<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"September has always seemed the perfect month for reinvention and resolutions, the real start of the new year, as novelist Jennifer Weiner wrote in this month&amp;#039;s Woman&amp;#039;s Day. And I couldn&amp;#039;t agree more. Once summer unofficially ends on Labor Day and school starts, I begin to make a list of all the things I&amp;#039;d like to work on for the fall. Topping my list is rethinking my food choices. It&amp;#039;s not only that I&amp;#039;ve been reading Michael Pollan&amp;#039;s, The Omnivore&amp;#039;s Dilemma in its entirety and am stunned anew about how unconscious I&amp;#039;ve been about where my food comes from, but also, I see this time in my life as a turning point where what I eat will set the stage for healthy aging \u2013 or not. At my annual physical last year, my internist said everything looked great, &amp;quot;But,&amp;quot; she added, &amp;quot;the only thing I see you needing to pay attention to is osteoporosis.&amp;quot; I was shocked. But I fit all the high-risk categories: a family history of this bone-thinning disease (my mother has it); female; thin and small framed; caucasian; older; and lastly, I&amp;#039;m perimenopausal with lowered estrogen levels and erratic periods. Oh, and I drink a lot of caffeine, which, as Julia Edelman MD writes, &amp;quot;is an insult to healthy bones.&amp;quot; She also states that women go through bone thinning starting about age 35, but go through a second, rapid bone loss postmenopause, particularly in the first five years, where we can lose up to 20% of our bone loss. Grim, isn&amp;#039;t it? I know I don&amp;#039;t get the recommended 1000-1200 milligrams of calcium in part because I don&amp;#039;t like swallowing the horse pills that the supplements seem to come in. But this month, as I begin to look at the things I want to change \u2014 incorporating more calcium-rich foods, eating more consciously, locally, wisely, and healthily \u2014 I hope my new food resolutions will carry me well into the new year and into a new, healthier phase of life as well. Do you have September resolutions readers? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/a44830/them-bones-1995/?src=shelter_footer>