If you have a book, article or a link to an article on a website that you feel would help others on SB and be beneficial to keeping in the forefront, please post it onto this website.
Most recommended readings that are posted would fall under FRIDAY FACTSso if you have something interesting to share, please post if first on the REGULAR WEEKLY SUPPORT BOARDthen CC it onto this board. If it's a link to an article on a website, please post the link that will take us to that site. Please try to give a little background on where you found the article, or what the link to the site provides.
If you have a book you'd like recommend, please try to give a little information about it, Title, Author, and why you recommend it.
Also, be sure to visit another important board, our TOOLS & TIPS BOARD at the link located below:
I hope this board will provide useful information to everyone who visits it now and in the future!
Debelli
11-03-2000, 09:43 PM
One cookbook I'd really recommend on having is the NIKKI & DAVID GOLDBECK'S AMERICAN WHOLEFOODS CUISINE. Over 1300 meatless wholesome recipes from short order to gourmet. Low fat, high fiber, norefined ingredients, naturally sweetened and seasoned.
It's an older book,copyright 1983, but there have been updates. I found mine at a garage sale, but you can find it on Ebay from time to time, as well as other places. See if your library has it. It's really more of a vegetarian book, but of the 1300 recipes there are tons that are SB legal, and wonderful baking recipes that with one alteration can be SB legal (honey to agave nectar or another sugar substitute). Book has over 500 pages. All the recipes I've made from this book so far, I've been happy with the way they came out.
Debbie
Debelli
THE BIG ORANGE BABE
11-04-2000, 05:58 AM
I have two suggestions and they follow below:
For some really good tips and modifications,
pick up a copy of THIN FOR GOOD by Fred Pescatore,M.D.
He will show you how to master the 11 emotional levels of eating. You can personalize your needs for eating our way.
He also provides more than 130 delicious, satisfying low-carb recipes.
I have found this to be very self gratifying
and recently, it gave me THE BIG CLICK with what I need to do for myself in this time of my life. Check it out, you won't be sorry!
Also, a great cook book to try is SUGARFREE
QUICK & EASY! A cookbook based on the glycemic index by Deanie Comeaux Bahan.
It's recipes were expecially created for the SUGAR BUSTER'S diet plan. It includes recipes for appetizers, salads, soups, meats, seafood, poultry, vegetables, desserts and more. Also included is a revised glycemic index.
These recipes are great and I haven't yet found one that I don't like. They are very tasty and down to earth. I got mine at BOOKSAMILLION for $15.95, but I'm sure you can find it at your local bookstore.
Debelli
11-04-2000, 10:43 PM
Here's a very good websites that will explain more about STEVIA a sweetner many people use:
Do you eat carbohydrate-rich snack foods when you're hungry? Do you think you can eat all the carbohydrates you want because they're low-fat? If so, you may be surprised to learn that carbohydrate consumption in this country has skyrocketed (and dietary fat intake has dropped), yet more Americans than ever are overweight.
If you're confused because you think all carbohydrates are good for you, it's time to gain a more thorough understanding of them. Once you learn overlooked basics, you'll see why too many of certain kinds of carbs can be hazardous to your health.
Beans and grains are sources of carbohydrates; however, few people realize carbs are also in vegetables, fruit, sugar, nuts, seeds and milk. Carbohydrates are known as energy foods because when they're metabolized, they supply glucose, a sugar that circulates in our blood and provides energy where the body needs it. Our muscles use glucose for quick energy during exercise, but the brain needs glucose the most. When we're at rest, the brain uses two-thirds of our glucose. If blood glucose levels fall too low, brain function suffers and mental fatigue or dizziness result.
To prevent this from happening, the body works to maintain a steady stream of glucose. When blood sugar drops below normal levels, the pancreas responds by releasing glucagon. This hormone stimulates the breakdown of fat and glycogen (a storage form of glucose) to provide energy for all body cells, especially brain cells. Glycogen reserves are limited though, and once they're depleted, the body must break down protein from muscles to provide the glucose the brain needs. Therefore, to meet our glucose needs and to spare body protein, we need a certain amount of carbs in our diet at frequent intervals.
However, carbohydrates aren't "free foods," as many believe. It's true that carbohydrates contain fewer calories than fat, but they can easily be stored as fat if they're overconsumed. Here's why: When carbohydrates are eaten, blood sugar levels rise, and the pancreas responds by secreting a hormone called insulin. Insulin -- designed to restore blood sugar equilibrium -- works in the opposite way of glucagon: It removes excess glucose from the blood and stores it first as glycogen and then as fat. When we eat large amounts of carbs, especially high levels of refined grain products such as bread, more insulin will be produced and fat will more likely be stored. High insulin levels promote fat storage and block the release of fat-burning glucagon. This means that even if carbohydrates are fat free, if you eat too many, they'll be stored as fat and prevent your body from burning fat.
How Many To Eat?
If too many and too few carbohydrates cause problems, what's a healthy amount to consume? Recommendations from nutrition experts vary widely, ranging from 30 to 80 percent carbohydrates in the diet. Government organizations generally advocate you eat more than half your daily calories from carbs.
Julian Whitaker, M.D., director of the Whitaker Wellness Institute in Newport Beach, Calif., recently modified his dietary recommendations from a higher carb diet to one that contains 60 percent carbohydrates (from mostly vegetables, legumes and fruits), 20 percent protein and 20 percent fat. The reason is people seem to overdose on carbohydrates, he says. Common problems Whitaker cites include abdominal obesity, difficulty losing weight, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, adult-onset diabetes and an increased risk of heart attack. All these conditions are associated with high insulin levels, says Whitaker, author of Reversing Heart Disease (Warner).
Barry Sears, Ph.D., author of The Zone (ReganBooks), advocates a more moderate carbohydrate intake -- 40 percent of calories as carbohydrates (mostly from vegetables and fruits) with 30 percent protein and 30 percent fat. He says a 40/30/30 ratio is best because it keeps insulin at optimal levels. "Insulin makes you fat and keeps you fat," Sears says. "A high level of insulin is the number one factor that predicts heart disease."
Although blanket recommendations serve as public guidelines, both experts believe carbohydrate intake must be individualized because insulin responses vary. Sears cites research showing 75 percent of the population has an excessive insulin response to high levels of carbohydrates. Most Americans need a moderate carbohydrate intake, and only 25 percent of the population does well on a high-carb diet, Sears says. Whitaker believes individual tolerance for carbohydrates ranges from 40 to 70 percent of calories.
The Hazards of Processed Carbs
Researchers link increased white flour and white sugar consumption to the degenerative diseases that plague modern people. Weston A. Price, D.D.S., noticed this connection as early as the 1930s. After studying the diets and health of more than a dozen nonindustrialized societies around the world, he found all these cultures had different whole-food diets and all were healthy. However, once white flour and white sugar were introduced to these cultures, physical degeneration set in over a period of a single generation, according to Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation).
In The Saccharine Disease (Keats), researcher T.L. Cleave, M.D., traced the development of diabetes, hypertension, ulcers, gallbladder disease, colitis and heart disease to the intake of refined carbohydrates. When people from non-Westernized societies, who normally didn't eat white flour or white sugar, began to eat these foods, they didn't develop immediate health problems. However, two decades later Cleave notes that these people displayed health problems associated with the newly introduced sugar and flour.
Excessive sugar and processed carbohydrate consumption contributes to the development of other health problems including cancer, osteoporosis, hypoglycemia, adrenal exhaustion, and parasitic and yeast infections, according to Get the Sugar Out (Crown) by Ann Louise Gittleman, M.S., C.N.S.
Eating refined carbs sets the stage for disease because they raise insulin levels and cause nutrient deficiencies, Whitaker says. Nutrients are stripped during the refining process. Since we need minerals and B vitamins to assimilate carbohydrates, the body uses its nutrient reserves to digest refined carbohydrates and convert them to energy. This causes nutrient deficiencies that lead to a variety of ailments. In the 1930s, doctors noticed many white bread eaters suffered from health problems caused by iron, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin deficiencies. This led to the development of "enriched" flour, which is fortified with four nutrients but is still missing 20 others in whole wheat.
What Type Is Right for You?
To understand which carbohydrates are good for you and which aren't, it's important to know how carbohydrates are classified.
Chemical Structure. Carbohydrates are separated into two types: simple and complex. Simple carbs are found in sweeteners such as refined sugar, honey, maple syrup and fruit juice concentrates. These sugars have simple chemical structures that are quickly broken down in the digestive system. Simple sugars should be avoided because they supply calories but few nutrients and encourage tooth decay and yeast overgrowth. They also weaken immunity (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1973, vol. 26).
Complex carbohydrates found in vegetables, legumes and whole grains consist of long chains of sugars that take longer to digest. They should make up most of our carbohydrate intake.
Glycemic Index. Another system of classifying carbohydrates is the glycemic index (see "Glycemic Index of Common Foods" on page 69). It refers to the rate of glucose entry into the bloodstream after a carbohydrate is eaten. Since complex carbohydrates are digested more slowly than simple sugars, it had been assumed they release glucose into the bloodstream more slowly. However, research conducted in the early 1980s found this isn't always true. Some of the foods with the highest glycemic rating (foods that cause the highest rise in blood sugar and insulin levels) are so-called "complex" carbohydrates such as breakfast cereals, potatoes, bread (both whole wheat and white) and grains. Carbohydrates with low and moderate glycemic ratings (foods that release glucose more slowly and produce more moderate insulin responses) are nonstarchy vegetables such as lettuce, celery, broccoli and most fruits. According to Sears and Whitaker, you should emphasize low- and moderate-glycemic fruits and vegetables and limit your intake of high-glycemic grains.
Americans are doing the opposite. Statistics show most of us still consume low levels of green and yellow vegetables, but we eat more grains than ever. Since 1977, intake of ready-to-eat cereals has increased by 60 percent, and grain mixtures (such as pizza, pasta and nachos) has increased 115 percent. Consumption of snack foods such as crackers and pretzels has risen even higher -- 200 percent!
During the same time period that grain consumption has escalated, 36 percent more women and 72 percent more men have become overweight, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. "The increase in obesity is just the first step toward an increase in a wide variety of other chronic disease states," Sears says.
Sears believes people need to keep adjusting the amounts and kinds of carbohydrates, protein and fat in their meals until they find "winning combinations" -- meals that satisfy hunger and carbohydrate cravings and provide mental focus and steady energy four hours later. In his new book Mastering the Zone (ReganBooks), Sears explains that people who are mentally focused but hungry four hours after a meal have eaten too little carbohydrate in that meal. Those who are hungry and mentally fatigued four hours after a meal have consumed too much carbohydrate.
If a lower carbohydrate intake is needed, it's not necessary to cut out servings of carbohydrates altogether. "The best way to control your intake of carbohydrates is to eat fruits and vegetables in place of grain products," Sears explains. Vegetables and fruits are so much lower in carbohydrates that six cups of steamed broccoli have the same carbohydrate content as one cup of pasta! That means you can eat a lot more fruits and vegetables without consuming too many carbohydrates.
Ultimately, being savvy about carbohydrates is a bit more complicated than believing all carbohydrates are good for you. However, in the final analysis, a simple guideline to remember is long-standing advice: Always eat your fruits and vegetables.
Debelli
11-05-2000, 04:21 AM
This site has an article that RICK MENDOSA published that explains THE GLYCEMIC INDEX
Here's some other reading you may find interesting (especially the 3rd & 4th paragraphs) in regards to PROTEIN called PROTEIN POWER:
PROTEIN POWER
One of the most important roles of protein is to stimulate the pancreas to produce the hormone glucagon. Glucagon's primary function is to unlock your stored fat cells for use as energy. With too much insulin in the body, glucagon is literally blocked from unlocking stores of fat, and the body is unable to burn its own fat.
In this scenario, protein acts in the reverse of insulin. When a person eats adequate quantities of protein (esp. in combination with healthy fats and low sugar), the pancreas produces the right amount of glucagon to mobilize stored body fat so the body can begin burning excess fat for energy.
When you aren't consuming enough protein, you battle intense cravings, often for foods high in simple sugars. When it seems like a candy bar is all you really need, your body actually may be starving for protein. Protein, like healthy fat, has a stabilizing effect on blood sugar and provides the body with the long-lasting steady energy it demands. Sugar cravings are merely the body's way of looking for foods that will provide it with quick, easily metabolized energy. Unfortunately, giving in to the sugar craving will result in a sugar rush followed by a crash in energy level and a continuous craving for more sugar.
If your protein intake is low and you find yourself craving sweets, try increasing your daily protein intake. Increasing protein intake will eliminate sugar cravings and boost energy levels significantly.
Critical in the development of tissue growth and healing, protein also plays a crucial role in the formation of neurotransmitters in the brain. It helps the body create new cells to replace those that die off every day. Without enough protein, healthy new cells will not be formed-the skin will be thin and dry, the hair fragile with a tendency to fall out, and the nails brittle, fatigue, confusion and irritability are conditions too. If you currently recognize any of these symptoms yourself, check your protein intake (unfortunately, I can relate to some of these!)
A lesser known function of protein is its role in maintaining fluid balance in the body. Proteins in blood attract molecules of water, controlling the water levels between cells, within cells, and within your arteries and veins. When the body is deficient in protein, the fluid int he cells cannot be drawn in by the blood and will not be efficiently eliminated by the kidneys. Thus, a diet low in protein will actually result in water retention, water weight gain, and uncomfortable bloating.
Protein can boost metabolic rate by helping the body build lean muscle mass. It also acts as a wonderful source of ongoing, steady energy throughout the day. If you feel tired and sluggish on a regular basis, check your protein levels. Chances are you're not getting enough protein in your diet. Adding lean meats and poultry will leave you with more energy and few energy swings throughout your day.
Debelli
11-12-2000, 06:19 PM
Here's some interesting facts about SUGAR from the book GET THE SUGAR OUT by Anne Louise Gittleman, which I highly recommend reading!
Label Reading 101
If you're going to buy packaged foods, you have to pay attention to what's in them. Three-quarters of the sugars are "hidden" in processed foods, so you have to become skeptical about every food you're thinking of buying. Read those labels, educate yourself, and don't let the "hidden" sugars pass you by.
Read the number of sugar grams listed on the nutrition-facts label of the food your considering buying. As a general guideline, look for foods that contain three grams of sugars or less per serving.
Compare the number of sugar grams to the number of total carbohydrate grams. Avoid foods that have more than one-third of their total carbs coming from sugars. The majority of the carbs you consume each day should be of the complex variety, not from simple sugars. To help you eat this way, shop for foods with the lowest number of sugar grams in relation to their carb grams.
Peruse the ingredients list and look for sugar in all its various forms. It can be listed as any of the following: barley malt, beet sugar, brown sugar, buttered syrup, cane-juice crystals, cane sugar, caramel, carob syrup, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, date sugar, dextran, dextrose, diastase, diastatic malt, ethyl maltol, fructose, fruit juice and fruit juice concentrate, glucose, glucose solids, golden sugar, golden syrup, grape sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, invert sugar, lactose, malt syrup, maltodextrin, maltose, mannitol, molasses, raw sugar, refiner's syrup, sorbitol, sorghum syrup, sucrose, sugar, turbinado sugar, xylitol and yellow sugar. A quick way to discern sugars on the label is simply to look for the word sugar in any form and the words ending in -ose.
Added tip: While your reading the label for sugar content, pay attention to the other ingredients in the food as well. If there are ingredients that you can't pronounce or spell, much less recognize, the chances are that the product belongs more in a laboratory experiment than in your body. Skip the fake foods and instead buy products that have identifiable whole foods as ingredients.
Debelli
11-12-2000, 06:27 PM
ARE YOU GETTING ENOUGH WATER???
Are You Drinking Enough Water?
Most people have no idea how much water they should be drinking, and most Americans live from day to day in a dehydrated state. They don't drink enough water.
Without water, we would be poisoned to death by our own waste products and toxins resulting from metabolism.
Water is vital to digestion and metabolism, acting as a medium for various enzymatic and chemical reactions in the body. It carries nutrients and oxygen to the cells through the blood, regulates body temperature and lubricates our joints (which is particularly important if you're arthritic, have chronic muscular-skeletal problems or are athletically active).
We need water to breathe; we lose approximately one pint of liquid every day just by exhaling.
If you are not in "fluid balance" you can impair every aspect of your body's physiological functioning.
Dr. Howard Flaks, Beverly Hills:
"As a result of not drinking enough water, many people encounter such problems as excess body fat, poor muscle tone and size, decreased digestive efficiency and organ function, increased toxicity in the body, joint and muscle soreness (particularly after exercise) and water retention."
Proper water intake is the key to weight loss," says Dr. Donald Robertson, Scottsdale, Arizona. "If people who are trying to lose weight don't drink enough water, the body can't metabolize the fat, they retain fluid, which keeps their weight up, and the whole procedure we're trying to set up falls apart."
"I'd say the minimum amount of water a healthy person should drink is 10 eight-ounce glasses a day," he continues, "and you need to drink more if you are overweight, exercise a lot, or live in a hot climate. Overweight people should drink an extra eight ounces of water for each 25 pounds that exceeds their ideal weight."
Your water intake should be spread judiciously throughout the day, including the evening. Dr. Flaks cautions against drinking more than four glasses in any given hour. Always check with your physician before embarking on a water intake increase program.
You may ask, "If I drink this much water, won't I constantly be running to the bathroom?" Initially, yes, because of the hypersensitivity of the bladder to increased fluids. But after a few weeks, your bladder calms down, and you urinate less frequently, but in larger amounts.
There is a difference between pure water and other beverages that contain water.
Water is water. Obviously you can get it by consuming fruit juice, soft drinks, beer, coffee or tea. Unfortunately, while such drinks contain water, they also may contain substances that are not healthy and actually contradict some of the positive effects of the added water.
Dr. Jerzy Meduski, Los Angeles, California: "Beer contains water, but it also contains alcohol, which is a toxic substance. Beverages that contain caffeine, such as coffee, stimulate the adrenal glands; fruit juices contain a lot of sugar and stimulate the pancreas. Such drinks may tax the body more than cleanse it."
Another problem with these beverages is that you lose your taste for water.
The way to interpret all of this, therefore, is that the recommended daily water intake means just that--WATER!
Debelli
11-12-2000, 06:37 PM
Found this site with a VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE on PMS (was actually looking to see why I get sick during that TOM)
Just click on the link below and it will take you directly to the article:
Here's an interesting article on REFINED SUGARS. Just click on the link and it will take you to the article.
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/SugarBlues.html
Debelli
11-27-2000, 10:52 PM
Here's a great article!
Why The Scale Lies
by Renee Cloe,
ACE Certified Personal Trainer
We’ve been told over an over again that daily weighing is unnecessary, yet many of us can’t resist peeking at that number every morning. If you just can’t bring yourself to toss the scale in the trash, you should definitely familiarize yourself with the factors that influence it’s readings. From water retention to glycogen storage and changes in lean body mass, daily weight fluctuations are normal. They are not indicators of your success or failure. Once you understand how these mechanisms work, you can free yourself from the daily battle with the bathroom scale.
Water makes up about 60% of total body mass. Normal fluctuations in the body’s water content can send scale-watchers into a tailspin if they don’t understand what’s happening. Two factors influencing water retention are water consumption and salt intake. Strange as it sounds, the less water you drink, the more of it your body retains. If you are even slightly dehydrated your body will hang onto it’s water supplies with a vengeance, possibly causing the number on the scale to inch upward. The solution is to drink plenty of water.
Excess salt (sodium) can also play a big role in water retention. A single teaspoon of salt contains over 2,000 mg of sodium. Generally, we should only eat between 1,000 and 3,000 mg of sodium a day, so it’s easy to go overboard. Sodium is a sneaky substance. You would expect it to be most highly concentrated in salty chips, nuts, and crackers. However, a food doesn’t have to taste salty to be loaded with sodium. A half cup of instant pudding actually contains nearly four times as much sodium as an ounce of salted nuts, 460 mg in the pudding versus 123 mg in the nuts. The more highly processed a food is, the more likely it is to have a high sodium content. That’s why, when it comes to eating, it’s wise to stick mainly to the basics: fruits, vegetables, lean meat, beans, and whole grains. Be sure to read the labels on canned foods, boxed mixes, and frozen dinners.
Women may also retain several pounds of water prior to menstruation. This is very common and the weight will likely disappear as quickly as it arrives. Pre-menstrual water-weight gain can be minimized by drinking plenty of water, maintaining an exercise program, and keeping high-sodium processed foods to a minimum.
Another factor that can influence the scale is glycogen. Think of glycogen as a fuel tank full of stored carbohydrate. Some glycogen is stored in the liver and some is stored the muscles themselves. This energy reserve weighs more than a pound and it’s packaged with 3-4 pounds of water when it’s stored. Your glycogen supply will shrink during the day if you fail to take in enough carbohydrates. As the glycogen supply shrinks you will experience a small imperceptible increase in appetite and your body will restore this fuel reserve along with it’s associated water. It’s normal to experience glycogen and water weight shifts of up to 2 pounds per day even with no changes in your calorie intake or activity level. These fluctuations have nothing to do with fat loss, although they can make for some unnecessarily dramatic weigh-ins if you’re prone to obsessing over the number on the scale.
Otherwise rational people also tend to forget about the actual weight of the food they eat. For this reason, it’s wise to weigh yourself first thing in the morning before you’ve had anything to eat or drink. Swallowing a bunch of food before you step on the scale is no different than putting a bunch of rocks in your pocket. The 5 pounds that you gain right after a huge dinner is not fat. It’s the actual weight of everything you’ve had to eat and drink. The added weight of the meal will be gone several hours later when you’ve finished digesting it.
