DIET COLUMN

For those of you out there who feel like you are doing all the right steps to lose weight by eating right and exercising often, but you can’t seem to lose any weight, there may a secret solution to your weighty dilemma.

In the book, Crack the Fat-Loss Code, personal trainer and performance nutrition specialist, Wendy Chant, MPT, SPN, lays out a pretty thorough and comprehensive plan for why you’ve hit your diet plateau and what you can do to break this stagnant cycle.

Relying on a system that has you eating a set amount of carbs each day over an 8-week period, Chant’s system tries to trick your body’s metabolism into munching on your conserved fat stores rather than eating your muscle or slowing down your metabolism, two survival techniques that your body does when you reduce your caloric intake. Chant spells out  the body’s complex but brilliant mechanism for conserving energy and illustrates why our bodies’ aren’t equipped to handle the enormous amounts of food we available to us and how our bodies hate to diet. In fact, when our bodies think they are on a diet, they do all they can to kidnap and keep safe what we just eat in fear that it will be its last meal.

Cracking the Fat-Loss Code on your body relies on taking two days out of each week to reduce your glycogen levels just enough for your body to grab fat. Then you replace those glycogen levels so that your body won’t kick into starvation mode. For those of you whose last biology class was a few decades ago, glycogen is energy that is stored in your muscles following carbohydrate consumption. Cracking the Fat-Loss Code is a distant cousin to the Atkins diet, since Chant has you reducing your carb intake to only 20 grams of certain carbs for the first seven days of your 8-week cycle. But it separates itself from many of the high protein, low carb diets by allowing you to eat carbs, the yummy carbs too like pizza and pasta, on your “carb-up” days: days when you replace those glycogen stores.

It’s a pretty cool concept: To trick our hard-wired metabolism that has been set in place since our hairy ancestors feasted on just game, nuts and berries to survive until their next meal which might not come for days or longer. I’m half-tempted to test it out. I’m not in the market to lose weight, but I’m curious to see how years of dysfunctional eating patterns has thrown a curveball or two into my metabolism and knocked it out of balance. Many of the testimonials are quite remarkable from those who have cracked the Fat-Loss Code, but I felt the book could have done a better job at spelling out portion sizes and exercise requirements for those of us who don’t know what a reasonable serving of rigatoni looks like or whether walking briskly through the grocery store in tennis shoes constitutes a work-out. So if I decide to test the Fat-Loss Code, I’ll keep you posted.

The 2008 Summer Olympic Games begin next Friday, 08/08/08.

We’ll have Olympic news each day throughout the Games. So if you can break away from your TV, stop by for the DietsInReview.com Olympic coverage.

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Plyometrics are generally used as a sport specific type of training. This type of exercise consists of fast powerful movements and muscle contractions to increase speed, power, strength, flexibility, and improving overall performance. The muscle is loaded with an eccentric (lengthening) action, followed immediately by a concentric (shortening) action. Plyometric exercise is used in almost every sport. This is a great way to incorporate a new routine into your program if needed.

Top 5 Simple Plyometric Exercises

1. Cable Squat Jump- Good for total body strength and endurance: 3 sets of 20

2. Medicine Ball Chest Pass- Good for upper body power, explosion, and endurance: 3 sets of 20 to 30

3. Squat Medicine Ball Side Throw- Good for lower/lower body endurance and core strength: 3 sets of 20

4. Vertical Jump With Arms In Air- Good for total body explosion and endurance: 3 sets of 20 to 30

5. Medicine Ball Toss Sit-Ups With Rotation- Good for core strength and endurance: 3 sets of 20 to 30

Check out all of Matt’s Top 5 Fitness Tips.

It is very obvious that we are a society of convenience and many of us have developed the habit of eating out on a regular basis.  Whether it is grabbing lunch at the nearest fast food joint or taking the family out to eat after a long day of work, we eat out a lot.  It may not be realistic to think you can completely avoid dining out all together, but I do recommend minimizing the number of times you eat out during the week.  Since it is unrealistic to think you will completely do a 180 with dining out, I would like to provide you with a few tips to doing it in a healthier manner.

