Packaging Doesn’t Always Equal Junk

With my job having been so crazy lately, grocery shopping has taken a bit of a dive in my priorities.  Now, that doesn’t mean I’m not sticking to my calorie range and eating as well as I should!  That just means I don’t have a lot of fresh food around the house (or time to prepare it, even if I did).  I realized today when I was packing my lunch that I have a kind of emergency supply of pre-packaged healthy foods for just these seasons!

So here are a few of my favorite quick-to-grab, easy-to-make foods:

StarKist Tuna Salad Pouch – I about fell over from shock when I first looked at the nutritional info on these little 3oz pouches.  There are only 100 calories in one pouch, 13g of protein and only 3g of fat!  Seriously, quickest lunch ever: grab two of these pouches and couple whole wheat crackers.

Brothers-All-Natural Fruit Crisps – Since I don’t have any fresh fruit around the house, these little pouches of freeze dried apples, pears, bananas and strawberries are the perfect answer.  Each little pouch of fruit is 40-60 calories of nothing but fruit!  They also help with those crunchy, munchy cravings.  I like getting the big box at Costco, but you can find them most anywhere.

Birds Eye Steamfresh Veggies – I’m sure you’ve already seen these at your grocery store—they’re everywhere!  If you don’t already keep some bags of the steam-in-bag microwave veggies around your house, you need to.  There’s no quicker dinner!  I’ll throw some chicken on to broil (add a very small amount of BBQ or teriyaki sauce on the side) and a bag of these veggies.  Dinner is done in 15 minutes and I got my veggies for the day!

SnackMasters Turkey Jerky – This one is my new favorite snack to go!  I’ve had turkey jerky before, but this SnackMasters brand just tastes amazing.  Their Teriyaki flavor is my favorite, but they also have Hot & Spicy.  Heck, if you’re feeling adventurous, you could try their salmon jerky or ahi tuna jerky!  The turkey jerky is only 70 calories in an ounce, and it’s a quick grab when you’re on the go.

Do you have any favorites in the pre-packaged category?  Does packaging make you nervous?  What are your secret weapons when you’re schedule gets crazy?

Protein Bar Puzzle

There’s a lot of talk out there over protein bars.  They are touted as meal replacements, diet aids, snacks or nutrition supplements.  So what should we do with them?  How do you pick a good one?  Do any good ones even exist, or do they all taste like Styrofoam?

I’m here to help!  Protein bars can be a big part of weight loss and weight maintenance.  You can use them as snacks or meal replacements.  One thing protein bars are not: nutritional.  It doesn’t matter how many vitamins they pack in them, a protein bar cannot replace vegetables and fruits—natural sources of fiber, vitamins and minerals.  I often use protein bars to replace a breakfast when I know I don’t have time to put anything together or a snack when I know I’m going to be crazy busy at work.

When you’re choosing a protein bar, your choice is going to first be based on the nutritional facts and second on the taste.  When you’re looking at the nutritional facts, what’s the most important number?  Protein!  That’s why it’s called a “Protein Bar!”  You want there to be more grams of protein than fat.  Ideally, there will be 10 grams of protein or more.

Since you’re already comparing your protein number to your fat number, you simply want to make sure there’s as little fat as possible.  There should definitely be less fat than protein.  Ideally, there will be 5 grams of fat or less.

The next number you’re looking for is carbs.  When you start looking at the number of carbs in protein bars, you’re going to be in for a shock.  For the most part, you don’t want any more than 25 grams of carbs.  If more than 50 percent of those carbs is sugar, chances are that you’re not holding a protein bar in your hand.  Say “hello” to the candy bar that snuck its way into that section with fancy words like “nutrition” and “all-natural.”

If you’re following the rules listed above, you’ll get a protein bar that’s between 150 and 200 calories.

I have a list here of bars that I have tried and that actually taste good!

Special K Protein Meal Bar (Strawberry)
170 Calories, 5g Fat, 25g Carb (15g Sugar), 10g Protein

Zone Perfect All-Natural Nutrition Bar (Double Dark Chocolate)
190 Calories, 6g Fat, 22g Carb (14g Sugar), 12g Protein

Luna Bar (Peanut Butter Cookie)
180 Calories, 6g Fat, 26g Carb (11g Sugar), 9g Protein

I’ve tried a lot of protein bars, and some of them are just disgusting!  Have you tried any good ones?  Any we should avoid?  Were you surprised by the nutrition numbers on your own protein bar?

