Cracking the Secret Language of Restaurant Menus

Eating at a restaurant can be a great way to enjoy some good food and even spend quality time with friends or family. Unfortunately, eating out can also pose a significant threat to your regular healthy eating habits. You don’t have to stop eating out or avoid certain restaurants to stick to your healthy eating habits! This is the third and final article in a series discussing the pitfalls of eating out. The first two articles discussed how to eat out without eating too much while still getting enough variety in your meals.

Eating out, by itself, is not necessarily what poses a health risk. More often, the threat is posed by eating behaviors and food choices made while eating out. Restaurant dishes may contain way too many Calories, too many carbohydrates, too much fat, too much salt, too much sugar, highly-processed ingredients, or not enough variety/nutrients. Additionally, some dishes that are presented as healthy or “lighter” options are not as nutrient-dense as you may think. One example of this is a salad that is primarily comprised of iceberg lettuce or has very few other healthier food items (other vegetables, fruits, lean protein) on it.

Looking For an Apple in the Barbeque Joint

Eating at a restaurant can be a great way to enjoy some good food and even spend quality time with friends or family. Unfortunately, eating out can also pose a significant threat to your regular healthy eating habits. You don’t have to stop eating out or avoid certain restaurants to stick to your healthy eating habits!  This is the second in a series of articles discussing the pitfalls of eating out. The first article discussed ways to avoid eating too much.

Even if you’re disciplined about making healthy food choices on a regular basis, it can still be challenging to maintain this habit when you go out to eat. One healthy strategy that can be particularly difficult to stick to when you’re at a restaurant is eating a balanced variety of food groups and nutrients.

How to Eat Out without Eating Too Much

Eating at a restaurant can be a great way to enjoy some good food and even spend quality time with friends or family. Unfortunately, eating out can also pose a significant threat to your regular healthy eating habits. This is the first in a series of articles discussing the pitfalls of eating out. You don’t have to stop eating out or avoid certain restaurants to stick to your healthy eating habits!

Many restaurants in the US serve exceedingly large portion sizes. This, in combination with a number of other psychosocial factors, leads most of us to overeat when we eat out. Last Thanksgiving, I published a guide to help you enjoy the holiday meal without over-doing it. While you may not be able to follow all of the tips provided in that guide, there is still some advice in that article that applies to eating out: you can’t always control the size of your dishes, portions served, or eating utensils, but you can control how much you consume by adapting several of the tips given here last November.

Fuel for Healing

Giving your body what it needs can keep you healthy, help you achieve or maintain your target weight, improve your physical and mental performance, and improve your mood. “Giving your body what it needs” can include resting from physical activity, staying hydrated, and eating nutritiously. Unfortunately, performing artists can have a difficult time integrating these healthy behaviors into their daily routine.

Rest and hydration guidelines have been presented previously, so this article focuses on the importance of nutrition on injury prevention and recovery.

4 Behaviors that Hurt Your Voice

Vocal health problems like hoarseness, fatigue of the voice, pain, and vocal cord lesions are caused by vocal abuse (using the voice in a way that damages your voice and vocal health) or vocal misuse (habitual vocal strain). While it’s easiest to identify and avoid isolated instances of vocal abuse (like screaming/yelling or cheering at a sporting event or concert), it may be more important for long-term vocal health to recognize and stop the vocal misuse that happens on a regular basis.

Four Things You Must Do While Carrying Something (or Someone)

This is the fifth and final article in a series examining low back pain in the performing arts. Previous articles examined the causes of low back pain, rules for safe lifting, proper lifting techniques in the performing arts, and the controversy surrounding using a lifting belt. This article discusses carrying, a common cause of low back pain.

Performers are frequently required to carry objects (instruments, props, equipment, parts of a costume) or even people. There are three steps in the process of carrying an object: lifting the object, moving while holding the object, and setting the object down. Safety measures while carrying weight are anchored in proper lifting mechanics, which maximize safety during the first and third steps of carrying. Since lifting technique has been discussed previously, this article focuses solely on actually carrying the object (the second step).

