Meal-Tracking Online

You ever have one of those work weeks that by Friday make you feel like you’re panting and out of breath?  I’ve had a couple of those back to back.  But my games have launched finally and the worst is behind me—back to the grind!

One of the most important tools you can possibly keep in your repertoire for weight loss and maintenance is meal tracking.  For weight loss, meal tracking can give you a sense of control over how quickly or slowly you lose weight.  Your meal tracker won’t make food decisions for you, but it gives you control over your accountability.  For weight maintenance, meal tracking is the perfect way to get yourself back on track—like when your company sends you to NYC and you decide to go a little nuts on NY pizza and street meat.  Hypothetically, of course.

I use a great meal tracker that was created by the 20/20 Lifestyles program that I did my weight loss with (they’re hoping to make the program available to the public in the future).  But there are a lot of great meal trackers online.

One of my good friends started using the LiveStrong.com My Plate program created by the Lance Armstrong Foundation (http://www.livestrong.com/myplate).  She’s found the program to have almost all features she needs to help her track her weight loss (as well as some health issues).  Here are her favorite features for My Plate:

• Provides numbers on calories, carbs, protein, fat, and sodium for each food.  You can create saved meals (foods consumed at the same time) and recipes which provide the same numbers.
• Huge database of foods (even my weird gluten free foods) including foods that don’t have calories on the package (like Whole Foods’ sausages).
• Tracks weight, exercise and water intake as well.
• Has reasonable calorie goals (although the goals for fat, carbs, protein are a little skewed towards carbs).  Can chart weight against calories and see if a change is necessary.
• Great recipe feature!  Since my husband and I cook together, and we usually cook multiple portions to reheat later.  What I do is I put all the ingredients into the system, and the servings, and it will tell me the calories/protein/carbs per serving (this helps me decide if it is worth making).  Then when we make it, I weight the pot empty and full and put into the system the total weight so that it will remind me what the right serving size is each time I have it.

Have you discovered any online (or offline) meal trackers that have been helpful?

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?

Eat Your Veggies!

Did you know that only 1 out of every 3 adults in the US eat more than three servings of vegetables each day?  The CDC recently published some state numbers on how many servings of fruits and vegetables we’re eating every day.  There’s some fascinating information (and a couple of maps that would make you gasp) under the Health Professionals section here: www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov.

Are you surprised by that number?  I asked around my work to see what others thought, and one coworker replied, “I like vegetables, but I just don’t buy them often.”  This was me not that long ago.  I kept commenting to my nutritionist as I was doing the 20/20 Lifestyles program, “I forgot how much I love veggies and fruit!”

We all have different reasons for not eating the veggies we need daily.  Some of us live in veggie-hostile environments.  My husband refuses to eat anything that grew out of the ground, so I’m the only person in our house who consumes vegetables.  Some people are unsure of what to buy or how to buy produce.  I knew how to buy good carrots and zucchini, but until I moved to Seattle produce like avocadoes and brussel sprouts were foreign territory to me.  And some people just don’t know what to do with the veggies once they have them.  Cooking some veggies takes a little practice, and not everyone loves boring, warmed, unseasoned vegetables.

I’ll chat about some specific veggies in later posts (so let me know if you have any requests!), but here are a few ideas of how we can build more produce into our diet every day:

·         Veggies (unadulterated) are always low-calorie.  You can absolutely include a little in every meal: a hand full of cherry tomatoes with your snack, a salad with your lunch, and grilled veggies with dinner are easy.  The key is to commit to keeping veggies around your house so you can pack them to go and snack on them at home.

·         Consider how you can use veggies to compliment what you’re already eating.  Don’t skip the lettuce and tomato on your burger.  Throw some broccoli in that mac ‘n cheese.  Add eggplant to your lasagna for a little excitement!

·         Consider how you could replace high-carbohydrate or calorie-dense foods with vegetables.  Instead of having bread as an appetizer, get a salad (watch that dressing!).  Instead of pasta, have your chicken or meatballs with asparagus and zucchini (or spaghetti squash as great substitute).  Instead of a bun for your hamburger, try portabella mushrooms or large leaf lettuce.

Do you find it hard to build veggies into your daily diet?  Are there specific days or times that are easier to get your servings of vegetables than others?  How have you found ways to work in fresh produce?

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?

Is It a Fruit or Not?

Everyone knows that fruit is a fantastic way to get healthy, complex carbohydrates into your diet.  As long as you’re not over doing it (yes, you can over-do fruit), fruit can be an important component to regulating your blood sugar, keeping your energy up, and even keeping your sweet tooth satisfied.  Most people should be getting about 2 to 4 servings of fruit each day (a serving is a half cup, which is never as big as you think it is).

But then there is dried fruit—is dried fruit still fruit?