Exercise physiologists tell us that in order to store one pound of fat, you need to eat 3,500 calories more than your body is able to burn. In other words, to actually store the above dinner as 5 pounds of fat, it would have to contain a whopping 17,500 calories. This is not likely, in fact it’s not humanly possible. So when the scale goes up 3 or 4 pounds overnight, rest easy, it’s likely to be water, glycogen, and the weight of your dinner. Keep in mind that the 3,500 calorie rule works in reverse also. In order to lose one pound of fat you need to burn 3,500 calories more than you take in. Generally, it’s only possible to lose 1-2 pounds of fat per week. When you follow a very low calorie diet that causes your weight to drop 10 pounds in 7 days, it’s physically impossible for all of that to be fat. What you’re really losing is water, glycogen, and muscle.
This brings us to the scale’s sneakiest attribute. It doesn’t just weigh fat. It weighs muscle, bone, water, internal organs and all. When you lose "weight," that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve lost fat. In fact, the scale has no way of telling you what you’ve lost (or gained). Losing muscle is nothing to celebrate. Muscle is a metabolically active tissue. The more muscle you have the more calories your body burns, even when you’re just sitting around. That’s one reason why a fit, active person is able to eat considerably more food than the dieter who is unwittingly destroying muscle tissue.
Robin Landis, author of "Body Fueling," compares fat and muscles to feathers and gold. One pound of fat is like a big fluffy, lumpy bunch of feathers, and one pound of muscle is small and valuable like a piece of gold. Obviously, you want to lose the dumpy, bulky feathers and keep the sleek beautiful gold. The problem with the scale is that it doesn’t differentiate between the two. It can’t tell you how much of your total body weight is lean tissue and how much is fat. There are several other measuring techniques that can accomplish this, although they vary in convenience, accuracy, and cost. Skin-fold calipers pinch and measure fat folds at various locations on the body, hydrostatic (or underwater) weighing involves exhaling all of the air from your lungs before being lowered into a tank of water, and bioelectrical impedance measures the degree to which your body fat impedes a mild electrical current.
If the thought of being pinched, dunked, or gently zapped just doesn’t appeal to you, don’t worry. The best measurement tool of all turns out to be your very own eyes. How do you look? How do you feel? How do your clothes fit? Are your rings looser? Do your muscles feel firmer? These are the true measurements of success. If you are exercising and eating right, don’t be discouraged by a small gain on the scale. Fluctuations are perfectly normal. Expect them to happen and take them in stride. It’s a matter of mind over scale.
Debelli
11-27-2000, 10:56 PM
Here's an article titled:
Plateaus and Pitfalls: Overcoming Weight Loss Obstacles
to read the article, just click on the link below and it will take you right to the site:
[This message has been edited by Debelli (edited 11-27-2000).]
Debelli
11-28-2000, 03:13 AM
This article is worth reading! It's an Womans Fitness Interview that was done with Dr. Allen from the Glycemic Research Institute
Just click on the link below, and it will take you directly to the article:
http://www.glycemic.com/inter.html
If you don't want to read the entire article, here was one interesting part that certainly stood out for me!!!
LD I had heard that. But how can ice cream be low glycemic?
Dr. Allen Because of the protein in the ice cream. High protein foods are usually low glycemic. The protein in the ice cream over-rides the effect of the sugar in the ice cream and the overall effect is that LPL, the fat enzyme is not activated. That's why high protein, low carbohydrate diets or the 40/30/30 diets are effective in the beginning, because protein reduces the glycemic response of a meal.
Debelli
12-04-2000, 05:07 AM
This possibly should be placed on the FOOD INFORMATION BOARD, but I decided to place it hear as I think it's definitely something I would consider RECOMMENDED READING!
This article is SCARY! Read what they say in regards to SUGAR esp. sugar derived from BEETS!:EEK:
Just click on the link below and it will take you to the website:
[This message has been edited by Debelli (edited 12-05-2000).]
Debelli
12-09-2000, 04:54 AM
This site has a copy of the PREFACE to the SCHWARZBEIN PRINCIPAL
http://www.sboutdoors.com/health/preface.html
Debelli
12-09-2000, 05:29 AM
Here's the website that summarizes the MICHAEL MONTIGNAC METHOD. It was he who first wrote the diet that was taken for the Sugar Busters diet.
Just click on the link below to get to the site:
http://www.montignac-intl.com/eng/met_en.htm
Debelli
12-23-2000, 11:04 PM
The site below had some interesting information in it. Read through to the part EMOTIONAL STRESS that's where I stopped. There's a good part of the GI, but others as well. It's a bit long, but thought it was worth reading. Just click on the link below:
[This message has been edited by Debelli (edited 12-23-2000).]
Debelli
12-31-2000, 04:22 AM
Two great books I recommend are:
GET THE SUGAR OUT and GET THE SALT OUT
Both are by Ann Louise Gittleman.
THE BIG ORANGE BABE
01-14-2001, 09:31 PM
IT'S A NEW YEAR...WHY NOT START YOUR JOURNALING OFF RIGHT....
The best journal I've found is the THIN for LIFE Daybook by Anne M. Fletcher M.S., R.D.
It's a whole year's worth of pages and is spiral bound to make it easy. The pages aren't dated, so you start them off on the day you want to start....not when they print
it to be...
CHECK IT OUT....I got mine at Barnes and Noble, but I'm sure any book store will have them...
PRICE.....$16.00
[This message has been edited by THE BIG ORANGE BABE (edited 01-14-2001).]
Debelli
02-03-2001, 03:45 AM
This was a FRIDAY FACT posted back in Sept.
PROTEIN POWER
One of the most important roles of protein is to stimulate the pancreas to produce the hormone glucagon. Glucagon's primary function is to unlock your stored fat cells for use as energy. With too much insulin in the body, glucagon is literally blocked from unlocking stores of fat, and the body is unable to burn its own fat.
In this scenario, protein acts in the reverse of insulin. When a person eats adequate quantities of protein (esp. in combination with healthy fats and low sugar), the pancreas produces the right amount of glucagon to mobilize stored body fat so the body can begin burning excess fat for energy.
When you aren't consuming enough protein, you battle intense cravings, often for foods high in simple sugars. When it seems like a candy bar is all you really need, your body actually may be starving for protein. Protein, like healthy fat, has a stabilizing effect on blood sugar and provides the body with the long-lasting steady energy it demands. Sugar cravings are merely the body's way of looking for foods that will provide it with quick, easily metabolized energy. Unfortunately, giving in to the sugar craving will result in a sugar rush followed by a crash in energy level and a continuous craving for more sugar.
If your protein intake is low and you find yourself craving sweets, try increasing your daily protein intake. Increasing protein intake will eliminate sugar cravings and boost energy levels significantly.
Critical in the development of tissue growth and healing, protein also plays a crucial role in the formation of neurotransmitters in the brain. It helps the body create new cells to replace those that die off every day. Without enough protein, healthy new cells will not be formed-the skin will be thin and dry, the hair fragile with a tendency to fall out, and the nails brittle, fatigue, confusion and irritability are conditions too. If you currently recognize any of these symptoms yourself, check your protein intake (unfortunately, I can relate to some of these!)
A lesser known function of protein is its role in maintaining fluid balance in the body. Proteins in blood attract molecules of water, controlling the water levels between cells, within cells, and within your arteries and veins. When the body is deficient in protein, the fluid int he cells cannot be drawn in by the blood and will not be efficiently eliminated by the kidneys. Thus, a diet low in protein will actually result in water retention, water weight gain, and uncomfortable bloating.
Protein can boost metabolic rate by helping the body build lean muscle mass. It also acts as a wonderful source of ongoing, steady energy throughout the day. If you feel tired and sluggish on a regular basis, check your protein levels. Chances are you're not getting enough protein in your diet. Adding lean meats and poultry will leave you with more energy and few energy swings throughout your day.
Debelli
03-05-2001, 05:40 PM
This list is worth taking a look at:
http://www.rheumatic.org/sugar.htm
karen3000
05-08-2001, 01:27 PM
This article came from http://thyroid.about.com/health/thy.../aa030701a.htm. There are many articles here about weight problems faced by people with thyroid problems. Even if you don't have a thyroid problem, there's a lot of info here for all of us.
Green Tea Extract Increases Metabolism, May Aid in Weight Loss
Green Tea May Safely Increase Daytime Metabolism as much as 30-40%
by Mary J. Shomon
There are two ways to lose weight -- either reduce energy intake, or increase energy expenditure. Because hypothyroidism -- even after treatment -- may reduce energy expenditure in some people, patients naturally are looking for options that can help safely help raise the metabolism.
In a study reported on in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, it was found that green tea extract resulted in a significant increase in energy expenditure (a measure of metabolism), plus also had a significant effect on fat oxidation.
While some of the effects were originally theorized to be due to the caffeine content of green tea, the researchers discovered that the tea actually has properties that go beyond those that would be explained by the caffeine. The same amount of caffeine as was in the green tea, administered alone, failed to change energy expenditure in other studies. This led reseachers to believe that there is some interaction going on with the active ingredients of green tea that promotes increased metabolism and fat oxidation.
The researchers indicated that their findings have substantial implications for weight control. A 4% overall increase in 24-hour energy expenditure was attributed to the green tea extract, however, the research found that the extra expenditure took place during the daytime. This led them to conclude that, since thermogenesis (the body's own rate of burning calories) contributes 8-10% of daily energy expenditure in a typical cubject, that this 4% overall increase in energy expenditure due to the green tea actually translated to a 35-43% increase in daytime thermogenesis.
Of critical importance to thyroid patients is the fact that none of the research subjects reported any side effects, and no significant differences in heart rates were noticed. In this respect, green tea extract is different from some of the prescription drugs for obesity, and herbal products like ephedra, which can raise heart rates and blood pressure, and are not recommended for many individuals, in particular, those with thyroid disease who may be particularly sensitive to stimulants.
Implications for You?
If you were to incorporate green tea into your weight loss efforts, how is the best way to go about it?
One way would be to choose a reputable brand of organic green tea at a health food store or natural grocery, and start by taking a cup of tea every day. You can also take a green tea extract, in the form of a supplement.
Either way, says dietitian Lynn Moss, M.S., R.D., a continuing education specialist for Pharmavite, makers of Nature Made and Nature's Resource supplements and herbs, you should definitely take the green tea with meals, to reproduce the study's conditions as much as possible.
Moss also feels that green tea may be a good choice for thyroid patients because, unlike caffeine, " green tea has the potential to accelerate metabolism -- which can help weight loss slightly -- without overstimulating your adrenal glands."
And even a small effect can go a long way, when you are dealing with a metabolism that may not rebound entirely, despite hypothyroidism treatment.
SPECIAL NOTE: Is Green Tea Dangerous to the Thyroid?
In response to my article, some readers expressed concerns regarding the high fluoride content in tea, and the negative relationship between ingestion of too much fluoride and thyroid problems, as well as other health concerns.
This is definitely something to be considered before deciding to take green tea.
While green tea has some definite benefits in the cancer-prevention and metabolism-boosting arena, the fluoride content may, according to some practitioners, be a concern for the public in general, but specifically for thyroid patients.
For more information on the green tea/thyroid/fluoride connection, please see Is Green Tea Dangerous to the Thyroid?.
Debelli
06-23-2001, 03:41 PM
Here's a great article on FIBERthat I had posted last year. The link was changed, so here's the new link:
It used to be that bran was bran and everyone knew what it was good for. Wheat bran was the only thing we thought of and it had a clear mission: to keep you "regular." But now oat bran is on the supermarket shelves with promises to lower cholesterol. Wheat bran, despite proven benefits to the intestinal tract, cannot claim to lower cholesterol.It is the amount and type of fiber that makes oat bran work differently from wheat bran. You will learn that fiber goes far beyond bran.
Refined (low fiber)
white flour (bleached/unbleached), pasta, cream of wheat
oat flour
cornstarch
white rice
Focus on Dietary Fiber
Before you load your grocery cart with bran products, there are important things you need to learn about dietary fiber in general. Dietary Fiber is:
the part of food that resists digestion.
found only in plant foods such as grain products, vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts and seeds.
not a source of calories or vitamins or minerals (but these are often found in foods that contain fiber).
not always high in foods that appear fibrous. Lettuce and cucumbers are low in fiber.
several different substances. These are gums, mucilages, pectins, lignin, cellulose and hemicelluloses.
Not All Fiber is Alike
Dietary fiber can be divided into two basic categories: insoluble and soluble. Both are important for health. Some foods are better sources of one form than the other. For example, soluble fiber accounts for half of the fiber in oat bran but only a fifth of the fiber in wheat bran.
Insoluble Fiber
Insoluble fiber is a coarse, chewy material that will not dissolve in water. It is what we think of as roughage. Insoluble fiber helps:
Bowel Regularity -- Insoluble fiber, when taken with enough water, swells and softens the stool. This stimulates the intestinal muscles, thus helping to pass the stool and relieve constipation.
Prevent Intestinal Disorders -- By speeding up the movement of food through the intestine, insoluble fiber reduces pressure in the intestine. This may help prevent hemorrhoids, spastic colon, and diverticulitis.
Prevent Intestinal Cancer -- Increasing both the bulk and speed of food moving through the intestinal tract leaves less time for harmful substances to build.The shortened transit time of certain body toxins may help prevent cancer of the colon. Many researchers want to see more evidence before promising that fiber prevents cancer.
Soluble Fiber
Soluble fiber dissolves in water. This kind of fiber is made up of sticky substances like gums and gels. Soluble fiber may help:
Control Diabetes -- Extra fiber along with complex carbohydrates (starches) can make the hormone insulin work better. This allows patients to take less diabetes medication while keeping their blood sugar normal. Persons with diabetes often have sharp rises of blood sugar following meals. Increased soluble fiber in meals slows down the release of food into the intestine and keeps the blood sugar from rising rapidly.
Lower Blood Cholesterol -- Foods high in soluble fiber can further lower the blood cholesterol of people who are already following a lowfat, low cholesterol diet. Soluble fiber probably works by increasing the passage of bile acids through the digestive tract. Cholesterol is taken out of the blood to form more bile acids. Some researchers think that smaller fragments of soluble fiber are absorbed into the bloodstream. These fragments may decrease the production of cholesterol.
Clinical studies show a lowering of blood pressure in response to increased amounts of fiber. This may be the result of other factors such as dietary fat, calories, or sodium.
Control Weight
You may be less likely to gain weight and find it easier to lose weight on a high fiber diet. These foods often require more chewing and take longer to eat. Extra time is needed for food to leave the stomach. That means more satisfaction with fewer calories. Fiber pills are advertised as promoting weight loss. They seem to produce a very modest loss (four pounds at best) over several months. This was with 36 Fiber Trim pills per day! For lifetime weight control include more fiber in everyday food choices.
Soluble Fiber: The Hot Topic
Best-selling books have touted several daily servings of oat bran as the answer to the high rate of coronary disease in this country. Legitimate scientific studies of oat bran, oatmeal and beans have shown significant reductions in blood cholesterol. Preliminary research indicates that corn bran, carrots and apples can reduce cholesterol. Although brown rice contains soluble fiber, no research to date has documented cholesterol lowering.
How Much Will Soluble Fiber Lower Cholesterol?
There are no hard and fast rules or guarantees when it comes to lowering blood cholesterol by eating foods high in soluble fiber. People with higher cholesterol levels appear to have greater cholesterol lowering than people with normal levels. For example, people with high blood cholesterol have been able to reduce their blood cholesterol by 20% (down from 260 to 208 milligrams per deciliters) with 5 ounces (about 1 2/3 cups) of oat bran. That would be like eating three large bowls of cooked oat bran each day! Other (perhaps more practical) studies used 1 cup of oatmeal or 2 muffins (oat bran as main ingredient) daily to lower normal cholesterol levels by 3% (from 196 to 190 mg/dl). Though one research group has found no difference between oatmeal and oat bran, most researchers agree that you have to eat twice as much oatmeal to get the same cholesterol-lowering benefits as oat bran.
Other possible sources of soluble fibers are laxatives based on psyllium (such as Metamucil and Fiber All). Men consuming their typical diet had a 15% cholesterol lowering with the addition of three daily doses. This won't appeal to everyone. The powder, made from the seeds of the psyllium plant, must be mixed into a beverage to be taken. Although these laxatives have had a long track record for safety, they may not be completely harmless. One study indicated poor absorption of riboflavin, a B vitamin, with psyllium use. Be sure to check with your physician or Wegmans pharmacist before considering the use of any supplement.
Trim The Fat As Well
This does not mean that you can have all the saturated fat and cholesterol you want as long as you eat oat bran and beans. Cutting back on fat will further help control blood cholesterol and weight and may also help prevent some types of cancer.
How Much Fiber?
Most Americans eat 10 to 15 grams of total dietary fiber each day. Health organizations such as the National Cancer Institute, the American Diabetes Association and the American Dietetic Association encourage 20 to 30 grams each day.
What Does 20 to 30 Grams of Fiber Mean?
It means having every day:
3 to 5 servings of whole-grain breads and cereals
3 servings of vegetables
2 to 3 servings of fruit
A serving is:
2 slices of bread, 1 bagel, 1 cup rice or pasta
1 medium piece of fruit
1/2 to 2/3 cup vegetables
Fiber Analysis Confusion
Years ago, fiber could only be measured as "crude fiber." The crude fiber measurement of food could be as little as 20% of the actual fiber content. Today scientists are still having difficulty finding a reliable way to measure total dietary fiber. Measurements of soluble versus insoluble fiber will vary depending on the laboratory technique used.
Be Wise To Size
Look for grams of fiber. A gram is about the weight of 2 paper clips. Fiber pills are often measured in milligrams (1 gram = 1000 milligrams). Using milligrams for daily fiber is like counting out your paycheck in pennies. A pill containing 275 milligrams of fiber has .275 grams. It would take 100 pills to get the amount of fiber recommended in one day.
Bakery-size bran muffins, at about 5 grams of fiber, seem to be great fiber food. They average 350 calories each -- as much or more than any desserts. It's not that they are bad foods, it is just that they are BIG. Other foods would also be "rich" in fiber if large-size servings were used.
Too Much Of A Good Thing
Adding too much fiber too quickly (especially wheat bran) can cause intestinal gas and other digestive discomforts. These side effects are not serious and usually go away after bacterial levels in the intestinal tract adjust, but why go through it to begin with?
Another concern is that too much fiber may bind important minerals. Fortunately, most high fiber foods are good sources of minerals and the fiber levels being recommended do not cause problems.
What's In A Name?
Some products with oat bran in the name (muffins, crackers, breads, cereals) contain only small amounts of oat bran.
Remember that ingredient labels list those ingredients found in greatest amounts by weight down to those found in least amounts. For example, if sugar is listed before wheat bran, the cereal may be sweeter and not as high in fiber as another wheat bran cereal. Many products have coconut oil, palm oil, animal fat or eggs listed as ingredients. These could cancel the cholesterol-lowering benefit of an oat product.
General Tips For Good Fiber Nutrition
Purchase whole grain breads and cereals rather than refined ones.
Buy fresh produce and eat it raw and unpeeled whenever possible. Don't drink juice for the fiber; it is not a good source.
Instead of refined flour, roll chicken in whole grain flour, wheat bran or oat bran before baking.
Use oatmeal or oat bran in place of bread crumbs in meatloaf or meatballs.
Substitute cooked dried beans for part or all of the meat in casserole recipes. Use in soups, salads and sandwich spreads.
Drink more fluids. Water is what helps fiber work. Without it, insoluble fiber can block the digestive system.
Spread fiber throughout the day. As a general rule, try two servings of fiber-containing foods at each meal.
Exercise regularly. All the benefits of fiber will not outweigh the problems that come with too little physical activity.
Rosalie
08-17-2001, 11:26 PM
I found an article on the INSULIN INDEX while surfing Aussie web sites which I would like to share with you. This is my contribution to Friday Facts. Some of it will be familiar to most of you but this is the first time I have read anything about an Insulin Index.
Glycaemic Index & Insulin Index
By Dr. Antigone Kouris-Blazos
New research is suggesting that just as all fats aren't necessarily bad, all carbohydrates are not necessarily good. And it seems the way we have thought about carbohydrates in the past, as simple and complex carbohydrates, is not very useful. The glycaemic index is a useful concept because it measures how rapidly the carbohydrates are absorbed and result in blood glucose and insulin elevations . The GI is not related to whether the carbohydrate is simple or complex. The GI measures the rise in blood sugar levels caused by a measured quantity of a particular food. High GI foods are rapidly absorbed and cause a large rise in blood sugar levels.
The Insulin Index (ID) is a relatively new concept which measures the amount of insulin the body produces in response to a set carbohydrate load in a particular food. This index is not necessarily proportional to the GI and consumption of large volumes of food with a high insulin index may play a role in the development of insulin resistance, although the link has yet to be conclusively established. High protein and high fat foods stimulate greater insulin responses than predicted by the level of glycaemia and in a study of insulin responses to 1000kJ portions of common foods, ordinary bread showed amongst the highest scores of any of the foods tested. More exaggerated insulin responses are seen when people with underlying insulin resistance consume high GI foods. Hyperinsulinaemia has recently been shown to be an independent risk factor for coronary heart disease (Depres et al. NEJM 1996; 334:952-7). Thus an insulin index of foods may eventually be needed to supplement tables of GI (Holt et al. AJCN 1997; 66: 1264-76). Both indices compare the body’s response to a food on a scale where the response to the glucose control is set at 100. Choosing foods with a low GI and low ID can improve diabetic management and may possibly reduce the incidence of diabetes complications e.g. heart disease, renal disease.
People with diabetes are used to thinking about glycaemic index, they use it to help control their blood sugar levels, but until now we have not really been aware of its significance for people without diabetes. Even though sugar per se has not been linked with any diseases of affluence, diets with a high glycaemic load have been associated with an increased risk of diabetes, obesity (especially abdominal/visceral obesity) and heart disease (Brand-Miller “The Glycaemic Index: Implications for Food-Based Dietary Guidelines” In: NH&MRC Dietary Guidelines for Older Australians, 1999).
