Entries Tagged 'Nutrition' ↓

1. Drink plenty of water
2. Eat foods high in water content (like fruit, for example)
3. Eat foods high in fiber (once again, fruit!)
4. Eat lots of vegetables and salads with your meals.
5. Eat your food slowly.
6. Chew sugar-free gum.
7. Brush your teeth.
8. Focus on other things or occupy downtime with activities to take your mind off of food.

These are all very simple… and very effective. Employ these and you’ll find it much easier to handle the munchies when they come along!

Long ago, we had no idea what the hell a calorie was. Much less a gram of protein or complex carbs. In the early times of our ancestors, life was… relatively simple. They would hunt, gather, and prepare during the daylight hours, while eating and resting at night. Obesity-related diseases like diabetes and hypertension were non-existent. In fact, obesity was rarer than ever. The people of this period had one thing down for sure- they knew how much to eat. After all, it was a “survival of the fittest.”

If there’s a lesson we can learn from our early ancestors, it’s the instinctual eating patterns that they followed. While it may take some work at recapturing that ability, it is certainly possible to reach your goals through this method. I’ve done it very successfully, along with countless others. All it takes is a firm understanding of what the human body’s natural instincts are towards food.

Here’s how to regain that natural instinct:

1. Eat natural, whole foods. Scrap the protein powder and consume lean meats. Eat plentiful amounts of fruits and vegetables.
2. When you are under greater physical stress (meaning more intense workouts or cardio), consume enough to satisfy the hunger.
3. When you are under lesser or no physical stress (light lifting & cardio or none at all), consume enough to satisfy hunger.
4. Don’t concern yourself with how many meals you are getting in. Eat to satiety when hungry and this will be taken care of.
5. Consume the bulk of your daily food intake immediately following your workout to recoup that lost energy and help ensure proper recovery and growth.

Now, I know you’re asking, how will I know if I am eating too much? Here’s your answer: The human body was designed to tell us when food is demanded more or less - case in point, when you’ve had a busy day full of physical activity. You’ll likely be much more hungry than you would be on a day where you were mostly sedentary.

Give it a try and see how you end up. If you’ve been killing yourself with all those calorie counts, macronutrient percentages, and the likes, then this is something that may just give you that much needed peace of mind you’ve been seeking.

Breakfast is one of, if not the most important meals of the day. You come out of a fasted state due to several hours of sleep and your body is most receptive to nutrients upon waking. Replenishing these nutrients is vital to blunt high levels of cortisol (which will cause muscle breakdown). Here’s a delicious pancake recipe that will fuel the early waking hours of your day!

Protein Power Pancakes

Dry Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of flax seeds
• 1/3 cup of dry oatmeal
• 1/4 tsp of baking powder
• 1/4 cup of ground up almonds or pecans
• 1/3 cup of favorite protein powder (vanilla flavors usually work best)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

  Mix all of dry ingredients together.
  
  Liquid Ingredients:

• 2 whole Omega-3 eggs
• 1/2 cup egg whites
• 3 tbsp cottage cheese
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1/3 cup of blueberries, strawberries, or raspberries (or mix ‘em all!)

  Mix all liquid and dry ingredients until smooth. Pour batter on skillet at medium heat and flip after 3-4 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 1-2 servings.

  Throw in Cary’s® Sugar Free Syrup as a healthier alternative to regular maple syrup.

Weight loss can be a real drag. Boring. Uninspiring. Anti-social. Between the calorie cutting and hour-long treadmill sessions, it just plain sucks. Isn’t there a better way to go about shedding the globs of fat that you have accumulated over the years?

You bet. You see, I’ve got the ultimate formula for blasting fat off of your body in record time.

My new e-book, Fat Loss Inferno, encompasses the following:

• The real way you can lose body fat and keep it off, in less time.
• Exercises that will shred you up.
• Recomposition- the new way to build lean mass and reduce fat!
• Why traditional cardio methods are obsolete. (The truth will shock you!)
• An easy-to-understand nutrition primer that will show you how to eat the right way, without starving yourself or screwing up your metabolism!
• Sixteen full weeks of pre-planned fat loss routines and meals. That’s four whole months!
• Custom Food and Workout Logs to keep track of your progress.

I’d tell you more, but I don’t want to spoil it for you! Just keep your eyes peeled and remember to subscribe to our RSS feeds, so I can update you on when Fat Loss Inferno becomes available. I’ll also tell you how you can win a free copy of the e-book!

There’s too many diets. Way too many.

