The Overworked Person’s Guide to Better Nutrition: Simple Steps YOU Can Take to Eat Well, Reduce Stress, and Improve Your Health.

It has been awhile since my last post—too long! I’m excited to tell you about a new series you’ll be seeing on Neily on Nutrition. With so many amazing colleagues authoring books—what better way to share than through my blog.

Kristine James

Together with Kristine James, a dietetic student at Kansas State University, we’ll be featuring books written by registered dietitian nutritionists focused on helping you live a healthier lifestyle.

I first chose registered dietitian nutritionist Jill Weisenberger for Kristine to interview because Jill has not one, but three books. Her third book was recently released 21 Things You Need to Know About Diabetes and Your Heart but it’s actually Jill’s second book I’m most interested in, The Overworked Person’s Guide to Better Nutrition: Simple Steps YOU Can Take to Eat Well, Reduce Stress, and Improve Your Health

Here’s Kristine’s interview!

Author Jill Weisenberger

Jill Weisenberger, MS, RDN, CDE, FAND

Meet Jill Weisenberger, MS, RDN, CDE, FAND. Jill is an internationally recognized nutrition and diabetes expert with more than two decades experience. Her practical approach to eating well includes foods that both taste good and are good for you. Jill is a consultant to the food industry, a frequent guest on radio and television and regularly contributes articles to a variety of magazines and websites, including Diabetic Living, Kids Eat Right and The DX. She is a two-time graduate of the University of Florida and a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the American Association of Diabetes Educators and the American Diabetes Association. Find Jill at jillweisenberger.com.

The book we’re highlighting is The Overworked Person’s Guide to Better Nutrition: Simple Steps YOU Can Take to Eat Well, Reduce Stress, and Improve Your Health.

Kristine: How has your professional experience as a registered dietitian nutritionist and working with patients given you the motivation to write The Overworked Person’s Guide to Better Nutrition?

Common obstacles

Jill: The most common obstacles to healthy eating that I see in my practice are being too busy, too overwhelmed and too tired. So often my patients and clients tell me their problem is that they’re lazy. This is almost never the case though because these same people are successful in their work and relationships. They couldn’t do that if they were lazy. Either they just haven’t found a way to make healthful eating a priority or they lack the necessary skills and strategies.

The Overworked Person’s Guide to Better Nutrition gets down to basics. The mini nutrition lessons are just the right amount of information for busy people, and the strategies are designed to help people get more done or be more effective in less time.

Kristine: What are two or three main challenges to good nutrition overworked people face?

Jill: I think we all face most of the same obstacles to healthful eating and living, but overworked people have issues with time and energy. The book offers suggestions for easy ways to improve nutrition and monitor portions.

Kristine: What advice does your book offer busy people who hope to eat well to support optimal health?

Jill: The Overworked Person’s Guide starts with strategies for organizing the kitchen and the menu. Organization helps most people with most goals. But even if readers are so busy they don’t have time to make changes in their kitchen and they’re not interested in meal planning, they can skip to the second part of the book.

In Part 2, there are 50 health-boosting strategies to make improvements in diet, activity, stress and sleep. Each one can be read in just a few minutes. There’s emphasis on what to do and how to do it, so the reader can jump right in and make immediate changes.

Kristine: Your book is loaded with such useful advice in bite-size pieces. What are some of your favorite tips?

No need to completely overhaul diet! Simple changes

Jill: I want my readers to know they don’t have to completely overhaul their diets to make improvements. Just adding a serving or two of fruits and vegetables each day is a big plus. Taking a five minute walk or getting up from the desk for a couple of minutes several times a day have meaningful health benefits.

The book is loaded with these types of tips—some take a few minutes, some take no time at all. For example, allowing crushed garlic to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before cooking allows the cancer fighters to stabilize. The cancer-fighting compounds would be destroyed if the garlic clove was crushed and immediately thrown in a hot pot.

Another simple tip is to pack 5 different types of fruit for work on Mondays, so you have a different wholesome snack each afternoon of the work week. The focus in the book is about planning ahead and setting up the environment in ways that encourage healthy habits.

Kristine: We’d love to feature a recipe or idea for breakfast and/or dinner. Do you have a quick and easy protein-powered breakfast idea—something with 25-30 grams of protein? Also if you have a suggestion for a simple quick easy dinner—not necessarily for a family but for someone living alone or an empty-nester type—we would like to include it.

Jill: I am hooked on cottage cheese (disclosure: I consult to Daisy cottage cheese) with fruit and muesli for breakfast. The low-fat cottage cheese is protein-packed (Neily note: and 13 grams protein per 1/2 cup!), the fruit is loaded with antioxidants and other health-boosters, and the muesli contains uncooked oats, which provide resistant starch. Resistant starch has health benefits. It can improve insulin resistance, lower cholesterol levels and help keep colon cells healthy. This is my typical breakfast.

For a quick dinner, sometimes I’ll mix reduced-fat cheddar cheese with cans of vegetarian refried beans, kidney beans tomatoes and chilies. Just heat that up and wrap with a tortilla.

Shrimp is also quick to cook, so I always have some in my freezer. Plus, I can do wonders with canned tuna or salmon. It comes down to having a plan and a backup plan and following through with the right pantry staples.

Kristine: Neily’s philosophy is not based on superfoods that many pseudo-nutritionists swear by, but more on super foods that make up a super diet. For example Neily can’t live without some things like milk and if she were to be deserted on an island that would be one thing she would want (of course, on Neily’s deserted island, she’d magically have electricity to keep it cold). If you had access to only 3-5 things what would your choices be?