Nutrition and health expert Joy Bauer, one of the nation’s leading health authorities, knows a thing or two about aging with vitality. On a recent episode of The Kim Gravel Show, she shared practical tips for doing just that, including how to grow old with “oomph and vigor” by developing the right mindset, setting realistic goals, reading food labels like a nutritionist, and satisfying cravings with healthier choices.
Kim summarized Joy’s approach to better health: “We don’t have to sacrifice our health,” Kim said, and “we don’t have to sacrifice our love of food.”
Joy said her mission is to deliver all the comfort foods we love and crave, but in a “joyful, healthified manner.”
For many adults, gaining weight can have additional health effects. So, losing weight and aging with vitality go hand in hand.
The bottom line: achieving more energy, a more positive mindset, and better overall health can be simple and fulfilling—and it doesn’t have to be hard.
Here are some of her favorite tips for aging well without the sacrifice:
When it comes to health and weight loss, define your why.
For many, weight loss is at the top of the to-do list when it comes to a health plan because that extra weight affects so many other things. But unless your attitude is right, you may continue to struggle.
“Losing weight and keeping it off is fifty percent attitude,” Joy said. “Following a health plan is not rocket science. We know what we should be eating and what we shouldn’t be eating. But in order to feel motivated and to have continuous inspiration, your head has to be in the game.”
Kim said that’s exactly how she was finally able to lose the weight she did—because she had made up her mind that she was done trying and ready to finally do it.
“You’re the living proof,” Joy said. “I’m going to tell you, out of the billions, tens of thousands of people I’ve worked with, nothing started and stuck until their head was in the game—and for the right reasons.”
“The best thing everybody could do is take a pen to paper and figure out what is your reason.”
For example, someone may choose to get healthy because they have breast cancer in their family and want to do everything they can to avoid it. Someone might want to be comfortable in their own skin, or get on the floor to play with their kids or grandkids. Your reason may change from time to time, and that’s okay!
Once you know your reason, write it down. Put it on Post-It Notes, on your bathroom vanity, on the refrigerator—"all the places you see it front and center over and over again, because that is your driving force for getting to the finish line. It is a powerful, powerful motivator.”
Shift your mindset for better mental health—and results.
We hear often about shifting our mindset—but sometimes actually doing it can feel mysterious or tricky.
Joy offered a couple of tips for making the shift:
- Find your pain point. Are you frustrated because you don’t feel comfortable in your skin? Are you sick of opening the closet and seeing all the beautiful clothes you can’t wear? Are you frustrated because your doctor prescribed statins because you have high cholesterol?
“There are all of these red flags that are bringing you to a place where you would feel better and have more energy and think more clearly and be more comfortable if you were to lose weight.” - Break bigger goals into smaller, achievable goals. “I love the big goals,” Joy said, “but they are overwhelming.”
Joy recommends not putting a number on your weight loss, but if you must, break it down into five- or ten-pound intervals. “Those small amounts add up quickly. All of a sudden, what started out as five pounds and eight pounds and twelve pounds and twenty pounds, and suddenly you’ve hit the hundred-pound mark.” Same with exercise goals or those related to eating (see details below).
Consider Joy’s tips for goal setting.
Set smaller, shorter-term goals for small wins and a psychological boost. “Everyone should have their big goals,” Joy said. “But it is the smaller weekly goals that will keep you on the straight and narrow.”
Small wins “are going to be your continuous fuel to keep going and eventually hit your big goal.”
Joy recommends putting pen to paper or using a spreadsheet to make a weekly goal (or two), and keep track.
The goals might be something like, “Every day I’m going to walk for 30 minutes, or every day as a snack, I’m going to have a handful of nuts or a piece of fresh fruit.”
“I would love if everybody would say [a goal like] ‘Every week I’m going to make at least two of Joy’s new healthy recipes.’ It doesn’t matter what it is, but set those weekly goals. If you’re extra motivated, make them daily goals. They are additive and they are going to pay off huge.”
Joy said she’s all about adding something in instead of taking something out. With that in mind …
Incorporate a produce item, specifically vegetables if you can, into every meal.
Vegetables are loaded with the good stuff: vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, and fiber, “so they keep us running on all cylinders and reduce the risk of all sorts of disease states.”
Also, “Vegetables are high in volume and low in calories, and they fill us up instead of filling us out.”
Consider these tips for incorporating veggies at each meal:
- If you’re making eggs in the morning, chop up a tomato, mushrooms, and/or onion, and add them into the pan and scramble it all up.
- With lunch, make a gorgeous rainbow salad.
- If you make a sandwich, lift up that top layer of bread and do more than “lame lettuce leaves.” Add thin-sliced cucumbers, red onion, or roasted peppers. Make the vegetables as fat as the meat on the sandwich.
- As a lunch side dish, add crunchy baby carrots, bell pepper sticks, or sugar snap peas.
- For dinner, do sheet pans of roasted vegetables.
- Consider a dinner stir fry on the skillet.
- Make frittatas with tons of veggies.
