 Hi everyone, my name is Caitlyn. I'm a dietitian in the Stolar Infusion and Greenbomb Outpatient Cancer Center. It's such a pleasure to be here. I apologize, I'm still recovering from Dana's to talk a little bit. Definitely hits home, I'm sure, for everyone here, and it was truly wonderful to hear her story. No matter how many times I hear it, it still hits me right here, and it's so wonderful to share this day with her and with all of you. It really is. So I am going to talk a little bit today about eating healthy and really getting yourself on track to eat healthy. So our focus today, as Dr. Miller said, is really being well and living well beyond cancer. So wherever you are in your journey, in your treatment, post-treatment, recently diagnosed, nutrition plays such a key role in all of those steps along your journey. So our focus is going to be a little bit about ways to stay motivated. I know a lot of us out there, we've tried every diet in the book, we've read, we've watched, we've done tons of research on our own. And it really comes down to some of the bare basics. We know that it's important to eat lots of colorful fruits and vegetables and choose whole grains and plenty of fiber, plenty of water. But the tricky part sometimes isn't knowing what to do, it's knowing how to do it and really how to stay motivated. So that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. So these are the top ten ways to get excited about eating healthy and to stay excited. So hopefully you'll leave here with some ideas for how to get yourself on the right track. So the first tip is make it a family affair. It's really important, we talk a lot about community and fellowship. It's so important to get your family, your friends, or a loved one involved in eating healthy. It's not something that you can do on your own without having some motivation. So making sure that you do reach out and get the family involved. Pick a night or several nights of the week when you have a sit-down meal at the table. Turn off the TV, put the cell phones away and really focus on family mealtime. Make sure that you involve others in picking recipes and finding the ingredients. Take the family to the grocery store, really get their hands dirty, get everyone involved. Sometimes it's fun to change the environment. So if you're getting tired of the same old, change the environment, make it fun. Have a theme, you know, get a cultural theme or a picnic day in the living room. Make it fun, have some candles, change the lighting, have something playing in the background. The next tip is get inspired. Sometimes we run low on inspiration and we get tired of the same old grilled chicken and roasted vegetables, right? So look for ways to get inspired. When you're in the grocery store or at the library, flip through magazines just to look at different pictures. Maybe hop on Pinterest, you had a Pinterest account. Does anyone here have a Pinterest account? It's a great place to just flip through and find tons of inspiration for healthy recipes. The library is a great place to borrow cookbooks. You can also, a lot of libraries will do ebooks as well. So if you have a Kindle, you can also get recipe books on there. And hop online. These are just some of my favorite websites. So the USDA has a fantastic website called What's Cooking. And they have tons of recipes. You can even pick based on your past medical history and what disease states you might be struggling with if you need to follow low sodium or diabetic and things of that nature. Also, NIH.gov, their healthy eating website is fabulous, eatright.org. And that's the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. And then the American Heart Association, heart.org. Another really fun thing that's available to us now are these services like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh. Has anyone tried those? Yeah, they're a ton of fun. And even if you're not familiar with cooking or you're just getting started, it can be a great way to get inspired. They basically send you a box or a bag of different ingredients. And a lot of times they're ingredients that you might not be familiar with. So it gives you a chance to play around, experiment, and get excited. My next tip is start familiar. So a lot of us, I think, get overwhelmed. You know, we watch these cooking shows and we see they're roasting duck and doing all kinds of crazy things. But you don't need to start there. Start familiar. So start with your favorite family recipes and then just make a couple tweaks. That's my favorite thing to do. So these are just some examples. I'm not going to go through all of them, but like mac and cheese, right? We all know good old comforting mac and cheese. Try your family recipe, but cut the butter in half and use low-fat cheese and low-fat milk instead of cream. Try whole wheat macaroni or do half and half whole wheat and regular. So just little tweaks like that and, lo and behold, you have a healthy meal. Another example is for a healthy pizza, just use a whole wheat pita or whole wheat tortilla. Throw on some low-fat cheese and some chopped vegetables and you can even pop it right in the microwave. So some really easy ways to eat healthy, but starting with things that you are comfortable with. Alright, my next tip is spice things up. So a lot of times we get bored, we get tired of the same old. It's really important to explore new flavors, especially if you are trying to do, say, more of a plant-based diet or, you know, stepping outside your usual chickens and fish and moving more towards beans, lentils, things like that. It's really important to try different spices. So these are some of my favorite spice spices from all around the world. And what you can do, one of my favorite things to do is make your own spice blend. Has anyone ever made their own spice blend? Nice. So it's one of my favorite things to do. Most of these spices you already have in your cupboard, you just pull out a few, mix them together, and then you have a Mediterranean spice blend or a Greek spice blend, Middle Eastern Moroccan. And suddenly you're cooking all sorts of flavors from around the world. It makes it really fun. It makes it interesting for a family to try. You might get some weird faces, but the more times they try it, the more times they're exposed to it, they'll wind up enjoying it. My next tip is to get your hands dirty. It helps to really start farm to table right