Milking the Dairy Debate

When it comes to dairy foods, everyone is pretty divided on whether we should dub it a “healthy” food group and how much of it we should eat.  How much calcium do we need?  Are dairy foods the best way to get calcium?  Should I only consume fat free dairy foods?  Does this mean I need to stop smothering everything I eat in cheese?

Disclaimer:  For our discussion today, I’m completely ignoring the antibiotics/organic debate and looking purely at dairy foods from a nutritional standpoint.  Also, many of my in-laws are dairy farmers so I would appreciate if they stopped reading right here (as I would like nice Christmas presents this year).

Generally, most people need about 600 to 1000 milligrams of calcium each day.  However, your body can only absorb about 500 milligrams at once (about one third of what you need), so it’s impossible to get all the calcium you need in one dose.  Dairy foods are often the easiest, and quickest, ways to get doses of calcium into our diets; but did you know that calcium is naturally found in many other foods?

Salmon, tofu, almonds and broccoli are just a few natural foods that are great sources of calcium.  Leafy green vegetables are the best low-calorie source of calcium (not to mention a slew of other nutrients).  An orange actually has more than half the calcium that a serving of cottage cheese has.  An artichoke has more calcium than a serving of cream cheese.  Interestingly, sesame seeds are the most abundant source of calcium in nature (cup of sesame seeds = 2200 mg, cup of milk = 280 mg).

However, dairy foods can be high in saturated fats, so we need to be careful of the quantity of dairy foods in your diet (remember that small amounts of saturated fat in our diets is fine).  Reduced fat dairy foods are great sources of protein.  There are many fat free dairy foods that actually taste pretty good as well.

So what’s the verdict?  Well, that’s up to you!  Personally, I take daily calcium supplements, sometimes eat greek yogurt for breakfasts, and eat low fat cheese sticks as snacks.  All in all, it really only comes to about 2 to 4 servings of dairy each day.  Do you find that less dairy each day would works better for you?   More?  Just make sure to track those calories and watch the fat.

Those Sneaky Health Halos

We’ve previously discussed Health Halos, which is a fancy word for the perception of “healthy” that we apply to foods that carry certain labels—labels like “low fat” or “sugar free.”  You can check out that post here.

Today I’d like to take a look at another category of labels that are creating health halos all over the place: organic, all natural, or locally grown.

I read a lot of the other blogs in my category.  I find that many of the healthy living blogs that focus on food (you’ll know them by the endless stream of food-photo filled posts) use a lot of the above buzz words.  One blogger in particular is genuinely trying her best to eat as healthy as she possibly can but often shares recipes that have ingredient lists like this: organic flour, all natural sugar, locally raised eggs, etc.  Congratulations!  You’ve just made an organic, all natural, locally supported waffle that has the exact same calories as any waffle at any Der Waffel Haus.

Unprocessed?  Yes.  Healthy?  No.

The worst part is—as is with any health halo—we tend to eat more of a food that we think is healthy than we would if we knew we were eating something that has a higher calorie content.  One of my favorite magazines, Cooking Light, just wrote an article on this: check it out.

When we’re not on our guard, it’s easy to assume that organic is the same as healthy.  Eating unprocessed foods is definitely a healthy goal.  And there are plenty of organic foods that are also low calorie.  But you ask: “Oh how are we to tell the difference?  Oh where are we to find this elusive information?” (I hope you put as much dramatic voice into those questions as I did in my head.)  You need to look right past those labels and headlines to find the nutritional information on packaging.  You check serving size first, calories second and then scan the rest of the info (looking particularly at fat and carbohydrates).

Have you ever eaten a food and only found afterward that it wasn’t as healthy as you thought?  Are there labels that you think you’re particularly attracted to?  Why do you think these kinds of labels work so well on us?

USDA Still Doesn’t Get It

Did you know that there is a new Food Pyramid from the USDA?  I had no idea the USDA finally woke up and adjusted their recommendations.  As it turns out, the New pyramid is definitely leaps and bounds better than the Old, but still completely unbalanced in how they prioritize their food groups.

You’ll notice Grains still have the top most emphasis.  The only change from Old to New is that now the USDA is emphasizing whole grains.  This pyramid is obviously still more concerned with our agriculture industry rather than our waist lines.

It’s great that Vegetables have a large portion of the pyramid, but the USDA is pretty undiscriminating when it comes to starchy or high-carbohydrate vegetables.  If you were trying to lose weight, decided to load up on veggies, but then only ate peas and legumes, then you would be fighting a losing battle.

I’m not surprised to see Fruits next on the pyramid.  Fruits are good to have in your diet, but you want to be careful with natural sugars like fruit.  Sugar, is sugar, is sugar.  You can have too much fruit in your diet just as much as you can have too much candy in your diet.

