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Now is the time to include fresh, natural foods in every meal: Grocery stores and farmers’ markets are overflowing with corn, peaches, peppers, summer squash and tomatoes at their peak of flavor and freshness. These and other natural foods contain the micronutrients your body needs to fight disease and create energy.

Researchers are constantly discovering new ways that whole foods work with your body. Here’s research showing how white button mushrooms enhance the activity of the body’s immune system. And another study reveals the unique way that cranberries sweep bacteria from the urinary tract. Doctors at three community health centers in Massachusetts believe so strongly in the transformative power of natural foods that they’re distributing $1-a-day coupons to be redeemed at local farmer’s markets—one newspaper dubbed the fruits and veggies “farm-e-ceuticals.” Apogee’s integrative health advisor, Woodson Merrell, M.D., agrees: “I don’t care how good food scientists are at their job, it is not possible to design a processed food with the complex antioxidant capabilities of a plant,” he writes.

Inspired to make the best choice for your plate today? It’s hard not to be! The APOGEE Cafe always has natural, whole foods choices to choose from. Or, stock your own: Put your zip code in this web page to find a farmer’s market or farmstand close to you.

Related links:
Kale and Swiss Chard: Easy, Tasty and Nutritious
Seasonal Eating: Spaghetti Squash
Almonds: Health by the Handful

by Jen Pollack
APOGEE Instructor

As a Power Pilates instructor I developed amazing tools to help clients reach their potential. Power Pilates offers such clarity and understanding towards how to truly progress clients. I completed the program with tremendous confidence in teaching clients at all levels. In addition, as a Power Pilates instructor I am inspired by the teacher trainers to continually study and add to the wealth of knowledge I’ve developed from the certification program.

Learn more at Career Night in White Plains on Thursday, August 5.
See the continuing education classes we’ll be offering at APOGEE starting this month.

by Jennifer Vagios, RD
APOGEE’s Dietitian

Have you ever said, “I’m going eat well, starting today!” Of course that’s an admirable goal: Your health, energy and weight will benefit from a diet of whole, natural, unprocessed foods. But such a sweeping, all-or-nothing plan is hard to achieve.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s important to have a target to motivate you and provide a focus. But goals without practical steps may set you up for failure. I help my clients at APOGEE by making sure their goals are SMART –that is, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. And once you’ve reached your goal (and I promise you will), you can build on it.  Here’s how to make sure your plan is SMART.

Specific
Your goal is specific if you can ask yourself: what will happen, where and when. For example,  “I will eat a healthful breakfast of fruit and yogurt at home four days this week,” and  “I will bring a salad to work for lunch two days this week” are specific. A non-specific goal is, “I will start eating better lunches.”  The what is the food, the where is at home or at work and the when is four times this week.

Measureable
Your goal is measurable if you can ask yourself: How will I know I’ve reached this goal? The simplest way to quantify your goal is to include a number: Three lunch salads a week or four breakfasts. Then, choose a timeframe: “I will eat a healthful breakfast of fruit and yogurt at home four days this week.” If you achieve the goal, extend the timeframe—for two weeks or until the end of the month, for example.

Attainable
Make your goals small-scale and you’ll achieve success. For example, it’s tough to go from never eating breakfast at home to always eating breakfast at home. Instead, try the new behavior two days a week. Succeed at that, and within a month you’ll be more likely to be practicing the new behavior most days of the week.

Timely
A goal should have a time frame—so there is sense of urgency to complete it—and a beginning and an end. “This week, I’m going to eat a salad at lunch on Monday, Wednesday and Friday,” is timely and specific. Plus, success will come quickly when you have an end date in the not-too-distant future.

Realistic
Be certain that you are willing and able to make the changes you need to in order to achieve your goal. It’s not realistic to say you will never eat cake or chips again! Instead, look at your life: If you’re eating cake every night now, perhaps you can cut back to cake once a week and fruit on other nights. If you’re snacking on corn chips every day, perhaps you can switch to crunchy vegetables on weeknights and corn chips on the weekend. Being realistic sets you up for success.