There have been two important studies, both looking at whether different carbohydrates have different effects on risk of disease. A study on 6500 nurses in the US showed that those who consumed diets high in carbohydrate from white bread, potatoes and low amylose varieties of rice had 2-5 times the risk of developing diabetes than those who ate a diet rich in high fibre less processed cereals - even after controlling for known risk factors such as age and BMI (Salmeron et al., JAMA 1997; 277: 472-77). For the risk of diabetes, the type of carbohydrate (low versus high GI) was more important than the total amount of fat and carbohydrate in the diet. Furthermore, the total amount of refined sugar in the diet was not a risk factor for diabetes. A similar picture has emerged with acute coronary heart disease in the nurse's study (Liu et al., Fed Am Soc for Exp Bio J 1999; 12: 260). The male health professional study has also demonstrated a link between GI load of the diet and risk of developing diabetes in men (Salmeron et al. Diabetes Care 1997; 20: 545-550). In another study on 1400 British adults (Frost, The Lancet 1999; 353: 1045-48) blood lipids were more favourable with diets which consisted of foods with a low GI i.e. "good carbohydrates and good cholesterol". Such foods included pasta, legumes, oats, whole grain bread/cereals, whole fruit, minimally processed/cooked foods.
Since potatoes have a high GI and can constitute 15-20% of the total starch intake in a typical Western diet; they could be a significant factor in the total glycaemic load. Current advice to increase the intake of starchy foods such as potatoes may lead to a greater risk of diabetes (Eu J Clin Nutr 1999; 53: 249-54), abdominal obesity, elevated blood lipids, hypertension and heart disease.
Some of the so-called complex carbohydrates advocated, like potatoes and white bread and low amylose rice, are absorbed very quickly and give an undesirable metabolic response. The body tries to bring those blood glucose levels back down by secreting insulin. The high GI foods generate a demand for insulin. Since hyperinsulinaemia is linked with all facets of the ‘metabolic syndrome’ (insulin resistance, hyperlipidemia, hypertension and visceral obesity) the GI of foods may eventually be linked with all so-called diseases of affluence e.g. heart disease, obesity, diabetes. Even small physiological increases in insulinaemia for as little as 3-5 days can induce severe insulin resistance in healthy young subjects with normal glucose tolerance and no family history of NIDDM (Del Prato et al., Diabetologia 1994; 37: 1025-35). Higher day-long insulin levels are believed to promote carbohydrate oxidation at the expense of fatty acid oxidation, thereby promoting fat storage in adipose tissue and triglyceride synthesis in the liver (Friedman, Ma J Clin Nutr 1998; 67:513S-8S). Thus low GI diets may promote weight control by both enhancing satiety and promoting fat oxidation. A lower insulin level means the body stores less fat and can access existing fat stores more easily than when insulin levels are higher. An important finding of GI research is that foods containing refined sugars often have less glycaemic impact than starchy staples like bread. Moderate intake of refined sugars (10-12% energy) found in foods (e.g. cakes) or added to foods (e.g. coffee) is not associated with obesity, micronutrient deficiency or undesirable effects on blood lipids or insulin sensitivity (Anderson Nutr Res 1997; 17: 1485-8). This finding has helped to liberate the diabetic diet. However, many foods containing refined sugars also contain undesirable saturated fats and some undesirable high fat foods (e.g. potato crisps) can also have a low GI . Therefore, when selecting a low GI food one should also consider the total amount of carbohydrate, fat, fibre and salt and whether it is a nutrient or phytochemically dense food.
In summary, the lower the GI, the better the carbohydrate food is for everyone, especially people with diabetes. The exception is if blood glucose falls below normal in people with diabetes. This is more likely if you are an insulin-dependent diabetic. A high GI food or drink will restore blood glucose levels more quickly. Follow up with a low GI food to maintain blood glucose levels.
Foods with a low GI are generally more filling, more sustaining, help control hunger and appetite as well as blood glucose levels and may help with weight loss.
Athletic performance and GI
Research with sports people has shown that foods with a low GI eaten 2-4 hours before a sports event provides a slower release of energy and an improved ability to last longer in endurance activities. Pre-event low GI foods are now added to high carbohydrate loading practices which are used up to 4-5 days before an endurance event. The GI index in foods is unlikely to influence performance during an event, as most athletes these days take quick acting glucose through glucose polymer drinks to replenish energy supplies while they are competing. ‘Re-loading’ however, after an athletic event to ensure maintenance of high energy levels for ongoing training, is still seen as important in sports and high GI foods are recommended for post event replenishment. Bread, potatoes and other high GI foods then, may have more value after the event than before, when fruit sugars and legumes are more likely to be useful.
Debelli
09-06-2001, 09:08 AM
Moving up!
Debelli
09-27-2001, 05:39 PM
That Stupid Bathroom Scale!
"For a man is slave to that which has mastered him!"
Imagine. You wake up one morning after getting the best night's sleep you've had in too long of a time. You feel well rested and your face shows it. In fact, you are pretty sure that you have never looked better (at least not as far back as you can rummage to mind at these wee hours). You got a raise the day before, and a promotion to go along with it. As far as you are concerned, if the Grinche stole Christmas this year, you probably wouldn't even blink twice. Your bills are paid - a month in advance, your entire family adores you, and your friends are fighting over your free days, (o.k., I may be pushing it slightly!). You walk into the bathroom to brush your teeth, when your eyes catch a glimpse of the bathroom scale. Everything is going so great; you can not help but wonder if your luck will continue straight down into the depth of those tiny numbers. What the heck! You pounce onto the scale, this in itself being a major step. Usually your one-toe, followed by the next-toe, followed by the whole foot process takes a good ten minutes! You look down. Wait! Screech! Another screech! This cannot, this mustn't! After all, you hardly ate a thing yesterday. You step off the scale and run over to the toilet, empty your bladder, take off all clothing, even your rings and bracelet. You try it again. You hold your breath this time, thinking that the lack of oxygen will tip the scale in your favor, hopefully before you tip yourself onto the floor! But, it is the same! You step off of the scale, look in the mirror and suddenly your heart sinks, straight into the depths of your stomach. Where did those five extra pounds come from? And as you stand gazing at your naked body in the mirror, you wonder why your stomach looks flatter even though the scale says that you are heavier. That just can't be right! There has got to be something wrong with that stupid scale. After showering you begin trying on clothes for the promotional ceremony being held in your honor. You go through about half of the clothes in your closet, feeling certain that nothing fits right, before setting on something that won't draw too much attention to your body. Gone is the feeling that "you've never looked better;" it has been replaced by a feeling of "life can not get any worse than this!' You consider the option of a sick call, but you somehow muster the strength together and head for the car. You skip breakfast, telling yourself you'll starve your body into submission. By the time you get to work, your head hurts (the effects of a painstaking hunger), and you r mood has been set for the forthcoming day. You are bummed out, so to speak, and low and behold, the first person you see is the skinny little receptionist who smiles ever so sweetly to you from behind the desk, and asks, "Did you do something different to your hair?" You smile smugly, and tell her, "No," but you are certain of what she really meant to ask: "Did you gain weight?" Can you relate to this situation? Although it may not be identical in detail, the feelings described in the opening paragraphs are most likely ones that you have experienced. Why? Because they are commonly felt emotions and feelings! It is important to note that there are millions of people addicted to their scales. They can not let a single day pass without finding out what the little flat box has to tell them. You know you are addicted if you are unable to let a day pass without weighing yourself. Or, when visiting a doctor's office, you ask if you may remove your shoes before weighing in. Chances are, after weighing yourself, this little infamous device determines for you not only what you will or will not be eating for the continuation of the day, but also, how you will feel about yourself. Let me ask you a question. After weighing yourself, has the scale altered your mood, diminished your confidence, or affected your self-esteem? If it has, then GET RID OF IT! Would you stay around a person who made you feel this way about yourself? Hopefully, not for a long period of time. If you can not bring yourself to get rid of the scale, maybe you need to re-think its power over you. "For a man (woman) is slave to that which has mastered him." The scale is similar to a hungry piranha in that it is never satisfied. If it shows a "loss," then it is never a big enough loss. "Just one more pound, or ten more pounds!" On the same hand, if it shows a "gain," then it eats away at your self-esteem and confidence. My friend, how will you ever learn to be happy and content with who you are, if someone or something is always shoving you back down, never allowing you the satisfaction of being, well, satisfied! I've got good news! You do not have to be a slave to your scale any longer! If you feel the need to lose weight, or to get in shape, then great, good for you! Those are positive factors in one's life. And in addition, you have come to the right place, because we want to help you reach those goals. But you must first learn one thing. You must use your clothing, not scale, to gauge your losses. It is up to you to make the decision not to permit the scale to sit crowned as the reigning master over your life.
GET RID OF IT! AND GET FREE!
- You, Too, Shall Overcome
Debelli
10-23-2001, 10:40 AM
This article was published in FDA Consumer magazine several years ago. It is no longer being maintained and may contain information that is out of date. You may find more current information on this topic in more recent issues of FDA Consumer or elsewhere on the FDA Website, by checking the site index or home page, or by searching the site.
Not Only Sugar Is Sweet
by Alexandra Greeley
Plain table sugar and its numerous taste-alikes may be one of our most popular food commodities. People come by their love for sweetness naturally. According to the experts, humans are born generally preferring sweet over bitter or sour tastes.
Sweeteners make many foods taste better. And natural sugars have a host of other valuable culinary?and practical?uses, including adding bulk to baked goods, helping foods to brown, and facilitating fermentation. But despite their immense popularity, sweeteners, particularly table sugar, have generated their share of sour publicity because of health concerns.
What Is Sugar?
Traditionally for most consumers the generic term ?sugar? means simply the white sugar crystals, or table sugar, that are stirred into or sprinkled on foods.
These familiar crystals are technically known as sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide--that is, it's composed of two simple sugar units, in this case, glucose and fructose. White sugar comes from sugar cane or sugar beets that have undergone a rigorous refining process. White sugar crystals can be used as is, compressed into cubes, or further pulverized to superfine, then to confectioner?s, or powdered, sugar. Brown sugar results from mixing white sugar crystals with molasses. Other forms of sucrose are beet sugar, maple sugar, turbinado sugar, and raw sugar.
Sucrose, however, is only one of a subgroup of sugars (see accompanying chart), and all sugars are carbohydrates. Monosaccharides, or single sugar units, include glucose, fructose and galactose. Monosaccharides also are the digestive end product of polysaccharides, the complex carbohydrates (starches) in fruits, grains and vegetables. Other disaccharides besides sucrose include lactose (glucose and galactose), also called milk sugar, and maltose (two units of glucose), also called malt sugar.
For labeling use and for making comparative claims, the Food and Drug Administration defines sugars as all mono-, di-, tri-, and tetrasaccharides and their derivatives, such as sugar alcohol, says Youngme Park, Ph.D., a nutritionist with FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. He says this includes all carbohydrate sweeteners with the same functional and physiological effect that can be used interchangeably in the food supply.
After complex carbohydrates are broken down to simple sugars (most sugars and carbohydrates are eventually broken down to glucose), the sugars are absorbed into the bloodstream and go to the liver. There they may be stored as glycogen or used immediately as glucose for energy by the body or brain.
"The body uses glucose as its simplest form of energy," says Judith Wurtman, Ph.D., research scientist in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "So for people who need calories, that is, those who are recovering from an operation or who are shipwrecked, sugar can keep them alive."
Thomas Jukes, Ph.D., professor of biophysics at the University of California at Berkeley, tells of his experiments feeding laboratory rats protein, vitamins, minerals, and sugar as the sole source of carbohydrates. The rats thrived, he says. "Fish is not a brain food," concludes Jukes. "Glucose is."
Sucrose occurs naturally in most green plants, says Sarah Setton, vice president for public affairs, The Sugar Association, Washington, D.C. It is produced by photosynthesis, which is the use of the sun's energy in the formation of food by plants. People would have to stop eating fruits and vegetables and any products incorporating them to cut sugar out of their diet. People seem to think that there is a difference between sugar in an apple and sugar in the sugar bowl," she adds. "But the way the body uses sugar is all the same. The body can?t tell where the sugar is from."
A Taste for Sweets
Americans have become conspicuous consumers of sugar and sweet-tasting foods and beverages. We have developed a relentless sweet tooth, "a severe addiction to sweetness," says Joan Gussow, Ed.D., professor of nutrition and education at Columbia Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City.
According to U.S. Department of Agriculture data on the amount of caloric sweeteners used in food, there has been an increase of more than 16 percent on a per person basis over the past two decades, and more than half of the increase has occurred in the past five years. Caloric sweeteners include sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, pure honey, and edible syrups.
Paul Lachance, chairman of the department of food science at Rutgers University in New Jersey states it another way. He estimates that, based on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, the average American consumes about 300 calories from sugars added to food. That comes to nearly 14 teaspoons of table sugar a day.
Gussow has her own theory about why sugar is so prominent in the American diet. It's for taste, she says. "I grow my own vegetables and fruit. And when I pick, cook and eat my parsnips, for example, they are as sweet as sugar," she says. "But food is shipped all over the place, and when food gets too old, much of the sugar turns to starch. The natural sweetness is gone, and people sugar food to give it flavor."
As yet, no scientist has established any limits for sugar consumption. In the typical American diet today (composed of about 45 percent carbohydrates, 20 percent protein, and 30 to 35 percent fat) all added and naturally occurring sugars account for about 21 percent of the total daily caloric intake. A 1986 FDA report estimated that sugars added to food accounted for 11 percent of calories consumed.
Yet if people eat increasingly larger quantities of caloric (nutritive)
sweeteners in general, these could compete with and crowd out other nutrients, warns Jane Hurley, associate nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Washington, D.C. People may consume many of their calories each day from a sugary soft drink or candy bar. "Those foods have few important nutrients we need," she says. "People are better off having an apple as a snack than a candy bar."
The Safety Issue
Over the last several decades, sugar has taken on the villain's role in the American diet. General sugar-bashing has led to "sugarphobia" as Jukes calls it and the unfounded fear that eating refined sugar causes many health problems, including heart disease, diabetes, anxiety, fatigue, depression, hyperactivity, and even criminal behavior.
But, in fact, added sugar at current levels is not detrimental to health. According to the landmark 1986 FDA Report of Sugars Task Force, sugar, when consumed normal or moderate quantities, cannot be linked to any disease, nor does it create a dependency.
Walter Glinsmann, M.D., FDA's associate director for clinical nutrition and senior author of the task force report, explains that members of the task force estimated the intake figures and trends of both added and naturally occurring sugars, based on USDA data. They also reviewed the scientific literature dealing with possible harmful effects of sugar consumption on numerous conditions, including tooth decay, glucose tolerance, diabetes mellitus, lipidemias (high blood fat), cardiovascular diseases, obesity, gallstones, and cancer. "Based on that work," says Glinsmann, "we decided that sugars are safe as they are now used in the food supply." If there is a significant change in the way Americans consume sugars, he adds, then scientists must reevaluate their role.
As Glinsmann observes, FDA does not say that eating unlimited amounts of sugars is safe. "There are not good or bad foods, only good or bad diets," he says. "If half your diet is pure sugar, that is not healthy. ... In a normal, varied diet, there are no adverse effects of sugar itself."
The task force did find that sugar can cause dental cavities, he says, but adds that so can other fermentable carbohydrates, such as dried fruit and honey, under the right conditions.
Despite the report, some consumers persist in linking sugar consumption with assorted ills, such as hyperactivity and aggressive behavior in children. This is often reported by parents who say that their children are uncontrollable after eating candy and other sugary sweets.
Glinsmann points out that sugar has not been shown to be a factor in hyperactivity. Studies of children and adolescents at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and elsewhere have looked at groups of individuals served sugar or a placebo (an inactive substance given as a control when testing another substance). Glinsmann points out that no researcher has found that sugar has had any discernible negative effect on children's behavior. To the contrary, sugar often has a soothing effect.
It also calms adults, says Wurtman, who has studied the relationship between carbohydrate consumption and mood. When people report having a sugar high or jitters, Wurtman asks them what was happening before they took a mouthful of something sweet. "When people feel the need to eat," she says, "They usually are jittery. But 20 minutes after eating, they are no longer jittery." In fact, the opposite happens: After eating sugar, people become calm or even sleepy, she says, an effect caused by sugar raising the level of a calming rain chemical called serotonin. Sugar in its pure form is the best
nonprescription antidepressant, she says.
Sugar by Other Names
Numerous nutritive and nonnutritive substitutes for sucrose vie for its place as a sweetener. All nutritive substitutes - such as honey, concentrated fruit juices, dextrose (also known as glucose), maple and corn syrups, fructose (levulose or fruit sugar), sugar alcohols, and high-fructose corn syrup contain and contribute calories.
Perhaps the most commonly used nutritive sweetener is high-fructose corn syrup, a sweet product manufactured from cornstarch and containing a high level of fructose, explains Kyd Brenner, director of public affairs for the Corn Refiners Association in Washington, D.C. High-fructose corn syrup is very close to the composition and calorie content of cane sugar, he says, and the syrup can be used as a direct and inexpensive substitute for cane sugar when liquid sweeteners are called for. It is used extensively in soft drinks, condiments, jams, jellies, and wine and is not available for home use.
Of the sugar alcohols, sorbitol (60 percent as sweet as sucrose with about the same number of calories per gram) is used in such products as hard and soft candies and chewing gums. Xylitol, another sugar alcohol, has limited FDA approval for special dietary uses. A third sugar alcohol, mannitol, has been removed from the GRAS (generally recognized as safe) list, and is regulated as an 'interim' food additive. This means that its current use is considered safe, but some questions have been raised that must be resolved to fully determine what limitations, if any, should be imposed. Mannitol is still being used in some products.
Both mannitol and sorbitol, when taken in large amounts, can cause diarrhea. Products whose reasonably foreseeable consumption may result in a daily ingestion of 50 grams of sorbitol or 20 grams mannitol must bear the labeling statement: "Excess consumption may have a laxative effect."
The sugar polymer polydextrose, because of its bulking properties, is used to replace a number of the technical effects of sucrose in various baked goods, salad dressings, frozen desserts, and candies. Because of its structure, polydextrose is not readily digested, so it is a low-calorie sucrose substitute. But it does not provide sweetness, so it is likely to be used with a nonnutritive sweetener. FDA is presently considering petitions for its use in other products such as in fruit and peanut butter spreads, sweet sauces, toppings, and syrups, and as a formulation aid in film coatings in vitamin and mineral supplement tablets.
Nonnutritive Sweeteners
Nonnutritive, or high-intensity, sweeteners satisfy America's sweet tooth without adding calories. Presently, manufacturers are using three such sweeteners to replace sugar in a variety of food and nonfood items such as mouthwashes and pill coatings.
One of these is saccharin, 300 times sweeter than table sugar and with zero calories. It is sold in liquid, tablets, packets, and in bulk. Saccharin has had a stormy past, with studies in the United States and Canada implicating it in the development of certain cancers. In the late 1970s, FDA contracted with the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to study cancer-causing agents and toxic substances in foods, including saccharin. NAS reports showed that saccharin is a potential cancer-causing agent in humans. A congressional moratorium protecting saccharin's continued use has been renewed periodically
by Congress. The required label warning on saccharin states, "Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals."
Aspartame - about 200 times sweeter than table sugar and with the same number of calories per teaspoonful has been shown to be safe. However, some people have reported that they are sensitive to it, although such a sensitivity has not been confirmed by scientific studies. Certain individuals suffering from a rare genetic disease called phenylketonuria cannot tolerate the amino acid phenylalanine, one of the building blocks of aspartame as well as naturally occurring proteins. Therefore, products containing aspartame must bear on the label a statement that they contain phenylalanine. Aspartame is available in packets and is used in numerous foods, including cereals, beverage bases, and ready-to-drink iced tea, but because it is not generally heat stable, it is not used for cooking. Food technologists have been working on ways to overcome this instability.
Acesulfame K (K is the chemical symbol for potassium)-130 times sweeter than table sugar?was approved by FDA in July 1988 as a sugar substitute in packets or tablets and as an ingredient in such products as chewing gum, dry drink mixes, and gelatins. The body does not metabolize acesulfame K so itcontributes no calories. Soluble in water, it is stable at normal temperatures and does not break down during cooking.
FDA banned the use of the sweetener cyclamate in 1970 because of concerns over its safety, but cyclamate is again under consideration for use in specific products, such as tabletop sweeteners and nonalcoholic beverages.
Under Development
Scientists continue to develop new sugar substitutes. For example, among the nutritive sweeteners, petitions for the use of the sugar alcohols isomalt (in gelatins, hard and soft candies, and baked goods), maltitol (in candy and cough drops), lactitol (in candy, chewing gum, baked goods, and frozen dairy desserts), and hydrogenated starch hydrolisates (in candy, chewing gum, and confections) are under current FDA review, says Art Lipman, Ph.D., a supervisory consumer safety officer with FDA's direct additives branch.
FDA has also received numerous inquiries about the regulatory status of a naturally occurring high-intensity sweetener known as stevia (or stevioside), says Lipman. Extracted from a plant grown in South America, stevia is 300 times sweeter than table sugar and is used for sweetening in Japan and other countries. Lipman says no petition has been filed for its use in the United States.
Two nonnutritive sweeteners being studied, says George Pauli, Ph.D., chief of the novel ingredients and policy development branch. These are alitame (Pfizer), which is chemically similar to aspartame, and sucralose (McNeil Specialty Products Co.), a chlorinated sucrose that has been made indigestible. FDA is also considering petitions for additional uses of the sweetener acesulfame K in beverages and baked goods and of aspartame for bulk use and in breakfast cereals, malt beverages, candies, and cooked foods.
