All of us have experienced “good luck” and “bad luck” and have wondered why the universe singles out people and seemingly dispenses luck at random. But maybe there is an explanation that is actually founded on more science than the Law of Attraction hocus-pocus contained in “The Secret.”  Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied the luck of 400 people over 10 years and has come up with 4 basic principles that determine good luck and bad luck. You can download his e-book workbook which contains exercises to help you practice these principles at www.theluckfactor.com).

 Dr. Wiseman says:

“A few seconds of bad fortune can unravel years of striving, while a moment of good luck can lead to success and happiness. Luck has the power to transform the improbable into the possible; to make the difference between life and death, reward and ruin, happiness and despair. Research has revealed there are four main differences between the lives of lucky and unlucky people.”

Lucky people…

Create, notice and act upon chance opportunities
Use intuition to make successful decisions
Expect the best for the future
Transform bad luck into good fortune

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Southwest Air adopted a  ”customer of size policy” 25 years ago that requires passengers that cannot fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling.  If anyone has had to give up a portion of their seat on an airplane to a person whose fat hangs over into their seat on a long flight, they can appreciate the courage of Southwest to have such a policy in today’s politically correct world.

Director Kevin Smith was recently a victim of this policy and has “vowed never to fly Southwest again”.  Now if only we could get all the other airlines to adopt this policy we could ground Kevin forever.

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This from Dr. Oz, “If a 50-something man could have sex 700 times a year, the exercise and stress reduction would make him look and feel years younger. I wouldn’t recommend quitting your day job in order to hit that number—but what’s the harm in trying? The next time your loved one says she has a headache, tell her she’s literally killing you. It works for me.”

Dr. Oz has even developed an 8 times a week sex schedule to help you figure out how to work it in. 

To eamil this post to your significant other, click on the title and cut and paste the web address into your email…………. or email the author dennis@healthjag.com

Under the file, no good deed goes unpunished, Whole Foods CEO and Obama healthcare plan critic John Mackey has put his money where is mouth is. Whole Foods , one of the leading purveors of natural and organic food products, covers every employee who works more than 30 hours a week with a high deductible plan that doesn’t not cover pre-existing conditions until after one year of enrollment. The plan features a health saving account that employees can contribute to tax free that rolls over from year to year. In addition, he has instituted something called  Team Member Healthy Discount Incentive Program,  which offers employees additional discounts on groceries purchased at the chain. While all Whole Foods employees receive a 20 percent discount on groceries from the store, if they meet certain health related benchmarks, they can get a discount of up to 30 percent.  The catch is that there is an accountability provision and employees have to agree to be monitored to meet thresholds across four categories: blood pressure, cholesterol level, not smoking and body mass index (BMI). Mr. Mackey is getting all kinds of flack for this. People are calling him and his company paternalistic, unfair, and discriminatory against the overweight.

But if we are really serious in this country about healthcare reform, shouldn’t we be equally serious about healthy behavior reform?  With obesity as the single largest contributor to healthcare costs in our country, shouldn’t we be applauding companies that give employee incentives for healthy behavior? Last week I discussed this issue in Super Sized- My Story. And I was thrilled to see someone in this country taking the initiative to influence people in a positive way to engage in healthy behaviors that will help all of us. Thank you, Mr. Mackey!

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I am the poster boy for super-sizing. I grew up in the 1960’s when McDonald’s corporate plan was to put a store on every block. Yes, I am picking on McDonald’s,  but only because this was the fast food that I grew up with and the only fast food I really knew until I was an adult.  I remember the first McDonald’s in my neighborhood.  With its golden arches, glass enclosed lobby, and gleaming stainless steel counters, we thought an alien space ship had landed that served burgers, fries, sodas, and shakes. And actually that was ALL that McDonald’s served when it first opened; small, portion controlled hamburgers, small portion controlled fries and small sodas. McDonald’s celebrated their grand opening by putting a coupon in the local paper for a free milkshake. In those days everyone subscribed to the local daily paper, so my friend and I went door to door the next day and collected the previous days papers from our neighbors. We each downed a dozen free milkshakes and suffered an evening of severe stomach cramps. But in our minds unlimited milkshakes was worth the pain.

I was reflecting on this when I recently analyzed the McDonald’s menu for the drive-thru diet posts on this blog. In those days, a meal of a McDonald’s hamburger, small fry, and small coke ran 685 calories. Hardly a healthy meal, but manageable. Fast forward to 2009. Hardly anyone orders a McDonald’s hamburger  or a small fry anymore. That sandwich is considered so small that it is relegated to the children’s Happy Meal. And McDonald’s recently ran a promotion where the 32 ounce drink was 99 cents, which was actually less than the small size. In 2009 ,the typical average adult meal at McDonald’s consists of a Big Mac, large fry, and large coke, and comes in at a whopping 1,370 calories, exactly double my satisfying fast food treat from 1963. And although I am using McDonald’s as an example, it is only the prototypical example of all corporate fast food and sit down restaurants. The bottle of Coca-cola that I grew up with was 6.5 ounces. The average bottle that you purchase in a convenience store is between 20 and 32 ounces, a four fold increase.

