The arms look OK here if you ask me. This or another photo might accompany a news article I’m having published in the NAMI blog online either this summer or in the fall.

I took my Top 10 Fitness Motivation Tips and expanded it into a news article to pitch to NAMI. The article will be published in the NAMI blog online.

Here now I want to suggest hiring a nutritionist to be on your treatment team. I’m going to hire a nutrition pro to help me this summer.

In the 1990s I employed an M.D. who had a private practice in health and nutrition to help me lose weight. I saw her at most five times through those years. Yet having seen her was the stepping stone to taking action on my own to have better health.

At a Left of the Dial book talk I recommended this M.D. to a father whose daughter struggles with atypical-drug weight gain. That’s why I champion hiring a nutritionist to be on your treatment team.

This M.D. wrote on her prescription pad the RDAs of fiber, protein, and calcium I was supposed to get. She gave me handouts like a sheet that listed sources of calcium and the amounts of calcium in each serving. She examined my food journal I kept to record what I ate every day for two weeks.

Keeping a food journal is the first step in tracking what you eat to see how you can change your behavior. Enlisting a professional to help you can also benefit you in the long-term even if you see this person for only a few sessions.

The ironic yet true thing is that if you train intense at the gym like I do and are active elsewhere you might need to eat more food as fuel. Which is not to say eat any food–eat more protein and more healthful food to fuel your body everyday.

The response was quick–NAMI responded in 24 hours to tell me they’re going to use my news article. I’ll give readers a link to this article here when it appears on the NAMI blog.