Eating foods sweetened with nonnutritive sweeteners rather than sugar is an individual choice, says Laura Tarantino, an FDA consumer safety officer. Our law says only that we [FDA] need to assess the safety of a new food additive and its technical effect," she says. "Nonnutritive sweeteners are safe to use. But we don't tell people to replace sugar with artificial sweeteners."
In the future, consumers wanting to know which sweeteners are present in their foods need only read the label. According to an FDA labeling proposal, all sweeteners will be listed together in the ingredient list, under the collective term 'sweetener,' when more than one sweetener is used in a product (following the collective term, each sweetener would be listed in parentheses in descending order of predominance by weight of the sweetener in the food). According to an FDA proposal published late in 1991, it would be mandatory for all complex carbohydrates and simple sugars to be listed on the nutrition label, says Lynn Larsen, Ph.D., director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition's Executive Operations Staff.
People may have an inherent preference for sweetness, and that may have helped our ancestors survive, since bitter-tasting plants are generally not fit to eat. But beyond survival, people seem to have discovered that sweet flavors really help make eating pleasurable.
Alexandra Greeley is a freelance writer in Reston, Va.
Type of Sweetener Regulatory Status
Common Sugars
Monosaccharides
Glucose (also called dextrose) GRAS
Fructose (also called levulose) GRAS
fruit sugar
Galactose none; cannot be directly added
to food
Sugar Alcohols
sorbitol GRAS
xylitol limited FDA approval for
special uses,
mannitol removed from GRAS; regulated as
"interim food additive"
Nonnutritive and High-Intensity Sweeteners
Aspartame approved
Acesulfame K approved
Cyclamate banned
Saccharin remains on market through
congressional moratorium
Debelli
11-04-2001, 03:28 PM
Moving Up!
Debelli
11-16-2001, 08:29 PM
This was previously posted way, way back in Sept. 2000 and disappeared when they changed over the boards. Worth reading!
Facts on Water for Health
The life-saving element we usually take for granted has been found to possess many seemingly magical qualities.
Incredible as it may seem, water is quite possibly the single most important catalyst in losing weight and keeping it off. Although most of us take it for granted, water may be the only true "magic potion" for permanent weight loss.
Throw away your diuretics, toss out the laxatives, flush the appetite suppressants. Water does these jobs better, yet it's safe, natural, and healthy. Water works - if you learn how to use it. Here are some startling - yet scientific - facts about the benefits of water to weight loss:
Water can help your body metabolise fat.
Water can eliminate fluid retention.
Water can help you lose all the weight you want and keep it off for good.
The liquid of life
Life without water would last about seven days. Every form of life on earth depends on water. Adequate water is essential for the human body to perform at its peak. Like the earth, the human body is 70 per cent water. A loss of 10 per cent body water would be critical and any more than that might prove fatal.
Where does the body get the water it needs?
About half comes from beverages we drink - water, tea, coffee, soft drinks, milk, beer, wine and so on. A small portion is metabolic water - water we manufacture as we metabolise food. The rest comes from food. Meat, for instance, is 70 per cent water. Fruits can be up to 90 per cent water. Even bread is 20 per cent water.
How does the body use water?
All reactions in the body take place in water. It's the catalyst for enzymatic reactions. Blood plasma, which is 90 per cent water, can be called the body's main waterway. Food is transported to cells. Waste is carried away, passed through the kidneys and out in the urine. About half our fluid intake is expelled this way. Water makes breathing possible. It moistens the harsh, dry air. We exhale about 20 per cent of our water intake. The digestive system uses several litres of water daily to process food. Digestive enzymes are made almost entirely of water. The body uses water in its cooling system. When it gets to be 33 degrees Celsius outside, or when we exercise briskly, the body heats up. The heat must be dissipated, so in the process, the body pumps moisture through the muscles to the skin where it then evaporates and consequently, cools down the system.
Where does the body store water?
Water input must equal water output and water distribution throughout the body must be balanced. The body continually strives to maintain this balance. Half our water is stored in the cells (intracellular). The rest is stored outside the cells (extracellular), which includes fluid between cells and plasma inside blood vessels.
If body mass is 70 per cent water, what's the other 30 per cent?
Muscle, organ tissue, and fat. Only three per cent of this fat is essential. It is found in and around most vital organs such as the kidneys and gastrointestinal tract. The rest is excess weight. The bad news for women is - they store more fat than men do because of different hormone levels.
Water and weight loss
Water suppresses the appetite naturally and helps the body metabolise stored fat. Studies show that a decrease in water intake will cause fat deposits to increase, while an increase in water intake can actually reduce fat deposits. Here's why: The kidneys can't function properly without enough water. When they don't work to capacity, some of their load is dumped on to the liver. One of the liver's primary functions is to metabolise stored fat into useable energy for the body. But, if the liver has to do some of the kidney's work, it can't operate at full throttle. As a result, it metabolises less fat, more fat remains stored in the body and weight loss stops.
Water is the best treatment for fluid retention
Sounds crazy? It's the most sensible solution to water retention you'll ever find! When an otherwise healthy person has a problem with water retention, he usually does two things: he drinks less water and/or starts taking diuretics. These are the worst possible things to do. First, when the body gets less water, it perceives this as a threat to survival. To conserve what it has, it begins to hold on to every drop. Water is stored in extracellular spaces (outside the cells). This shows up as swollen feet, legs, hands, and so on. Diuretics are a temporary solution at best. They only mask the real problem. The diuretic forces out stored water along with some essential nutrients. Again, the body perceives a threat and will replace the lost water at the first opportunity. The best way to overcome the problem of water retention is to give your body what it needs - plenty of water. Only then will stored water be released. If you have a constant problem with water retention, excess salt may be to blame. Your body will tolerate sodium only in a certain concentration. The more salt you eat, the more water your system retains to dilute it. Salt intake makes you thirsty. This releases an antidiuretic hormone that causes water to be retained. The water is packed away in extracellular spaces that expand. This means swollen hands, feet, legs and so on. For your kidneys to expel the excess sodium, they need more water. If you don't drink enough, the water will automatically be siphoned from internal sources. It's the same old story - the body's way of coping with too little water is to store up what it already has.
How do you get rid of excess sodium?
Drink more water. It's that simple. Water is forced through the kidneys taking the excess sodium with it. In addition, the body has some natural checks and balances for dealing with sodium. Eat no salt, and the body secretes a hormone called aldosterone to hang on to the sodium it needs. Eat a little salt, and the aldosterone level drops. Eat too much salt, and extracellular spaces begin to expand with stored water. When this happens, another hormone is released to prompt the loss of both the excess sodium and the water. All these checks and balances work in concert to help maintain perfect water balance. But none of them will work without an ample supply of water.
How can one avoid eating too much sodium?
You don't have to go on a rigid salt-free diet. Instead, just be aware of the products that are high in salt; processed wheat and bran flakes, most canned foods, bacon, ham, salted fish, processed cheeses, most snack foods, and foods with additives such as monosodium glutamate. Read labels. Most manufacturers are required to list the amounts of sodium their products contain. Foods naturally low in salt are fruits, fruits juices, fresh vegetables, and anything you cook from scratch, because you can add little or none.
An overweight person needs more water than a thin person
The larger a person is, the larger his metabolic load. He needs more fuel to keep going. Since we know that water is the key to fat metabolism, it follows that the overweight person needs more water. This is why so many overweight people retain fluids. Their bodies get too little water, so their systems hang on to what they get. The only way to overcome this problem is to give the body what it needs to function - plenty of water. Only in this way will stored water be released.
Water helps to maintain proper muscle tone
It does this by giving muscles their natural ability to contract and by preventing dehydration. It also helps to prevent the sagging skin that usually follows weight loss - shrinking cells are buoyed by water, which plumps the skin and leaves it clear, healthy and resilient.
Water helps rid the body of waste
When the body gets too little water, it siphons water from internal sources. The colon is one primary source. Result? Constipation. The faeces become hard and dry. Constipation is too often treated with laxatives. Aside from leading to a dependency, this solution never addresses the root of the problem. The whole miserable cycle can be avoided. When a person drinks the correct amount of water, normal bowel function usually returns.
So far, we've discovered some remarkable truths about water and weight loss:
The body will not function properly without enough water and can't metabolise stored fat efficiently.
Retained water shows up as excess weight.
To get rid of excess water you must drink more water.
Drinking water is essential to weight loss.
How much water is enough? On the average, a person should drink eight 240ml glasses every day. That's about 2 litres. However, the overweight person needs one additional glass for every 11kg of excess weight. The amount you drink also should be increased if you exercise briskly or if the weather is hot and dry.
Water should preferably be cold - it's absorbed into the system more quickly than warm water. And some evidence suggests that drinking cold water can actually help burn kilojoules.
To utilise water most efficiently during weight loss, follow this schedule:
Morning: 1 litre consumed over a 30 minute period.
Noon: 1 litre consumed over a 30 minute period.
Evening: 1 litre consumed between five and six o'clock.
When the body gets the water it needs to function optimally, its fluids are perfectly balanced. When this happens, you have reached the "breakthrough point". What does this mean?
Endocrine-gland function improves.
Fluid retention is alleviated as stored water is lost.
More fat is used as fuel because the liver is free to metabolise stored fat.
Natural thirst returns.
There is a loss of hunger almost overnight.
If you stop drinking enough water, your body fluids will be thrown out of balance again, and you may experience fluid retention, unexplained weight gain and loss of thirst. To remedy the situation you'll have to go back and force another "breakthrough".
Is water the only liquid you can drink?
Coffee, tea, and diet soft drinks should be taken only in moderation. Have no more than two cups of coffee or tea a day. Limit soft drinks to two per day. These beverages have an adverse effect on weight loss. Eliminate them completely if you can, since caffeinated drinks (coffee, tea, diet colas) stimulate the appetite. However, if you now drink large amounts of caffeinated beverages, it might be wise to cut down slowly. Cold-turkey caffeine withdrawal can trigger severe headaches.
Are decaffeinated drinks all right?
In moderation. Most still contain a degree of caffeine. And decaffeinated soft drinks may also contain excessive amounts of sodium, so read the labels.
Diet drinks are not for dieters!
Most so-called diet drinks are loaded with sodium, which we know can cause fluid retention. The high levels of phosphates in diet drinks interfere with the body's absorption of calcium, which can be critical to the dieter.
What if tap water has an unpleasant taste? Buy bottled water. If that's not convenient, try chilling the tap water thoroughly, with a few thin slices of lemon added to the jug. One lemon slice to a glass of plain water gives it a nice fresh flavour.
Rosalie
11-27-2001, 02:02 AM
This article was originally posted by DEBELLI on the Weekly Support Board on 5 October, 2001.
Glycemic Load, Diet, and Health
Until recently, there was little question that the best approach to healthy eating was to follow official guidelines — such as the USDA Food Guide Pyramid — which emphasize carbohydrates as a way to discourage fat consumption. But this view of carbohydrates and fats is too simplistic. It might even contribute to the very conditions that we hope to avoid by eating a good diet in the first place, such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
For one, not all fats are bad. In fact, certain fats are heart-healthy. In addition, not all carbohydrates act the same. Some are quickly broken down in the intestine, causing the blood sugar level to rise rapidly. Such carbohydrates have a high glycemic index (GI).
Because rapidly rising blood sugar levels have various adverse effects, we advise eating plenty of fruits and non-starchy vegetables and few high-GI carbohydrates, such as refined grains and starches. We also favor a food pyramid where fruits and nonstarchy vegetables, not refined grains, occupy the bottom tier. The purpose of this advice is to reduce overall glycemic load (GL). GL is a relatively new way to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption that takes GI into account but gives a fuller picture than does GI alone.
GL Reflects Actual Carbohydrate Burden
A GI value tells you only how rapidly a particular carbohydrate turns into sugar. It doesn’t tell you how much of that carbohydrate is in a serving of a particular food. You would need to know both things to understand a food’s effect on blood sugar. That is where GL comes in. The carbohydrate in a carrot, for example, has a high GI. But there isn’t a lot of it, so a carrot’s glycemic load is relatively low. Calculating GL allows researchers to better relate carbohydrate intake to its health effects.
Researchers at Harvard, including Harvard Women’s Health Watch advisory board member JoAnn E. Manson, M.D., have closely examined the relationships among carbohydrates and heart disease and diabetes in women. The Nurses’ Health Study, for example, found that women with the highest dietary GL have double the risk for heart disease when compared to those with the lowest GL.
Why It’s Not As Simple as GI
The glycemic index originated as a research tool. It assigns a numerical value to a food indicating how much and how rapidly 50 grams of its carbohydrate content will raise blood-sugar levels, compared to 50 grams of a reference food (glucose or white bread). The reference food is given an arbitrary value of 100, and the GI value of a particular food is expressed as a percentage of that value. Many things contribute to the GI of a given food, including its fat and fiber content and how much it’s been processed.
But carbohydrates differ in quantity, as well as in GI ranking, from one kind of food to another. The shortcoming of GI values is evident when you compare foods of different carbohydrate densities. For example, the GI of a baked potato is 121% (assuming white bread is the standard reference food). This has earned the potato, which is largely carbohydrate, a place on the “avoid” list in publications and on Web sites promoting the GI approach to food choices.
The GI of carrots, as noted earlier, is also high: 131%. But this unfavorable GI rating is based on the blood-sugar effect of eating 50 grams of carbohydrate from carrots — the amount contained in a pound and a half of them — which few people would consume in one sitting. A serving of carrots, therefore, just doesn’t have much carbohydrate, so its impact on blood sugar is much less than that of a serving of potato.
Avoiding carrots because of their GI ranking would be a big mistake, particularly given all the vitamins and minerals they contain and the low GL of each serving (see “How to Calculate GL,” below). The GI of potatoes, on the other hand, is not a misleading measure because potatoes are carbohydrate-dense. Their GL is also fairly high.
How to Calculate GL
GL is the amount of carbohydrate in a serving of food multiplied by that food’s GI. Thus, a 12 cup serving of carrots (which has 8 grams of carbohydrate) has a glycemic load of about 10 (8 * 131%, or 1.31 = 10.48).
As reported recently in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (March 2001), Nurses’ Health Study researchers — aided by blood samples and a food-frequency questionnaire — used GL measures to assess the impact of carbohydrate consumption on 280 postmenopausal women. They found that high-GL diets (and, by extension, high GI foods and greater total carbohydrate intake), correlated with lower HDL concentrations and higher triglyceride levels, a marker for heart disease. The strongest association was in overweight women, i.e., those whose body mass index (BMI) was over 25. Increased risk started, on average, at a daily GL of 161.
Calculating overall dietary GL is difficult outside a research setting. But knowing a food’s GL can help you make comparisons that can improve the quality of your carbohydrate choices. In general, it’s a good idea to replace processed and refined-grain carbohydrates, such as those found in many snacks and desserts, with fruits and non-starchy vegetables. These foods, as well as whole grains and beans, are rich in nutrients and contain fiber, which slows digestion and moderates blood sugar levels. Also, try substituting, for example, whole grain bread for white bread; wild rice for white rice; and beans or lentils for potatoes.
Dietary GL may not become an everyday calculation, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see labels that exclaim “Low Glycemic Load!” — like “Low Cholesterol!” — beckoning from grocery shelves in the near future.
Glycemic Index
The glycemic index (GI) number is a relative not an absolute number. In effect, it is the blood sugar response to ingestion of a given food compared with the blood sugar response to another standardized food. Researchers have used both glucose and bread as this standardized, or reference, food.
Sometimes test results have yielded a range of values, which we show with a plus or minus sign, ±. So, for example, the GI value for a croissant using bread as the reference number is 96± 6 means test results ranged from 90 to 102.
One way to think about the glycemic index number is to picture it as fraction. The blood sugar blood response to a food is the numerator. The blood sugar response of the reference food is the denominator. Therefore, index number for same food will vary depending on whether you put glucose or bread in the denominator.
Because glucose quickly becomes blood sugar, the GI numbers based on glucose result in a lower number than do the GI numbers that use bread. Again, if you envision the GI number for a food as a fraction, or ratio, the glucose-based index has a larger denominator: you’re dividing by a bigger number. But the numerator doesn’t change, so the GI number gets smaller.
A word of warning about applying the GI to your diet. It is a carbohydrate-to-carbohydrate comparison. It doesn’t say anything about how much carbohydrate a food contains. So, for example, while the carbohydrates contained in carrots may have a relative high GI index, carrots contain relatively few carbohydrates compared with corn chips. Therefore, the net effect of carrots on blood sugar levels is considerably less than corn chips, even though their GI index numbers are similar.
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You can view the entire article at the link below:
Diets With A Low Glycemic Index: From Theory To Practice
by Janette Brand-Miller
The glycemic index (GI) of foods has important implications for the prevention and treatment of the major causes of morbidity and mortality in western countries, including non-insulin-dependent diabetes, coronary heart disease, and obesity. The recent United Nations FAO/WHO Consultation on Carbohydrates recommended that "the glycemic index of foods be used in conjunction with information about food composition, to guide food choices." Specifically, it recommended that "at least 55% of energy be derived from carbohydrate and that the bulk of carbohydrate foods be those rich in dietary fiber (non-starch polysaccharide and with a low glycemic index." Although these recommendations are designed for the general population, there is persuasive evidence that they are even more applicable to people with diabetes.
What exactly is the glycemic index (GI), and why has it become so important? In this article, we show how foods are classified according to their GI, summarize the health benefits and criticisms of the GI, and consider the practical aspects of putting GI into nutrition therapy for diabetes.
WHAT IS THE GI?
The GI is an established, physiologically based method used to classify foods according to their blood glucose-raising potential. It compares the level of glycemia after equal carbohydrate portions of foods and ranks them relative to a standard (usually glucose or white bread). Over the past two decades, the GI concept has been subjected to extensive research confirming its reproducibility, application to mixed meals, and clinical usefulness in the treatment of diabetes and hyperlipidemia. More than 600 individual foods have been tested for their GI. Concerns about using high-carbohydrate diets in diabetes (because of adverse effects on triglycerides [TG] and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol [HDL] levels) are overcome by recommending low-GI instead of high-GI carbohydrate foods.
The GI concept has been widely adopted in diabetes management in Australia,[6] New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France. Dietitians at the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, Australia, headed by Professor Paul Zimmet, were among the first to take GI from theory to practice. The GI remains controversial in the United States, where it is perceived as too complex for health professionals as well as for ordinary people or simply not worth the trouble. Inexplicably, food exchanges and carbohydrate counting are regarded as less complicated. The average American diet has a high GI, and the adoption of a low-GI diet will entail some adjustments, but our experience suggests that this is not difficult and may be facilitated by simple "take home" messages.
Contrary to popular belief, low-GI foods are not the same as foods based on high complex carbohydrate and fiber, nor are high GI foods those based on simple sugars. The foods that produce the highest glycemic responses include many of the starchy foods consumed by people in industrialized countries, including bread, breakfast cereals, and potatoes, whether high or low in fiber. This is because the starch is fully gelatinized and can be rapidly digested and absorbed. The foods with the lowest GI values include pasta, relatively unprocessed cereal foods, baked beans, dairy products, and many types of fruit and vegetables. Sugary foods often cause lower levels of glycemia per gram of carbohydrate than the common starchy staples of western diets. This is because up to half of the weight of carbohydrate is fructose, a sugar that has little effect on glycemia. In fact, the overall GI of the diet has been shown to have an inverse correlation with total sugars (refined plus naturally occurring) expressed as a proportion of total carbohydrate.
The Glycemic Index (GI) of Foods That Make the Largest Contribution to Carbohydrate Intake(*)
High GI (>70) GI
Breads
White bread 70
Wholemeal bread 72
French bread 95
(*) Data from references 4 and 54. Reference food is as follows: glucose = 100.
THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF LOW-GI FOOD CHOICES
Many well-designed experimental and epidemiologic studies highlight the health benefits of slowly digested and absorbed carbohydrate. Short-term studies in lean healthy people, obese individuals, and people with diabetes show consistently higher day-long insulin levels with diets based on high-GI foods in comparison with low GI diets of similar nutrient composition. Because fasting hyperinsulinemia has been found to be an independent risk factor for coronary heart disease, differences in postprandial insulinemia caused by food can no longer be ignored. Even a small physiologic increase in insulinemia for as little as 3 to 5 days induces severe insulin resistance in healthy young subjects.
In people with diabetes, there are particularly important reasons to promote low-GI foods in dietary choices. One reason is that they show greater insulin resistance than nondiabetic individuals, and consumption of high-GI foods results in far more exaggerated glycemic and insulin responses, which may lead to worsening insulin resistance and eventually the need for drug or insulin therapy. Furthermore, higher day-long insulin levels promote carbohydrate oxidation at the expense of fatty acid oxidation, thereby encouraging synthesis of very-low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (VLDL) in the liver and fat storage in adipose tissue. A combination of high-GI carbohydrate and high fat (of any type) in a meal therefore may be synergistic in promoting weight gain.
Long-term studies in animal models show that high-GI starch increases fasting insulin levels and promotes insulin resistance, in comparison with identical diets based on low-GI starch. In rats, high-GI diets promote faster weight gain, higher body fat levels, higher adipocyte volume, and hypertriglyceridemia--that is, all of the components of the insulin resistance or "metabolic" syndrome.
In subjects with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, low-GI diets, in comparison with high-GI diets of similar nutrient composition, lead to improvements in glucose and lipid metabolism. In eight well-designed long-term studies using a cross-over design, the low-GI diet reduced glycosylated proteins by an average of almost 14% over periods ranging from 2 to 12 weeks. Although these results have been criticized as only modest, they are higher in magnitude than improvements induced by oral hypoglycemic drugs. The improvement in glycosylated proteins with low-GI diets contrasts with the lack of change seen with high-MUFA diets in diabetes.