- Avoid fried food. Order baked, broiled, or grilled items, in doing so you will cut calories and help protect you from disease.

- Choose fresh over fried. Pick a lettuce side salad or fruit over French fries.

- Ask your server questions.  Order veggies is highly recommended, but it’s can be tricky because restaurants like to cook in a lot of butter.  Ask the server what the vegetables are cooked in and how they are prepared (see if you can get them grilled or steamed).

- Pass on the sauces and gravies.  These are easy ways to add some serious calories to your meal.

-Choose oil-based salad dressing versus the creamy dressings.  Oil-based salad dressings are typically lower in calories and fat, but make sure you order the dressing on the side.  Restaurants typically like to drown their salads in dressing, which provides you with a ton of empty calories.

- Pass on dessert.  The temporary satisfaction is not worth the calorie impact later.  Know yourself, if you can order dessert and only eat one bite then ordering it every once in a while won’t kill you.  However, if you devour the entire thing without putting your utensil down, then pass on dessert.

- Order water instead of soda.  Water, as we all know, is calorie-free, unlike soda.  Adding fresh fruit slices (lemons, limes, oranges) to your water provides you with a refreshing taste when plain water doesn’t sound that appealing.

- Practice moderation. If you’re of age, order only one alcoholic beverage with your meal.  Ideally you would choose water, but if you want a drink it’s ok to have one…just try to keep it at one.

- Keep portion size in mind.  Rarely do restaurants give the correct portion size, more times then not the portion you are being served is double or triple the amount you should be taking in.  Split your meal with your significant other, family member, or friend.  This will help your waistline and wallet.  Boxing half of your meal in advance is also a good way of to prevent over eating.

Keep in mind, unless you are preparing your food you have no idea the exact amount of calories you are taking in.  I suggest eating at home and preparing your own meals as often as you can.  That way you can save money, know the exact amount of calories are in your meal, and if you are dining with others, will help you spend some quality time with your family or friends.

I swear I’m not trying to turn this into a blog about California… but there’s more health news here on the West Coast.

The “Govenator” is terminating trans fats!

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation banning the use of trans fats in the state’s restaurants. The ban will be “phased in” in 2010. California will be the first state to ban unsaturated fats, which raise the risk of heart disease, while cities like New York and Philadelphia have passed similar legislation.

Maybe you can’t survive without your Thursday evening yoga class. It calms you down, it gets your heart rate going, it stretches out tight muscles, and it makes you feel like you just gained about 3 inches in height and in self-esteem. So if yoga does this for you, think about what it might do for your child who has to deal with his or her own set of stresses?

In typical yoga for kids classes, the same postures that you breathe and sweat through, are taught to your little ones, but in a more creative, playful and fun manner. Here are three reasons why having your child learn how to down-dog is so important to their health and yours.

Enhanced flexibility: Keeping kids flexible is so important, especially since their day-to-day lives seem to become more  stressful and sedentary as they clock hours at school and in front of the computer. Stiff muscles can lead to injuries later on, particularly in the lower back since hips and hamstrings tug on the lower back to compensate for their immobility. Kids tend to be a lot more limber and daring than most of adults. So balancing on one foot and being able to twist their bodies into some pretzel-like positions comes much easier to them than to us. But we used to be that limber!

Years of walking, sitting on chairs, engaging in Western exercise like running and cycling or years of not exercising at all, has stiffened us up. Take a quick jaunt back down on memory lane and remember how you could swing from limb to limb on a tree, legs and arms outstretched. Or remember how you could sit in a cross-legged position for hours as you colored for hour in your coloring book? For adults, even though that kind of flexibility may no longer seem like it’s available to you, it is. But just as it took your hips and hamstrings decades to get to the stiff-place they are in now, it will similarly take you some time to soften those taut muscles and joints and get them moving again like when you were a kid.

Greater focus and attention: I’ve often wondered what would happen if we took a group of rambunctious kids and had them go through a 20-minute yoga class filled with closed-eye breathing and gentle postures. Could continuous and thorough yoga classes be a replacement or a therapeutic compliment to  many of the pharmaceuticals being dispensed to children all in an effort to quiet them down? I don’t know but a test experiment might me worth trying. It can’t hurt.

