March is National Nutrition Month® and is a great time of the year to explore more ways about improving dietary lifestyle choices, incorporating physical activity into your life, and having a better relationship with food. Whatever you decide, do it for YOU. Selflessness has been boasted since childhood- when it comes to food and lifestyle choices, however, your health is your wealth. Only when you are at your best can you provide your best to your family, friends, and loved ones. Here at The-Sage, we try to provide useful, accurate nutrition-related information based on current research to counter balance the abundance of misinformation that exists in the media (and therefore in our minds) today.

People want fast results. We live such a fast paced world, we want everything now. Remember that your body is a living organism and does not respond as quickly as we would like, especially with diet. When it does, we are putting our body in stress. Stress can cause a bunch of hormones and reactions in the body to go awry. On the outside, you lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks. "It worked," you think. Eventually, you gain all the weight back and then some. Discouraged, you try another fad diet, lose some weight, and gain it back. The problem is that the body loses lean body mass or fluid, not fat. Lean body mass helps keep our bodies protected from infection, sickness, and damage. Fluid shifts in our bodies all the time, which could result in a ±5 pound weight difference. This is what has inspired me to write The Slice Plan: An Integrative Approach to a Healthy Lifestyle and a Better You (www.the-sage.org/thesliceplan).

Remember that the tried & true trick for healthy living is not extreme weight loss from promotional diets. It is not formed from a diet created in the Paleolithic age. It does not come in a bottle in the form of a "cleanse." It is not a pill, a shake, a juice, or a strict meal plan. It is enjoying an abundance of real foods, including tons of fruits and vegetables. Real does not mean fast, frozen, or boxed foods. You have to prepare real food. The-Sage gives you recipes to do this, with easy step-by-step instructions. We may not give you the fast results you crave, we give you real balanced information you can use to begin to make healthy lifestyle choices and eliminate any uneasiness you may have about certain foods. Have your cake, French fries, and junk food and eat it too… but not too much. Sounds contradictory, right? That’s because there is no one steadfast rule for eating. Just enjoy it. Enjoy fruits, vegetables, nuts, yogurt, beans, and water (lots of water). If you happen to eat a few slices of pizza with friends on Friday night, your body will not malfunction. It may even thank you. We hope you find thanks in yourself for embarking on a journey of healthy living, and know we at The Sage are always here to help, whether it be a Conversation, an informative News article, a tasty Recipe, or an instructional Video.

Happy Eating!