybe you want to do it just for more animal reasons and animal rights or maybe you want to do it for more of a health conscious reason to really trying to find the balance in there and yeah vegan when you eat vegan you're eating a lot more fruits and vegetables um you're getting at full a lot fiber faster just because there's a higher amount of fiber in there and you're getting a lot more vitamins and nutrients so doing it kind of that way and using plant-based proteins such as beans and legumes and nuts those all have protein and fat and a lot of vitamins and nutrients so you're really getting a nice overall balance versus going kind of in the other direction there's a lot more processed vegan foods now so really trying to find the balance between the two if that's the route that you wanted to go thank you Mackenzie and I think related to that um the next question is do you find it hard to maintain a stricter diet what advice would you have for someone struggling to adapt their diet to a healthier lifestyle I really try to find the bits and pieces that you want to focus on um so strict diets first of all diets don't work um they're not lasting you'll do it for a little bit and then kind of go back to your old ways so really trying to find a balance in there and it maybe it's you look at your overall diet and you kind of look at the amount of foods that you're eating different food groups and you notice that oh my fruits and vegetable intake is is really low so that might be just one goal to kind of have is this week I'm just going to try to have three cups of vegetables and two cups of fruit servings of fruit so really trying to find the balance and what's missing in your diet is really a better way to go than kind of going on a restricting note and taking out different food groups because a lot of times then you're going to be missing a lot of the nutrients and vitamins that those food groups offer you so really trying to find the balance in there okay and um after that as well what is the healthiest food to eat there's there's no there's no food that is one above all in my opinion it's really looking at your diet and doing a diet analysis which I thought was great that the students had the opportunity to look at what they were eating and kind of analyze all that information and really figure out what what food are you missing from your diet maybe it's you're not getting enough dairy in there maybe it's you're not getting enough vitamin D or calcium so really kind of trying to focus on what foods you're missing and really trying to increase those fruits and vegetables because that's where all of the vitamins and minerals the phytonutrients the antioxidants are kind of going to be and those are going to help with your immune system so really trying to add those foods into your diet and not trying to find that magical food that's going to kind of solve all your problems right thank you kenzie um next question can you please discuss your thoughts on gluten dairy and sugar being inflammatory if having inflammation in your system could make you more susceptible to getting sick like with COVID-19 and I'll take that question so um it's really kind of uh probably a four-part question so the first being gluten as far as gluten gluten does increase inflammation in individuals who have celiac disease as well as those that are gluten sensitive however um there are no studies that um indicate an increase in inflammation in healthy individuals with that said there really have been no well-defined studies to investigate it so we don't really I guess the answer to that is we don't really know as far as dairy dairy actually has been shown to decrease inflammation and uh that was in many many articles so as far as sugar there really was nothing specific as far as sugar and inflammation but we do know that increasing uh calorie consumption and eating a lot of added sugars and refined carbohydrates it's empty calories it does result in weight gain and therefore it causes insulin resistance and we do know that insulin insulin resistance increases inflammation um and then the last part of that question is uh can inflammation make you more susceptible to disease or COVID and I did not know that off the top of my head so I did a little literary research on that and really I did not find any definitive answer to that I don't think anybody um really knows the answer to that question inflammation um we know that COVID-19 is characterized by an inflammatory response but whether or not information is caused by it that's inconclusive I can say that exercise is known to be an anti-inflammatory effect thank you Janet I have another question um can you suggest good breakfast options for my picky non-egg eating carb and processed food loving college age sun so I can take a stab at that so there are actually lots of great options for breakfast that are healthy that don't involve eggs so a couple of ideas you know when you think of eggs for breakfast you're looking for a protein source right and eggs are a great protein source but there are so many others for one breakfast doesn't have to be traditional health breakfast foods they could be um traditionally dinner foods or lunch foods so a left leftovers from dinner could be breakfast a chicken sandwich could be breakfast it doesn't need to be a stir fry why not if if your college age son would would like that kind of thing for breakfast that's perfectly acceptable um but some other options for protein sources you know nuts um or nut butters so peanut butter on a