Given these facts, it is actually amazing that only 1/3 of Americans are classified as obese and only 2/3 are overweight. It is popular for us to blame our obesity on stress eating, depression, or unhappiness. From my point of view our obesity is caused by our evolutionary craving for food that drove our hunter-gatherer ancestors to spend their entire existence looking for food, combined with our scientific ability to engineer artificial foods that satisfy our most basic cravings without the satiation that comes with nutrients. Add to that cocktail the unbelievable ability of humans to market to each other, and the unlimited (relatively speaking) ability of the average American to afford to purchase calories, and it’s actually amazing that obesity isn’t closer to 100%.

Although hunting for food with a gun is still practiced in parts of our country, the most common weapon for hunting now is the automobile.  We cruise the suburban savannah in our SUV’s, spotting our food sources grazing on the edges of the boulevard.  Our prey aren’t camoflaged by their surroundings, they invite us to hunt them with signs that brag about the billions and billions of their kind that have been downed before.  And there are no limits to the amount of our prey that we can take home. Our limits are our pocketbooks, and as obesity statistics show, money is not a limiting factor for calorie consumption.

So the question is, what human motivation is stronger than our evolutionary need to binge on food, stronger than the easy accessibility of calories, stronger than multi-billion dollar advertsiing budgets?  What motivates people to engage in a  healthy lifestyle in the face of all that is stacked against us? Are most of us doomed by our DNA controlled  propensity for instant gratification? Maybe not. The obesity rate in Japan is about 3.5% compared to over 30% in the U.S. The average citizen of Japan consumes over 200 caloires less per day than the average American. It seems to me that we have created a culture of unhealthy eating in our country. Over the last year, we have focused the debate in this country on our health care delivery system and costs. But the number one health care problem in this country is obesity. Obesity by itself is the source of the majority of our country’s health care costs. And this problem has gotten little attention from the government.  A few years ago, we declared a government sponsored “war on drugs”.  And although this war has not been successful, we have been fairly successful in indoctrinating our children in the dangers of drugs through the DARE school drug education programs.

Until we recognize that obesity is a severe national problem, as severe as cigarette smoking and drugs, we cannot begin the cultural change that is required for us to slim down.  For example, I have noticed that it is not politically correct to criticize people who are obese. In the 1960’s smoking was part of our culture. It was promoted through advertising and protected by the government. It would have been unthinkable to outlaw smoking in public places. Has the time finally come for us to treat obesity like cigarettes? It is a choice that turns into an addiction. It causes severe health problems, costs our country billions of dollars that we cannot afford, and if we don’t prevent our children from getting hooked, then they all become unhealthy obese adults.

I came to realize over a period of time that being fat made me less attractive, less able to do the active things I wanted to do, and was going to become more and more of a problem as I grew older.  But we are all fighting an uphill battle living in a culture that promotes obesity and doesn’t treat it for what it is. Until we can turn our culture around, each of us are fighting the battle as an army of one.

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A University of Pittsburgh study found that obese people have 8% less brain tissue than people of normal weight, and merely overweight people have 4% less brain tissue than people of normal weight. Obesity is classified as having a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 30 and above. Someone is overweight if their BMI falls within 25 and 30.

The researchers scanned the brains of 94 elderly people.  Although the test participants were elderly, they were all  cognitively normal. They were not afflicted by brain degenerating diseases such as Alzheimer or Parkinsons. According to Dr. Paul Thompson, a UCLA professor of neurology, just a 4% loss of brain tissue represents“severe” brain degeneration.

So not only can being fat affect your health, we now have evidence that if affects your intelligence.  Of course, we don’t know for sure if the deficiency in brain tissue caused people to be fat, or if the fat caused the loss in brain tissue.

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Wouldn’t it be great to get paid to lose weight? An innovative new website has created a system to do just that. Healthywage.com  has created a system which gets corporate sponsors to give a cash reward to obese users who during a specified time period move from an unhealthy to a healthy body mass index (BMI). (This typically translates into a weight loss of between 30 and 80 lb.) Members can either sign up for free – according to a company rep, the final deadline to enter the next 12-month challenge is Jan. 20 – and win $100 or “super-size” their weight-loss incentives by ”betting” some of their own money.  The website also has a plethora of weight loss tools to help its members reach their goals.