I’m fascinated that we’ve reached Oils already without encountering Meats yet.  The USDA definitely got one right with their recommendation of fats, but their priorities could use some adjusting.

Ah, Milk.  I guess dairy farmers lost the fight on this one finally that they get bumped to the second to last priority.  They still emphasize milk in American diets way more than any of us should be consuming, but they got it right with the low-fat recommendation.

And that brings us to Meat & Beans.  Poor protein.  If we follow the New pyramid, we are going to be some hungry, munchy individuals.  The USDA has some good recommendations under here with a preference for lean, non-fried meats.  But without a significant amount of protein in your day, you are going to want to eat constantly.

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend using the New food pyramid as a guide to healthy eating.  The http://www.mypyramid.gov/ site does, however, have some other great resources (like calorie counts and nutritional information).

Incredible Weight Loss Drink!

You’re not going to believe it, but I’ve found a weight loss beverage that has 0 calories and no caffeine (or other iffy ingredients).  It’s pretty darn cheap, and it actually tastes good!   I’d like to introduce you to: Water.

If you actually fell for that, you haven’t been reading long (this blog definitely does not offer any silver bullets or quick fixes).  But I guarantee you that water can have a huge impact on your weight loss and maintenance!

Studies show that drinking water before a meal will result in you eating about 75 to 100 calories less than you would normally.  Avoiding those calories alone, you could lose 5 pounds over several months.  One study actually showed that drinking water increased the rate at which subject burned calories (their metabolism) by 30 percent!

Another reason to drink water is that it keeps you from drinking other sugary or fattening drinks.  Many studies have proven that your body tends to compensate it’s caloric intake when you eat high-calorie foods.  However, our bodies do not compensate for extra calories from beverages!  Meaning, if you sneak a handful of M&Ms before lunch, you’re likely to eat a few less calories at lunch.  But if you have a large Coke with lunch, you’re still going to eat the same amount of food.

What’s the best way to drink enough water?  Keep it with you!  I have this nifty plastic cup with a lid and straw that I keep at my desk at work—super convenient.  There are a lot of great water bottles out there, too.  Are there any tricks you use to drink lots of water throughout your day?

Highly Palatable – Part I

After a few previous weeks of pretty willingly giving into temptation, I decided it was time to fully get back onto the wagon (instead of running alongside the wagon so that I didn’t look like I had fallen off, but was intentionally choosing to be where I was). But this weekend was just more than willpower could do for me: pizza, chocolate, munchies and more. I felt bad about my choices, but I couldn’t even muster a decent feeling of guilt—it was all so good!

But it’s Monday and Monday’s a new slate for me. And, I have a new hero: David Kessler. Kessler is a former FDA commissioner and a fellow to our struggle with food. He's done much research and discovery around how we have conditioned ourselves to overeat certain foods.

When we eat highly palatable foods—delicious foods containing fat, sugar and salt—our brains begin to release dopamine. Dopamine is the chemical our brains use to let our bodies know that pleasure is coming (kind of like a neurotransmitter version of “Oh yeah, baby, here it comes!”). Kessler found that those dopamine pathways begin to activate at the mere mention of food. Hear that? You don’t even have the food in front of you, but I could just say “double chocolate brownie” and your brain’s instant response is “Where?” Once you eat that food, your brain starts to release opioids which make you feel that emotional release (also known as endorphins) or a sense of pleasure.

So you’re driving to work and you see Krispy Kreme (or Dunkin' Donuts for my East Coast family). Your hands turn the wheel and you’re at the checkout counter before you know it. You eat one doughnut, and you think to yourself “This was totally worth it.” The one doughnut turns into two doughnuts. Maybe you even justify another doughnut after that, and you weren’t even hungry to begin with.

Kessler strikes it home for me when he says, “I used to think I ate to feel full. Now I know, we have the science that shows, we’re eating to stimulate ourselves.”

I didn’t want this post to be crazy long, so we’ll chat more this week. Until then, check out Kessler’s Washington Post article and his NPR interview. They’re fascinating!

Lapse and Relapse

Lately I’ve been having a hard time making good decisions. Unfortunately, I compound one bad decision by using it to justify other bad decisions (“Well, I had one peanut butter M&M, so I might as well just eat the whole bag.”). Needless to say, this is not how I should live day to day if I want to keep that 95 pounds off.

There are lapses and then there are relapses. A lapse is a one-time kind of thing, like the moment I chose to eat the peanut butter M&M. Missing a workout or giving into unplanned food choice are lapses.