in your home. So even if you live in an apartment or just have a balcony or a window sill, try starting a little herb garden. There are a lot of plants that will grow in different climates or even if you have full shade. So things like arugula, beets, broccoli will grow even in shade. Herbs tend to grow well indoor, certain herbs that are a little bit hardier. So basil, rosemary, thyme, oregano are a great place to start if you're just starting an herb garden on your window sill. And if you don't have space, that's not a problem either. So they now have tons of community gardens all over, so within the city and outside of the city. If you hop on the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension, you can get your own little plot of land for free. It's pretty awesome. You can also check out the Baltimore Free Farm and the Department of Rec and Parks. So through all those organizations, you can get your own plot of land and start your own garden. You could even do it with a neighbor or pair up with a friend. My next tip is look local. So just as there are these community gardens available, there's so many resources right at your fingertips. So think about looking for a local farmer's market. A lot of farmer's markets are actually year round. So even in the fall or the winter when you feel like you might not be finding the best produce in the grocery store, check out your farmer's market. They tend to have a lot of great options. A lot of times they're offered at reduced costs as well. There's a couple of really neat programs that you might not be familiar with in Baltimore. Healthy grocery bags. This is something that there's a couple options. So there's Gather Baltimore. And then there's our very own UMMC mobile market, which takes place right on the Midtown campus. And both locations will offer you a bag of beautiful produce. It's like seven or eight pounds worth and it's for eight bucks or less. So it's really a wonderful way to get your produce for an inexpensive cost and a good variety. So I know a lot of times cost can be a reason why we don't choose fresh produce. So definitely hop in, hop online or look for your local farmer's market or check out one of these mobile markets. My next tip for staying motivated. It does help to continue growing your experience, extending your learning. So hit the classroom. There are so many free classes available. A lot of us forget about the library. They have tons of resources. Your local library will have, like I said, cookbooks, ebooks, but also will run events. Nature centers. So if any of you are in Howard County, the Robinson Nature Center does tons of really neat events about growing, farming, things like that. Also the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension. They have tons of free classes on farming as well or growing or starting a garden. And local farms as well as the Department of Parks and Parks will have really nice resources for you as well. And maybe for a very special occasion, a birthday or something like that, you could even look into a class that you have to pay for. So in Baltimore there are locations where you can learn how to cook different types of cuisine. It's a really fun date night or special night out with friends. My next tip. Fill nutrition into your workout. So really important to make eating healthy part of your lifestyle. That's what it's about. We don't want this to be an afterthought. We want it to become natural to you, part of your everyday. So make it part of your workout. You will notice the difference. If you eat healthy before your workout, if you have a healthy snack post workout, you're going to feel so much better. You'll be able to take those extra steps. You'll be able to do those extra stretches, those extra movements and make strides towards your goals. So it's really important to do both together, not just one without the other. One of the most common questions I get is, what am I supposed to eat after a workout? So the best thing to do is really to do a really light snack. If your next meal isn't for several hours, have it consist of a protein and a whole grain or a fruit with a protein. So pair it up. A good example is a piece of whole wheat toast with some peanut butter or an apple with some almond butter or an apple with a slice of cheese. My next tip. Pay attention. Again, a lot of times we fall off track. We start eating healthier. We get on track after the New Year, right? And then by March it's like, ah, yeah, that hamburger's looking pretty good. So make sure you pay attention. January 1st comes around and you're on the right track. How do you feel? Look at yourself in the mirror. Is your hair looking better? Is your skin glowing? Are you feeling stronger? Are you having more energy during your work day? Are you having more energy during your work out? Is your pain different? My favorite thing is keeping track. I always encourage people to keep a journal. Track how you're eating, how you're working out, and how you feel. So I like to give it a score, like score of one to ten, score of one to five, but how am I feeling that day? And what did I do differently? So it really helps to make that connection and it just gives you that motivation. And any time you fall off track, think about that. Flip back to your journal and say, you know what? My pain was a four that day and I ate this wonderful salad and that's probably why. So just pay attention to how you feel and anytime you fall off track, go back to that journal. And finally, know it is okay to fail. It happens. We all fall off track. We all hit bumps in the road but we need to get back up again. So nutrition will always be there for you. It's something that you have to tuck far away if you have a rough time or you have a rough experience. You can get right back to it. It's always out there. Like I said, get your family involved, get a friend involved, and get yourself right back up again. Make sure that you do acknowledge your wins. It's not about the numbers. We a lot of times get really focused on weight loss or a weight goal. It's not what it's about. It's about how you feel. It's about making these changes and rewarding yourself for those changes, feeling good knowing that you've made a difference for yourself. Above all else, eating healthy should be fun. So I hope some of these tips help you to have fun with eating healthy and stay on track. Thank you guys so much for listening.