Fosters self-esteem and body awareness in a non-competitive way: By drawing awareness on how their young bodies feel and the power and strength in their muscles, kids yoga improves self-esteem and helps children connect how what they do to their body affects how they feel. This same kind of awareness can spill over from the yoga mat into the kitchen:   Kids can learn to make better food choices by realizing how what they put into their mouths affects how they feel. With childhood obesity and diabetes rates at record levels, having children become aware of what they are eating, why they are eating and how much they are eating is indispensable knowledge that can keep them feeling and staying healthy for years to come.

Creates a connection to Mother Nature: Today, so many children are so removed from nature and its surroundings. Whether they live in an urban area or whether their activity schedule leaves them little time to play outdoors, many of the children today don’t feel a connection to nature. When yoga postures were devised thousands of years ago, the Indian sages developed postures by mimicking the animals and plants that they lived in tandem with. Postures like tree pose, lion’s pose, cobra pose and turtle pose all get their names and appearance from the creatures in nature. This provides a powerful connection to nature for children who don’t enjoy such access to the natural world.

If you’re curious about yoga for kids classes, inquire with your local yoga centers and look for a teacher who either has a certification from a yoga for kids training program like YogaKids. There are also tons of DVDs for kids yoga. To make it more fun, do the DVD with them or invite some of your childrens’ friends over for a yoga party.

Have fun!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of going to a local lavender festival where every vendor, baked good, sandwich, and craft heralded the beauty of this multi-purposed purple-hued herb.

Over the course of the afternoon, I learned about all the different uses of lavender. Lavender is much more than an aromatic scent that is added to shampoos and soaps. In fact, it has been long used for medicinal purposes as well as a kitchen staple.

Here is a list of just a few of the things you can do with lavender:

Relieve stress: If you’ve ever taken a deep breath of fresh lavender, your senses are immediately swept away by its soothing fragrance and its almost instant ability to caste a wave of peacefulness over you. It should come as no surprise then that many aromatherapists use lavender essential oil as a way to calm nervous conditions like anxiety or stress.  But you don’t have to make an aromatherapy appointment to reap the calming effects of lavender. Burn a lavender candle or add a few drops of lavender essential oil into a carrier oil like olive oil and apply a fingerprint-sized drop onto your wrists or on your clavicle. Take a deep breath and relax.

Bake with it: The next time you are baking a batch of cookies or shortbread, add a tablespoon of dried lavender leaves to your batter. Your cookies specked with soft purple leaves will not only look extra beautiful, but everyone will be begging you for the secret ingredient that turned your basic sugar cookies into an aromatic culinary delight.

Ease skin ailments: If you suffer from eczema or acne, research shows that lavender oil has antiseptic and antifungal properties making it a favorite natural treatment option for skin disorders, scars, cuts, sunburns and psoriasis.

Treat hair loss: In one study, people with alopecia areata, a kind of disease that is characterized by patchy hair loss, those who massaged their scalps with lavender oil  had significant hair re-growth in comparison to those who didn’t use any oil.

Catch some ZZZs: Getting a good night’s rest is a privilege that far too many of us don’t enjoy. Rather than relying on over-the-counter sleeping aids, studies have shown that having a massage with lavender essential oil may improve sleep quality, lift spirits and contribute to a solid’s night rest.

Bug Off!: With summer in full swing, mosquitoes and other pesky insects can ruin an evening’s barbeque or a star-gazing night. To naturally protect your skin, add a few drops of lavender oil to one teaspoon of carrier oil and apply to your skin. The insect-fighting magic bullet in lavender comes from the compound, geraniol, which helps to ward off biting bugs. But since lavender does increase skin’s photosensitivity, make sure you stay in the shade.

Relax sore muscles: Whether you pushed yourself too hard at the gym or pulled up too many weeds in your garden, rather than popping a few over-the-counter pain relievers, try massaging lavender oil onto your achy joints to ease pain. Just the smell of the lavender oil alone, will help to take your mind off of your tired muscles.

