New York City, If you Can Get Fit Here, You’ll Get Fit Anywhere

In New York City, there are over 45,000 registered restaurants, bakeries, catering companies, food trucks, specialty food bars, cafes and more. Bagels, hot dogs, Boerewors rol, samosas, haggis (yes, haggis), cou cou with flying fish, arepas de choclo, saltah – a world of food awaits us in the city that belongs to the world.

Everything, literally everything, is available (oftentimes for takeout).

Everything is now.

Everything moves at a sonic-speed pace that matches the average New Yorker’s caloric intake at a hot dog cart.

Over 8.4 million people live together in this amazing hub of ethnicity, culture, tradition, religion, food, exercise (or not), all juggling impossibly complicated lives and even more complicated information about how to live our lives better.

According to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 34% of New Yorkers are overweight, 22% are obese. 40% of elementary school students are overweight. 1 in 5 kindergarteners are obese; 1 in 4 Head Start children are obese. Over 700,000 New Yorkers have diabetes (a third of whom don’t even know they have it).

And as our waistlines grow, so, too, do the lists of diets, fads, and get-fit-quick gimmicks. Everybody has become an expert at the best way to … fill-in-the-blank. Everybody is a certified nutritionist and personal trainer. Or, worse yet, we rely on information that’s been watered down and generalized, because Jane said so at soul cycle.

The relationships we’ve developed with food, exercise, and our health have become entangled in misinformation, social expectation, and unhealthy attitudes and habits.

I’m here to clear the air and provide my readers with accurate, up-to-date information they can count on because your health matters.

Your life matters.

Eating should be a pleasurable experience. We are made to enjoy food. Our tongues have 2,000 – 4,000 taste buds for the sole purpose of experiencing the gift of flavor. Salt, sweet, bitter, sour, umami … pleasure comes from the experience of seeing, smelling and tasting food. But many people get pleasure from eating as a way of soothing, reward, or distraction. Or they just don’t pay attention to what or how much they are eating. That’s when problems start to happen with our weight and health.

Learning about positive, functional ways to make nutrition, good eating, and health part of anyone’s lifestyle is what I do. 8.4 million people can’t apply a cookie-cutter fix to fitness. But we can all count on a reliable source to provide us with knowledge that comes from years of experience, study, and plain old common sense.

As a New York City-based registered dietitian, nutritionist and personal trainer, with over twenty years of experience, you can count on this blog as a source of dependable, medically-backed, useful, and applicable information. I’ll be providing you with recipes, book reviews, book recommendations, breathing and stretching exercises, and more how-to ways to navigate the world of nutrition and fitness in New York City. The best nutritionist advice should come from someone with qualifications and experience to back it. That’s what I offer!