Breakfast and the Hunger Hormone
One piece of advice that all dieters receive is simply this: don’t skip breakfast. The idea is that skipping breakfast will make you crave junk food, and bypass eating the healthy stuff.
Well, new research presented at the Endocrine Society’s 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego explains why this may be the case. And it has everything to do with the activation of ghrelin, the “hunger hormone.”
Before we get to the newest study, let’s learn a little more about this “hunger hormone.”
Ghrelin is a hormone located in the stomach that sends hunger signals to the brain. When ghrelin levels are too high, the brain wants food – even if we are full. And when ghrelin levels are high, the food we crave is high in calories – especially foods that are loaded with fat.
Here is where it gets interesting: ghrelin helps you feel good. In fact it helps you feel REALLY GOOD by activating some of the same regions of brain that are also activated by cocaine! So let’s just say it is highly motivational.
Ghrelin and high calorie cravings
In a study on micei, Dr. Jeffrey Zigman and his team found that mice injected with ghrelin chose to be in a room previously anchored with a high calorie treat versus a room anchored with a low calorie treat. The mice not injected with ghrelin had no preference for either room.
For clarity, the mice with elevated levels of ghrelin just “felt better,” in the high calorie room, “The mice’s behavior had nothing to do with eating,” Zigman said. “Their behavior was linked to obtaining the more pleasurable thing.”
In a second test, Zigman tested how long mice would continue to poke their noses into a hole in order to receive a pellet of high-fat food. The non-ghrelin group gave up far faster than the mice injected with ghrelin.
A new way to increase ghrelin levels and your cravings for fatty foods…
Skip breakfast. In the studyii referred to earlier in this article, researchers recruited healthy (not obese) adults to test this theory.
Here were the conditions:
1. Subjects came into the lab on three separate mornings.
2. Each time, subjects would be asked to view pictures of either high calorie foods (chocolate, cake and pizza) or low calorie foods (salads, vegetables and fish).
3. Then, using a keypad, the subjects rated how appealing they found each food picture.
4. There were, however, three different conditions:
o Condition one: subjects came into the lab 90 minutes after eating breakfast and were injected with a saltwater solution 40 minutes before viewing the pictures.
o Condition two: subjects came to the lab 90 minutes after eating breakfast and were injected with ghrelin 40 minutes before viewing the pictures.
o Condition three: subjects came to the lab after skipping breakfast and were injected with the saltwater solution 40 minutes before viewing the pictures.
When injected, neither the researchers nor the subjects were aware of whether they were injected with salt water or ghrelin.
The results: Skipping breakfast is just like injecting ghrelin
The group that skipped breakfast (c) AND the group that ate breakfast and had the ghrelin injection (b) both preferred the high calorie foods.
The group that ate breakfast AND had the salt water injection (a) preferred the low calorie foods.
So don’t skip breakfast if weight loss is your goal!!
The best breakfast for reducing ghrelin (and your cravings)…
In a study, iiipublished in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers determined that protein is the best way to lower post meal ghrelin levels.
The ingestion of fats had little to no effect on post meal ghrelin levels, meaning that eating fat for breakfast is not going to help you make better decisions later in the day.
The ingestion of carbohydrates had an initial ghrelin lowering effect. But in a short period of time after eating carbohydrates, the ghrelin levels not only rebounded, but after only two hours, they rose to an even higher level than before. So eating lots of carbohydrates might also be counterproductive.
So, if you want to control your cravings for high calorie, fatty foods throughout the day, it might be wise to include a lot of protein along with a limited amount of carbohydrates and fats. I am not sure of the types of carbohydrates and fats used in the study, so it might be that carbohydrates high in fiber have a different effect – I just don’t know.
And you definitely require a certain amount of good fat in your diet, so please don’t overdo this.
A ghrelin pill?
Don’t expect ghrelin to show up in your local health food hotspot any time soon. Other studies indicate that artificially reducing ghrelin is also associated with a rise in feelings of depression. Would losing weight be worth risking depression? Sadly, when people were surveyed on this question back in 2008, the majority of people said it would be worth the risk.
So would you take a pill that would help you lose weight even if you knew it would probably make you feel bad?