A relapse is reverting back to old behaviors or, in my case, when I decide to eat the whole bag of peanut butter M&Ms five days in a row. Missing a week’s worth of workouts or making unplanned food choices for several days straight are relapses. The tough thing about a relapse is that sometimes you don’t even realize you’re relapsing until it’s done. The key is to make an immediate choice to get yourself turned back around, because a series of relapses is just you going back to how you used to live.

The best way to help yourself catch any relapses is to give yourself a realistic weight “ceiling.” For me, I tend to hover around 170 to 175 pounds, but 180 is my ceiling. If I notice myself creeping closer and closer to 180, it’s like a yellow light. If I hit that 180, it’s a red right, directly turn around, do not pass go, do not collect $200. After my surgery, I hit that ceiling so I’m working getting back down to my normal weight—but, man, peanut butter M&Ms are just so damn good!

Here are the best ways to help recover from a relapse:

• Get on the scale. Take responsibility for where you are. NO EXCUSES.
• Tell someone about it! You should have a community in place to help keep you accountable, but—if you don’t—tell a friend what you’re struggling with and ask them to help keep you accountable.
• Get back into weight loss mode. Guess what? You have to lose some weight! Can’t do it eating peanut butter M&Ms. Eat smart—get that protein balanced with carbs and heart healthy fats.
• Remember that the cravings don’t last forever. Only a couple days without sweets and I find that it’s already easier to say “no.”

Meatless Monday Misguided Move

I was listening to NPR today on my way to work and caught this article: Campaign Aims to Make Meatless Mondays Hip. I think the gentleman behind Meatless Monday is a bit misguided (one woman in the article applauds her healthy meatless meal of tempura—for my East Coast readers, tempura is a Japanese dish of battered and fried vegetables).

Even the sentiment behind the campaign is admirable, but foolishly simple: if we could just get people to make one small change, then somehow that will help make our diets healthier. However, the obesity epidemic in America isn’t the fault of one food or another. Plenty of diets have tried to completely remove fats, sugar, carbohydrate, or specific foods like meat. But, obviously, the elimination of one element of our diet has not proved to be a cure-all.

I think the first step to truly making change happen is to educate people about food: how food works in our bodies, how to combine foods to make them work better, how to make better choices of the foods that surround us.

Make Eating Out a Good Choice

As healthy as it would be to eat every single meal handmade, it’s not super realistic with many of our busy lives. When you’re eating out, the best policy is simply to try to follow the same rules you would follow if you were making your meal yourself (a good amount of protein paired with balanced carbs and heart healthy fats).

But restaurants don’t exactly make it easy on us! Many chain restaurants offer the calorie count for their dishes, but usually no other nutritional information (if you’re wondering where most of the calories come from, it’s always fat). But even chain restaurants make this information difficult to find.

Here’s the rundown of a few restaurants I’ve found (and how I eat at them):

· Subway – For many of us, this is the first place we think of when we’re hungry but need to eat out. Here’s the trick: order double meat and rip the bottom half off your bread. Subway makes it easy to get the nutritional information for their sandwiches. If you actually look at it, holy carb overload Batman! You literally cut the calories of a sandwich in half (and significantly limit your carb intake) if you only eat half the bread.

· Applebees – With decent section of their menu approved by Weight Watchers, Applebees is a decent choice if you have to eat out. Here’s the trick: no butter, get the dressing on the side and easy on the cheese. These dishes are lower on the calories for a restaurant, but they can be off balance by the amount of fat in them (and we’re not talking heart healthy fats).

· Cheesecake Factory – Ok, after you pick your jaw up off the floor, the Cheesecake Factory only made it on my list because of ONE dish: the Thai Lettuce Wraps. I’m warning you—if you eat this entire dish, unmodified, you will be consuming over 1000 calories! Here’s the trick: skip the coconut curry noodles and ask for plain chicken breast. As long as you’re being smart with the side sauces, you can get away with a meal at the Cheesecake Factory for less than 500 calories. And you get the pleasure of watching your friends get fatter!

As long as you’re paying attention to your rules, you can often find a way to make bad options better. Get a salad with dressing on the side and no cheese. Get fajitas and ask for extra meat and veggies. Get chicken soup and order extra chicken breast. Get chicken teriyaki but only eat a very small bit of rice and all the salad (you know you usually don’t eat the salad!).

If you’re going to eat out, make it a good choice!

