HealthyLife Articles

Tag: stop

  • What To Do If Clothing Catches Fire

    Home Safety

    Image of mother and daughter.

    Few things are more terrifying than having your clothes catch fire. Teach your children and everyone else in your family this simple, lifesaving technique, known as stop, drop, and roll.

    Stop. Your natural inclination may be to run. But motion only fans the flames.

    Drop. Get to the ground, cover your face with your hands, and keep your face as far from the flames as possible. (If a blanket, rug, or coat is handy, use it to smother the flames. But doing so should never delay stop, drop, and roll.)

    Roll. Roll back and forth, again and again, until the flames go out.

    A Year of Health Hints book by the American Institute for Preventive Medicine. www.HealthyLife.com. All rights reserved.

    © American Institute for Preventive Medicine

  • Feeling Full

    Healthylife® Weigh

    Part 6

    Man feeling full.

    Learn to better evaluate your fullness. It can take twenty minutes to start feeling physically full.

    1. Be satisfied in other ways. Enjoy the taste of food, the people you are with, or the place you are eating.

    2. Express gratitude for your food. This includes who prepared the food (it may be you!) and where it comes from.

    3. Drink a glass of water throughout the meal. This will help with digestion and feeling full.

    4. Make half your plate vegetables. It will take longer to eat these nutrient-dense foods.

    5. Keep consistent “food rules” like sitting at the table and drinking a glass of water with each meal or snack. This can be a built in “speed bump” for overeating. If you don’t want to sit at the table or drink water, you may not be physically hungry and emotional hunger is your trigger.

    6. When tracking your intake, also track your hunger-fullness using the scale to the right. Try to eat in the gray area (range 4-7). Avoid being too hungry or too full.

    The Hunger-Fullness Scale

    0: Empty

    1: Ravenous

    2: Over-hungry

    3: Hunger pangs

    4: Hunger awakens

    5: Neutral

    6: Just satisfied

    7: Completely satisfied

    8: Full

    9: Stuffed

    10: Sick

    7. Slow down. If you can, try to increase the time it takes you to finish your meal by 50%. If you currently finish dinner in 10 minutes, set a timer to stretch the meal out by 5 minutes-or longer!

    © American Institute for Preventive Medicine