Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of saying you should completely avoid a food or listing foods in a good or bad list. I think it’s more important to practice moderation, with an understanding that sometimes moderation means once a week, but with other foods it should mean once a month. However, there are a few foods that I personally tend to avoid 100% of the time because they provide little-to-no nutritional value, or the fat/calorie component exceeds any potential positives of the food.
My list of foods to avoid include:
Chicken Pot Pies. The flaky pastry and meat-filled center sounds good and comforting, but you are doing more harm then good when eating these. Most of the time you will see that these pot pies have around 500 calories and 10 grams of fat, but after looking closer you will see that is for only half of the pie. So for those of you who would normally eat the whole thing, you’re consuming ~1000 calories and 20g of fat!
Ruby provides us with a great outlook on how to approach this new year and trying to be healthy. This video below is a great, short but sweet motivational spill by Ruby. She states just that, your focus should be on health, not “trying to be skinny like a tooth pick.”
CNN.com posted an interesting article, originally featured in Health magazine, about the top 10 best diets. The new year is here and if you’re like the estimated 80 million Americans who go on a diet every year, you might be interested to see the list that was compiled. According to the article, Health magazine collected some experts in the field of nutrition and examined 60 well-known diets and narrowed them down to the top 10.
This is structured after Gerard J. Musante’s (the author of the diet) work at the actual Structure House, a Durham, North Carolina-based residential treatment center for obese adults. This book/diet offers a holistic approach to weight loss with motivational components. This diet helps followers understand the ‘why’ behind overeating and helps them to put their lives in balance. This book wants you to find other things than food, i.e. time with friends, outdoor activities, etc., and includes many recipes!
This diet really focuses on walking to help motivate you to lose weight and slim down your waist, and it even comes with a pedometer. It incorporates easy things for losing weight from intentionally going for a walk or making small changes in your life like parking farther away from the store and in turn burning more calories. The plan puts emphasis on calories burned rather then cutting calories, while nutritionally this diet asks you to “Cut food intake to 75 percent of what you currently eat.”
New years is right around the corner, meaning everyone is determining their New Year’s resolution. What will yours be? For most/many, it is to lose weight or to get into shape. Here are a few helpful tips for getting you a jump start on your weight loss goal:
1. Start small. Make realistic, attainable goals. You want to stay motivated, so by setting and meeting small goals will keep your fire burning and you will feel strong to take on another more challenging goal.
2. Try to eat out less often. Unless you are personally preparing your food you truly have no idea what or how many calories and fat you are taking in.
3. Incorporate exercise into your routine. If you’re not ready for daily exercise, doing some every other day would be great, especially if you never exercise.
The Glycemic index was developed as a means of ranking carbohydrates (or carb-containing foods) based on their effect on blood sugar level. Foods with a high glycemic index value tend to raise blood sugar levels faster and higher compared to foods with a lower glycemic index. Rapid increases in blood glucose are potent signals to the beta-cells of the pancreas to increase insulin secretion. Over the next few hours, the high insulin levels induced by consumption of high-glycemic index foods may cause a sharp decrease in blood glucose levels (hypoglycemia).
In contrast, the consumption of low-glycemic index foods results in lower, but more sustained, increases in blood glucose and lower insulin demands on pancreatic beta-cells. However, this does not necessarily mean that a low-index food is healthier than a high-index food.
I recently composed an article with all the information you need to know about protein. As we enter the most popular season for dieting, I wanted to arm you with the good side and bad side of carbs, before you fall into one of those low-carb fad diets and refuse to ever eat bread again! You might be surprised to learn that there are a lot of healthy benefits to eating the right kind of carbs.
Benefits of Carbohydrates
When you eat a carbohydrate, your body breaks it down into a simpler form known as glucose.
Glucose (for immediate energy) and its storage form glycogen (reserve energy) provide about half of all the energy muscles and other body tissues use (the brain depends 100% on glucose for its energy). The other half of the body’s energy comes from mostly fat. We now know that carbohydrates aren’t all good or all bad. Some promote health while others, when eaten often and in large quantities, increase the risk for diabetes and heart disease.
With the holidays here I thought it would be helpful to share some healthy cooking, baking, and recipes for you and your family to try and enjoy.
Healthy (or healthier) holiday cooking is possible, try some of these substitutions to cut down on calories or fat:
Use whole wheat flour.
Try fruit juice as the base for salad dressings or marinades.
Instead of using cream, try evaporated skim milk. You will be able to whip it, use it in sauces, casseroles, and even pies.
Cocoa powder is a healthy chocolate alternative; it works in brownies, cakes and fudge (use three tablespoons for every ounce of unsweetened chocolate).
Applesauce can substitute for oils in your baked goods (use equal amounts of it in muffins, breads, cakes, cookies, etc.).
Instead of butter, use canola oil, olive oil, prune puree or applesauce.
I have mentioned the Ruby show several times in my blogs, and how important social support is in aiding healthy weight loss and maintaining the pounds dropped. How many of you considered spirituality/religion to be a component to social support? In Ruby’s case, she turns to her church family and God to pray for her and help keep her strong and motivated to meet her weight loss goals.
Spirituality can be and is different for everyone. Whomever or whatever you believe in tends to give people a strong sense of being and helps with having a healthy lifestyle. When enduring a diet and focusing on having a healthy lifestyle, you can think if this as a time of self-reinvention. A few ideas behind spirituality/religion and weight loss/being healthy are:
A new study has shown a relation between sugar and addiction. This study, conducted at Princeton University, has found evidence of how sugar affects brain functions the same way as cocaine and heroin do. Bart Hoebel, Princeton psychology professor, conducted this research by examining how sugar effects the brains of rats. The researchers were able to find that a sugar binge alters brain function and fuels the desire for more sweets. These alterations closely resemble the functions of a brain addicted to cocaine or heroin. When sugar was denied, the same withdrawal psychological and physical symptoms were seen in the sugar deprived rats just like the cocaine and heroin deprived rats.
It’s getting to be that time of the year… diet season. Right now decorations are going up and people are getting festive by baking and sharing holiday treats for all to enjoy. Right now you aren’t even thinking about being healthy or following your weight loss plan, instead you’re enjoying the plethora snacks.
The truth is, it could save you a few extra pounds to lose with your New Year’s resolution by not overdoing it right now and staying focused. Honestly, this is a rarity and too many of us fall into temptation. So, I want to help you remember a few things when trying to lose weight. My biggest advice would be to avoid fad diets. How do you know if you are falling into a fad diet?
Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of saying you should completely avoid a food or listing foods in a good or bad list. I think it’s more important to practice moderation, with an understanding that sometimes moderation means once a week, but with other foods it should mean once a month. However, there are a few foods that I personally tend to avoid 100% of the time because they provide little-to-no nutritional value, or the fat/calorie component exceeds any potential positives of the food.
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