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According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention), obesity-related deaths in America have climbed to more than 300,000 a year,  SECOND ONLY TO TOBACCO RELATED DEATHS . Yet there are no warning requirements for high calorie, high fat food items. Shouldn’t there be a warning on that Big Mac that reads: WARNING, EATING A DIET HIGH IN FAST FOODS HAS BEEN SHOWN TO MAKE YOU FAT, UNATTRACTIVE AND LEAD TO PREMATURE DEATH!  Obsesity is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes, and a contributor to many types of cancer. Obesity in adults has increased by 60% within the past twenty years and obesity in children has tripled in the past thirty years. A staggering 33% of American adults are obese. 

The simple fact is that most of us sabotage our own health by poor eating and lifetstyle choices. Corporate America has capitalized on our evolutionized craving for high fat, high calorie foods by providing the ability to access a virtual unlimited menu of unhealthy, highly processed foods for $1 simply by rolling down the window (actually we don’t roll down windows anymore, we push the button, thus relieving our fingers of that strenuous, calorie burning task). I once drove 300 miles, and using cruise control was able to  severely limit any body movement and calorie burning, but was able to consume over 5,000 calories in less than 5 hours.

I have never smoked, but I suspect that my poor eating choices for much of my life have left my heart just as unhealthy as a lifelong smoker’s. My first resolution for the New Year: Be Conscious of Every Eating Choice that I Make Every Day.  Being conscious of each choice doesn’t guarantee a good choice. But it does make me say, “Yes, the satisfaction I am going to get from this Big Mac is worth more than life itself.” Sort of like shaming myself into being a healthier eater. 

I wish  you all a New Year full of healthy eating.

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After a short hiatus, HealthJag is back for the New Year! Join us and get your New Year off to a healthy start. Did you know that written New Year’s resolutions are four times more effective than non-written resolutions? Make your first New Year’s resolution to check out HealthJag every day. Write it down in your daily calendar or subscribe to our feed! Have a Happy and Healthy New Year!

With all the national debate over health care reform, I have a plan that will guarantee that all members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats, will unify to adopt a heatlh care reform plan that will appeal to all Americans.  Right now, members of Congress have very little personal incentive to reform health care, since they enjoy the benefits of one of the most liberal, comprehensive and inexpensive (to them) health care plans in the country. The solution for this is simple: Congress should have the same stake in the system as the average American. If every person in this country were to demand of their Congressional representatives and Senators, that they be declared ineligble for the Federal employee plan, then they would have to buy their healthcare in the “free market” like all self employed and unemployed Americans.  If the health care for Congress was removed, we would see Congress frantically working for a bipartisan solution.  All we have to do to make this happen is have every American write and call President Obama and their Congressional reps every single week until it is done. After all, we potentially have as much influence as the lobbyists for insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

I love brunch. Most people do it on Sunday, but there is no reason that it can’t be a 7 day a week affair if you have both the motive and opportunity to do the crime. Here are my top ten reasons for loving brunch:

1) Getting Up Late. Sleeping late on a weekend and then going to brunch at a restaurant (or even making it at home) always makes me feel like I am on vacation.

2) Eating Guilt Free. I justify my overindulgence at brunch by saying that I am really eating two meals and that therefore I can double my calorie quota. I have been known to make brunch the only meal of they day and actually triple my calorie quota.

3) Bloody Marys, Mimosas, Screwdrivers. You can drink before noon and no one gives you a second glance.

4) Omelet Bars. I feel good about myself when I pick out the healthy veggies and see them folded into my omelet.

5) Unlimited Bacon. This was actually my son’s favorite reason for brunch and I actually have to agree with him on this. Thanks, Michael.

6) Value.  In most towns outside of the major cities,  you can get a gourmet meal with champagne, seafood, a carving station, fancy desserts, and more for under $20.

7) Conversation. Some times its difficult to get your family and favorite friends together in one place for an extended conversation. If you feed them they will come.

Eggs Five Ways. I love eggs. I have actually had an omelet, scrambled eggs, eggs benedict, egg salad, and egg foo young at the same brunch.

9) Carving Station. Who doesn’t love a white suited man piling big hunks of hot roast beef, turkey, and ham on your plate?

10) Dessert Table. Need I say more?

I am going to shower now and wake up the family and see if anyone wants to go with me.