whole on whole grain toast might be a nice option or uh yogurt is another good one especially greek yogurt that's low in added sugar so you could get a plain yogurt and add your own um sweetener um and try to keep it you know on the lower side um maybe topped with some nuts topped with a little whole grain granola or something like that um oatmeal is a good choice again as long as it's not loaded with added sugars like some of those um packets the instant packets are um fruit of course is another good option um also even breakfast cereals which you know can they get a bad rep and they can be not so great because they are heavily processed and a lot of them have a lot of added sugars um but there are a lot of healthy choices out there um and one idea one thing that i've done myself you know when i was pregnant many years ago um i had this intense craving for frosted flakes had to have frosted flakes every day and it went against everything i stood for to eat frosted flakes but what i did was i come i combined frosted flakes with some total cereal so it would be half frosted flakes half total and therefore i'm getting still getting the flavor of the frosted flakes but i'm cutting the sugar in half because i'm diluting it with an unsweetened cereal i'm adding in whole grains and fibers so it's more filling again less added sugar less empty calories you know you come add some milk to that and now you've got another source of protein and some of the nutrients that come with dairy and that's a complete breakfast um another thought if you know if either you or your son are interested in baking um so you know daniella talked about how baking if you if you're baking lots of desserts that can lead you down a path of maybe not making the best choices but there are so many healthy option healthy recipes out there and they're so easy to find now um and a lot of them i i find the best healthy recipes i'm finding that are baked goods tend to be breakfast items like pancakes muffins banana bread um so i think daniella banana bread was one of the things that you mentioned but banana bread is one of my favorite things to make a healthy version of because when you have the bananas in there they add a natural sweetness and they add moisture so you don't need a lot of extra fat from butter or even oil or a lot of added sugar so you can find really good recipes out there and for something like that something like banana breads or or muffins you can make a big batch and then freeze them they freeze really well and then you take them out one at a time they defrost really quickly or you can heat them up and it's a nice quick quick breakfast and can have a lot of nutritious ingredients in them so those are just some thoughts oh no thank you cam um we did get two questions on the chat i'm gonna uh the first one is um what is your opinion of intermittent fasting do either of you have a an opinion i'll let you have a stab at it if you'd like okay um i've done counseling for intermittent fasting it's really kind of trying to figure out there's so many options for intermittent fasting um so you can do it by the hours of the day you can do it by the days of the week so it's really trying to fit what kind of works well with your schedule and your lifestyle i found that counseling patients it's really easier to do the hours um and also is something that isn't a long-term diet it's one of those kind of things to kind of get your body regulated into that mode and it's really on a case-by-case basis so it's not something that i recommend for athletes or older adults or anyone suffering from any other chronic diseases so it's really on a case-by-case basis on how you're going to implement intermittent fasting what's going to work for your lifestyle and if you have any other existing conditions i usually don't ever recommend it okay thank you kenzie and one more um some people say to avoid fruit because of high levels of sugar what are your thoughts i'll take that one thanks janet okay so um there's two different kinds of sugar there's simple sugar and then there's complex sugars and um they are not created equal um fruit has many benefits it has a lot of um vitamins minerals it has fiber and it's it's not the same as eating it's not the same type of sugar that would be from a simple sugar or a candy bar which spikes your blood sugar very quickly and then drops very quickly with the complex carbohydrates and the fiber your blood sugar levels raise gradually and then drop gradually so i am always a proponent to eat lots of fruits and vegetables thank you janet um thank you all this was wonderful i want to thank our educators our students for such an informative and relevant relevant presentation it was absolutely outstanding thank you thank you um i know we've been able to take away many techniques insights and strategies for not only our current environment but for the future as well and it's been a pleasure for me to work with and to get to know all of you so i thank you for your time your knowledge and your support i really appreciate this was great um on um on the page today or on on the screen today is um for our folks who are registered and uh joined us today go to www.fairfield.edu backslash alumni events to learn about other online experiences um that the university is offering um thank you for thank you for joining today i hope to see you all in the future very very soon in person but until then be well and stay safe thank you thank you all thank you thanks everyone bye pat great thank you thank you bye pat bye