Celebrity Interview with Nia Vardalos on healthy tweaking & American Girl

Nia currently lives with her family in New York where she continues her acting, screenwriting, directing and producing career while being a very busy mom. She’s found it more important than ever to maintain a balanced and healthy lifestyle for herself and her family. 

UrbanMoms had the opportunity to interview Nia, along with Dr. Duffy McKay, Vice-President of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs for the Council of Responsible Nutrition, live via Skype from New York about how movies, souvlaki, and how to maintain healthy lifestyle needs as moms. 

NIA: The bottom line is no one is looking to add to our lives. We are all looking for ways to keep organized. I found I was giving my daughter a multi-vitamin supplement and not taking care of myself. So, I partnered with LIFESUPPLEMENTED.ORG  because the simple truth is, they make it so easy. You just go to the website and there are so many ways!  First of all, the website is easy to navigate and there’s the My Wellness Scorecard. If you fill it out, you will realize “oh, wait I thought I was exercising enough” or “I thought I was eating more whole grains” but when asked to count them, “maybe I’m eating more white grains than I should”. So, it’s a really easy way to make a couple of tweaky changes in your life and suddenly you feel better and have more energy…to chase your kids!

NIA: Well, Dr. McKay and I are both parents but my quick tip is that I write it down in an old school day planer because it gives me IMMENSE satisfaction to cross it off when I’ve done it. So, I write everything down from when I drop  my daughter to school to taking my supplements, to my class, writing all day, my prep and all the things I have to do ..and then I cross it all off! That works for me!

Dr. McKay: I think what’s really important is to recognize that even the best laid plans sometimes don’t work out. We all try to eat our servings of vegetables and our servings of protein but sometimes we forget. So an easy insurance part of the plan is to add a multi-vitamin to your overall wellness program.

Dr. McKay: This is a great question! I think the most important part is to make sure you have a professional you can talk with whether it be a registered dietician or doctor to discuss your personal needs because, not only do you have “mom needs” or “breastfeeding needs”, but these all have unique nutritional requirements. Also, your diet and what you choose to eat is important. If you have a vegetarian cohort that follows you, they are going to need more protein, more B vitamins, or they may be missing some Omega 3 fatty acid, so it’s about recording and sharing with a dietician or doctor. The My Wellness Scorecard also points you to some good advice as well. 

NIA:  Yes! On every film set there is so much food laid out everywhere so this is what I do… I let everyone else go first because after a while the sight of all those hands touching that food…you’re not going to want to touch anything! 

NIA: Yeah! A little trick that I have too is this…as I am taking my daughter’s plate away and so I won’t shove the last of Annie’s mac ‘n cheese in my mouth, is I take whatever leftover drink she has in her cup and spill it on to the food! Then it’s not that appetizing at all!

Dr. McKay: First of all you need to wake up motivated. You need to be motivated to live a long and healthy life. Once you’ve decided that you want to be healthy, you want to feel good, you want to get the benefits of taking care of yourself, then we’ve laid out the road map. Sit down for 20 minutes, take the My Wellness Scorecard quiz which takes just 2 minutes, and learn a little bit more about yourself. Review the expert tips and as Nia says, write down a plan and see how close you can stick with it. 

NIA: In the time that it takes you to go through everything – you’ll realize that the time we spend on the internet looking at pictures without makeup..if you actually just instead, go to the My Wellness Scorecard you will be feeling a lot better about yourself – instead of checking out who has cellulite and who doesn’t! 

NIA: When we first adopted my duaghter, my cousin Nicki (the real cousin Nicki not the one from the movie) gave her her first real American Girl doll. Then we went to the American Girl store and she chose a doll. When I got the part in the movie, I told my daughter who really up to that point didn’t know or care what I did for a living even though I asked her, “Come on, don’t you think I’m cool?” and she said “um…no”. 

Then I said “hey I’m going up to Canada and I’m going to shoot a part of the American Girl movie – I’m playing the mom!” and she threw her arms in the air Evita style, and yelled “That’s my favourite!” It was just the greatest moment! And then the producers had sent her the McKenna doll so, I’m pretty cool in my house right now.

NIA: I really can’t answer that or my cousins will all come after me with souvlaki sticks! I’m going to say all of them!

NIA: (laughing) The truth is
my dad used Windex on everything when we were growing up. If you had a wart or anything. The morning of my actual wedding, you know I’m from Winnipeg, so the mosquitos are the size of natural birds, and I had a huge golf ball zit on my chin and my brother took a Poloroid picture of it. So, I took little truths like that and put it into the film. But I did think about spraying it. 

Now, I’ve just taken the My Wellness Scorecard myself and I’m happy (ok, relieved) to see that I’m doing “WELL”. This shows that I’m achieving good scores across the board with healthy eating, dietary supplements and regular exercise. But there are more ways that I can improve  and I could use a little more “tweaking”.  For example, water consumption…the site’s experts suggest that I maybe lacking water that may leave me feeling cranky(sometimes,yes), tired (yes) and depriving my body of important nutrients that’s needed for maintaining body temperatures and other important functions. (I’m actually sitting here with a blanket wrapped around me and it’s summertime!) So, it’s easy tips like this that I find do-able and not overwhelming. 

LIFESUPPLEMENTED.ORG will give you a good starting point and will give you basic information including a supplement library from A to Z where if you have questions about a specific vitamin, mineral or dietary supplement you can find more information there. Take the MY WELLNESS SCORECARD quiz to find out your own personal wellness and what little steps you can take to optimize your health!

The new American Girl Movie is released on DVD and broadcasted on television in July 2012 and follows McKenna Brooks, a girl who loves to practice and perform gymnastics but faces some challenges. 

Here’s the trailer…