A Balanced Day

On a daily basis, the most important nutritional change you could make is balance. Most of us, even if we’re eating the correct range of calories are not getting very nutritionally balanced calories. We get significantly more fat calories or carbohydrate calories than protein calories, which throws our bodies out of whack. Our blood sugar spikes and drops, we feel energized then sluggish, we’re hungry all morning and then eat too much at lunch.

For the most part, our diets should consist of about 30% of our calories coming from protein, 45% from carbohydrates, and 25% from fat.

For a weight loss diet, simply lower the carbohydrates (while increasing physical activity and decreasing overall calorie intake) to more of a balance: about a third of your calories coming each from protein, carbohydrates and fat. The greater protein helps get your body balanced quickly, and keeps you from being hungry.

What does a balanced day look like?

Breakfast – Make sure to get a small amount of protein (15-25 grams), healthy carbohydrates like fruit or whole grain bread, and no less than 10 grams of heart healthy fats. Getting enough fat in the morning is crucial to conquering hunger until lunch.

Lunch – A good amount of protein (40-60 grams) and balanced carbohydrates including plenty of veggies.

Snack – The most important part of a snack is a small amount of protein (15-25 grams). Try not to let carbohydrates greatly outnumber your protein (keeping to about 20-30 grams).

Dinner – A good amount of protein (40-60 grams), balanced carbohydrates, and 3 or more servings of non-starchy vegetables.

I tend to want an afternoon snack and an evening snack, but you may find you are hungrier at the beginning of the day. As your body gets back into balance, you can trust it more when it tells you you’re hungry. A balanced diet keeps you from yo-yoing between hunger and satisfaction.

Health Halo

You’re standing in line at the coffee shop and your will is iron! You’re looking that pastry case up and down, but you’re resolute that you’re just getting coffee and no sweets. After all, they’re all high-calorie and filled full of fat—the choice is easy, right? But then you see it: low-fat coffee cake. Suddenly, you’re not so resolved. It’s low-fat after all!

We tend to let our guard down when we see these kinds of labels, don’t we? If high-fat is the same as high-calories, then shouldn’t low-fat mean low-calorie? I’m guessing we’re already on the same train of thought, and I don’t even need to answer that for you.

Research has found that we tend to eat more of a food that we think is low-fat than of foods regularly labeled. This article is fantastic, you should check it out. Researchers basically found that everyone ate more calories overall of low-fat labeled foods because we think that low-fat is the same as low-calorie. They call it the “health halo”: its an illusion that because of one label the entire food must be healthy (whether it’s a low-fat label, organic, high-fiber, etc).

In reality, most low-fat foods are only about 15 percent less calories than their regular counterparts. That means that a low-fat muffin might only have 30 calories less than a 200 calorie regular muffin. 30 calories, that’s it! Saving 30 calories isn’t going to make much of a dent in your weight loss. Especially when you consider you’d be more like to only eat half a regular muffin (100 calories), but because the low-fat muffin makes you feel better you let yourself eat the whole thing (170 calories).

What do we do with this, then? Don’t let labels be the deciding factor in what you eat and how much. Ignore the label and check the nutritional information.

Or, even better, skip the coffee and eat a cheese stick and a handful of carrots.

Balanced Snacks

Let’s take some of what we’ve learned so far and apply it to how we snack! We know that we want to have balanced snacks, but what does that look like exactly?

A snack is ideally 150-200 calories. You want to get somewhere between 7 and 15 grams of protein, but with less than 20 grams of carbohydrates. Remember, these are just guidelines to help you make good choices—but the above numbers work the best to give you a balanced snack that will keep you from being hungry again right away.

Now, how about a few ideas:

· 2 ounces of turkey jerky + a 1/2 cup of strawberries

· 2 Babybel Light Mini Cheeses + 6 ounces of baby carrots

· a serving of greek yogurt

· 1/2 cup low fat cottage cheese + 1/2 cup cubed tomatoes

· a small apple + 1 Tbsp peanut butter

· 2 Tbsp hummus + 1 cup cucumber

It’s up to you to check out the nutritional information and balance your snacks in ways that work best for you.

For me, I find that a little bit of a higher calorie snack in the afternoon works well to keep me going until a late dinner. My favorite snack is a giant English cucumber (usually about 12 ounces, 5 servings of veggies in my day right there) and a Zone bar. My aunt introduced me to the Zone bars during my visit home and now I love them! They have the most protein I’ve seen in a bar yet, and low on carbs and fat. The only downside is that the fat is mostly saturated fat (not something I need to particularly avoid, but just be aware not to get too much of).

What are your favorite balanced snacks? I’m always looking for ideas!