Here’s one last tidbit before you go out and purchase lavender: “Lavender” comes from the Latin word, “lavare,” which means to wash. The Romans first used lavender to scent bath water and they believed that this ancient herb was also able to replenish the skin.

Do a bit of research around your own town. Lavender festivals are popping up more and more during the summer months in part due to the beauty and many uses of this cherished purple herb.

I’ve addressed the issue of the “walkability” of our cities, and how modern urban design has helped make us fatter. That made WalkScore an interesting website to stumble upon. WalkScore.com ranks 2,508 neighborhoods in the U.S. for how walkable they are. The top four U.S. cities, according to WalkScore, are:
1. San Francisco
2. New York City
3. Boston
4. Chicago

Are you thinking about a move? Maybe this can influence your plans.

More news on the effort to put a moratorium on new fast food restaurants in a section of Los Angeles that already has 400 in a 32-square-mile radius. (See my original post explaining this story.)

A Los Angeles city council planning committee unanimously approved a one-year ban, which could be extended for a another year, on new fast food outlets. The measure will go to the full council for a vote next month. It will be interesting to see if there is any long-term good that will come of this. One key is to replace prospective fast food establishments with healthier options. The plan is to encourage that. How, I’m not sure.

I’ve always been amazed that healthy fast food businesses haven’t spread like wildfire in recent years. It seems that given a fast healthy option, people would go for it. Here in Roseville, California there’s a UFood Grill, which has locations in several states across the country.

If you have healthy fast food businesses in your hometown, share them with us- because it just seems like a huge niche waiting to be filled. I don’t know if it just hasn’t been handled by the right business minds, or if the costs of fresh and healthy foods don’t match the dynamics of fast drive-thru service. It seems there has to be a good reason why they haven’t started to flourish.

We welcome Hillary from ChewOnThat Blog to our guest blog series today. Hillary Marshak is one of the primary writers for Chew on That blog, a blog about recipes, restaurant reviews, disasters in the kitchen and more! She is also the editor for Recipe4Living and loves to share new recipes and learn about different cuisines around the world!

Boy have I got a recipe for you! It’s so easy, simple, beautiful and delicious and it comes all the way from a little town I visited recently called Buenos Aires (ok maybe it’s not so little!). I ordered it for an appetizer and was pleasantly surprised when a heaping plate of freshly cut tomatoes, avocados and hearts of palm was just waiting for me to dig in. I thought to myself ‘how simple’ and decided I’d track down a recipe for the dressing so I can make this work of art at home.

Well, I did just that and realized I couldn’t keep the recipe to myself! I had to share it with my own readers on Chew on That blog, and now I’m here to share it with you! Feel free to use low fat mayonnaise in the dressing or tweak it any way you like. Just make sure to use fresh tomatoes and avocados and you’re on the road to deliciousness.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Here is the recipe:

Tomato, Avocado and Hearts of Palm Salad
I had this fresh and delicious salad for the first time in Buenos Aires. I thought it would be too simple but these ingredients turned out to be a wonderful combination!

Ingredients
2 fresh tomatoes, sliced
2 fresh avocados, sliced
8 pieces fresh hearts of palm, chopped diagonally (or 1-2 cans since fresh might be hard to find)
1 C. mayonnaise
1/4 C. ketchup
1 Tbs. white sugar
1 lemon, juiced
1/4 tsp. paprika
1 pinch ground black pepper
olive oil
sun-dried tomatoes for garnish (optional)

Directions
In a small bowl, whisk the mayonnaise, ketchup, white sugar, lemon juice, paprika and pepper together.

Slice tomatoes and avocados to desired thickness and arrange around your serving plate. Sprinkle avocado with lemon juice to keep fresh. Chop hearts of palm diagonally and arrange on plate with tomatoes and avocados. Pour dressing into a small serving bowl (for dipping sauce) and drizzle with olive oil. Garnish with sun dried tomaroes if desired, and serve!

Hint: You may make the dressing ahead of time, but I wouldn’t slice the vegetables until just before serving, to keep them fresh.