Take a look for yourself:

1. 100-Mile Diet control
2. Abs Diet
3. Alkaline diet
4. Atkins diet
5. Best Bet Diet
6. Blood Type diet
7. Body for Life
8. Breatharian diet
9. Buddhist diet
10. Cabbage soup diet
11. The Cambridge Diet
12. Candida control diet
13. Cretan diet
14. CRON-diet
15. Detox diet
16. Diabetic diet
17. Diet for a New America by John Robbins
18. The Diet Smart Plan
19. Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension or the DASH Diet
20. Dr. Hay diet
21. The Fat Resistance Diet
22. Feingold diet
23. Fit for Life diet
24. Flexitarian diet
25. Food combining diet
26. Fruitarian diet
27. Gerson diet
28. Gluten-free, casein-free diet
29. Glycemic Index diet
30. The Graham Diet
31. Grapefruit diet
32. Hacker’s diet
33. Halal diet
34. Hallelujah diet
35. High protein diet
36. Jenny Craig
37. Joel Fuhrman diet
38. Junk food diet
39. Kosher diet
40. KimKins Diet
41. Lacto vegetarianism
42. Living foods diet
43. Low-carbohydrate diet
44. Low-protein diet
45. Macrobiotic diet
46. Master Cleanse
47. Mediterranean diet
48. Montignac diet
49. Natural Foods Diet
50. Negative calorie diet
51. No-Grain Diet
52. Okinawa diet
53. The Optimal Diet
54. Organic food diet
55. Ornish Diet
56. Ovo-lacto vegetarian diet
57. Paleolithic diet
58. Perricone diet
59. Pescetarian diet
60. Plant-based diet
61. Pollotarian diet
62. Prison loaf
63. Pritikin diet
64. Rastafarian diet
65. Raw foodism
66. Rice Diet
67. Scarsdale Diet
68. Sex Diet
69. Shangri-La Diet
70. Slimming World diet
71. Sonoma diet
72. South Beach diet
73. Stillman diet
74. Subway diet
75. Vegan diet
76. Vegetarian diet
77. Very low calorie diet
78. Weigh Down diet
79. Weight Watchers
80. Western pattern diet
81. Zone Diet

That’s 81 different diets. And that’s just skimming the surface.

So the question is, how in the world could one possibly decide which diet is the best to follow? How could there be such great variances when it comes to nutrition? It’s simple. There’s a lot of quackery and “get-rich-quickers” out there. Each author, or should I say “dietary expert,” claims why their’s is superior to the next. Who to believe?

To give you an idea on just how easy it is for anyone to create a diet, here’s a little story. You may have heard about it on the news a while back.

Enter the Kimkins Diet:

This diet was created by a woman who went by the name of Kimmer. In essence, the diet she “created” is very low in calories, fat, carbs and fiber. Basically, it’s just a fork off of the earliest version of the Atkin’s Diet, so it makes me wonder how she didn’t get busted for copyright infringement anyway.

What’s funny is when this lady was summoned to be interviewed by the media, she refused. When nutritional experts and scientists examined the diet, they were startled. What they found was that the diet extremely hazardous for the health. Calling it the Starvation Diet or the Anorexia Diet seems much more fitting. To make matters worse, she had no credentials either- she was neither a nutritionist nor a healthcare professional. Experts continued to ask where her claims were coming from, but she would not speak up. I believe they even quizzed her on her understanding of basic nutrition, which she was lacking.

It wasn’t uncommon for the followers of her diet to experience extreme constipation, hair loss, chronic eating disorders, metabolic disorders, and more unsightly problems.

And to think she was charging $80 to folks that were completely oblivious of what they were getting in to!

Listen, there’s a whole host of diets out there just like this with absolutely no scientific basis. This is why I, along with many nutritional experts, personal trainers, and doctors, recommend that you drop the diet mentality altogether. These diets may bring good results at first, but in the long-run, you’ll end up worse off than before. The best way to solve the question of what’s best is to refute all but proven methods. Even our government has made this readily available. There’s a wealth of general nutrition tips and information out there that hold much truth, and more importantly, safety and effectiveness. It just takes a little research!

Here’s a little something before I head out-of-town for a few days:

Are you bound to bistros and cafe for the time being? The choices you make when you are dining out will ultimately make or break your goals, so if you are trying to lose the gut, you must ensure that you have planned out where you are eating and what’s on the menu. Thank goodness for the internet because nearly every major restaurant (especially franchises and chains) displays their menu and the nutritional values of the food they serve right on their website! This is especially important when you are traveling or on vacation, where you may not have the ability to tailor your calories and macronutrients as exact as you would at home. Now, if the restaurant is smaller and does not list their nutrition, you’ll want to ask your waiter what choices are offered for dieters.

Then again, if you’ve been working hard for the vacation that you are now enjoying, and you feel like you are where you want to be, by all means have at it. Splurge a little, it will keep you from going insane from calorie deprivation!

How often have you been told to consume five or six small meals a day? Chances are you’ve heard your fair share. For years, health authorities have stated that a higher meal frequency is significant in maintaining an optimum metabolism and that by consuming fewer meals, you would bring about your body’s starvation mechanism, causing you to store body fat. With such staunch claims as this by health magazines, personal trainers, and the media alike, how can they be refuted? Here’s a word for you– science. Recent studies have revealed that the former is not true.