“If you incorporate a produce item, specifically vegetables, into all your meals,” Joy said, “I’m telling you—you will be adding flavor, you will be adding nutrition, but it’s going to help you lose weight.”
Consider healthier versions of your favorite foods, or foods you see on videos or commercials.
Food is everywhere. Many of us watch shorter-form videos on social media, and food is big! Use your expanding knowledge of healthier choices as an opportunity to build those delicious recipes in a healthier way.
Joy’s cookbooks feature just that. She makes buffalo-style chicken tenders for more protein, or buffalo-style veggies for a healthier way to satisfy that craving. She makes a version of Snickers candy with dates, peanut butter, peanuts, and melted semi-sweet chocolate.
The result: added energy and vitality while you lose weight and satisfy your cravings.
Read the nutrition labels.
When you’re considering what you eat, it’s not just about your weight. It’s also about what’s going to give you the fuel to do the things you love to do—even as you age.
“Most of us know what is healthy and what is not healthy,” Joy said. “When you know something should be healthy and you’re not one hundred percent sure and you’re comparing brands, you want to flip it over. You first want to look at the ingredient list. You want to see things that are recognizable.”
The shorter the list, the better. If there are a lot of “Frankenstein” ingredients, it’s probably not the best thing for you. Also, the order in which the label lists ingredients is by weight. You don’t want to see less nutritious items first (white flour, sugar, high fructose corn syrup).
“In a perfect world, [the first ingredient] will be oats or whole wheat flour or fresh fruit and vegetables.”
Check the serving size, which you’ll find at the top of the nutrition label. Keep in mind that all the nutrition information listed on that label is per serving. So if the container has two servings, and you consume the whole container, you’re getting two times every element listed (calories, sugar, fiber, protein—all of it).
Pay special attention to calories and saturated fat and added sugar. For both of those elements, Joy said, “The lower, the better.”
“We don’t care about the total fat. We don’t care about the unsaturated fat, because we now know that heart-healthy unsaturated fat is actually good for you. It helps clean the pipes, it helps make things taste good, it helps keep our blood sugars steady. Saturated fat is a different story. That’s the artery-clogging type of fat.”
Ice cream and baked goods can often be high in saturated fat.
Added sugar has its own line on the nutrition label. While some natural sugar can be healthy, such as that in dairy or fruit, food with less added sugar is healthier.
Sodium, also known as salt, is another important element to look at, Joy said. Salt draws water into our arteries, which increases the volume of fluid in our arteries, which increases the pressure in our blood vessels. So the lower, the salt, Joy said, the better we’re eating.
Learn about the new weight-loss drugs, and talk with a doctor about whether they may be right for you. Losing weight can help you improve several other aspects of your health.
First, know that weight-loss drugs don’t replace the energy and effort people should put in when it comes to making the right choices, Joy said. “You still want to have energizing fuel that you nourish your body with so that you thrive.”
Weight-loss drugs “are not going to be the end all, be all, but they are incredibly helpful, and I think they could be life changing for people,” Joy said. “They’re revolutionary. A lot of people are food addicts and compulsive overeaters, and they’re walking around for years … with so much noise in their head. And what [these drugs] do is sort of ease that noise and allow people to make food less of a focus.”
Adopt a ninety-ten food philosophy.
“I eat pizza, I eat ice cream,” Joy said. “I have my cookies, I drink my wine … I don’t think anybody needs an all-or-nothing approach. So ninety-ten is how I raised my kids. Ninety-ten is how I live my life. It could be day to day. It could be week to week, however you want to define that. But I also think it removes the deprivational piece. It just allows you to feel like nothing is your last sort of splurge meal of your life.”
Just get started.
Finally, Joy said: “I say this boldly from an amazing amount of truth behind the statement: It is never ever too early or too late to start taking care of your health and having it pay off magnificently.”
Whether you’re starting your kids early or entering your seventies, eighties, or nineties, the changes Joy recommends can help you feel significantly better than you ever have.
Learn more about Joy and her health tips and recipes at www.joybauer.com or follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
Joy Bauer, MS, RDN, CDN, is one of the nation’s leading health authorities. Widely recognized as the nutrition and healthy lifestyle expert on NBC’s TODAY Show, Joy has become a trusted source for millions of people looking to live their best and healthiest life. She is a #1 New York Times bestselling author with 14 bestselling books to her credit.
The Kim Gravel Show is a top women’s lifestyle podcast where Kim shares her message of confidence and encouragement with a side of laughter and fun. The show features inspiring, topical conversations with thought leaders, CEOs, and celebrities tailored to give listeners the insight they need to help them discover their purpose, find their confidence, and love who they are. On each episode Kim tackles the topics that women care about in a way that will make you laugh, make you think, and help you see your life in a new, more positive way.
The Kim Gravel Show is a celebration of the stories that shape us. It's about laughing together and not taking ourselves too seriously. It's about the wisdom we've gathered and the hardships we've overcome. It's about looking at the woman you see in the mirror and remembering that she is beautiful inside and out. This is a show about remembering that no matter what you’ve been through you can love who you are right now.
Y’all, life is hard, but we can do it together.