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Think Twice Before Going Under the Knife to Lose Weight
Weight loss surgery, which includes gastric banding and the more invasive gastric bypass, may seem like a quick fix, but it is NOT a safe solution because of the many negative long-term health consequences inherent with either of these surgical options.
Over 40 percent of weight loss surgeries result in major complications within six months, including black-outs, malnutrition, infection, kidney stones, bowel and gallbladder problems, liver failure, and, worst, an increased risk of death.
In case you skimmed the last paragraph let me state that again in different words.
Nearly HALF of those having the surgery have MAJOR complications.
In fact, whereas all surgeries have inherent risks, bariatric surgeries seem to have a much higher ratio of complications. In fact, you are far more likely to suffer an adverse event from these types of surgeries than not.
According to LapBand.com, one American clinical study that included a 3-year follow-up reported that a staggering 88 percent of gastric banding patients experienced one or more adverse events, ranging from mild to severe.
Gastric banding consists of surgically inserting a band around the top section of your stomach, and cinching it into a small pouch. Common complications from gastric banding included:
• Gastroesophageal reflux, 34 percent
• Band slippage and/or pouch dilation, 24 percent, (which means you'll need another surgery)
• Stomach obstruction, 14 percent
• Esophageal dilation and reduced esophageal function, 11 percent
• Difficulty swallowing, 9 percent
• Leaking or twisted access port into the stomach, 9 percent
• Band eroding into the stomach, 1.3 percent, which requires band removal
The complications are often so debilitating that patients opt to have the bands removed completely. In the study noted above, 25 percent of the patients ended up getting the lap band permanently removed, two-thirds of them due the adverse events suffered.
This is another important point that you need to understand before the surgery. ONE IN FOUR of the patients who had the surgery had the bands removed.
Whereas gastric banding is at least reversible, gastric bypass is not. In this procedure, a section of your small intestine is typically removed entirely, and your stomach is reconnected further down your intestine, bypassing the duodenum.
Your duodenum -- that first section of your small intestine -- is responsible for the majority of nutrient absorption. Hence malnutrition is a common concern after this type of surgery.
So with half of the patients having major complications, and one-fourth of the people actually having the band removed, logic would dictate that this is simply not an acceptable alternative to obesity. Especially since it in no way, shape or form even begins to address the underlying cause of the problem.
My guess is that sometime in the future this medical procedure will be prohibited from ever being done and any physician who performs it will have his license reprimanded or revoked.
Bariatric Surgery Condemns You to a Lifetime of “Food Jail”
Even if you were to be one of the fortunate few who makes it through bariatric surgery without significant side effects, you are not home-free from there.
Remember, the surgery has significantly modified portions of your digestive system in ways that nature never intended. As a result, you can kiss your old ways of eating goodbye.
Now, I am all for making changes toward a healthier diet, but some of the guidelines expected after bariatric surgery such as gastric bypass are incredibly restrictive.
According to the Barrington Bariatric Center, not only will you need to exist on a diet of solely pureed food for at least two weeks, but even in “Stage 2” of your transitional post-surgery diet you may only be able to eat 2 ounces of ground chicken breast before feeling full.
A Completely Unnatural, and Unhealthy, Way of Eating
Because gastric bypass involves stapling your stomach into a pouch that’s only a half-ounce in size, it literally cannot hold much. This means you’ll often be eating meals that are sorely lacking in nutritional requirements.
A small opening is also created to allow food to empty slowly from the pouch. Because the opening is so small (made this way deliberately to keep the small amount of food you’ve eaten in your stomach longer, making you feel “full”), food must be chewed very thoroughly or it won’t be able to fit through the opening, leading to vomiting.
You’ll also be instructed to eat the protein portion of your meal first, because you very well may get too full to fit in a vegetable or anything else. Even liquids must be restricted for up to 45 minutes before and after a meal, lest they take up what little space you have to consume actual food.
And, as you might suspect, because bariatric surgery patients can consume very little roughage, constipation is often a problem. It is even described as “normal” to have a bowel movement only once every two or three days!
Hair loss and muscle loss are also common after the surgery -- both signs that your body is not receiving proper nutrition. If this, plus constipation and vomiting are not enough to make you think twice, you should also know that certain foods, including tomato sauces, mayonnaise, fruit juice, dressings and others, will lead to “dumping syndrome,” aka cramps, nausea and diarrhea.