Why, then, is this advice considered the mainstream? Perhaps it was another marketing ploy by big magazine publishers back in the day to draw in subscribers. Or may it was the best way to help people understand the need for eating less. Nobody wanted to discredit the claims; it made sense. After all, wouldn’t eating smaller meals at a higher frequency seem to place lesser stress on the metabolism? It would certainly seem that way.

Here’s the justification behind all this:

Twenty-two females between the ages of 18 and 74 (M=30, SD=15) volunteered for the study. All of the females had to meet specific criteria to be a participant. The criteria were based on variables that could have affected metabolism. Participants were not to have exercised in the previous three months. They were not to have any known metabolic disorders. They were not to be taking any medications or dietary supplements that could potentially affect metabolism. Lastly, participants were not to be pregnant or lactating.
Procedure

Participants were accepted on a rolling basis. When an individual committed to participate in the study, she scheduled a time for an orientation session. At the orientation session, each participant signed an informed consent form. She was then given specific instructions on the desired method to record what and how much she ate in the diet diary. At this time, the participant was also debriefed on how the procedure for obtaining resting metabolic rate would be conducted. At the end of seven days the diet diary was turned into the research team. In addition, a preprandial RMR test was conducted in the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Human Performance Lab. Prior to testing, participants were to minimize their physical exertion and to have fasted for at least six hours. The Quinton QMC metabolic cart was calibrated and then the mouthpiece was attached to the participant. She was then instructed to lie in the supine position on a padded table. Resting metabolic rate was measured by indirect calorimetry. The test was performed for 20 minutes; however, only data from the last five minutes was utilized in the study. Diet diaries were analyzed using NutraQuesttm nutritional software (Mc Graw Hill Inc.).

RESULTS
Average meal frequency (AMF) was calculated by averaging each participant’s total meals a day. This number was then averaged across participants to yield an overall AMF of 2.7 meals a day. Participants who reported an average daily meal frequency (ADMF) of greater than 2.7 were categorized into the high meal frequency (HMF) group. Participants who reported an ADMF of less than 2.7 were categorized into the low meal frequency (LMF) group. An eating session was defined as anytime during the day a participant consumed any amount of food. For each participant, an average daily eating session (ADES) was calculated by adding up the total eating sessions in the seven day period and dividing by seven. The overall ADES was calculated by averaging all of the participants’ ADES, which yielded 4.7 daily eating sessions. Those participants who reported an average greater than 4.7 eating sessions were categorized in the high eating sessions group (HES). Those participants who reported an average lower than 4.7 eating sessions were categorized in the low eating sessions group (LES). Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to detect a relationship between HMF or LMF and RMR and also between HES or LES and RMR. Average daily caloric intake and age were used as covariants to determine any effects on RMR. Alpha level was set at .05.
Results of ANCOVA revealed no significant relationship between HMF and RMR and also between LMF and RMR (F=0.001, p=0.981). Also the results of the ANCOVA revealed no significant relationship between LES and RMR as well as HES and RMR (F=0.601, p=0.450).

-Goodman-Larson et al. UW-L Journal of Undergraduate Research VI (2003).

Now, if reading all that scientific nomenclature is not your fancy, here’s the conclusion that was made following the study: Regardless of meal frequency by each individual, there was no correlation between frequency and metabolism. Tell that to your personal trainer!

From a psychological standpoint, eating less per meal at a higher meal frequency makes sense in that it may prevent one from overeating and those late night gorges, especially when on a reduced calorie diet. Although not significant, the appetite suppressive qualities of a higher frequency meal intake may help during dieting.

Many will argue that by eating less frequently with larger meals, you will raise blood insulin levels, causing lipogenesis (the storing of fat). This model’s theory was that the raised insulin levels increased LPL activity (Lipoprotein Lipase was the supposed rate limiter for free fatty acid uptake and fat metabolism/synthesis), thus it was the single factor for fat storage. The problem with the insulin > fat storage model is outdated and there are many other factors outside of insulin which dictate fat storage and metabolism. For instance, Chlyomicrons alone (byproducts of fat digested in the stomach) can rouse free fatty acid uptake and triglyceride production, even in the absence of insulin. Bye-bye insulin model!

It all comes down to your macronutrient breakdown and your total caloric intake. It’s entirely a matter of preference as to whether or not you choose to have half a dozen meals or three meals. More active folks might get hungrier more often, so six meals sounds like a treat. I eat more than six meals because I eat like a horse and I’m always on the go. I know many extremely ripped and lean individuals that eat three or four meals in a day. Eat however often you feel you need to eat, within reason. If you are hungry, chances are your body is telling you to eat something, so shut it up by feeding it. If you are wise with your caloric intake, you may find that you can eat a few decently portioned meals and snack and graze intermittently to keep hunger satiated. Then again, if eating all day isn’t your fancy, go with three meals (I’d keep the baseline at three, since it’s hard to down four digit calorie meals (>1000 kcal) at one sitting without bloating up like the Pillsbury Doughboy).