Fitness/Nutrition Excuses? TV Host Nadeen Boman Quashes Them All!

This Mom: The first excuse has to do with not having enough time for nutrition: being too rushed to make healthy lunches in the mornings, no time to make several trips to the grocery store for fresh produce, or to wash, peel, chop the healthy things that we should be eating. Any tips there?

Nadeen Boman: We don’t have time if we don’t plan for things, so if you can choose one day a week where you buy all your groceries, and then you come home and prepare them and get everything ready for the week ahead, then there’s no excuse not to do it that way.

This Mom: The same “time” excuse came up a lot in terms of exercise as well: the kids are involved in extracurricular activities in the evenings, moms are up early and late doing chores, some have work commitments at night…how do we squeeze in the exercise we need?

Nadeen Boman: You know, we don’t need a lot of time to do exercise, and it doesn’t have to be that you go to the gym and work out for half an hour on the treadmill and then do some weights. You can do just a walk around a block, and if you’re extra keen find a bench to do some pushups or stepups, or do some lunge walking. It really is just about staying active and moving around and not so much having to specifically work muscles, especially for people who can’t fit that time in. The other thing is, they do offer half an hour training sessions now that you can book with a personal trainer, so if you do have the funds, that’s a great way to utilize just a half hour, to specifically get in there and do it. That way you know you’re covering all your body parts, you’re getting a balanced workout in, and then you don’t have the alignment issues that come from not spending time making sure you’re getting stretched and getting your muscles worked in a balanced way.

This Mom: Several of my readers talked about taste, and the fact that sugary snacks just seem to taste better (especially because of cravings) and healthy things aren’t always as appealing. What are some good-tasting foods that are still good for us?

Nadeen Boman: It’s kind of a myth that healthy food doesn’t taste good because we’ve become addicted to sugar. {I swear she was looking right at me through the phone line when she said this}. We crave it because we haven’t gone through that withdrawal to get off it. {Did she say “withdrawal”? If this is a ‘blog interview intervention’ someone is going to pay! I am now looking around the room frantically.}

If you have a nice fresh salad with all kinds of different vegetables, some fresh chicken, shrimp or salmon in there, and throw on some strawberries or blueberries and pine nuts, that’s a delicious-tasting concoction. There’s no trick to it; it’s a mental thing more than anything where we think it doesn’t taste good, but try some different things out. My parents had never tried strawberries on their salad. I just introduced them to that the other day. We have this misconception in our mind, but until we try something I think we have to be open-minded about it.

This Mom: What about snacks? I know I’m an M and M’s kind of snacker where I like little pieces of something I can munch on for a while…are there any healthy alternatives to those types of snacks?

Nadeen Boman: Edamame beans are good, or baby cucumbers, snap peas, baby carrots, cherry tomatoes, radishes…for protein, nuts are a great option as long as they’re raw and not roasted, and again, one handful is a serving size; you don’t want to go overboard as they are high in calories and fat. Popcorn can be a good snack too, especially if it’s a choice between chips or popcorn, and as long as you’re not soaking it in butter or salt.

This Mom: I know you’d like to talk about Controlex. Can you speak to how it works, and how safe it is?

Nadeen Boman: Controlex is a natural, plant-based product, made of three ingredients: glucomannan, pepsin, and yerba mate. These ingredients work together to moderate hunger, so they’re not suppressing your hunger, just making you feel fuller. It’s done with water. The glucomannan absorbs 100 times its weight in water, and when we’re overweight it’s due to overeating, and our stomach size has been stretched out, so with Controlex, our stomach gets filled but not stretched. After we follow the regime for a while and reach our ideal weight, we can go off it without the risk of gaining weight back because we’ve developed healthy habits and our stomach has shrunk back down to size.

{This sounds way too good to be true…if any of you decides to try it, I would love to hear your feedback.}

This Mom: And it’s a safe product?

Nadeen Boman: It’s safe, with no known side effects. And it’s not a miracle pill. It really works slowly and in a healthy way in conjunction with healthy eating and exercise. You can get it at Walmart for around $35, and there’s a deal right now where the first 500 people to like the product on Facebook receive a free three-day trial, and they really can see if it works for them.

This Mom: Last question: my readers and I all share “momhood” in common. Any tips for incorporating the kids into our exercise routines?

Nadeen Boman: That’s an interesting question, because they’ve done some research and there are some programs set up for resistance training with kids as early as five years of age, so we really can start doing workouts with our kids, and just going out to the park and doing lunges or line drills, playing tag…what kid doesn’t like to do that, and the moms get the cardio in there. You can make fitness into a game with your kids, just doing it on the fly and chasing them around, and doing pushups and chinups and situps.