Food Addiction

I’ve mentioned previously that I have and continue to struggle with an addiction to food. Today we get to do some learnin’ because I’m going to explain how this addiction works. Those of us with an addiction to food (which is more of us than we’d like to admit) struggle with a very drug-like addiction. Granted it’s not as severe as drug addiction; however, I would argue our social acceptance of obesity makes food far more dangerous to our society than drugs.

We have two chemical systems in our bodies that influence what we “like” (Opioid System) and what we “want” (Dopamine System) to eat.

Our Opioid System releases a kind of pleasure chemical when we eat a food we like. We’re sitting eating a hot fudge sunday and our opioid system is releasing chemicals that tell our brain we’re happy (I dare you to try to eat a hot fudge sunday and be sad about it). Our Dopamine System releases chemicals into our brains that our brains translate as a reward when we eat something we like (if we eat a hot fudge sunday every night except Thursday, our brains on Thursday begin to go through withdrawal).

High fat and high sugar foods increase the opioids in your system when you eat them. Interestingly, so does morphine (just on higher level). Check out this article on the research. Once we experience this pleasure, we seek to have it again and again. But we develop a tolerance—the second time we eat that sweet, our opioids system only releases a third of the opioids it previously released. Now you need more and more of that food to get the “feel good” experience you had the first time.

The dopamine system simply compounds the problem. When we continue to overeat foods we like, we teach our brains that every time we eat hot fudge sundays we get a dose of dopamine. When our brains don’t get the dopamine it tells us to go eat a hot fudge sunday. Interestingly, cocaine also causes our bodies to release dopamine (just on higher level).

Are you seeing the pattern yet?

The worst part is that dieting actually increases the reward effect that happens in our dopamine system. When you abstain from that hot fudge sunday for several weeks—then give in—that hot fudge sunday tastes like the best hot fudge sunday you’ve had in your entire life. You think to yourself, “Why don’t I eat these every night?” And you’re back to where we started.

Our food choices are driven by a pleasure and reward system rather than an energy deficit or excess signal system. How do you get back on track? Knowledge! When you know how many calories you’ve eaten and how many you need, it’s much easier to rationalize your brain back on track. But, when it comes down to it, everyone works differently. You may discover there are certain foods you just cannot have; otherwise you can’t stop yourself from overeating. You might find that abstaining for the most time isn’t too hard, as long as you let yourself indulge every once in a while.

Know Your Fats

We have a question submitted by a reader this week! Jessica from Tennessee would like to know: “I found some carrot chips I like, but they’re made in sunflower oil. Is that high in saturated fat?”

The quick answer is no, but let’s chat about fats! Why do we consider saturated fat bad? What kind of fats are good? What’s the different between them?

The first 2 types of fats we’ll discuss are unsaturated fats and saturated fats.

Unsaturated fats are divided into 2 groups—monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. These fats are called “unsaturated” because of their chemical makeup (monounsaturated fats having only one double bond in the chain of fatty acids, polyunsaturated having more than one). So, without using a microscope, how can we tell if a fat is unsaturated? The lack of hydrogen atoms (eliminated by the double bonds) makes the melting temperature of a fat lower meaning, at room temperature, unsaturated fats will remain a liquid. A quick test: which is unsaturated fat, olive oil or butter? Olive oil, because it remains a liquid when it’s sitting on your counter.

Polyunsaturated fats help to keep your LDL cholesterol low. Your LDL cholesterol is what clogs your arteries, the “bad” cholesterol. You can find polyunsaturated fats in fish like salmon, tuna, sardines, and trout. However, monounsaturated fats actually raise your HDL cholesterol. Your HDL cholesterol takes the LDL cholesterol back to your liver (keeping it out of your arteries), the “good” cholesterol. You can find monounsaturated fats in plant sources of fat like walnuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, cashews, avocados, and olives.

Saturated fats are called so because they have no double bonds in their fatty acid chain and are fully saturated with hydrogen atoms. As mentioned above, the hydrogen atoms make the melting temperature higher, so these fats are solid at room temperature. A quick test; which is saturated fat, canola oil or Crisco? Crisco, because you can keep that sucker in your cupboard and it’s still a solid.

Saturated fats contribute to your LDL cholesterol; however, we do actually need a certain amount of saturated fat in our diets. Saturated fats contribute to cell growth, are preferred fuel for some muscles, and are an important component in certain hormones. So you certainly don’t want to cut saturated fats completely out of your diet. But most of us get plenty of saturated fat in our diet, so we shouldn’t focus on adding any in. Saturated fats are found in animal sources like cheese, milk, beef, eggs, and ham. Some plant sources also have saturated fat, like coconut and palm.