Foot Care for Dancers

Dancers face a host of potential foot injuries and related problems. These issues run the gamut from skin conditions and infections to muscle strains and fractures. Foot problems can be caused by old/worn out dance shoes, dancing barefoot, improperly-sized shoes, choreographic demands, hard or improperly-maintained dancing surfaces, poor nutrition, sweaty feet, and improper mechanics or alignment. Musculoskeletal foot injuries like plantar fasciitis, FHL tendinitis, and stress fractures have been discussed elsewhere on this site. This article will focus on preventing non-musculoskeletal conditions of the foot, including blisters, ingrown toenails, and skin or nail infections. Routinely taking care of your feet is one of the most important things you can do as a dancer as it helps avoid infection, pain, compensations or alterations in your technique, and injuries in other parts of your body (like your ankle, shins, knee, hip, and low back).

Yoga for Performing Artists...and staff! 6 Poses to Keep Stage Crew Bodies Happy

This is the last in a series of articles designed to help you identify a handful of yoga positions that will be most beneficial to your particular performance genre. This article focuses on stage crew. Previous articles have been written for marchers, dancers, and instrumentalists (not marching).

Practicing yoga offers performers many significant benefits, including lowering stress levels, promoting physical and mental relaxation, improving balance, and maintaining or improving flexibility. All of these things can help keep your immune system functioning optimally, maintain a healthy body weight, and reduce the likelihood of falls that can cause injuries. Additionally, regular yoga practice can improve body awareness, which can improve precision of movement, lower unnecessary muscular tension, and improve posture.

Injury Risk Factors for Musicians

Playing a musical instrument, like all activities in the performing arts, carries a certain amount of inherent risk of developing an injury. However, identifying the injury risk factors instrumentalists face isn’t always easy since nearly all injuries instrumentalists suffer are chronic injuries (also called “overuse injuries”). It’s much easier to identify risk factors for a traumatic injury, because these injuries are typically caused by a single incident (like a fall or collision), whereas chronic injuries are caused by a combination of a number of predisposing factors and events.

Lifting Belt Controversy: Should You Use One?

This is the fourth article in a series examining low back pain in the performing arts. Previous articles examined the causes of low back pain, rules for safe lifting, and proper lifting techniques in the performing arts. This article discusses a commonly-used piece of safety equipment: the lifting belt.

There are many types of lifting belts, also occasionally referred to as “back belts.” The lifting belts most commonly encountered in the performing arts and athletic worlds are specifically designed for athletic use. These belts are designed to support the lower back while minimizing the extent to which they interfere with body movement. Conversely, some back belts are intended for people with specific back injuries or for manual laborers to wear at work. These belts may have suspender-like supports or may be made of inflexible materials, like hard plastic, which make it harder to perform athletic movements while wearing these belts.

Industrial Lifting Belt

How Ergonomic Principles Can Improve Your Playing

Since the 1950s, the word “ergonomics” has been used to describe the study of humans and their interaction with objects in their lives. This field has focused on improving the design, manufacture, and arrangement of objects within a given (work) environment to make these locations and the actions performed in them safe, healthy, and comfortable. Instrumentalists can benefit greatly from modern ergonomics, as musical performance requires a very high amount of repetitive motions that can lead to injury.

Yoga for Performing Artists: 6 Relaxing Yoga Positions for Instrumentalists

This is the third article in a series designed to help you identify a handful of yoga positions that will be most beneficial to your particular performance genre. This article focuses on instrumentalists (not including marchers). The previous two articles were for marching band members and dancers. Check back for the series’ final article, focusing on stage crew.

Practicing yoga offers performers many significant benefits, including lowering stress levels, promoting physical and mental relaxation, improving balance, and maintaining or improving flexibility. All of these things can help keep your immune system functioning optimally, maintain a healthy body weight, and reduce the likelihood of falls that can cause injuries. Additionally, regular yoga practice can improve body awareness, which can improve precision of movement, improve aesthetic qualities of performance and movement, lower unnecessary muscular tension, and improve posture.

Ten Tips to Snack Smarter (and Healthier)

Snacking is a great way to keep your energy levels up between meals, stabilize your blood sugar, and make sure you’re getting all the nutrients and variety of foods your body needs. However, snacking on the wrong foods can derail dietary plans, lead to over-consumption of fats, sugars, or Calories, and interfere with adequately fueling your body. The following tips will help you make smarter snacking decisions so you can get the most fuel and nutrition out of your snacks.

Safe Lifting Techniques in the Performing Arts

This is the third article in a series examining low back pain in the performing arts.