Recent epidemiologic studies indicate that the GI of the diet may be the most important dietary factor in preventing type 2 diabetes. Two large-scale prospective studies, one in female nurses and one in male health professionals, showed that diets with a high glycemic load (GI x carbohydrate content) increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes after controlling for known risk factors such as age and body mass index. The only other dietary factor that increased risk was lack of cereal fiber. Importantly, the total carbohydrate and refined sugar content, and the amount and type of fat, were not found to be independent risk factors in these studies. A similar picture has emerged with acute coronary heart disease in the Nurses' study. The underlying mechanism postulated by these authors is the demand for insulin generated by high-GI foods. Because hyperinsulinemia is linked with all of the facets of the "metabolic syndrome" (insulin resistance, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, and visceral obesity), the GI of foods eventually may be linked with all so-called diseases of affluence.
In healthy people as well as those with type 2 diabetes, high-carbohydrate diets ([is greater than] 50% energy) have been shown to worsen aspects of the blood lipid profile, including the TG, VLDL, HDL, and lipoprotein a. Individuals with insulin resistance are more susceptible to these adverse effects. However, this effect of high-carbohydrate diets is almost certainly linked to the rate of absorption of the carbohydrate, because strategies that slow down digestion and absorption (high soluble fiber, low GI, [Alpha]-glucosidase therapy) improve these parameters. The concerns with usual (ie, high-GI) high-carbohydrate diets have led some experts to recommend high intake of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated oils in place of carbohydrate, but high-fat, energy-dense diets of any sort are prone to overconsumption. High-carbohydrate foods (even energy-dense versions) can only ever have half the energy density of high-fat foods.
The GI has implications for weight control in people with diabetes because slowly digested carbohydrate is associated with higher satiety. The prolonged presence of food in the gut may stimulate chemical and pressure receptors that signal satiety. Low-insulinemic diets have been shown to increase the rate of weight loss on energy-restricted diets through the mechanism of lower insulin levels. Thus, low-GI diets may promote weight control by both enhancing satiety and reducing insulinemia.
CRITICISMS OF THE GI
The GI approach has been dismissed by some in the mistaken belief that it does not work in "mixed meal" situations or when there is added fat or protein. In fact, at least a dozen studies show that the GI of single foods predicts the response to mixed meals. In our own study, the correlation coefficient (r) for the observed glycemic response versus the predicted response was 0.88. One of the studies showing lack of effect in mixed meals can be faulted on methodologic grounds.
Unfortunately, some foods have been rated as "good" or "bad" simply on the basis of their GI. It is certainly not appropriate to substitute boiled potatoes (high GI) with potato crisps (lower GI). Large amounts of fat in a food reduce glycemia by slowing down gastric emptying, but glucose tolerance to the subsequent meal is impaired. Thus, high-fat foods may be seen in a "falsely favorable" light if the GI is the only criterion for selection. The total amount of carbohydrate, the amount and type of fat, and the fiber, micronutrient, and salt contents of a food are also important considerations. The proper use of the GI is to compare foods within categories of similar nutrient profile.
The use of 50-g carbohydrate portion sizes in GI testing has been criticized because it does not reflect a normal serving size. However, it has been shown that the glucose response to 1000-kJ portions (a reasonable serving size) of a range of foods is highly correlated with the published G144. Other criticisms of GI, including "too complex," "too many variables," a "burden" on people with diabetes, "restriction of food variety," and "too many foods with unknown GI values," stem from inexperience with this relatively new concept. In Australia, where the approach has now been used for over a decade, dietitians have produced simplified educational material that is useful for the layperson and professional alike.
Another concern about the GI is that the insulin response to a food may be more relevant than the glycemic response. Our laboratory is one of the few that has measured both glucose and insulin levels concurrently in all GI testing. In general, insulin responses in healthy people have followed the rank order of the glycemic responses. High-protein and high-fat foods, however, stimulate greater insulin responses than predicted by the level of glycemia. More exaggerated insulin responses are seen when people with underlying insulin resistance consume high-GI foods. In our study of insulin responses to 1000-kJ portions of common foods, ordinary soft breads (white or wholemeal) showed scores that were among the highest of any of the foods tested. An insulin index of foods may eventually be needed to supplement tables of GI.
THE GI IN PRACTICE
Considering the evidence that has accumulated supporting the benefits of low-GI foods, it is difficult to understand how nutrition advice can be given today without incorporating it. The GI is the fundamental principle underlying the relationship between carbohydrate intake and the consequent glycemic response, yet some dietary recommendations for people with diabetes still ignore it. The American Diabetes Association guidelines state that first priority should be given to the total amount of carbohydrate consumed rather than its source, and detailed carbohydrate counters exist to equip people with diabetes in doing this. This advice ignores twofold to threefold differences in glycemia for the same quantity of carbohydrate in common foods: potato versus pasta, yogurt versus ice cream, cornflakes versus All Bran. Although the amount of carbohydrate consumed may be a consideration in refining glycemic control, the question of "what to eat" is one that naturally precedes the question of "how much to eat." Guidance on appropriate food choices should, at least initially, be a primary goal of nutrition education for people with diabetes.
The information contained in the GI is the basis on which recommendations about carbohydrate intake should be made. First, the GI dispels the myth that foods containing refined sugars have a greater glycemic impact than starchy staples such as bread. This has forced us to reassess the range of carbohydrate choices recommended to the person with diabetes, in effect expanding, rather than limiting, food choices. Foods such as sweetened breakfast cereals, low-fat flavored dairy foods, and Sweetened baked goods are some examples of nutritious foods now appearing on diet sheets that were once forbidden to people with diabetes. From our own experience, allowing sugar as a carbohydrate improves dietary compliance by making fairly bland cereal grains, such as oatmeal, more palatable.
A sequela of moving the focus from sugar is that greater consideration can be given to other, more significant nutritional aspects of foods. The fiber content of breakfast cereals and fat content of baked goods, for example, were often overlooked by people with diabetes in their quest for low-sugar products. No longer need low sugar content be a criterion of suitability. A moderate intake of refined sugars (10% to 12% energy) is not associated with obesity, micronutrient deficiency, or undesirable effects on blood lipids or insulin sensitivity. Conversely, there is good evidence that low sugar intakes are associated with higher intakes of saturated fat, higher body weight, and a diet with a higher GI. Unfortunately, some dietitians have found the liberalization of sugar that goes hand in hand with GI advice can be one of the major stumbling blocks to general acceptance of the GI. The "pure, white, and deadly" image of sugar is well entrenched.
The GI identifies those sources of carbohydrate that have the lowest glucose-raising potential. The concept that slowly digested and absorbed carbohydrate has the least impact on blood sugar levels is readily understood. A useful approach to convey the concept is to represent all high-carbohydrate-low-fat foods as "good," but some as "better" and others as "best," making the distinction on the basis of GI and fiber content. All high-carbohydrate-low-fat foods may be regarded as useful or "good" because carbohydrate is quantitatively the most limiting nutrient in western diets (we eat only 40% to 45% of our energy as carbohydrate instead of the recommended 55%), but some of them may be "better" or "best," depending on the context. Kellogg Australia have produced a colored pyramid-style food guide in which the largest component (ie, "eat most") is divided into two parts, the bigger segment being low-GI, high carbohydrate-low fat foods, and the smaller segment being the high-GI counterparts. The message is simple and effective.
The "Good-Better-Best" System of Choosing High
Carbohydrate Foods
Good Better (more fiber Best (high fiber
or low GI) or low GI)
White bread Wholemeal bread Grainy breads (high kibbled
grain: flour ratio)
Soft drink Fruit juice Piece of fruit
Potatoes Pasta Baked beans
In practice, therefore, applying the GI is then simply a matter of substitution. A system of "this for that," as shown in Table 3, makes reducing the GI of the diet easy. To examine the effect of making such changes on the GI of the diet without drastically altering its nature, we have constructed dietary models of high- and low-GI diets. Both diets contain the same amounts of energy and macronutrients and derive 50% of energy from carbohydrate, and 30% from fat. In each diet, carbohydrate choices have been made that maximized the difference in GI between the two diets. In practice, however, it is unnecessary to choose only low-GI carbohydrate, because exchanging only half of the carbohydrate from high to low GI will lower the GI of the whole diet by about 15 units, sufficient to bring about clinical improvements in glucose metabolism in people with diabetes.
Substituting Low GI Foods for High GI Foods(*)
High GI Food Low GI Alternative
Bread, wholemeal or white Bread containing a high proportion
of whole grains
High GI rices (low amylose), Low GI rices (high amylose), eg,
eg, sticky rice, waxy rice Basmati, parboiled rices
Processed breakfast cereal Unrefined cereal such as oats
(muesli or porridge) or check
the GI list for processed
cereals with a low GI factor,
eg, Kelloggs All Bran
Potato Substitute with pasta or legumes
Plain biscuits and crackers Biscuits made with dried fruit
and whole grains, such as oats
Cakes and muffins Look for those made with fruit,
oats, whole grains
Tropical fruits, such as Temperate climate fruits, such as
bananas apples and stone fruit
(*) Changes in the type of bread and breakfast cereal have the biggest impact in the western diet. Changes in the type of rice are more important in Asian diets.
Model High and Low GI Diets That Contain the Same Amounts of Energy and Macronutrients and Derive 50% of Energy From Carbohydrate (CHO) and 30% From Fat(*)
Snack
1 crumpet 20 6.40
1 tsp margarine
Lunch
2 slices wholemeal bread 23.5 7.60
2 tsp margarine
25 g cheese
1 cup diced canteloupe 8 2.50
Snack
4 plain sweet biscuits 28 10.40
Dinner
120 g lean steak
1 cup of mashed potato 32 12.10
1/2 cup of carrot 4 1.70
1/2 cup green beans 2 0.60
50 g broccoli
Snack
290 g watermelon 15 5.10
1 cup of reduced fat 14 1.90
milk throughout day
Total 212 69.80
Low GI Diet
CHO Contribution
(g) to Total GI
Breakfast
30 g All Bran 24 4.70
1 diced peach 8 1.10
1 slice grain bread 14 2.20
1 tsp margarine
1 tsp jelly 4 1.20
Snack
1 slice grain fruit loaf 20 4.10
1 tsp margarine
Lunch
2 slices grain bread 28 4.50
2 tsp margarine
25 g cheese
1 apple 20 3.60
Snack
200 g low fat fruit yogurt 26 4.10
Dinner
120 g lean minced beef
1 cup boiled pasta 34 6.40
1 cup tomato and onion sauce 8 2.50
Green salad with vinaigrette 1 0.60
Snack
1 orange 10 2.10
1 cup of reduced fat milk 14 1.90
throughout day
Total 212 39.00
(*) In each diet, carbohydrate choices have been made which maximize the difference in GI between the two diets.
Breads and breakfast cereals make a large contribution to the glycemic load of a western diet, and therefore a change to low-GI alternatives is especially useful. In the model diets, these two food groups supply 50% of the total starch, and choosing low-GI varieties reduces the total GI by 13 units. In Australia, many breads and breakfast cereals have been identified as having a low GI, so this type of change is often one of the first and simplest to make. Alternatively, altering the main meal starch and one snack choice (raisin toast instead of a bagel) will lower the GI by a similar amount. In the diet of someone who eats more fruit, a focus on low-GI types will reduce the GI significantly.
Some people mistakenly believe that they should avoid foods with a high GI altogether. However, the aim is not to eat low-GI carbohydrate at the exclusion of all other. We suggest that people try to include at least one low-GI carbohydrate choice per meal or to base at least two of their meals each day on low-GI choices. In the high-GI diet model, even a food with a very high GI, such as carrots (GI = 92), in a normal serving, contributes less than 2 units to the total GI of the diet. If potato and carrots were substituted for pasta in the low-GI diet model, the total GI of the day would be increased by only 7 units. Against the background of low-GI choices, the diet retains a low GI.
One other aspect of the GI research that is of practical significance, particularly to people with diabetes, is the challenge that arises to the concept of carbohydrate exchanges. The theory that equal amounts of different carbohydrate foods produce similar glycemic effects is refuted by the GI. Fifteen-gram carbohydrate loads of a range of common foods have been shown to produce glycemic responses that vary threefold (authors' unpublished data). Researchers are now seeking to determine the size of food exchanges that are truly "glycemic equivalents." In reality, two slices of grainy, low-GI bread produces an equivalent glycemic response to one slice of regular bread. Practically speaking, these findings question the value of carbohydrate counting--low-GI carbohydrate foods can be eaten more freely without overt risk of hyperglycemia, thereby helping to reduce fat intake.
In our nutrition recommendations, we need to emphasize that all carbohydrate foods (even those containing refined sugars) are good choices, that coarsely ground flours are preferable to fine flours (whether white or wholemeal), and that the consumption of slowly digested carbohydrate foods such as pasta, oats, barley, baked beans, Basmati rice, low-GI breakfast cereals, and grainy breads is particularly beneficial. Fruits that have a low GI and are more acidic will help to lower the overall GI. The use of salad dressings containing vinegar and lemon juice also could be encouraged, because this results in further reductions in glycemic and insulin responses.
The challenge to the food industry is to produce new and palatable low-GI foods, because no doubt many people see some low-GI foods (beans and "birdseed" breads) as less than acceptable. We therefore should encourage the development of low-GI foods for specific applications in diabetes, appetite control, weight reduction, and exercise. Specially formulated breads, breakfast cereals, and other low-GI products will give astute food manufacturers a new marketing edge, with long-term benefits to public health.
CONCLUSIONS
The rewriting of nutrition recommendations with GI in mind will be painful for some. The dilemma for most dietitians is that adopting the GI approach will appear to contradict previous dietary advice. Bread and potatoes have been the "staff of life" for many people for a long time. But we would do well to remember that finely milled flours and domesticated varieties of fruits and vegetables are produces of the agricultural and industrial revolutions. In evolutionary terms, these are recent developments, not of sufficient duration to produce human genetic adaptations. For most of human evolution--for over two million years--cereal foods were absent, and, when introduced 10,000 years ago, they were in a coarsely ground, low-GI physical form. Hence, foods producing high glycemic and insulin responses were not available in large amounts until recently. It should not be surprising, therefore, to find that the glucose homeostatic mechanisms of many individuals will be exceeded by a lifetime intake of high-GI carbohydrate foods.
Debelli
02-28-2002, 12:54 PM
GLYCEMIC LOAD
Gabe Mirkin, M.D.
Many popular books such as Sugar Busters and The Zone give you a list of foods based on Glycemic index, and they recommend avoiding all foods that have a high glycemic index.
When you eat a food, your blood sugar level rises. The food that raises blood sugar the highest is pure table sugar. So glycemic index is a ratio of how high that food raises blood sugar in comparison to how high table sugar raises blood sugar levels. Foods whose carbohydrates break down slowly release glucose into the bloodstream slowly, so blood sugar levels do not rise high and therefore these foods have low glycemic index scores. Those that break down quickly cause a high rise in blood sugar and have a high glycemic index.
Most beans, whole grains and non-starchy vegetables have low glycemic index; while sugars, refined grains made from flour, fruits and root vegetables have a high glycemic index.
If you look at tables of glycemic index, you will see things that should bother an intelligent person. A carrot has almost the same glycemic index as sugar does. That is ridiculous. You know that a carrot is far safer for diabetics than table sugar. So scientists developed a new measure to rank foods called glycemic load. It tells you how much sugar is in the food, rather than just how high it raises blood sugar levels. To calculate glycemic load, you multiply the grams of carbohydrate in a serving of food by that food's glycemic index.
Carrots and potatoes both have a high glycemic index, but using the new glycemic load (GL), carrots dropped from high GI of 131 to a GL of 10. Potatoes fall from a GI of 121 to a GL of 45. Air-popped popcorn, with a glycemic index of 79, has a GL of 4.
Foods that are mostly water or air will not cause a steep rise in your blood sugar even if their glycemic index is high. That's why the new measure, Glycemic Load, is more useful. However, all of these tools should be used for research and not for your daily selection of foods. Use your own common sense and eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans and other seeds. If you are diabetic, you can eat root vegetables and fruits with other foods to slow the rise in blood sugar they may cause.
Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating (Simon & Schuster, June 2001), by Harvard School of Public Health professor and researcher Walter Willett, M.D.
Debelli
03-17-2002, 10:12 AM
How to Keep Your Weight in Line
It's annoying but true: As we chalk up additional years, we find ourselves adding unwanted pounds in the process. People who had no weight problem in their 30s and 40s watch in dismay as the needle on the scale creeps upward during their 50s and 60s, even though their diet hasn't changed. And therein lies the problem.
As the years go by, the body's metabolism rate slows down and we need fewer calories than we did when we were younger. The same diet that kept us trim at 40 may plaster on the pounds at 50. Yet we still need the same amount--or more--of the vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients we've been getting all along. This poses a dilemma: How to find a diet that meets no more than our basic caloric needs while supplying more nutritional value than ever.
One way around the problem is exercise. The more calories you burn, the more you can eat. And you don't have to enter a marathon or "feel the burn" of a Jane Fonda workout for exercise to make a difference. Taking a walk every day is ideal (see chapter 4). You can burn off three pounds a month by walking at a moderate rate for an hour per day. For many, however, this won't be enough.
Whether the solution is diet, exercise, or both, the problem is more than aesthetic--especially as we grow older. Studies by life insurance companies show that slim people live longer, healthier lives than those who are overweight. And the reasons for this are legion.
The Health Consequences of Excess Weight
Carrying too many pounds has a hair-raising array of potential consequences. Excess weight increases the chances of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, gallstones, certain cancers, varicose veins, pressure ulcers, and a variety of other diseases.
For example, high blood pressure is twice as common among overweight people aged 45 to 74. Overweight people are also three times more likely to develop diabetes. In fact, the Nurses Health Study, one of the largest disease-risk studies ever undertaken, showed that women who gain 15 excess pounds increase their risk of diabetes by 50 percent.
For men, the consequences of being overweight can be even more pronounced. A recently completed 27-year study of more than 19,000 middle-aged men found that those at their ideal weights lived significantly longer than those just 2 to 6 percent above the ideal. The heavier the men in the study, the shorter their life expectancy. Those who were 20 percent overweight had a risk of death from heart disease that was two-and-a-half times that of their slimmer counterparts.
Cancer and More
Obesity has also been linked with gallstones, back pain, sleep apnea (a condition characterized by brief periods when breathing stops during sleep), heartburn, stroke, gout, varicose veins, and even some types of cancer, including colon and prostate cancer in men, and uterine, endometrial, and breast cancer in women.
What seems clear is that the biochemical disruptions caused by being overweight are more complex and more prevalent than we thought. In just the last year or two, medical researchers have discovered links between excess weight and an astonishing variety of health problems, ranging from osteoarthritis of the hands and knees to carpal tunnel syndrome (a nerve conduction problem in the hand). All of these discoveries underscore the wisdom and benefits of weight control.
It Happens
Why do so many Americans tend to be overweight? The answer is simple: Many of us are taking in more fuel than our bodies need. Indeed, Americans now consume 34 percent of their calories in the form of dietary fat, the food most easily converted to body fat. (For every 100 unused calories taken in as fat, 97 are stored as fat. For every 100 unused calories taken in as carbohydrates, only 77 are stored as fat; the rest fuel the process of converting those carbohydrates to fat.)
Other factors that have contributed to the epidemic of overweight include highly processed foods laced with excessive amounts of fat, sugar, and sodium; lack of exercise in an age of labor-saving devices, computers, and tv; stress that prompts us to overeat or routinely snack on junk food; drinking (and nibbling high-fat snacks at the same time); and the decline in smoking (individuals who quit smoking often experience a 4- to 6-pound weight gain).
Sex Matters
Where weight is concerned, men can count themselves lucky. Women gain weight more easily than men do; and women have to work harder to get it off. It's all a matter of biochemistry.
A fat cell is designed to store calories (lipogenesis) when you don't need them and release fat (lipolysis) when you do. The enzymes that help store fat are called lipogenic enzymes; the ones that help release fat are lipolytic enzymes.
Women tend to have more lipogenic enzymes for fat storage; and the more you can store, the bigger the fat cell. Men have more lipolytic enzymes for fat release and, therefore, smaller fat cells.
Testosterone, the male sex hormone, activates the lipolytic enzymes for speedy release of fat. Estrogen, the female sex hormone, activates and multiplies the lipogenic enzymes. Estrogen not only stimulates the storage of fat, but also directs where most of it will be stored, concentrating it in the hips, buttocks, and thighs.
Throughout their lives, women have more body fat than men. The bodies of young girls contain a higher percentage of fat than those of young boys. And at certain milestones in the female life cycle--puberty, pregnancy, and menopause--women tend to put on even more fat. That means that the older a woman gets, the more likely she is to face the health-destroying problem of excess weight.
In technologically advanced countries, most men keep gaining weight until they reach their mid-50s, when they start shedding pounds. In women, however, body weight keeps increasing until the late 60s. After that it declines, but at a rate slower than that of men. While the metabolic changes of maturity could be a factor, reduced physical activity may be the real culprit.
Overweight or Over-Fat?
Don't trust only your scale or your mirror; they tell just half the story. It is body fat, rather than weight, that may be the best indicator of whether or not you need to trim down.
Fat comprises about 15 to 18 percent of the total body weight of a healthy, physically fit man. For a woman, the ratio is slightly higher: from 20 to 25 percent. It's quite possible to exceed these ratios without weighing in above your ideal; and the reverse holds true as well. Remember: You can be overweight without being over-fat and over-fat without being overweight.
This is one of the reasons a tape measure can be a better tool than a scale for measuring the success of a weight loss program. Since muscle weighs more than fat, your weight may seem to stabilize or even increase as you build muscle mass. Don't be discouraged. If you're wearing smaller-sized clothes or you've lost inches from your hips, waist, or neck, you are actually leaner and healthier than when you started.
Apple vs. Pear
At least as important as total weight is where the fat tends to settle on your body. While fat in the hips, thighs, and buttocks is mainly stored just under the skin, fat in the midsection is stored deeper in the body.