“Let’s Play Two!” was Hall of Fame Chicago Cub Ernie Banks catch phrase reflecting that he got so much joy from  playing baseball that he wanted to play a doubleheader every day. Did you know that the number one incentive given to police dogs in their training to master the tasks of sniffing out drugs or criminals is the incentvie to play ball? For dogs, the pleasure of play is a bigger motivator than food or sex.  Many of us have trouble keeping ourselves motivated to workout. Our workouts become a chore and drudgery. That’s because our workouts have ceased being part of our play. The most effective workout is the one that you can’t wait to get a chance to do again. You can make it part of the play in your life. Just find a physical activity that you really enjoy and do it regularly. Join a baseball or softball league, a bicycling group, train for a 5k or a 10k or even a marathon. Join a swim club……………….find a physical activity that you can be passionate about. You can take the work out of your workout!

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
- George Bernard Shaw

When I originally wrote this post back in July 2009, the entirety of Tiger’s workout regimen was not known. Now that we know his workouts were not limited to the driving range and the gym, his fitness is even more impressive. As it turns out, the Men’s Fitness magazine article cited in this post was a quid pro quo for not publishing info about his affair in a sister publication.  It is still informative, however.  His gym workout involves 2-3 hours of high intensity workouts and weight training 6 days a week.  But if you want to add 30 pounds of muscle (that’s right 30 pounds of muscle since he was a scrawny rookie on the PGA tour), that’s what you would have to do.  Men’s Fitness magazine gives the lowdown in this article excerpted at espn.com.

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Americans ingest hundreds of millions of tons of soy annually in their diet. If you are NOT a soy eater, think again. Read the labels on all the processed foods in your pantry. I guarantee that you will find soy added to many if not most of these products. The agricultural industry along with the multi-national companies that supply the consumer products food industry have conspired to slip soy into almost all of our processed foods. We have been sold on this “healthy” protein supplement, but the facts about soy are very disturbing and have not been publicized. Continue reading »

My father-in-law is 99 years old, which actually isn’t that old when you consider that he wasn’t even born yet when the Cubs last won a World Series. But you can imagine his reaction when he found out that the tag line to my blog was, “Because you only have 100 years to live”. For most of us,  a century of a healthy and vigorous life would be a terrific accomplishment. This video is one of my inspirations for this blog. I told my wife that I will update the tag line when I reach 99…

The French paradox is the observation over the centuries that even though the French consume a diet high in saturated fats, are crazy smokers, and Parisians are not known for their physical activity outside of the bedroom, they have a much lower incidence of coronary artery disease than Americans. The most recent explanation for this phenomenon is their consumption of red wine (although I don’t think we should discount the relationship of their bedroom activities to longevity ). Recently Dr. Oz, Oprah’s health guru, endorsed the dietary supplement resveratrol, the ingredient in red wine that is believed to be the source of these health benefits.  High doses of resveratrol have been linked to longevity and cancer prevention in species other than humans. Continue reading »

I used to try to cheat breakfast. Fueled by plenty of caffeine I would try to make it to lunch. The theory was that if I was trying to lose weight, if I could just make it to lunch, I would have saved all the calories for future use. The reality was that my low blood sugar would cause a throbbing headache, which would lower my productivity and my grouchiness would threaten everyone who came into contact with me until lunchtime. Continue reading »

Baseball.

It’s as simple as that. We now have a consensus that the home run records of Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were fueled by steroids, the ultimate nutritional supplement. We also know that marginal major league baseball players and 45 year old pitchers have been catapulted to MVP performance levels by steroids.

I am not suggesting that steroids are a good thing, only that they demonstrate that we know for sure that certain nutritional supplements do have a dramatic effect on your body’s performance AND your health. Most of us want to take advantage of the health benefits that nutritional supplements can provide. The biggest concern is the unregulated nature of the supplement market. There is no guarantee that what the label says about those pills is actually what’s inside those pills.  Nor are there guarantees about ingredients or impurities not listed on the label. We don’t know for sure that they are effective or that the negative effects don’t outweigh the positive. There are hundreds of unregulated supplements advertised on the internet and I am sure that most of them are either useless or harmful. Continue reading »

Two years ago my sedentary lifestyle and poor diet left me unable to effectively fight the everyday battles that life brings.  It had sapped my physical energy levels, drained my  intellectual energy levels and affected my personal relationships. I felt that if I had totally lost control of everything in my life, and didn’t know how to regain it.  Many of the self-help books and tips that I read told me that control over your life is an illusion anyway so you have to learn to accept this reality.  But for a control freak, that is not an acceptable answer. I know that I can’t control how the economy is affecting my life, and I can’t control the choices that other people make that affect me.  But as I thought about it, I came to realize that there are a few things in my life that I can control. I CAN control the choices I make each day of what to put into my mouth, and the choices I make about my daily activities, and the choices I make about what I am thinking. And these choices have a major impact on the quality of my life, in spite of the fact that the rest of the universe seems indifferent to my existence. So I chose to end my crying jag and begin something more productive: a HealthJag. Continue reading »