The last fat to discuss can be thrown into the “bad” or “unhealthy” foods category without pause. Trans fats, also known as hydrogenated fats, are unsaturated fats that have had hydrogen atoms forced onto them turning them partially or completely into a saturated fat. These fats were discovered in the early 1900s, and scientists used to think they would solve all our cholesterol problems. Turns out, they only contribute toward them and have absolutely no health benefits. Trans fats, thanks to the FDA, are required to always be marked in the nutritional information of a product (since these fats are only found in processed foods). Check your labels!

Think Nutritionally, Not Healthy

I find it interesting that we insist on classifying foods as “healthy” and “unhealthy”. As if all food could be classified into 2 distinct categories of “eat” and “don’t eat.” That somehow cucumbers are something we eat and ice cream is something we don’t eat.

On one hand, it would be nice if food were so black and white. It would certainly make choosing what to eat easier. However, wouldn’t we just be miserable if we just never ate the foods that we classify as unhealthy? Let’s be honest—none of us choose not to eat foods because we think of them as unhealthy. But we do make many choices about what we think we should eat based on what we think is healthy.

I’m sure you’ve stood in the cereal aisle and reached for your favorite sugar cereal. Then you change your choice and grab a box of granola because you think you should be eating healthy and you’ve classified granola as a healthy food in your mind. Wait! Turn that box over and give the nutritional information a good look over! I’ll bet you didn’t realize there’s so much sugar in most granola cereals that in half a cup you’ll be eating close to 40 grams of carbohydrates and only 5 grams of protein. Hmmm. From what we learned about carbohydrates, if you eat a bowl of this cereal (which I guarantee you will be more than half a cup of cereal), then you’ll be hungry again and looking for something sweet in no time.

So, unless you plan on accompanying this bowl of granola with some cottage cheese or a cup of greek yogurt, then a bowl of granola is not your best option for breakfast.

Uh oh. Does that mean granola is actually unhealthy? No! Granola has great value in breakfast—as long as you pair it with some protein and heart-healthy fats. I would go so far as to say most all foods have great nutritional value—as long as you are being smart in how you balance them in your diet.

There are some foods we can leave in the “unhealthy” category: any foods with trans fats, for example. And there are obviously foods that have a greater nutritional value than other foods: whole grain wheat versus refined wheat, for example.

But let’s pull ourselves out of our black and white thinking and begin to be aware of the nutrition in our foods and how to build them into a diet that keeps us healthy for life!

Breakfast Club!

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” I prefer to think that all meals are created equal, but—nonetheless—it’s important to have breakfast and do it right.

I won’t go into the details about why breakfast is important—we all know breakfast is important for energy and health; we just choose to ignore it. Do yourself right and stop ignoring breakfast!

Breakfast doesn’t need to be a large or complex meal. Every person is different, so you need to experiment with different options to see what kind of breakfast gives you the best start to your day. As you try different things, these are the basics: get a minimum of 15 grams of protein and 10 grams of fat (ideally, heart healthy fats). Carbs are easy to get at breakfast; Americans are obsessed with carbs at breakfast (just think about the cereal aisle at the grocery store—it has its own aisle!).

You want to make sure you’re balancing your carbs with your protein. So, if you’re eating 15 grams of protein, then you’ll want to get about 15-25 grams of carbs. The point of balancing breakfast this way is to get enough protien and fat that you're not hungry for a while, but enough carbs that you get a boost of energy to start your day.

As you try different options, you may find that having too many carbs at breakfast makes you hungry too soon in your morning (sending you looking for snacks and knocking your calories off for the day). You may find that protein from certain foods seem to keep you satisfied longer. You may find that a lower calorie breakfast with a small snack in the middle of your morning is the best way to get you to lunch.

One of my favorite breakfast options is a low-fat version of my mum’s Frittata (one serving):

1 egg, 1 Tbsp of part skim ricotta, 1 oz. of low fat mozzarella cheese, and 15 pieces of Turkey Pepperoni

I throw everything together in a mini frying pan. Add a piece of toast or some fruit to balance out your carbs (the whole meal is under 300 calories) and you’re good to go for the morning!

The Hunger Chat

Wouldn’t it be great if at one point in our lives our parents sat us down said, “Son, we need to have a chat. You’re becoming a man now, and you’re going to start feeling hungry all the time. Don’t worry, son, it’s a normal part of life. But let me share some secrets with you that will help you manage that hunger.”