Good luck being SMART! Let us know how this style of goal-setting works for you by posting a comment here or on our Facebook page.

Heart pounding, sweat producing, calorie burning, fat busting, exhausting, invigorating: Spinning is all these things and more. No wonder the Spinning® classes at APOGEE Bedford Hills are among the most popular.

If you’ve spent the winter on a Spin bike, though, cycling on a road bike can be a bit of a shock. Yes, your legs are pushing the pedals, but that’s about all that a Spin bike and a road bike have in common. APOGEE Spin instructor Jennnifer Cromie, an experienced bike racer and national class biathlete (run-bike-run) has advice for Spin class devotees who want to ride on the road.

Be aware! When you’re out of the studio and on the road, you have to be mindful of what’s going on around you. Keep your eyes on the road and not on your cycling computer or heart rate monitor. Gaze about 50 yards ahead of you and be mindful of traffic signs and lights, potholes, and other road hazards. No matter what the road is like, you should ride a predictable, straight line.

Use the proper gear. In the Spin studio you can ride a high gear with no repercussions. But on the road, you should select a gear you can spin at 80 to 100 revolutions per minute (rpm’s) on the flats and 60 to 80 rpms on the hills. Your Spinning instructor can help you learn what these spin rates feel like.

Practice handling your bike. Even if you’ve been Spinning with clip-in pedals, don’t be discouraged if you have a low-speed fall when you clip in and out of your pedals on the road. “It’s a rite of passage!” says Jennifer. “Understand that this is not a permanent problem.” After a few rides, you’ll be clipping in and out like a pro.

To learn more about road cycling in Bedford Hills and Westchester County, join Jennifer Cromie and other instructors at workshop “Cycling From Studio to Street,” on Monday, June 21 at APOGEE  Bedford Hills. Learn more.

Here is a collection of recent health news you can use.  We’re focusing on whole-body health. Click on the links to read more about each topic.

Give your spirits a lift: Now that the days are long, it’s easy to spend time outdoors—and here’s a reason why you should: Just five minutes of exercise in a natural setting boosts your mood and sense of personal well-being. Go for a walk, jog, bike ride or run in a park or on a tree-lined road. Even working in a garden counts—so go outside and give your spirits a lift!

The gym beats walking: If fitness is your goal, you’ll get the biggest returns from time spent at the gym compared to walking. A study compared a daily pedometer walking program with four-day a week supervised gym visits and found that, after six months, the gym goers had greater improvements in fitness. The catch: More of the walkers met their goal of walking 10,000 steps a day—92 percent. Only 77 percent of the gym goers kept to the program. The gym workout was harder; the gym goers lowered their lower blood pressure and improved their ability to turn oxygen into energy. Both groups had a significant reduction in body mass, waist circumference, and resting heart rate.

Strength fights diabetes: If you’re making dietary changes to control or stave off diabetes, you might want to add bran—and muscle. Researchers found that diabetic women who ate a diet rich in bran-containing foods had a 35 percent lower risk of death over the 26 years of their study. Bran is found in whole wheat, oats, rye, rice and other grains. Researchers also wondered if thinness alone could prevent diabetes—probably not, they learned. They found that people with low muscle mass had higher levels of insulin resistance than people who had greater muscle mass and strength–it didn’t matter if the subjects were overweight or thin. The conclusion: Dieting to be thin is not enough to prevent diabetes—you must exercise to maintain and build strong muscles, too!

Go ahead, go nuts: If you’re cutting back on the amount of processed meat you eat because cold cuts, bacon and other processed meats contribute to heart disease, consider replacing that animal protein with nuts. Researchers found nuts lower bad LDL cholesterol, reducing risk of heart disease. Eating just 2.4 ounces of nuts a day—of any kind—was enough for a healthy effect and the more nuts people ate, the greater the benefit.