By the way, snacking is expressly forbidden after gastric bypass, you’re only allowed three small meals a day, and you may have to write off certain foods entirely because your body just can’t digest them anymore. This includes:
• Red meats
• Membranes of oranges or grapefruit
• Skins of fruits and vegetables
• Fibrous vegetables such as celery and sweet potatoes
• Chili and other spicy foods
If these “guidelines” sound a bit restrictive, it’s because they absolutely are. The procedure severely limits the amount of food you can consume, and the rapid weight loss that follows is essentially the natural effect of forced starvation. You cannot eat more than a tiny amount because it will make you physically sick.
Weight Loss Surgery Still Depends on YOU Modifying Your Behaviors
In the short-term, weight loss surgeries do produce significantly greater weight loss compared to lifestyle modification alone. But unless you address the emotional aspects of your eating, you could very easily stretch your stomach to again be able to accommodate increasing amounts of food, effectively negating the entire surgery.
There will also be changes asked of you both before and after weight loss surgery. Many centers will require that you exercise after the surgery, and prior to the surgery that you stop smoking, drinking soda and eating fast food. Many will also require you to lose weight prior to the surgery!
If you can lose weight for that, you can continue on and reach a healthy goal weight without any type of medical intervention whatsoever. Since success depends on your ability to modify your behavior anyway, why not simply modify your behavior without going through the surgical procedure and taking all those health risks?!
Weight loss surgery, which includes gastric banding and the more invasive gastric bypass, may seem like a quick fix, but it is NOT a safe solution because of the many negative long-term health consequences inherent with either of these surgical options.
Over 40 percent of weight loss surgeries result in major complications within six months, including black-outs, malnutrition, infection, kidney stones, bowel and gallbladder problems, liver failure, and, worst, an increased risk of death.
In case you skimmed the last paragraph let me state that again in different words.
Nearly HALF of those having the surgery have MAJOR complications.
In fact, whereas all surgeries have inherent risks, bariatric surgeries seem to have a much higher ratio of complications. In fact, you are far more likely to suffer an adverse event from these types of surgeries than not.
According to LapBand.com, one American clinical study that included a 3-year follow-up reported that a staggering 88 percent of gastric banding patients experienced one or more adverse events, ranging from mild to severe.
Gastric banding consists of surgically inserting a band around the top section of your stomach, and cinching it into a small pouch. Common complications from gastric banding included:
• Gastroesophageal reflux, 34 percent
• Band slippage and/or pouch dilation, 24 percent, (which means you'll need another surgery)
• Stomach obstruction, 14 percent
• Esophageal dilation and reduced esophageal function, 11 percent
• Difficulty swallowing, 9 percent
• Leaking or twisted access port into the stomach, 9 percent
• Band eroding into the stomach, 1.3 percent, which requires band removal
The complications are often so debilitating that patients opt to have the bands removed completely. In the study noted above, 25 percent of the patients ended up getting the lap band permanently removed, two-thirds of them due the adverse events suffered.
This is another important point that you need to understand before the surgery. ONE IN FOUR of the patients who had the surgery had the bands removed.
Whereas gastric banding is at least reversible, gastric bypass is not. In this procedure, a section of your small intestine is typically removed entirely, and your stomach is reconnected further down your intestine, bypassing the duodenum.
Your duodenum -- that first section of your small intestine -- is responsible for the majority of nutrient absorption. Hence malnutrition is a common concern after this type of surgery.
So with half of the patients having major complications, and one-fourth of the people actually having the band removed, logic would dictate that this is simply not an acceptable alternative to obesity. Especially since it in no way, shape or form even begins to address the underlying cause of the problem.
My guess is that sometime in the future this medical procedure will be prohibited from ever being done and any physician who performs it will have his license reprimanded or revoked.
Bariatric Surgery Condemns You to a Lifetime of “Food Jail”
Even if you were to be one of the fortunate few who makes it through bariatric surgery without significant side effects, you are not home-free from there.
Remember, the surgery has significantly modified portions of your digestive system in ways that nature never intended. As a result, you can kiss your old ways of eating goodbye.
Now, I am all for making changes toward a healthier diet, but some of the guidelines expected after bariatric surgery such as gastric bypass are incredibly restrictive.
