Welcome to the Studio Sewickley Blog!

This blog will mainly focus on healthy lifestyle behaviors and both trendy/ research based ideas on how to improve your overall wellness as well as the well-being of others around you. 

Everyone starts out the year with New Year’s resolutions, but life is busy and those amazing goals may get lost along the way. Sustaining positive change will require self-confidence and support from the community around you and the people closest to you. Make it your personal pledge this year to not only change your life for the better but also to educate your friends and family about positive changes they can make as well. Everyone can take part in improving the health of local and global communities - join in the invigorating and meaningful challenge!! Healthy communities make happy communities; every person matters. Participation no matter how small makes a difference in improving the health of the nation!

This year is an exciting time to learn more about your body and give your body the respect it deserves. Being healthy goes far beyond simply looking the way you want; rather wellness embodies mental, physical and emotional aspects. A new year offers the opportunity to be embrace wellness and be healthy for personal reasons and for your loved ones. 

One way to accept the call to action to lead a healthier life and educate yourself and others on wellness is understanding the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. These five overarching Guidelines, shown on the right, encourage healthy eating patterns and help individuals shift their eating habits to healthier options. The Guidelines also reflect that healthy eating is not a rigid set of foods and portions, rather dietary patterns should be adaptable to certain cultures and traditional preferences. For instance, in order to stick to the appropriate calorie limit for the day depending on one’s age, gender and height, consuming nutrient-rich foods from all food groups will help encourage a healthy diet. 

To help meet these guidelines, key recommendations were created in tandem. The Recommendations list what a healthy eating patterns includes, which are listed below:

- A variety of vegetables from all of the sub-groups—dark green, red and orange, legumes (beans and peas), starchy, and other

- Fruits, especially whole fruits

- Grains, at least half of which are whole grains

- Fat-free or low-fat dairy, including milk, yogurt, cheese, and/or fortified soy beverages

- A variety of protein foods, including seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, legumes (beans and peas), and nuts, seeds, and soy products

Oils

In addition to these recommendations, a healthy eating pattern should limit saturated fats and trans fats, added sugars, and sodium. For those that are more quantitative in nature, below are key recommendations with numbers:

- Consume less than 10% of calories per day from added sugars

- Consume less than 10% of calories per day from saturated fats

- Cosume less than 2,300 milligrams (mg) per day of sodium

- If alcohol is consumed, it should be consumed in moderation—up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men

Finally, of course nutrition needs to be accompanied with physical activity… that’s for another blog post in the future! For more information on the Dietary Guidelines, visit www.health.gov where the entire report is available for viewing pleasure. Cheers to a year full of health education and promotion!! Use these guidelines to help with the February 28 day challenge coming up and go out and spread the call to action to be healthy!

Office of Disease Prevention Health Promotion. 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines. Retrieved from https://health.gov/dietaryguidelines/2015/guidelines/executive-summary/