Nearly all people experience some degree of low back pain at some point in their lives. In the performing arts, most cases of low back pain are strains and/or sprains. Usually, these injuries are caused by misuse and overuse of the low back’s tissues. Improper lifting technique is the most common culprit of low back pain, so following safety guidelines and using correct lifting mechanics can reduce the risk of suffering a low back injury.

A Cold or the Flu? Use These 8 Symptoms to Find Out

It’s the holiday season, but, unfortunately, it’s also cold and flu season. You can take steps to prevent getting a cold or the flu by washing your hands frequently with warm soapy water, avoiding contact with infected people and contaminated surfaces, and getting a flu vaccine. However, sometimes these steps aren’t enough.

Colds can happen at any time throughout the year, whereas flu outbreaks tend to be seasonal. In the United States, seasonal flu activity generally peaks between late December and early March. In order for the flu vaccine to be effective, it needs to be administered early enough for the body to react to it and produce protective antibodies before being exposed to the virus. These antibodies develop within two weeks of receiving a flu vaccine (so get your vaccine now, if you haven’t already!).

Ten Keys to Making it through Thanksgiving without Feeling More Stuffed than the Turkey

Thanksgiving is a great holiday to get together with family and friends and remember all of the great things and people we have in our lives. Unfortunately, it also has a reputation of offering way more food than anyone could possibly eat without exploding. Survive the multitude of heavy sides, savory entrees, and mouth-watering desserts by following the following tips.

Yoga for Performing Artists: 7 Ideal Poses for Dancers

This is the second article in a series designed to help you identify a handful of yoga positions that will be most beneficial to your particular performance genre. The first article was for marching band members.  This article focuses on dancers.  Check back for future articles for instrumentalists (not marching) and stage crew.

Practicing yoga offers performers many significant benefits, including lowering stress levels, promoting physical and mental relaxation, improving balance, and maintaining or improving flexibility. All of these things can help keep your immune system functioning optimally, maintain a healthy body weight, and reduce the likelihood of falls that can cause injuries. Additionally, regular yoga practice can improve body awareness, which can improve precision of movement, improve aesthetic qualities of performance and movement, lower unnecessary muscular tension, and improve posture.

10 Keys to Saving your Back...and Your Performing Career

This is the second article in a series examining low back pain and injury in the performing arts.

Nearly all people, active or otherwise, will experience back pain at some point in their lives. Most often, back pain is caused by a combination of poor posture and bad mechanics, specifically lifting technique. Adhering to the rules of lifting can save you a great deal of pain and disability – and may even keep you from missing rehearsals and performances due to back pain.

Your Guide to Pain Medicine

Pain is the most common reason people seek medical attention, so it’s no surprise that there are so many different medicines designed to reduce or eliminate pain. Pain signals are sent to the brain through the body’s nerves after pain receptors on the nerve endings have been activated by chemical, mechanical, or thermal damage to tissue cells. Medication and therapeutic treatments aimed at reducing pain work through a variety of mechanisms, including removing/limiting the irritants that contribute to pain, raising the threshold of the nerve endings to delay pain signal transmission (you have to be in more pain before your nerves decide that it’s important enough to tell your brain about it), or preventing or removing the swelling that increases mechanical pressure on nerve endings.

Pain medicine covers a wide range of types of medication, including counterirritants, local anesthetics, analgesics (narcotic and non-narcotic), anti-inflammatories (including steroid-based and non-steroid-based), and antipyretics. This article only addresses oral medication (pills) that is available over the counter (OTC) (as opposed to prescription medications), focusing primarily on analgesics and anti-inflammatories.

What to Look for on a Nutrition Label

Eating nutritious, well-balanced meals is important because the food you eat is your body’s fuel. Giving your body what it needs can keep you healthy, help you achieve or maintain your target weight, improve your physical and mental performance, and improve your mood. But eating well can be very challenging. There are many factors that can get in the way – cost, time available for meal preparation, food allergies and preferences, daily schedule – but one factor that prevents many people from eating as well as they’d like is a lack of awareness of how to use a food item’s nutrition label and ingredients list to help make informed decisions.

Interpreting nutrition labels and ingredients lists can be intimidating, but it is incredibly helpful when comparing similar foods or identifying the nutritional value of your current diet.