According to the Barrington Bariatric Center, not only will you need to exist on a diet of solely pureed food for at least two weeks, but even in “Stage 2” of your transitional post-surgery diet you may only be able to eat 2 ounces of ground chicken breast before feeling full.
A Completely Unnatural, and Unhealthy, Way of Eating
Because gastric bypass involves stapling your stomach into a pouch that’s only a half-ounce in size, it literally cannot hold much. This means you’ll often be eating meals that are sorely lacking in nutritional requirements.
A small opening is also created to allow food to empty slowly from the pouch. Because the opening is so small (made this way deliberately to keep the small amount of food you’ve eaten in your stomach longer, making you feel “full”), food must be chewed very thoroughly or it won’t be able to fit through the opening, leading to vomiting.
You’ll also be instructed to eat the protein portion of your meal first, because you very well may get too full to fit in a vegetable or anything else. Even liquids must be restricted for up to 45 minutes before and after a meal, lest they take up what little space you have to consume actual food.
And, as you might suspect, because bariatric surgery patients can consume very little roughage, constipation is often a problem. It is even described as “normal” to have a bowel movement only once every two or three days!
Hair loss and muscle loss are also common after the surgery -- both signs that your body is not receiving proper nutrition. If this, plus constipation and vomiting are not enough to make you think twice, you should also know that certain foods, including tomato sauces, mayonnaise, fruit juice, dressings and others, will lead to “dumping syndrome,” aka cramps, nausea and diarrhea.
By the way, snacking is expressly forbidden after gastric bypass, you’re only allowed three small meals a day, and you may have to write off certain foods entirely because your body just can’t digest them anymore. This includes:
• Red meats
• Membranes of oranges or grapefruit
• Skins of fruits and vegetables
• Fibrous vegetables such as celery and sweet potatoes
• Chili and other spicy foods
If these “guidelines” sound a bit restrictive, it’s because they absolutely are. The procedure severely limits the amount of food you can consume, and the rapid weight loss that follows is essentially the natural effect of forced starvation. You cannot eat more than a tiny amount because it will make you physically sick.
Weight Loss Surgery Still Depends on YOU Modifying Your Behaviors
In the short-term, weight loss surgeries do produce significantly greater weight loss compared to lifestyle modification alone. But unless you address the emotional aspects of your eating, you could very easily stretch your stomach to again be able to accommodate increasing amounts of food, effectively negating the entire surgery.
There will also be changes asked of you both before and after weight loss surgery. Many centers will require that you exercise after the surgery, and prior to the surgery that you stop smoking, drinking soda and eating fast food. Many will also require you to lose weight prior to the surgery!
If you can lose weight for that, you can continue on and reach a healthy goal weight without any type of medical intervention whatsoever. Since success depends on your ability to modify your behavior anyway, why not simply modify your behavior without going through the surgical procedure and taking all those health risks?!
Thursday, May 27, 2010
How much of a challenge do you need?
I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone says “my workout isn’t challenging me enough”. But just how challenging do your workouts need to be. I've seen personal trainers work new clients until they are so sore they can barely move the next day. Is this really what most people should be striving for?
Whenever you start a workout program you may want to feel that your exercising is making you work a little hard, making you sweat, and making your muscles feel a little tender. You’ll probably feel parts of your body that you haven’t felt in a while, and that’s OK. But the idea that you continually need to push yourself to newer heights is not necessarily what most people want or need.
If you are trying to improve your health and change your lifestyle, in a period of maybe six months, you should be able to reach a level of health and fitness that allows your workout to be quite easy for you to accomplish on a regular basis. If you have achieved your health goals there is no need to be constantly pushing yourself harder. When you get to this point the only good reason to change your exercise routine is to keep it from becoming to boring.
So unless you want to be a bodybuilder, a marathon runner, or a mountain climber, find and exercise regiment that fits your lifestyle and helps you maintain your health and activity level and don’t worry about continually challenging yourself.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard someone says “my workout isn’t challenging me enough”. But just how challenging do your workouts need to be. I've seen personal trainers work new clients until they are so sore they can barely move the next day. Is this really what most people should be striving for?
Whenever you start a workout program you may want to feel that your exercising is making you work a little hard, making you sweat, and making your muscles feel a little tender. You’ll probably feel parts of your body that you haven’t felt in a while, and that’s OK. But the idea that you continually need to push yourself to newer heights is not necessarily what most people want or need.