Dried fruit is a tricky thing, and you don’t want to treat dried fruit the same way you treat regular fruit.  The first difference is quantity.  Since dried fruit is so much smaller and lighter than its un-dried (or hydrated) counterpart, a serving size is much, much smaller.  Case and point: one cup of grapes is about 70 calories, and one cup of raisins is over 400 calories.  A serving size of dried fruit is generally about a quarter cup, but even that quarter cup is not equivalent to one serving of regular fruit.

The second big difference is that dried fruit often has added sugar.  I have a couple different salad recipes that call for dried cranberries:

40 grams of Dried Cranberries: 138 calories and 29 grams of sugar

40 grams of Cranberries: 18 calories 1 gram of sugar

The dried cranberries have 15 percent more sugar than the regular cranberries.  Although dried cranberries tend to get more added sugar than most fruits (because they’re so tart), make sure you’re checking the ingredients and nutritional info so you have a good idea of how much added sugar you’re getting.

Lastly, don’t underestimate the importance of the water naturally in fruit.  I have a weakness for dried mango—I find it hard to stop eating.  But when I eat regular mango, I can eat a small bowl (about 6 ounces) and then feel full and satisfied.   The water in fruits helps to fill you up so that you begin to feel full before you’ve eaten more calories than you actually need.  Since dried fruits remove that water, it’s best to make sure you’re drinking water while you snack to help you not overeat.

I’ll post in the comments my favorite salad recipe using dried cranberries.  Please post any of your own recipes for other good dried fruit uses.  I’m looking a great trail mix combination!

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).

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.

The Dish on Fiber

There’s a whole lot of talk lately about fiber. Several times now, I’ll be preparing my lunch or a snack in the kitchen at work and someone will comment on the fiber in my food. I really haven’t put much thought into fiber previously since I mostly just make sure I’m getting enough veggies in my week. But fiber is all the rage right now.

To start, what is fiber? There are 2 types of fiber: soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. Insoluble fiber essentially greases your digestive tract (this is where that “regularity” comes from). Think of insoluble fiber like little scrub brushes that keep everything moving. Soluble fiber (meaning it dissolves in water) helps keep your cholesterol and blood sugar low.

It’s easy to find foods with both kinds of fiber. Wheat, nuts, and dark green leafy vegetables are all high in insoluble fiber. Oats, citrus fruits, carrots, peas and beans are high in soluble fiber.

In addition to fiber’s effect on your digestive tract and cholesterol, it has another benefit that seems to be the source for fiber’s popularity right now. Fiber takes longer for your body to digest (like protein) which, therefore, helps to reduce your hunger throughout the day.

If you’re having trouble with hunger mid-morning or mid-afternoon, try combining the powers of fiber and protein! Have a spinach and chicken salad for lunch, or a shredded wheat and cottage cheese for breakfast. Just make sure to not replace your protein with fiber. Fiber alone might help you fight hunger, but fiber is usually found in foods that are higher in carbohydrates. If you were just to have an orange for a snack, there are many more carbs than fiber and you’ll be hungry again in half an hour.

Be smart about how you get fiber in your diet, and fiber can be a small addition to make a big difference.

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.

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!

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.

Insulin Invasion!

This information may at first seem very unrelated to weight loss and management, but I promise you it’s some of the most important information you could put into action. Our culture is inundated with carbohydrates, and we need to know how our bodies respond to carbs before we can consume them in a healthy way.

First things first: insulin is a hormone our bodies produce which allows our cells to absorb the glucose (or sugar) in our blood and convert it to energy. So we need insulin in our system so that we can use the sugar in our blood. Think of insulin as the key to the locked doors in our cells; insulin opens the door and lets sugar enter the cell.

Here’s the catch, though—as soon as we taste something sweet on our tongue or smell something sweet, our bodies begin producing insulin. So what happens when we consume something sweet (like a diet soda) but there is no sugar in our blood for the insulin to work with?

That insulin sticks around until it has sugar to work with. You may not even realize it, but you’ve just caused your body to produce a whole lot of insulin that it isn’t going to use. With all that extra insulin sitting around, your cells get used to it. Your cells eventually become insulin resistant, but your body thinks “I should probably just produce more of it and that will help.” This insulin resistance causes hyperinsulinemia, where you’re just producing way more insulin than you need.

Type 2 diabetes, anyone?

So, today at 2:30 in the afternoon you’ll be standing at the fridge in the office kitchen. You’re looking at this 6-pack of Pepsi and Carla’s can of Diet Pepsi (she’s wound so tight that she has a post-it with her name on the can). You’re thinking to yourself, “I really want a snack, but I should go for the diet since it has no calories.”

Wrong! It’s almost better for you to grab the regular Pepsi—I say “almost” because you’re still drinking over 100 calories of sugar and caffeine. So you reach for the regular Pepsi (I mean, you’re pretty sure you saw Bob put them in here, but they’re clearly not labeled).

Or you could skip the soda altogether. There’s this stuff called “water”…

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.