As we grow older, fat tends to collect around the abdomen, and many people develop an "apple shape." This can be more dangerous than having a "pear shape," in which excess fat gravitates to the hips and thighs.
Experts theorize that abdominal fat releases more fatty acids, leading to a rise in blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels. While this can be a serious health problem in and of itself, it also may interfere with the action of insulin in the body, thus increasing the risk of diabetes. Some researchers also believe that "apple shape" obesity may increase the availability and activity of estrogen, leading to an elevated risk of breast cancer. The good news is that, to some degree, you can modify your shape, whether apple or pear, through exercise and diet modification.
What Weight Is Right for You?
Recent research suggests that if you repeatedly have trouble reaching--and maintaining--your ideal weight, you may be better off surrendering that elusive goal altogether and focusing on what your body really wants to weigh: your natural weight.
Natural weight is the weight your body goes to and maintains when you're eating reasonably and not drastically cutting calories, exercising vigorously, or otherwise trying to shed pounds. It will never be a fixed number, but, rather, a range of 5 to 8 pounds (since weight normally varies slightly with changes in general health, activity, hormone levels, and the time of day).
Of course, that doesn't mean that any weight is healthy. If your weight is 20 percent or more over the top of the ideal range for your height and frame (see the nearby table), you should consider trimming down to stay healthy.
Gauging Your Natural Weight
To determine your current natural weight range, consider the following factors.
Your personal weight history. Try to remember the lowest weight range you have successfully maintained as an adult, without dieting, for a period of a year or more. That is your baseline natural weight range.
Your family. Make a mental picture of family members when they were about the age you are now. Because genetics is a powerful variable in terms of size and shape, family resemblance can help define your natural weight. (Remember, however, that even if you come from a long line of very heavy people, if your weight seems dangerously high, it's wise to check with your doctor about the need to shed some pounds.)
Your exercise habits. Think back to that period when you maintained your lowest-ever weight. If you exercised regularly then and don't do it now, you may need to add several pounds to your baseline weight range--or start exercising again.
Strategies for Successful Weight Loss
Once you have determined your natural weight range, what do you do with the information? If your weight is excessive for your height, you should try to lose weight gradually by adopting a low-fat, moderate-calorie, healthful diet and boosting your exercise level. Remember that crash diets and furious bouts of exercise don't work and can, indeed, be dangerous. Moderation and consistency are the keys to success.
From a weight-loss standpoint, a low-fat diet is ideal because it minimizes the amount of fat readily available for your body to store. But how low is low? The American Heart Association, the National Academy of Science, the American Cancer Society, and many other groups recommend that we get a maximum of 30 percent of our calories from fat (with no more than 10 percent of total calories from saturated fats). Another body of nutrition experts, including Nathan Pritikin and Dr. Dean Ornish, suggest that even lower levels of fat (10 to 20 percent of total calories) are much better than 30%, and can, among other things, actually reverse existing heart disease.
Calories Still Count
Your body needs a certain number of calories per day to maintain bodily functions--referred to as your Basal Metabolic Rate (bmr). You can estimate your bmr by multiplying your current weight (in pounds) by 10 for women, 11 for men. For example, a woman who weighs 120 pounds would require about 1,200 calories per day just to maintain her bodily functions. You'll also need some percentage of calories above your bmr to provide energy for your daily activities; the percentage will vary widely based on your metabolism and activity level. A moderately fit and active person might need 30 to 50 percent more calories than the bmr to maintain current weight. Example: A 120-pound woman would need approximately 1,680 calories per day [1,200 + (1,200 x 40%) = 1,680]. A person who is very fit and exercises frequently might burn as much as 100 to 200 percent more than his or her bmr.
If your goal is to lose weight, you'll need to take in fewer calories than you use up, or burn off extra calories through exercise, or both. If you choose to decrease calories, aim for the amount needed daily to maintain your target weight, not your current weight. Most experts recommend that women take in a minimum of 1,200 calories and men a minimum of 1,600 per day. Lower calorie levels are unlikely to supply all the essential nutrients you need, and may slow down your metabolism, making weight loss even more difficult. For gradual weight loss, some professionals recommend a daily calorie target of 10 times your weight. At this level, they say, you can expect to lose half a pound per week.
Good (And Bad) News about Sugar
The "empty calories" of sugar have gained a bad reputation. Yet sugar by itself isn't a problem. It's the high levels of fat in sugary foods such as ice cream and pastries that really put on the pounds. In terms of weight loss or maintenance, sugar becomes objectionable only when you fail to keep your intake down to moderate levels. Sugar is a carbohydrate, thus it is normally burned by the body immediately, and is converted to fat only if it's present in quantities too large to be used at once.
Nevertheless, some people find that even moderate amounts of sugar stimulate cravings for yet more sweets, often of the high-fat variety. If you are one of these people, you may find it helpful to eliminate processed sugars from your diet, relying instead on the natural sweetness of fruits, vegetables, and grains. Artificial sweeteners can be an effective aid if you have occasional cravings for sweets, but probably won't work for those of us with an active sweet tooth. The taste of artificial sweeteners can trigger sugar cravings about as easily as the real thing can.
Tempting Techniques for Boosting Fiber
Fiber has many benefits, but one stands out when you're losing weight: it fills out the stomach and intestinal cavity, producing a feeling of fullness. Fiber is found chiefly in nonprocessed foods such as whole grains, beans, peas, fruits, and vegetables. Fiber may be added to processed foods in the form of bran, which is the outer coating from a grain such as wheat or oats.
The typical American diet is high in processed foods, most of which contain little or no fiber. Most people get only about 10 to 12 grams of fiber per day, while 25 to 30 grams are needed to get real health benefits. If your current diet is low in fiber, it's important to increase your intake gradually over a period of weeks or months (a sudden jump can cause bloating, cramping, and gas). Try having a small serving of a high-fiber, low-fat cereal with your breakfast; as your system becomes used to the higher fiber levels, start substituting whole-grain breads, cereals, and pastas for refined (white flour, low fiber) varieties. Increase your consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, and eat edible peels and skins (apples, potatoes) instead of trimming them.
How to Put Your Diet into Action
Once you've decided it's time to shed a few extra pounds, the big question is How? The basic principles--less fat, fewer calories, more fiber--are enshrined in hundreds of dieting schemes. At any given time, you have a choice of over 300 diet books, plus all of the commercial diet centers in your area (there were over 8,000 of them recently in operation across the country). The first decision to make is whether you prefer to go it alone or seek the help of a structured program.
Tips for Do-It-Yourselfers
If you're the go-it-alone type, keep these tactics in mind. You'll need to make up for the support that comes automatically with enrollment in a program.
* Find a good time to start. "I'm going on a diet tomorrow," is a sentence that often heralds failure because it's sparked by a momentary impulse (or guilt after a triple-decker ice cream cone) rather than a well-thought-out plan. Weight loss is tough, and you should give it the same careful consideration you would give to changing your career or buying a house. Find a starting date during a relatively quiet time in your life, not while you're also moving to another state or dealing with a crisis at work.
* Create a diet "campaign." Some people prefer to start with an exercise program, and add nutritional changes later on. For others, the reverse strategy works best. And for "all or nothing" types, starting both programs on a particular day can increase motivation.
* Choose a good book for companionship. Some people prefer a diet plan book, while others do best with a low-fat, low-calorie cookbook.
* Check with your doctor if you have any medical problems. You need to make sure that the eating and exercise strategies you've chosen are suitable and safe.
* Decide whether you need a "quick start." Quick-start programs, in which you change your eating habits drastically for a few weeks, are likely to deliver the most dramatic changes on the scale. But they require a good deal of concentration during the initial phase and may not be suitable if you're pressed for time. For many people, however, this approach serves as a great motivator. After you've lost those first exciting five pounds, you can modulate the plan into one you can continue life long.
* Consider "gradualism." This strategy works best for people who don't have too much weight to lose, and those who can accept the idea of slow--but steady and permanent-- change. One approach is to modify one daily meal at a time. For example, during the first week, you can concentrate on low-fat, low-calorie dinners, assembling menus and creating tasty meals. In the second week, you can turn to lunch, and so on. Or, you can tackle one food group at a time. A switch to low-fat dairy products is a good start. The second week, pay attention to lower-fat meats and fish, and to learning how to create one or two vegetarian dinners a week. (Be careful, though: Some vegetarian recipes are amazingly high in fat.)
* Don't forget fluids. Drinking eight glasses of water a day can fill you up, prevent the shakiness and fatigue of dehydration, and give you something to put in your mouth when you're trying to forget about eating.
* Eat slowly and savor your food. Give your internal "portion control" monitor a chance to get through to you. Fill up on lots of veggies prepared without added fat. Eat pastas, potatoes, and other filling foods, too, but only within reason. Use cheeses, meat, and sweets to give an extra zing to meals, but keep them to a minimum.
* Keep track of your progress. Weigh yourself daily, keep a food diary or try on a once too-tight skirt or pair of jeans each morning. Tracking progress reminds you that you've started a change, and rewards you with a hint of the final results.
* Don't punish yourself. If you "fall off the wagon," don't despair. Learning to climb back on is a key to long-term success.
* Survive the "plateaus." While the first pounds often come off quickly, many dieters hit plateaus where their weight remains steady for weeks even though their fat and calorie counts are low. Your metabolism is making noble efforts to keep up your fat levels, in the mistaken belief that starvation is near. Don't give up; weight loss will start again once this plateau is passed.
* Reward yourself. Small treats and large pleasures will help you celebrate everything from sticking with your plan on Day One to reaching your target weight, along with whatever small markers you create in between.
Checking Out the Enrollment Programs
If you want the extra motivation and support that come from a structured weight-loss program, you'll be faced with some additional choices. How best to judge a commercial program? Make your decision based on cost, comfort, and common sense. These plans generally attract women who have a moderate weight problem and men who are moderately to seriously overweight. All the top four commercial weight-loss programs--Diet Center, Jenny Craig, Nutri-system, and Weight Watchers--include a low-calorie diet of about 1,000 to 1,500 calories a day and some kind of supportive counseling.
None of the top four emerges as better at helping individuals to lose weight and keep it off, according to a 1994 Consumer Reports survey of 95,000 readers who had attempted to lose weight in the past 3 years. Overall, however, Weight Watchers tended to be the clear favorite among those polled. It costs less than the others, emphasizes healthful dietary habits, encourages relatively slow weight loss, and generally appears to provide the most satisfying support. In contrast, Nutri-system and Jenny Craig cost more and are more likely to use high-pressure sales tactics. But as Deralee Scanlon, rd, points out in Diets That Work: The monetary aspect does not in itself lessen the potential effectiveness of a program--in fact, some people take these programs more seriously precisely because of the financial investment.
How to Keep the Lost Pounds Off
Once you've lost the weight and have come to accept your new appearance, you have to develop new skills to hold onto your hard won gains. While there is no simple formula for keeping weight off, there are skills you can develop that will help you maintain your desired weight and make maintaining it more automatic.
The "C" Word
Long-term weight management requires a conscious commitment--one just as strong as, or stronger than the one you made in deciding to lose weight. As with any large project, it's a good idea to break the task down into smaller, doable segments. Many people find it easier to make a commitment to maintain their current weight for one year.
The commitment should be specific--something like: "I will continue to go to exercise class 3 times a week and I will continue to use vegetables for my snacks." Remember that keeping this commitment is something no one can do for you.
Once the commitment is made, keep visualizing your success. Imagine yourself a year from today, still able to get into your current sized jeans. Imagine yourself relaxed and happy, eating foods you like that are also good for you.
Create New Habits
Weight maintenance becomes a much easier proposition once you've established good nutritional habits. Simplification and preparation are key to getting new habits in place. For example, if you don't habitually eat breakfast but have decided to do so to boost your morning energy and prevent overeating at lunch, start with a simple approach: Eat the same breakfast every day until the habit is firmly embedded. Prepare by keeping the things you want for breakfast always on hand.
To avoid falling back into old habits, you need to trigger your new habits on a daily basis. For example, put a note on the mirror reminding yourself to eat breakfast, and set out dishes and some ingredients the night before.
Simplifying your approach to food makes it easier to form new habits. Choose a nutritional plan that feels comfortable and doable. If possible, reduce your plan to a simple-to-remember formula. For example, plan to eat a fruit or vegetable with each meal or snack, or set a fixed number of portions from each food group to eat every day. Keep your plan in your wallet and look at it before you buy your lunch. And remember to drink plenty of fluids to prevent dehydration.
Connect with Hunger
People who have never had a weight problem tend to eat when their body says "I'm hungry." But hunger signals may be badly scrambled for those who have been through various deprivation diets. Judith Matz, co-director of the Chicago Center for Overcoming Overeating, suggests it's possible to relearn to identify and respond to hunger signals and to eat only when they occur. "With practice you can reconnect your eating with internal cues," she says. "Doing so helps you distinguish between a bodily urge for nourishment and the desire for emotional comfort from food." This doesn't mean you should never reach for food out of emotional hunger, but that you should know it when you do and perhaps choose another way to fill your needs instead.
If you often feel hungry between meals, consider adjusting your food choices. Some foods have "staying power," notes Sybil Ferguson of The Diet Center Program. They stay longer in your system, helping you feel more satisfied and energetic. Many foods low in calories, such as prepackaged convenience diet foods, are also low in "staying power" because they're digested quickly. Natural foods with lots of fiber, such as oatmeal, vegetables, and fruits--are helpful for maintenance because they take longer to chew and to digest, and they create a full feeling in your stomach.
Skipping meals, either because of time crunches or out of guilt from previous overeating, interferes with the steady state of satisfaction that makes maintenance easier. When the body has been deprived of food for many hours, your blood sugar level drops, leading to cravings for immediate energy boosts. Eating a balanced selection of foods on a consistent schedule helps stabilize your blood sugar level and hunger sensations, so you can continue to make intelligent decisions about eating.
Avoid Deprivation
A sense of deprivation ("oh, I wish I could eat that," "you're lucky, you can eat anything," "I used to be able to finish a whole cake at one sitting") is a prime enemy of long-term weight maintenance. Tyrannical diet programs do work well for short-term weight loss, but over the long haul, we all need to eat for pleasure as well as nourishment. Meals are among the most pleasurable social events in life, and it pays to learn to take pleasure in the foods that are good for you.
Keep a list of foods or dishes you particularly like that also fit in with weight maintenance. When you find yourself missing your old bacon, eggs, and steak diet, treat yourself to all of your favorite nutritious foods in the same day. It keeps your spirits up without expanding your waistline.
Whenever you feel hungry, there's always something you can eat that will be satisfying without threatening your weight stability. Try keeping the refrigerator stocked with fresh fruits and vegetables. Treat yourself to exotic and out of season fruits and vegetables when they look inviting in the market. Nibble on red peppers, fresh young carrots, and cucumbers dipped in a low-fat sauce (no-fat salad dressing makes a quickie dip).
Monitor Your Weight Daily
If you find you've put on a pound or three, try to ease yourself back on track quickly. This may involve relaxation efforts, visualizing more nutritional eating, or being extra careful for a few days. But once a 5-pound gain has occurred--you should consider it a "weight emergency" and construct a relapse recovery plan.
Return from Relapse
Everyone should expect to have slips from their weight maintenance program," says James Hill, PhD, associate professor of psychology at the University of Colorado in Denver. "The most important thing is to recover as soon as possible."
The first step in recovery is to identify the problem(s). List all possible reasons to finish the sentence, "I've started gaining weight again because ...."
Then adopt an optimistic stance about your ability to bounce back from hard times. Remembering previous accomplishments, and setting realistic goals for the future can soon have you back on the maintenance track.
Assume responsibility for your actions and beliefs--this puts you firmly in control of your future. Come up with some solutions for each of the stresses that undercut your program. For example, a new low-fat cookbook or cooking class can help you combat food boredom.
When you've patched together a recovery plan to meet your needs, gather strength for the new change by tapping into your support network. Talk to someone who is positive and reinforces your decisions. If you were part of a formal weight loss program, check in with the support group whenever you need to recover from a lapse.
Feed Your Emotional Needs
The trick to avoiding relapses--and coping with those that occur--is to remember that you're a capable, lovable human being who can accomplish your goals. Nurturing your own self-esteem can help you cope with the stress and burnout that so often lead to overeating. When you feel tired, bored, quick to anger, withdrawn, rigid and ineffective, you're most apt to abandon your nutritional program. It helps to remember the positive side of your weight loss experience: feelings of being in control, reaching goals, making peace with your appetite, taking care of yourself. It's easy to believe in yourself when things are going well. It's when the going gets tough that you need to reinforce your self-confidence.
Making positive life changes that improve your body and mind are a good way to foster self- esteem. Consider taking a stimulating class or workshop, or try a new exercise program. Developing a relaxation ritual, which may involve breathing exercises, chanting, or muscle tension and relaxation, is another excellent technique for caring for yourself.
The Maintenance Mantra
Why do you want to maintain your weight loss? What's the most important factor for you? The reasons vary from person to person. For some, lowering blood pressure or a high cholesterol level is most important. For others, cosmetic concerns loom largest. Naming your motivation proudly and loudly, at least to yourself, can help you stay on track. "Usually people go out and lose as much weight as they can, then see how much they can keep off," notes Professor Hill. "Maybe we should do the reverse: first, make the right nutritional changes, then, based on our ability to stick with them, accept the resulting weight."
Debelli
06-08-2002, 02:17 PM
Weight Loss Plateau: Thou Shalt Not Overeat
by Tanya Zilberter
Fighting stalled weight loss, or a weight-loss plateau, is not an easy business; nor is it easy to advise on troubleshooting because there are many reasons for this plateau. The rule of the thumb, however, is universal...
Fighting stalled weight loss, or a weight-loss plateau, is not an easy business; nor is it easy to advise on troubleshooting because there are many reasons for this plateau. The rule of the thumb, however, is universal:
Thou Shalt Not Overeat
What is overeating? It depends. For one person, overeating means that she eats in excess of her energy expenditure, which may be due to the sedentary needs. For another person, it's because of sluggish metabolism. For yet another, it can be a plain old cheating on his diet.
In this article, I'll talk about the weight-loss plateau and one of its aspects that is rarely discussed: taste and calories.
There are two issues in the weight-loss plateau problem that concerns low-carb dieters. First, what is this plateau - ; is it anything real or all in our heads? Second, is low-carb stalled weight loss different from any other diet stalling?
A Look at the General Problem of Plateaus
A weight-loss plateau is when you were losing weight and then stopped losing, without changing your diet, exercise or other lifestyle factors. You eat the same diet and exercise as much as before, but your bathroom scales are frozen at some mysterious point, sometimes referred to as the body-weight set point.(Just think of your refrigerator: it's the point you set to maintain the temperature you want. Though different in details, basically the same parts make up the human body's "thermostat" or "fatostat," for that matter.)
Body-weight set point is nature's idea of what amount of fat you need. If we deviate from nature's, it forces us to eat more - ; even when our fat stores are huge. Luckily, a low-carb diet allows your body to recognise your stored fat as legitimate fuel and uses it instead of storing it (as it does on any other diet.) However, there is another danger that is often overlooked by low-carb dieters:
The Sweeter, the Heavier
It seems that our body-weight set points are not carved in stone. Clinical studies revealed links between taste and the amount of food we eat.
Tastier foods make the set point of body weight shift up proportionally, that is: the tastier the food, the greater the set point. Researchers even showed that foods with negative taste qualities, (in the study, researchers added quinine) do the opposite: the more bitter the food, the lower the set point.
Artificial Sweetners Are Not the Answer
Sweet taste - ; even from artificial sweeteners - ; causes an increase in calories coming from fat and protein. Why does this happening?
Sweet taste, even coming with artificial sweetener, raises glucose concentration in the blood before the food has a chance to be digested. Your body knows that eventually, it will have all the carbs you've swallowed and it doesn't wait until it that happens. Instead, it releases some glucose from the carbohydrate depots and hopes to get it all back. When the sweet food is real, the carbohydrates eventually get into the blood. If they're not? Well, nature never counted on us inventing artificial sweeteners. Being fooled, your body reacts rather vindictively: it forces you to want more sweet food plus eat more next time, no matter what food you agree to have.
So, you'd be better off without artificial sweeteners. There are other tasty foods you can have on a low-carb diet.
Some Clinical Data on Fats:
* Preference for high-fat foods appears to be a universal human trait.
* How much fat we eat appears to be determined simply by the amount of fat available.
* Fats are especially provocative in the obese, who tend to overeat fatty foods more than the lean.
Clinical Data on Other Tasty Foods:
* Good tasting foods increased so-called diet-induced thermogenesis (heat production after meals) and reduced food efficiency (how many calories are used and how many pass through the intestines).
* Good tasting foods increase energy expenditure. It seems like a paradox, but when you eat what you really enjoy, you body gets less of this particular food's calories.
THE BIG ORANGE BABE
07-07-2002, 07:34 PM
America Rubs Its Stomach, and Says Bring It On
By GREG WINTER
ORTY pounds of white bread, 32 gallons of soft drinks, 41 pounds of potatoes and a couple of gallons of vegetable oil in which to fry them. No, it's not a roster of provisions for the troops on the Fourth of July. It's a sample of what the average American eats in a year.
Bear in mind, that's only what consumers admit to eating. If there is one thing researchers have learned while surveying the nation's gastronomic habits, it is that, whether from modesty or sheer denial, Americans are prodigious liars about how much they really eat.
The fact is, Americans are not only eating more healthy foods like fruits and vegetables, but more of almost everything else. Per capita consumption of food increased about 8 percent from 1990 to 2000, according to the Department of Agriculture. That translates to something like 140 extra pounds of food a year. Yes, per person.
Given that exercise rates have hardly changed, is there any wonder that obesity rates increased 61 percent during that time? A more difficult question may be: Why, despite our better judgment, do we keep eating more and more?