If you are trying to improve your health and change your lifestyle, in a period of maybe six months, you should be able to reach a level of health and fitness that allows your workout to be quite easy for you to accomplish on a regular basis. If you have achieved your health goals there is no need to be constantly pushing yourself harder. When you get to this point the only good reason to change your exercise routine is to keep it from becoming to boring.
So unless you want to be a bodybuilder, a marathon runner, or a mountain climber, find and exercise regiment that fits your lifestyle and helps you maintain your health and activity level and don’t worry about continually challenging yourself.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Protein bars can be a good tool
I had a nice chat this morning with one of our members. She told me how happy she was with her success losing weight so far. She said that eating better and exercising has also helped her regain the kind of energy that she used to have. One of the tools that she said helped her was the protein bars.
Not all protein bars are created equal and the Healthsmart bars we use at Inches-A-Weigh cover four important bases for our clients to help them succeed with their lifestyle goals.
One, they have 10 grams of protein. This helps our members get a protein boost any time of the day that they think they need it. Protein is an energy source that doesn’t make you tired a short time later like carbs can do.
Two, they have 10 grams of fiber. We encourage our members to increase the fiber in their diets to help them have a feeling of being full longer and to decrease hunger in general. More fiber also decreases the amount of food we want to consume at each meal.
Three, they are delicious. I have never had a nutrition bar that I thought compared to our Healthsmart bars when it comes to flavor. The great flavor of the bars makes it easier for our member to avoid treats, since they have already had a treat with their bar.
Four, they are great for our diabetic clients, The Healthsmart protein bars are sugar free and have only about 100 calories. This makes them perfect between meal snacks if you are diabetic.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton and Green Bay, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
I had a nice chat this morning with one of our members. She told me how happy she was with her success losing weight so far. She said that eating better and exercising has also helped her regain the kind of energy that she used to have. One of the tools that she said helped her was the protein bars.
Not all protein bars are created equal and the Healthsmart bars we use at Inches-A-Weigh cover four important bases for our clients to help them succeed with their lifestyle goals.
One, they have 10 grams of protein. This helps our members get a protein boost any time of the day that they think they need it. Protein is an energy source that doesn’t make you tired a short time later like carbs can do.
Two, they have 10 grams of fiber. We encourage our members to increase the fiber in their diets to help them have a feeling of being full longer and to decrease hunger in general. More fiber also decreases the amount of food we want to consume at each meal.
Three, they are delicious. I have never had a nutrition bar that I thought compared to our Healthsmart bars when it comes to flavor. The great flavor of the bars makes it easier for our member to avoid treats, since they have already had a treat with their bar.
Four, they are great for our diabetic clients, The Healthsmart protein bars are sugar free and have only about 100 calories. This makes them perfect between meal snacks if you are diabetic.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton and Green Bay, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Lifestyle diet tips
Successful weight loss comes from making good lifestyle choices. If we can turn those good lifestyle choices into a regular routine we can achieve permanent weight loss.
Routines in our daily life service very well even though they may sound very boring. when we get up in the morning we done think much about getting ready for work. We shower, brush our teeth, get dressed, comb our hair etc.
We don't get in the shower in the morning and start deciding how we are going to wash ourselves today. We usually have a routine and we do it almost exactly the same everyday. This is great because we don't need any more things to think about in our busy lives.
One of fthe first things I reccommend if you want to lose weight is to examine your eating routines and habits and try to identify the good ones and bad ones. Let face it the more we can improve our routine the less we have to think about dieting and does anyone really want to spend anymore time thinking about dieting than is absolutely necessary.
The first routine you want to establish is to eat breakfast. Eat as soon as you can after you get up in the morning. Some people like to call their first meal of the day breakfast, but if you get up at 6am and don't eat your first meal until 10am that can hardly be called breakfast. Numerous studies have shown that people who eat a healthy breakfast within 30 minutes of rising in the morning will lose more weight on their diet than people who don’t. If you have a hard time with eating breakfast you need to figure out some way to make it work. I have counciled numerous women and it's amassing how many skip breakfast, but when we sit down and talk about it we can usually find a way to work breakfast into a routine.