Aside from being a really creepy conversation (especially if you were a girl reading that), wouldn’t it be nice if someone had actually taught us about food and how to eat? We have habits and reasons for eating what we eat and when we eat it, but we’re not aware of half them nor do we know where they came from.

Hunger is the biggest reason that we make many of our food and drink decisions throughout the day (there are also emotional and psychological reasons, but we’ll talk about those later). Hunger is just our bodies’ way of letting us know we need energy. There are ways we can eat that energize our bodies more efficiently than others.

When you eat carbohydrates, your body converts them to glucose and your blood sugar (literally, the sugar in your blood) rises. This gives you more energy—you feel more awake and alert. This is what is happening when you go to your coworker’s desk to ask a question and sneak a Snickers from the candy jar there. You’re giving your body an infusion of energy.

But that energy isn’t going to last long with just sugar in your system. Your blood sugar rises rapidly, then the sugar is absorbed and your blood sugar falls rapidly—you begin to feel tired and lagged. This leaves your body looking for energy, and it knows where the best sources of energy are: sweet foods! You eat that Snickers bar, but 20 minutes later you’re thinking about another one. Or several.

When you eat protein and fats, they take longer for your body to metabolize them (to turn them into energy). This is where balance is key! If you were to just eat protein or fat, you wouldn’t get that spike of energy from having your blood sugar rise.

So you eat a little carbs and a little protein or fat: the carbs spike your blood sugar up but, just at the point when your body uses up the carbs, your body is releasing the glucose and amino acids from metabolizing the protein and fats. Your blood sugar is now up and it stays up! You feel energized for hours and you’re body is burning calories efficiently. And your blood sugar slowly lowers as you use energy, so that you’re not hungry until your next meal time.

Dispelling the Myths

Let’s get the “I thought I heard from a friend who had a cousin who heard on the news one time” beliefs that affect the decisions we make out of the way. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made a horrible decision thinking the whole time that I was making a good one.

I can lose weight just by cutting my calories—I don’t really need to exercise.

You could just cut your calories. But if you’re not using or building your muscles, you’ll lose weight from both fat and muscle mass. For every ten pounds you lose, four of those pounds will be from muscle mass which will cause your metabolism to slow. And, no, lifting weights and building muscle will not make you gain weight (well, it might, but only if you’re starting out at a pretty healthy weight).

I should simply cut as much fat as possible from my foods.

There is such a thing as “healthy fat.” Healthy fats counter act much of the damage from the bad fats we consume. Even some fats with a bad reputation (like saturated fats) are an important component of nutrition.

Nutrition bars or protein bars can help me lose weight.

I hate to break it to you, but there’s no silver bullet for losing weight. Even if there was, nutrition bars wouldn’t be it. Most nutrition bars are primarily carbohydrates, which will spike your blood sugar. Your blood sugar will then drop quickly: you’ll be hungry and looking for more carbs. Even some protein bars can have five times more carbohydrates than protein. Wouldn’t that make it a carb bar?

All natural and organic foods are better and healthier for you.

Just because a food touts that it is organic and all natural doesn’t mean it is also good for you. Guess what? Fat is organic. Sugar is natural. Both can be consumed in very natural foods, but you definitely don’t want to overload on them simply because of that.

Eating late in the evening will make you gain extra weight.

It doesn’t matter when you eat your calories in a day: your body will process what you eat in the same way no matter what time of day it is. However, we need to be aware of how the time of day affects the choices we make. You may find that you eat a lot of sweets in the evening. If so, you may want to cut out eating altogether after a certain time of day in order to avoid the temptation.

I can diet and exercise, lose some weight, and then go back to how I ate and lived before.

Did you even listen to yourself as you said that? Somebody is in denial… No! You need to make lifelong changes, which is why those changes need to be realistic. Some fad diet will only help you in the short term.

The Basics

There’s so much to cover, I almost don’t know where to start! First, the basics:

All calories come from only three sources: protein, carbohydrates and fat. Most food consists of a combination of these three sources, although in varying proportions. It is important to eat a diet balanced with each of these sources as they each play important roles in nutrition and satiety (not being hungry, being satisfied).

Protein is critical for cell growth, maintenance and repair (as well as building muscle mass) and is an energy source for your body. Protein is the main contributor toward satiety because it takes longer for the intestines to digest and absorb.

Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for our bodies. In the case of red blood cells and brain tissues carbohydrates are the sole source of energy those cells can use (hmmm... wonder what that means for diets that completely exclude carbs?)

Fats are not only important for fat-soluble vitamins, but they also contribute toward satiety. Healthy fats are needed f regulating blood pressure, blood clotting, our immune systems and organ functions.