The main answer, according to many in the public health community, comes down to an obvious yet ineluctable truth: the more food people are served, the more they will eat. Simple as that.
Maybe it's a cultural compulsion to get the most bang for the buck, or perhaps it's a biological imperative to bulk up in case of famine, researchers say, but only a select few can resist the almost gravitational pull of the supersizing option, especially when it is so cheap to take the plunge.
At 7-Eleven, 37 extra cents buys four times as much soda. At Cinnabon, pay 48 more cents and one gets a sweet roll nearly three times as large as the regular size. At McDonalds, 87 cents buys almost three times as many French fries. You get the picture.
The impact on caloric consumption is particularly pronounced because Americans are eating out as never before. In 1970, for instance, about one-quarter of the average household's food budget was spent outside the home. Today it is roughly one-half. What is more, researchers at the University of Minnesota say, restaurant food typically contains 22 percent more fat than food consumed at home.
Then there is the speed at which Americans eat. So many meals are now wolfed down in the car, at the desk, on the run, that we tend to stuff ourselves before our brains have the chance to slow us down. The satiety signals that usually tell us we've had enough may not kick in for a full half-hour, scientists point out, long after many dietary crimes have been committed.
The experience of hunger may itself have changed as well. With sugar and highly refined starches becoming a much larger part of the average diet, often as substitutes for fat, blood-sugar levels tend to rise very rapidly, then plummet within a few hours. That stimulates hunger again, much faster than with a diet rich in fruits, nuts and vegetables, none of which seem to hold much appeal for the average consumer.
And why is that, by the way? If Americans know junk food carries such consequences, why does it continue to cast such a powerful spell? While some scientists cite the ubiquity of sweet and fatty foods — in the mall, in vending machines at school — others suggest there may also be a primal instinct at work.
Researchers at Yale University, for example, say that when laboratory animals are fed healthy food, they will eat their fill but refrain from stuffing themselves. Yet when they are switched to a high-calorie diet with lots of fatty fare, they will keep on eating until they swell up to as much as three times their original weight, possibly because of an instinctual preference for foods that deliver the most calories — as a way to stave off starvation in bad times.
"It's not like those animals have seen any fast-food commercials," said Kelly D. Brownell, a professor of psychology at Yale. "It's just their hard-wiring driving them towards that food."
THE BIG ORANGE BABE
07-07-2002, 07:38 PM
Check out this link for a really good article about diets...
Another New York Times article today
in the Sunday magazine. Someone should give him a recipe for a low carb blueberry pie.
A Dieter's Dilemma
By JASON EPSTEIN
In August and September, as the blueberry crop advances northward across Long Island on its way to Canada, I like to bake a blueberry pie, to which I add an entire lemon, including the peel, coarsely chopped. By the time the pie is baked, the peel and its pith caramelize and give the berries a surprising tang. A tablespoon or two of arrowroot doesn't quite absorb all the lemon juice, but I prefer my blueberry pie a little runny, not glutinous and stiff with cornstarch like pies from the bakery. I enjoy the way a scoop of vanilla ice cream melts into the warm juice.
During blueberry season, I usually make a dozen or so of these pies, their top crusts lightly browned with egg wash and accented with little rivers of purple syrup. But this year I'm not making any. And when they ripen, I'm not cutting up plump Golden Delicious or crunchy Mutsu apples from the Milk Pail in Water Mill on Long Island and laying the thick slices out neatly in circles in caramelized sugar and butter on the tarte Tatin pan that I bought from Fred Bridge in the 1960's. Nor will I be topping the apples with a thin sheet of buttery pie dough and sliding the tarte in the oven for 50 minutes at 360 degrees, to keep the apples from sticking to the pan the way they would at a higher temperature. And I won't be adding a tablespoon of flour to thicken the syrupy apple juice, because a tarte Tatin, unlike a blueberry pie, should not be runny at all.
Never again will I make the buttery muffins that I used to bake on Sunday mornings. I am also giving up ketchup, which is mainly corn syrup flavored with tomato and vinegar. Moreover, I'm going to think twice before I buy another Walla Walla onion, laden with sugary carbohydrates, or the wonderful rolls from Amy's Bread. That probably means no more hamburgers either and, for that matter, no more onion marmalade, the perfect accompaniment to magret de canard (the breasts of moulard ducks, the kind raised for foie gras), sautéed until warm and pink inside, then sliced and fanned out on the plate accompanied by the marmalade, a silky reduction of a half-dozen large, sweet onions -- a critical mass of carbohydrate waiting to turn itself into body fat.
According to Dr. Robert Atkins, 60 percent of the American population is perilously plump, an endangered group from whose condition I have been withdrawing for the past month at the rate of a pound every other day. I am especially wary of pecan pie, of which a single triangular slice contains three times the daily amount of carbohydrate permitted during the two-week initiation phase -- Atkins calls it the Induction Phase -- of his diet. This is the phase I have recently completed, having lost 10 pounds. I am now well into the Ongoing Weight Loss (O.W.L.) phase, with the permission of my wise friend and physician Stanley Mirsky, who for years has been urging me to avoid carbohydrates. But it was to the evangelical pitchman Dr. Atkins, not the stately Dr. Mirsky, that I finally succumbed, goaded by my son, Jacob, who, though not at all plump, lost 27 pounds and reduced his cholesterol in two months on Atkins.
The physiological case against excessive carbohydrates, reported in this magazine seven weeks ago, is fairly straightforward and by now well known. The low-carbohydrate diet, touted originally by Atkins and adopted successfully by millions of his followers, contradicts the widely accepted theory, introduced in the 1980's and later promoted by the Department of Agriculture's Food Guide Pyramid, that carbohydrates should be the basis of the American diet. Most researchers now agree that carbohydrates, especially refined ones like sugar and other vegetable-based sweeteners, white flour and rice, are quickly absorbed as energy by the body, while carbohydrates in excess of the body's immediate needs are stored as fat for future use. A secondary effect of this quick absorption is renewed hunger soon after a high-carbohydrate meal, for example after a Chinatown dinner of noodles, rice, wonton wrappers, egg-roll skins, syrupy ribs and cornstarch thickeners.
A low-carbohydrate diet, on the other hand, not only forces the body to seek energy by consuming its own stored fat but also suppresses appetite, since dietary fat and protein take longer to digest and enter the bloodstream than carbohydrates. Moreover, the body expends more energy burning fat than burning carbohydrates, yielding what Atkins calls ''a metabolic advantage.'' These phenomena explain the quick weight loss, especially during the Induction Phase, which allows only 20 grams of carbohydrates per day, about half the amount in a single bagel.
Even in its rigorous two-week Induction Phase, however, Atkins provides a rich larder of bacon and eggs, steak, lamb, pork and poultry, fish, including most shellfish, cheese, butter, cream (but not whole milk) and green vegetables except leeks, onions, peas and artichokes. Gin, vodka, whiskey and other spirits, according to Atkins, become ''acceptable,'' as does wine. Excluded forever are pasta, pizza, pastries and so on. No more sushi, congee, cookies, cereals, bagels, croissants, pancakes or waffles; no potatoes or corn, though one or two chips with guacamole is allowed. Above all, no more pretzels, which deliver five times as many carbs as potato chips. Orange juice, alas, is also out. But pecans, almonds and macadamia nuts are in.
Despite these restrictions, you can make a splendid breakfast of eggs scrambled through a strainer and cooked gently in a Teflon pan over simmering water, accompanied by warm prosciutto or its Austrian cousin, speck, with a few spears of asparagus, or a lunch of lobster, shrimp or chicken salad with homemade mayonnaise. (My favorite, Hellmann's, contains sugar.) For dinner you can have a pan-roasted rib-eye steak or striped bass with braised fennel or grilled trevisano radicchio. Most cheeses are acceptable, including blue, cheddar, cottage, cream and mozzarella. Tomatoes are iffy, but Atkins includes a recipe for fried green tomatoes using a noncarbohydrate bake mix. He may be an evangelist, but in his recipes he is not inflexible.
For the moment, at least, I seem to have successfully reversed my compulsions. Not only am I no longer addicted to croissants, hash-brown potatoes, blueberry pies and lobster salad stuffed into hot-dog rolls, but I am also slightly repelled by them. For moderately resourceful cooks, a low-carbohydrate diet offers abundant opportunity, and many of the recipes in ''Dr. Atkins's New Diet Revolution'' are worth considering. Nevertheless, I include my recipe for blueberry pie. Perhaps one day, when I am beyond Atkins's O.W.L. phase and into Maintenance, I'll make it again.
This is a good book to help explain Eating Low on the Glycemic Index. :)
"THE GOOD CARB COOKBOOK"
(Secrets of Eating Low on the Glycemic Index)
by: Sandra Woodruff, M.S., R.D.
I checked this book out from my local library, but I think it would be one that would be worth purchasing if you plan to follow this plan for life!
Jo Ann in TEXAS
Debelli
10-12-2002, 03:02 PM
Toxic Weight
Breaking The Stress-Eating Cycle
By Dr. Pamela Peeke
Special to ABCNEWS.com
March 9 — Stress can make you frazzled. Stress can make you sick. Stress can also make you fat. And keep you fat. It's a scientific fact.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Toxic Weight Busting Tips Take The Stress-Eating Quiz
How you cope with stress determines your appetite. If you're a woman, your life is especially frenzied (juggling aging parents, career, spouse, kids), and your hormones — including your stress hormones — are beginning to flood the body somewhat unpredictably. This can result in mood swings, muscle fatigue, loss of memory and intense food cravings.
These physical and emotional changes get worse when you harbor chronic, long-term stress that makes you feel hopeless, helpless and defeated. I call this Toxic Stress. It's the only kind of stress that adds weight inside the belly — the toxic kind. How does it do that?
Hormonal
When stress hits, different brain chemicals are released to help the body handle the physical response. One of the chemicals — cortisol, known as the stress hormone — is a powerful appetite stimulant. When you come under stress, cortisol levels in your bloodstream rise. The hormone makes fat cells release fuel for what it assumes will be your fight-or-flight reaction.
But we aren't gazelles in the Serengeti being hunted by lions. The stresses we face in the modern world aren't the kind you run away from. We usually just sit there and get upset and anxious. Meanwhile, our brain just assumes we've gotten really physical with such high levels of stress hormone circulating. So, the cortisol's next job is to refuel us, replenishing what it thinks were the fuels we used.
Toxic Stress
When you're under long-term Toxic Stress, your cortisol is constantly elevated. This leads to real problems. You end up with a big appetite for the special fuels of the stress response — fats and carbs. Ever notice it's not a can of tuna you reach for when you're getting the stress munchies? No, it's almost always cookies, candies, chips and starches. That's how you gain the weight.
Where does the fat go? It's deposited in a unique place in the body – deep inside the abdomen. Everyone's got some fat inside there, even skinny people. However, too much fat inside the tummy is very dangerous, which is why I call this extra stress-induced fat Toxic Weight. Poor lifestyle choices and fluctuating estrogen levels contribute to Toxic Weight as well.
Toxic Weight is the only fat associated with diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
How do you know you have Toxic Weight? Lie down flat on the floor and look down at your abdomen. Does it rise up above your pelvic bones like you swallowed a bowling ball? If so, Toxic Weight is on board. If you have high blood pressure or diabetes, the Toxic Weight is definitely contributing to your condition. So that expanding waistline is more than an eyesore. It can shorten your life.
Dr. Pamela Peeke is an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Toxic Weight Busting Tips
What can you do about stress-induced Toxic Weight? You need to keep your stress hormone under better control all day long. The real goal is to learn to become more stress-resilient. Here's how:
Start with your MIND: Learn how to adapt and overcome whenever life's stresses occur. Learn the fine art of regrouping. Step back and realize your original Plan A approach may not work under stress. Quickly move to Plan B or C and adapt to the new challenge. Desperately holding onto Plan A creates Toxic Stress.
Move to your MOUTH: When you're feeling stressed, avoid processed sugars and starches. If you eat them, the resultant increased insulin levels give you a double whammy. The high levels of insulin induce a binge, and in the face of a high cortisol level, you'll binge on fats and carbs. Eat fruit, crunchy cereal or pretzels instead.
Finally, move your MUSCLE: By getting up and taking a walk, you can increase the secretion of stress hormone-busting chemicals called beta endorphins. Escape for a short walk, lift some weights or just stand up and do some stretches. Get back some of that fight-or-flight physical activity and you'll keep stress hormones under control.
Debelli
10-22-2002, 09:44 AM
How Fat Cells Work
by Craig C. Freudenrich, Ph.D.
About half of the adults in the United States are overweight. That's 97 million people who have too much fat. Many Americans exercise and go on diets to reduce their amount of body fat.
But have you ever wondered what fat is? When a person "gets fat" -- gains weight -- what is actually happening inside the person's body? What are "fat cells" and how do they work?
In this edition of HowStuffWorks Fitness, we will look at the world of the fat cell. We will examine where fat cells are located, how they store fat and how they get rid of it!
Where's the Fat?
Fat, or adipose tissue, is found in several places in your body. Generally, fat is found underneath your skin (subcutaneous fat). There's also some on top of each of your kidneys. Other locations depend upon whether you are a man or woman:
An adult man tends to carry body fat in his chest, abdomen and buttocks, producing an "apple" shape.
An adult woman tends to carry fat in her breasts, hips, waist and buttocks, creating a "pear" shape.
The difference in fat location comes from the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone.
Your body contains two types of fat tissue:
White fat - important in energy metabolism, heat insulation and mechanical cushioning.
Brown fat - found mostly in newborn babies, between the shoulders; important for thermogenesis (making heat).
Fat tissue is made up of fat cells. Fat cells are a unique type of cell. You can think of a fat cell as a tiny plastic bag that holds a drop of fat:
White fat cells are large cells that have very little cytoplasm, only 15 percent cell volume, a small nucleus and one large fat droplet that makes up 85 percent of cell volume.
Brown fat cells are somewhat smaller, are loaded with mitochondria and are composed of several smaller fat droplets. The mitochondria are able to generate heat.
Fat cells are formed in the developing fetus during the third trimester of pregnancy, and later at the onset of puberty, when the sex hormones "kick in." It is during puberty that the differences in fat distribution between men and women begin to take form. One amazing fact is that fat cells do not multiply after peuberty -- as your body stores more fat, the number of fat cells remains the same. Each fat cell simply gets bigger!
In addition to fat tissue, some fat is stored in the liver, and an even smaller amount in muscle.
How Fat Enters Your Body
When you eat food that contains fat, mostly triglycerides, it goes through your stomach and intestines. In the intestines, the following happens:
Large fat droplets get mixed with bile salts from the gall bladder in a process called emulsification. The mixture breaks up the large droplets into several smaller droplets called micelles, increasing the fat's surface area.
Emulsification in Your Kitchen
When you add water to a greasy skillet, the grease forms a layer on top of the water. If you squeeze one drop of dishwashing liquid into the center of the skillet, you'll see the large grease layer immediately break up into small droplets.
The pancreas secretes enzymes called lipases that attack the surface of each micelle and break the fats down into their parts, glycerol and fatty acids.
These parts get absorbed into the cells lining the intestine.
In the intestinal cell, the parts are reassembled into packages of fat molecules (triglycerides) with a protein coating called chylomicrons. The protein coating makes the fat dissolve more easily in water.
The chylomicrons are released into the lymphatic system -- they do not go directly into the bloodstream because they are too big to pass through the wall of the capillary.
The lymphatic system eventually merges with the veins, at which point the chylomicrons pass into the bloodstream.
You might be wondering why fat molecules get broken down into glycerol and fatty acids if they're just going to be rebuilt. This is because fat molecules are too big to easily cross cell membranes. So when passing from the intestine through the intestinal cells into the lymph, or when crossing any cell barrier, the fats must be broken down. But, when fats are being transported in the lymph or blood, it is better to have a few, large fat molecules than many smaller fatty acids, because the larger fats do not "attract" as many excess water molecules by osmosis as many smaller molecules would.
How Fat is Stored in Your Body
Chylomicrons do not last long in the bloodstream -- only about eight minutes -- because enzymes called lipoprotein lipases break the fats into fatty acids. Lipoprotein lipases are found in the walls of blood vessels in fat tissue, muscle tissue and heart muscle. The activity of lipoprotein lipases depends upon the levels of insulin in the body. If insulin is high, then the lipases are highly active; if insulin is low, the lipases are inactive.
Insulin
When you eat a candy bar or a meal, the presence of glucose, amino acids or fatty acids in the intestine stimulates the pancreas to secrete a hormone called insulin. Insulin acts on many cells in your body, especially those in the liver, muscle and fat tissue. Insulin tells the cells to do the following:
Absorb glucose, fatty acids and amino acids
Stop breaking down:
glucose, fatty acids and amino acids
glycogen into glucose
fats into fatty acids and glycerol
proteins into amino acids
Start building:
glycogen from glucose
fats (triglycerides) from glycerol and fatty acids
proteins from amino acids
The fatty acids are then absorbed from the blood into fat cells, muscle cells and liver cells. In these cells, under stimulation by insulin, fatty acids are made into fat molecules and stored as fat droplets.
It is also possible for fat cells to take up glucose and amino acids, which have been absorbed into the bloodstream after a meal, and convert those into fat molecules. The conversion of carbohydrates or protein into fat is 10 times less efficient than simply storing fat in a fat cell, but the body can do it. If you have 100 extra calories in fat (about 11 grams) floating in your bloodstream, fat cells can store it using only 2.5 calories of energy. On the other hand, if you have 100 extra calories in glucose (about 25 grams) floating in your bloodstream, it takes 23 calories of energy to convert the glucose into fat and then store it. Given a choice, a fat cell will grab the fat and store it rather than the carbohydrates because fat is so much easier to store.
It is important to note that as your body stores more fat, the number of fat cells remains the same; each fat cell simply gets bigger.
Hormones That Act Opposite to Insulin
When you are not eating, your body is not absorbing food. If your body is not absorbing food, there is little insulin in the blood. However, your body is always using energy; and if you're not absorbing food, this energy must come from internal stores of complex carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Under these conditions, various organs in your body secrete hormones:
pancreas - glucagon
pituitary gland - growth hormone
pituitary gland - ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone)
adrenal gland - epinephrine (adrenaline)
thyroid gland - thyroid hormone
These hormones act on cells of the liver, muscle and fat tissue, and have the opposite effects of insulin.
How Your Body Breaks Down Fat
When you are not eating, or you are exercising, your body must draw on its internal energy stores of complex carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Your body's prime source of energy is glucose. In fact, some cells in your body, such as brain cells, can get energy only from glucose.
The first line of defense in maintaining energy is to break down carbohydrates, or glycogen, into simple glucose molecules -- this process is called glycogenolysis. Next, your body breaks down fats into glycerol and fatty acids in the process of lipolysis. The fatty acids can then be broken down directly to get energy, or can be used to make glucose through a multi-step process called gluconeogenesis. In gluconeogenesis, amino acids can also be used to make glucose.
In the fat cell, other types of lipases work to break down fats into fatty acids and glycerol. These lipases are activated by various hormones, such as glucagon, epinephrine and growth hormone. The resulting glycerol and fatty acids are released into the blood, and travel to the liver through the bloodstream. Once in the liver, the glycerol and fatty acids can be either further broken down or used to make glucose.
Brown Fat: Making Heat
When you are first born, your body does not have much white fat to help insulate and retain body heat; although there are white fat cells, there is not much fat stored in them. A newborn baby produces heat (thermogenesis) primarily by breaking down fat molecules into fatty acids in brown fat cells. Instead of those fatty acids leaving the brown fat cell, as happens in white fat cells, they get further broken down in the mitochondria and their energy is released directly as heat. This same process occurs in hibernating animals, which have more brown fat than humans. Once the newborn baby starts eating more, developing layers of white fat, the brown fat goes away. Adult humans have little or no brown fat.
Losing Weight and Losing Fat
Your weight is determined by the rate at which you store energy from the food that you eat, and the rate at which you use that energy. Most experts agree that the way to maintain a healthy weight is:
Eat a balanced diet - appropriate amounts glucose, fat and protein
Do not eat excessively - for most people, a diet of 1,500 to 2,000 calories a day is sufficient to maintain a healthy weight
Exercise regularly
Debelli
10-22-2002, 09:51 AM
ARE YOU A SEROTONIN JUNKIE? CRAVING CARBS?
Do you crave more sugars, starches or alcohol these days?
I was watching, "The View" on television, when I heard Joy (the Comedian) raving about the intensity of her carbohydrate cravings, since the attack on America on September 11, 2001. An hour earlier, I had heard the identical complaint on another talk show.
What about you? Have you been feeling a l i t t l e desperate ...anxious ...nervous ???
Perhaps, a bit m o o d y ?
Do you reach for sugars, starches, sweetened drinks or alcohol when feeling on edge? Craving carbohydrates is a symptom you need more serotonin, the "feel-good" brain hormone. Once serotonin levels rise, cravings for carbohydrates vanish.
So, now that you know feeling anxious, nervous, depressed or even angry is an indication to raise brain serotonin concentration, stay aware of your body's instincts. Notice your emotional state. When you feel anxious or sad, depressed or emotional, you may begin to notice a craving stirring within...a yen for something sweet...salty 'n crunchy...alcoholic... This is your body's instinct to raise serotonin.
You may find yourself in the grips of an old habit; Overdosing on refined carbohydrates when your body truly needs nutrient-dense carbohydrates. Perhaps your old habit is to turn to sugars, starches, alcohol, or even a drug called "ecstasy", which floods the brain with serotonin for a deeply relaxing, euphoric feeling. The question is: how much serotonin do you really need? The brain only requires a slow drip, not a tidal wave! Too much serotonin floating in your brain makes you sleepy. You feel drugged and "out of it"...can't get anything done...too fuzzy-headed.