The second routine I like to see women develope is to eat more regularly. Eating more small meals on a regular basis will help you lose more weight. Eating more often will increase your metabolism so you burn more calories and have more energy. We don't skip brushing our teeth in the morning and we shouldn't skip meals either. It should be as routine as brushng your teeth.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton and Green Bay, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
Successful weight loss comes from making good lifestyle choices. If we can turn those good lifestyle choices into a regular routine we can achieve permanent weight loss.
Routines in our daily life service very well even though they may sound very boring. when we get up in the morning we done think much about getting ready for work. We shower, brush our teeth, get dressed, comb our hair etc.
We don't get in the shower in the morning and start deciding how we are going to wash ourselves today. We usually have a routine and we do it almost exactly the same everyday. This is great because we don't need any more things to think about in our busy lives.
One of fthe first things I reccommend if you want to lose weight is to examine your eating routines and habits and try to identify the good ones and bad ones. Let face it the more we can improve our routine the less we have to think about dieting and does anyone really want to spend anymore time thinking about dieting than is absolutely necessary.
The first routine you want to establish is to eat breakfast. Eat as soon as you can after you get up in the morning. Some people like to call their first meal of the day breakfast, but if you get up at 6am and don't eat your first meal until 10am that can hardly be called breakfast. Numerous studies have shown that people who eat a healthy breakfast within 30 minutes of rising in the morning will lose more weight on their diet than people who don’t. If you have a hard time with eating breakfast you need to figure out some way to make it work. I have counciled numerous women and it's amassing how many skip breakfast, but when we sit down and talk about it we can usually find a way to work breakfast into a routine.
The second routine I like to see women develope is to eat more regularly. Eating more small meals on a regular basis will help you lose more weight. Eating more often will increase your metabolism so you burn more calories and have more energy. We don't skip brushing our teeth in the morning and we shouldn't skip meals either. It should be as routine as brushng your teeth.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton and Green Bay, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
As if reading food labels wasn’t hard enough
In a recent discussion I had with one of my weight loss clients the topic of reading food labels came up. As we talked I started to realize that this lady looked at the label on the side of the box of food as if it were gospel. This made me understand that I needed to do a little more research so I could educate my clients about reading labs.
The Federal Food and Drug Administration or FDA is the agency of the government that regulates how companies label their foods. Most people take it for granted that what the label says is what’s in the product. This is not the case however.
The FDA allows a whopping 20% lead way in the numbers that are reported on the label. This means if that Lean Cuisine you had for lunch was supposed to be 290 calories it might actually have been 348 calories and been perfectly fine by government labeling standards. I’m not really trying to run down the government regulators or the companies, because it’s not that easy to hit the numbers right on the head all the time. It is important to know this however if you are trying to count or monitor certain nutrients in your diet.
What do you need to know to help protect yourself? First of all you need to realize that the nutrition contents as they are reported on the label come from adding up the nutrients in the individual ingredients and not by testing the end product. So the more ingredients in a particular product, the more likelihood there is for error. Our Lean Cuisine might have 50 ingredients but a bag of carrots has one. Where do you think the error is more likely to be? Who do you think is more like to want to massage the number a little bit, the people selling the Lean Cuisine or the ones selling the carrots? Dropping the calories 20% might be quite a marketing boon for Lean Cuisine but it probably would be of little value to the carrots.
So what is my take way message? First, be more leery of food labels from products with lots of ingredients and foods that are marketed as being diet or lite. Second is to eat more whole fresh foods and you won’t have to worry about the labeling so much. A woman who is trying to maintain a 1500 calorie diet could be off by as much as 300 calories per day if everything she ate was mislabeled by 20%. This could cause a difference in her weight over the period of one year of as much as 31 pounds.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton and Green Bay, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
In a recent discussion I had with one of my weight loss clients the topic of reading food labels came up. As we talked I started to realize that this lady looked at the label on the side of the box of food as if it were gospel. This made me understand that I needed to do a little more research so I could educate my clients about reading labs.
The Federal Food and Drug Administration or FDA is the agency of the government that regulates how companies label their foods. Most people take it for granted that what the label says is what’s in the product. This is not the case however.
