Making Healthy Changes One Baby Step at a Time

My main objective in talking with nutrition patients at Heartland Health Centers every day is to help them make small changes and set achievable goals that will help them lead a healthier lifestyle. I've found that it almost always has to do with sugar. Drinking fewer sugary beverages, putting less sugar in coffee and oatmeal, and being aware of the copious amounts of sugar that is unnecessarily added to 80% of the food items in the average grocery store. Most people are aware that there is sugar in beverages such as soda, and that it is not very good for them. However, I found through my experiences that people are unaware just how much sugar is in the other foods they are eating and how truly detrimental it is to their health.

When I started my training in nutrition at the beginning of the service term, I came into it thinking that I knew a lot about nutrition and how to be healthy. However, the training that the Heartland Health Centers AmeriCorps members went through proved to be indispensable. Dr. Freedman taught us how sugar can hide in many different forms but is still processed the same way in the body. And no matter what form of sugar you are consuming, excess sugar gets turned into fat by the pancreas. Additionally, Michael Pollan's book'In Defense of Food" was eye-opening to me. It not only taught me what I needed to know about good and bad fats, but it showed me a very simple way to teach patients how to eat healthier: eat real food. I frequently tell my patients that anything they make at home is healthier than what they eat at a restaurant or fast food chain. However, this is easier said than done for many of my patients. Due to time constraints, location barriers, and the false perception that it is more expensive, fresh fruits and vegetables are normally not the cornerstone to my average patient's diet. Because of this, telling patients to just eat smoothies and salads is not at all theoretical. But with our trainings in harm reduction and motivational interviewing, we have learned how to help patients make one or two healthy changes per session. We give our patients the tools to be motivated to make changes for themselves. I get excited when my patients tell me that they still eat at McDonald's but they have cut out drinking cranberry juice every day and lost a few pounds. Or they took my advice and tried quinoa and actually liked it.

I wish I could get all my patients to stop eating fast food and make their food themselves, but I now understand just how hard it is. There are systematic injustices in society that are very difficult to overcome. Sticking to small, measurable changes and teaching patients that they should think of this as a healthy lifestyle instead of a temporary'diet" is how I will continue trying to help as many people as I can in my role as a Health Promoter this service term.

This blog post was written by NHC Chicago 2016-17 member Ellie Port.

Ellie is a Health Promoter at Heartland Health Centers - Uplift and Wilson.