The FDA allows a whopping 20% lead way in the numbers that are reported on the label. This means if that Lean Cuisine you had for lunch was supposed to be 290 calories it might actually have been 348 calories and been perfectly fine by government labeling standards. I’m not really trying to run down the government regulators or the companies, because it’s not that easy to hit the numbers right on the head all the time. It is important to know this however if you are trying to count or monitor certain nutrients in your diet.
What do you need to know to help protect yourself? First of all you need to realize that the nutrition contents as they are reported on the label come from adding up the nutrients in the individual ingredients and not by testing the end product. So the more ingredients in a particular product, the more likelihood there is for error. Our Lean Cuisine might have 50 ingredients but a bag of carrots has one. Where do you think the error is more likely to be? Who do you think is more like to want to massage the number a little bit, the people selling the Lean Cuisine or the ones selling the carrots? Dropping the calories 20% might be quite a marketing boon for Lean Cuisine but it probably would be of little value to the carrots.
So what is my take way message? First, be more leery of food labels from products with lots of ingredients and foods that are marketed as being diet or lite. Second is to eat more whole fresh foods and you won’t have to worry about the labeling so much. A woman who is trying to maintain a 1500 calorie diet could be off by as much as 300 calories per day if everything she ate was mislabeled by 20%. This could cause a difference in her weight over the period of one year of as much as 31 pounds.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton and Green Bay, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
More on Salt
When you make the decision to start monitoring the sodium level in your diet the task seems rather daunting. Every food we eat has some sodium in it but canned, boxed, or restaurant foods are going to be the main culprits. We can just try and count all the milligrams of sodium in everything we eat and try to stay below 2500 mg. for regular diets or closer to 1500 mg for folks with high blood pressure. These are some pretty high numbers to keep track of so what’s the alternative.
We can take a different approach and compare the calories in our foods to the sodium in our foods and look at the ratio. If you are a women on a low calorie diet to help you shed some pounds you may be trying to maintain a calorie level of say 1200. If you want to stay under 2400 mg. of sodium per day the ration of calories to sodium is 1 to 2. Under this guideline if a food that you choose to eat doesn’t have more than twice as many milligrams of sodium as calories it will not throw the sodium in your diet out of whack. So if a food serving had 200 calories and had less than 400 mg. of sodium you would be alright. If however your were a man on a 2400 calorie diet trying to stay under 2400 mg. of sodium your ratio would be 1 to 1 and a 200 calorie serving would need to be 200 calories or less.
This approach will work under almost any situation but the ratio will change depending how many calorie and how much sodium you want to have in your diet. This little trick of comparing calories to sodium can be very helpful in deciding which foods work for you and which don’t.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton and Green Bay, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
When you make the decision to start monitoring the sodium level in your diet the task seems rather daunting. Every food we eat has some sodium in it but canned, boxed, or restaurant foods are going to be the main culprits. We can just try and count all the milligrams of sodium in everything we eat and try to stay below 2500 mg. for regular diets or closer to 1500 mg for folks with high blood pressure. These are some pretty high numbers to keep track of so what’s the alternative.
We can take a different approach and compare the calories in our foods to the sodium in our foods and look at the ratio. If you are a women on a low calorie diet to help you shed some pounds you may be trying to maintain a calorie level of say 1200. If you want to stay under 2400 mg. of sodium per day the ration of calories to sodium is 1 to 2. Under this guideline if a food that you choose to eat doesn’t have more than twice as many milligrams of sodium as calories it will not throw the sodium in your diet out of whack. So if a food serving had 200 calories and had less than 400 mg. of sodium you would be alright. If however your were a man on a 2400 calorie diet trying to stay under 2400 mg. of sodium your ratio would be 1 to 1 and a 200 calorie serving would need to be 200 calories or less.
This approach will work under almost any situation but the ratio will change depending how many calorie and how much sodium you want to have in your diet. This little trick of comparing calories to sodium can be very helpful in deciding which foods work for you and which don’t.
Hey, we know it’s a struggle, but we also know there are no quick fix, no magic pill, no more counting points, and no bad tasting pre packaged mail order food. When everything else has failed, you know it’s time for a lifestyle change. Inches A Weigh is a lifestyle center exclusively for women that combine nutrition counseling, and state of the art toning beds and fitness programs in an atmosphere where you’ll never feel out of place. Inches A Weigh lifestyle centers exclusively for women in Appleton and Green Bay, when you are finally ready to make a lifestyle change.
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