Here's a few strategies to manage serotonin...and carbohydrate cravings:
Select low-glycemic foods like apples, pears, organic red meat, fish, barley, soy foods, beans, lentils...
Select any carbohydrate-containing food or beverage, but be sure to limit the total grams of carbohydrates [per meal or snack] to under 100 grams. Overdosing on sugars, starches and alcohol in the afternoon will overproduce serotonin and zap your energy. Between the hours of noon to five -- or when you need to boost mental concentration, be sure to cut back on carbohydrates. Eating more protein produces "dopamine" -- a hormone which will help you stay mentally alert and focus on your work.
Balance glycemic (carbohydrate-rich) foods with protein-rich foods... to manage blood sugars for 4-5 hours.
Select tryptophan/B6-rich foods to raise serotonin.
Go for a brisk walk for a nice dose of dopamine [to think clearly about your daily challenges]. Serotonin is also released when moving your body in a rhythmic fashion, to help you relax you. If you work out long enough you can even release some endorphins for a euphoric feeling!
Sunshine stimulates serotonin production, so sit next to a window -- but don't overdo it! If serotonin rises too much, you may just fall asleep!
Start by selecting low-glycemic foods as often as you can.
Let's talk about "The Glycemic Index" and "Glycemic Load"
The Glycemic Index classifies hundreds of carbohydrate-containing foods with number values: 100 is considered high glycemic, which indicates the food will raise blood sugars rapidly. 10 is considered extremely low-glycemic, which indicates the food will raise blood sugars slowly. The Glycemic Index is listed on pages 41-46 of my book: Be Lean, Healthy, Energetic! Medical Health Planner for a Metabolic Makeover [ISBN: 0-9663748-6-X]
The Glycemic Index compares the relative speed at which various carbohydrate-containing foods raise blood sugars or "glucose". Low glycemic foods help manage blood sugars because they raise blood sugars slowly. Apples, pears, grapefruits, greens and organic red meat are examples of foods which raise blood sugars gradually. On the other hand, carrots, beets and potatoes have an index in the '90's.
"Glycemic Load" refers to the total grams of carbohydrate consumed, which increases the concentration of sugars in the bloodstream. Let's look at a couple examples.
Raw carrots are considered glycemic: they raise blood sugars rapidly, but have a low glycemic load because fiber-rich, water-dense carrots only provide 5 grams of carbohydrate per 7-inch carrot (1 1/4 " thick). I mean, seriously: how many raw carrots can you eat?
...as opposed to 15 grams of carbohydrate for only 1/3 cup of rice!!! I mean, really: who can eat just 1/3 cup of rice? Rice creates a huge glycemic load in the bloodstream because it truly is difficult to only eat 1/3 cup of rice at a time! Most folks will end up eating a few more servings than that! So the glycemic load will be much greater. Check out the grams of carbohydrates on the NUTRITION FACTS food label. Look at the grams of carbohydrate "per serving" to know the effect it will have on your bloodstream.
Debelli
10-23-2002, 09:58 AM
This article is posted on the 3FC'S website in the library. LINDAT posted it and I hope she doesn't mind if I repost it for all of you to read...
Got this article in an email from my medical group. I thought it had some good info.
by Sinatra, Stephen
Total Health
Jul/Aug 2002
Whether you want to shed 15 pounds or 215 pounds, if you want to be successful at long-term weight loss, you must examine your attitudes, beliefs and behaviors around food. Otherwise it is almost guaranteed that you will backslide into old eating patterns at the first sign of emotional stress.
Theoretically, losing weight is one of the easiest things to do -- you simply expend more energy (measured in calories) than you take in. But as you probably know from experience, the process is not that straightforward in practice. This was evident when I directed the Optifast program, an intensive, hospital-based regimen where patients dieted for 16 weeks on shakes prepared under strict medical supervision. What other medical personnel and I observed was that the leading root causes of weight gain are a lack of discipline and a lack of support.
No Support System
The combination of poor discipline and inadequate support is a disastrous one for weight loss. By support I mean that coworkers, friends and family help reinforce you in the process of weight loss or whatever personal goal you are trying to reach. Sadly, many overweight individuals lack support, often from the time they were children. They usually come from families where achieving was more important than being and where there was little acceptance of the children as they were. Their parents let them know in one way or another that they didn't measure up.
But the truth is that too much pressure, for adults or children, only tempts people to rebel or to loathe their shortcomings, and consequently themselves. What they need more than anything is acceptance and encouragement. The supportive atmosphere among the participants of the Optifast program, for example, was a big factor in their individual successes. The group met once a week but members would also call one another when in danger of "slipping" and get encouragement to make healthier choices. By contrast, if a woman cooks for a family and family members put their desires for unhealthy foods over her needs, then it is almost impossible for her to lose weight.
Of course we all need to support ourselves from within, too, and have the courage of our convictions in interactions with others. But some people back away from such confrontations, externally acquiescing to everyone else's wants and needs while padding themselves with fat rather than dealing with their anger at their own self-betrayal.
Stuffing Emotions
For people who are chronically overweight, food becomes a vehicle with which to block uncomfortable emotions -- usually anger, fear, shame, frustration, guilt, loneliness and sadness. In their book Overcoming Overeating (Random House, 1998), Jane Hirschmann and Carol Munter distinguish between "stomach hunger" (when you eat to fill your body because your stomach is empty) and "mouth hunger" (when you are reaching for something to put in your mouth because you are experiencing a difficult emotion).
People who eat from stomach hunger have a healthy relationship with food, whereas those eating from mouth hunger do not. Some of you may find yourself doing both at different times but it is an important detail to acknowledge. For many of us it is hard to take in love but easy to take in food. So in a cruel irony, we can be physically full, yet emotionally starved. The fact that obesity is rising in the United States means that we all must have something in common when it comes to abusing food . . . and yes, that is a strong statement but I believe many of us do abuse food.
Get a Handle on What's Eating You
To help understand what role emotions play in my patients eating patterns, I have them ask themselves some tough questions. Try it yourself. Any "yes" response indicates a situation where you are eating out of month hunger.
* Have I ever found myself looking for something to eat within an hour or two of eating?
* Do I sometimes overeat?
* Do I feel guilty or have thoughts of self recrimination after eating?
* Do I overeat to "treat" myself after a long, hard day?
* Do I feel less anxious after eating?
* Do I rush through meals, not even tasting the food?
* Do I need to have large helpings of food to feel full?
* When I done with loves ones, am I more concerned about the food than the company and surroundings?
* Is food replacing something that is missing in my life?
* Do I make excuses for being overweight?
* Do I think I will feel better (calmer, more relaxed, lathargic) after I eat?
If so, then you need to take an honest look at your relationship with food. To help uncover your own unconscious drives I suggest writing out answers to the following questions:
* Am I able to take in love from my partner? My children? Family? Friends? Or do I keep certain thoughts and feelings to myself to avoid possible rejection?
* When in pain, do I turn toward loved ones for support or do I push them away and isolate myself? Why do I react this way?
* Am I getting something out of being overweight? Does it get me off the hook for sexual intimacy? Is it an excuse not to be more active? Does it get me help and sympathy from others?
If you have identified that emotions are ruling your eating, then you can start to change the way you think. For example, are you a card-carrying member of the "Clean Plate Club"? Many of us are. It may have started in childhood, when you were pushed to clean your plate out of guilt for the "starving children." If you still feel that it is somehow wrong to leave food, even if your body signals that it is full, then this unconscious belief is probably part of what is driving you. Bring it to consciousness and you are then free to choose whether to clean your plate.
This is what needs to be done at every turn. Especially when you get the urge to dig into your favorite comfort food. Stop and ask yourself what is really going on. Writing about it for a minute or two is even better. If you keep a journal like this for a few weeks, patterns will start to emerge and I think you will be happily surprised at the insights you gain.
Nuts and Bolts of Losing Weight
Today we have more fad diets, diet pills and low-fat foods on the market than ever before and yet we also have more obesity and obesity related illnesses than in decades past.
The only way you can lose weight is to combine increased physical activity with healthy eating. The goal is to gradually and consistently lose because if you lose any more than one to two pounds a week, your body will be shedding lean muscle mass rather than fat and that is not good at all.
In fact, the more lean muscle mass you lose, the more your basal metabolic rate (BMR) drops, which means your body becomes better and better at existing on very little food. (BMR is a measure of the body's ability to burn calories at rest -- sleeping, reading a book, watching television, etc.) This is what happens to most dieters who achieve their goal weight very rapidly and it is why so many are unsuccessful at maintaining their weight loss.
Haul Your BMR Out of the Basement
Those of us over age 40 are also familiar with steep declines in BMR. Part of it is just the aging process but the vast majority of people in this culture also tend to be more sedentary as they age and all that uninterrupted sitting around really sends BMR into the basement. Hormonal imbalances can also play a role and they result from a variety of factors, from thyroid dysfunction to drug side effects to excess carbohydrate intake.
Therefore, if you are serious about weight loss, you need to look for every opportunity to increase BMR. Exercise is going to give you the biggest most noticeable payoff. There is just no getting around it, so you might as well find activities you like to do. As you probably know, I am a big advocate of walking, combined with a little weight lifting and regular stress-reducing activities such as yoga, t'ai chi or qigong. But that may not fit with your lifestyle. Maybe you would rather work out to an exercise tape and then garden when the weather permits. Or perhaps you like to take classes at a gym.
Whatever you prefer, schedule at least some of your sessions for the morning because research shows that individuals who exercise early in the day are much more apt to stick with it. That is not surprising. The later in the day your workout is, the greater the possibility that life's events will intervene.
Mountain Climbing as an analogy for weight loss
Which is more difficult -- ascending a mountain or descending it? If you have climbed mountains or read stories about people who have, you know that more climbers die on the descent than the climb. So often, in both mountaineering and life, we view reaching the summit as the victory but it really is not. It is only half the story. Experienced mountaineers know this and that is why they do not celebrate until they return to base camp.
Losing weight is similar in that attaining your goal weight is the mid-point. Maintaining this ideal weight is the part of the story we often do not hear about, partly because so few are successful at it. What I would like you to consider as you embark on your weight loss journey is the second half of the story.
Keeping your sights set on maintaining a certain weight and level of fitness, rather than on simply reaching a target weight, will change your perspective. So instead of focusing on how to get down to a certain clothing size as fast as possible, you will be more concerned with what enduring lifestyle changes you can make. It is the difference, for example, between telling yourself you will give up white bread with every meal just until you reach your goal and finally deciding to make more nutritious carbohydrate choices from here on out.
Debelli
10-29-2002, 09:19 AM
NUTRITION CORNER:
Reduce Starchy Carbs at Night
For most, starchy carbs make up a substantial portion of their evening meals. Pasta, rice, potatoes… these are nightly staples in the standard American diet. Steak and fries, spaghetti and meatballs- what would dinner be without them?
The trouble with starchy carbs is that they are readily transformed to fat when eaten before bedtime. The reason for this is simple: The primary function of carbohydrates is to supply short-term energy for your daily activities. If carbs are not used immediately for fuel, they have two possible fates; they either are stored as glycogen in your liver and muscles or are converted into fatty acids and stored in adipose tissue as bodyfat. Since activity levels usually are lowest during the evening hours, there is a diminished use of carbs for fuel and therefore an increased potential for bodyfat storage.
In general, the best time to consume carbs is early in the day, when your activity levels are at their peak. This will allow your body to utilize a maximal amount of carbs for energy and minimize the potential for fat deposition. Breakfast, in particular, is an excellent time to load up on complex carbs. A large bowl of rolled oats or bran cereal will set the stage for fueling your daily activities and keep you physically and mentally fit throughout the day.
On the other hand, it is best to limit your dinner fare to fibrous, vegetable-based food sources. Fibrous vegetables tend to be extremely low in total calories and, because of their bulk, are very filling. For supper, consider eating a meal consisting of lean poultry or fish combined with a large bowl of salad greens. Other vegetables (i.e. broccoli, string beans, cauliflower, zucchini, etc) also make fine nighttime carbohydrate choices, and will reduce the potential for unwanted bodyfat storage.
Debelli
12-03-2002, 09:29 AM
I wanted to post this little information that I read in the book I mentioned yesterday by Dr. Ian K. Smith, THE TAKE CONTROL DIET which really, so far in my reading, isn't really a so-called diet, but how to take control of your diet. I do recommend reading it, has lots of good info in it, including stuff about the GI, though I have to say, once again, the info he talks about having to do with SB has some stuff that's incorrect information.
One of the major disappointment that people encounter when losing weight is that what they expected to gain from the weight loss doesn't happen to the degree they had hoped. Some people who have been heavy all of their lives and have been chronically ostracized through social exclusion hope that losing weight will bring them social inclusion. It might be true that people will make less fun of a more normal-size person and behave in a more socially gracious manner, but better that a life of exclusion and embarrassment will be reversed by weight loss is a gamble not worth taking.
People who are mean and small-minded enough to exclude someone for his or her physical appearance are unlikely to change their petty and immature behavior because of that person's alteration in weight and appearance. In fact, when dieters reach that target weight yet don't collect the rewards they hoped it would bring, the spiritual and psychological disappointment only serves as a trigger to undo all that has been done. The disappointed no longer find value in their long sacrifice and hard work and thus return to the bad habits of overeating, consuming unhealthy foods, and finding themselves engaged in more sedentary behaviors.
Your first commitment must be to losing weight for you and only you. This sounds selfish, and it should be, because you're the one who must cuts back on those favorite between-meal snacks. You'll be the one taking more flights of steps and turning down car rides so that you can walk and kick-start your metabolism. The work will fall squarely on our shoulders, as should the satisfaction. Dieters who tie their own satisfaction to external approval often find themselves in a cycle of hope and disappointment.
Boy, did the above have my name written all over it!!!!!!!
Also, another interesting tidbit in the book was about yo-yo dieting:
The consequences of yo-yo dieting were first observed by a researcher at Yale. Using rats, he examined the effects of repeated cycles of weight loss and regain. He found that not only did it take the rats longer to lose the weight on subsequent cycles, but they also gained it back faster the more they cycled. First, the rats were put on a calorie-restricted diet. After a certain period of time, they were refed. During the second cycle of restriction, the rats needed a total of forty-six days to lose the weight that had taken them only twenty-one days previously. It was also easier for future weight gain. It took the rats only fourteen days on the second off-cycle to regain the same amount of weight that had taken them forty-six days to gain previously.
There are no completed studies yet in humans to confirm this yo-yo diet effect, but athletes will paint a similar picture if you ask them about their course of weight loss and weight gain between seasons.
Debelli
12-10-2002, 10:34 AM
Magnesium
Magnesium is a mineral that is required for the proper growth and formation of human bones, muscle tissues, and enzymes. It is used to convert carbohydrates, fats, and proteins into energy. It is involved in the transmission of nervous system impulses, assist in the uptake of calcium and potassium. Higher intake of magnesium has also been linked to lung function, according to a study published recently in England. Researchers found that adults consuming an average of 380 milligrams of magnesium per day exhibited increased lung function, and benefits were consistent regardless of whether or not the subjects smoked.
The body's relative balance of magnesium and calcium has a profound impact on health as these two minerals must work smoothly together to insure proper muscle control. Calcium is involved in stimulating muscle contraction, and magnesium is required to allow the muscles to relax. Both an excess intake of calcium or a magnesium deficiency can result in poor muscle coordination, irritability and nervousness. Magnesium also helps to prevent depression, muscle weakness and twitching, heart disorders, and high blood pressure.
In the U.S. the Recommended Daily Allowance for magnesium is 400 mg. per day. Foods high in magnesium include fish, dairy products, lean meat, whole grains, seeds, and vegetables. Consumption of large amounts of zinc and vitamin D increase the body's requirement for magnesium as does alcohol, fats, proteins, and diuretics. The body's uptake of magnesium can also be inhibited by consuming foods high in oxalic acid, such as spinach, cocoa and tea.
Debelli
12-10-2002, 10:41 AM
How does high fibre food assist in digestion and what are the benefits of a high fibre diet?
Dietary fibre is only found in plant foods. Fibre has several effects on digestion, some beneficial, and some detrimental. One beneficial effect is that fibre tends to slow down the rate of digestion of food, leading to a more gradual emptying of the food from the stomach into the small intestine. This means that there is less likelihood of large quantities of glucose (the major breakdown product of carbohydrate) being absorbed rapidly from the small intestine into the blood and therefore a lower chance of an 'insulin surge'. Insulin is the hormone that is released when glucose is absorbed from the small intestine. It is possible that by slowing stomach emptying, fibre helps avoid the situation where the body has to produce large quantities of insulin (as a result of repeated rapid release of glucose into the intestine). In turn this may help protect against diabetes in susceptible people.
However, fibre does interfere with the absorption of some nutrients. For example, up to 5% of the fat in a moderately high fibre diet is not absorbed because of this interference. This may even be a good thing in Australia, given that 63% of men and 47% of women were overweight in 1995 (with no sign that these levels of overweight and obesity will decrease in Australia). High fibre foods also interfere to some extent with the absorption of some essential minerals and trace elements, but a high fibre diet is also likely to provide you with extra minerals and trace elements, so the effect is not believed to be very significant for normal Western diets.
Despite these minor detrimental effects, a high fibre intake is believed to be significantly beneficial overall. Low intake of fibre (particularly of the insoluble forms of fibre such as those in bread and other wheat products) is one of the major causes of constipation. Low fibre intakes are also strongly associated with an increased risk of diverticulitis. Although the evidence is less compelling, lack of fibre in the diet may also contribute to the incidence of rectal cancer, haemorrhoids, obesity, appendicitis and ulcerative colitis. High intake of soluble fibres such as the pectins and gums (found in fruits, vegetables, rolled oats) and saponins (found in legumes) is associated with reduced blood cholesterol. High intake of foods of plant origin (all of which contain some fibre) is associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, cancer, and an increased life expectancy.
Another benefit, and one that may assist with weight control, is the feeling of satiety (that is, a feeling of fullness) that follows a meal rich in fibre. It is also true that high fibre foods are almost invariably low in fat, so a high-fibre diet will usually be a low-fat diet.
Of course, it may not always be the fibre as such that is helpful. Plant foods contain many vitamins, phytochemicals, trace elements, non-nutritional antioxidants and other substances that may be just as valuable as fibre, or even more valuable. But the fact remains - to get all these other potentially beneficial chemicals you have to eat plant foods.
The current daily intake of fibre is probably 20-25g on average for Australian adults. Increasing this average intake to 30-35 g would very likely lead to improved health outcome. This is achievable by simply eating more fruits, vegetables and cereal foods (preferably whole grain).
Debelli
01-02-2003, 09:04 AM
Are You Drinking Enough Water?
Most people have no idea how much water they should be drinking, and most Americans live from day to day in a dehydrated state. They don't drink enough water. Without water, we would be poisoned to death by our own waste products and toxins resulting from metabolism.
Water is vital to digestion and metabolism, acting as a medium for various enzymatic and chemical reactions in the body. It carries nutrients and oxygen to the cells through the blood, regulates body temperature and lubricates our joints (which is particularly important if you're arthritic, have chronic muscular-skeletal problems or are athletically active).
We need water to breathe; we lose approximately one pint of liquid every day just by exhaling.
If you are not in "fluid balance" you can impair every aspect of your body's physiological functioning.
Dr. Howard Flaks, Beverly Hills:
"As a result of not drinking enough water, many people encounter such problems as excess body fat, poor muscle tone and size, decreased digestive efficiency and organ function, increased toxicity in the body, joint and muscle soreness (particularly after exercise) and water retention."
Proper water intake is the key to weight loss," says Dr. Donald Robertson, Scottsdale, Arizona. "If people who are trying to lose weight don't drink enough water, the body can't metabolize the fat, they retain fluid, which keeps their weight up, and the whole procedure we're trying to set up falls apart."
"I'd say the minimum amount of water a healthy person should drink is 10 eight-ounce glasses a day," he continues, "and you need to drink more if you are overweight, exercise a lot, or live in a hot climate. Overweight people should drink an extra eight ounces of water for each 25 pounds that exceeds their ideal weight."
Your water intake should be spread judiciously throughout the day, including the evening. Dr. Flaks cautions against drinking more than four glasses in any given hour. Always check with your physician before embarking on a water intake increase program.
You may ask, "If I drink this much water, won't I constantly be running to the bathroom?" Initially, yes, because of the hypersensitivity of the bladder to increased fluids. But after a few weeks, your bladder calms down, and you urinate less frequently, but in larger amounts.
There is a difference between pure water and other beverages that contain water.
Water is water. Obviously you can get it by consuming fruit juice, soft drinks, beer, coffee or tea. Unfortunately, while such drinks contain water, they also may contain substances that are not healthy and actually contradict some of the positive effects of the added water.
Dr. Jerzy Meduski, Los Angeles, California: "Beer contains water, but it also contains alcohol, which is a toxic substance. Beverages that contain caffeine, such as coffee, stimulate the adrenal glands; fruit juices contain a lot of sugar and stimulate the pancreas. Such drinks may tax the body more than cleanse it."
Another problem with these beverages is that you lose your taste for water.
The way to interpret all of this, therefore, is that the recommended daily water intake means just that--WATER!
agape3737
02-09-2003, 02:39 PM
Debbie,
I just can't get enough. so , so, so much to read and study and loving it.
LJunel:dizzy:
Debelli
03-25-2003, 04:03 PM
From the MOTIVATION STATION WEBSITE:
The Cold Hard Facts about Weight Loss
by Joanne Bednar
I wish there were a pill you could take. I wish there were a machine that would just rub it all away. But if there were, I’d be out of a job because there would be no personal trainers. Still, I wish there were a miracle answer to losing weight the easy way. So many people would be so happy if they could just drop pounds with just the snap of their fingers. But unfortunately there is no easy way to shed pounds. In fact, it is very hard to lose weight and keep it off permanently.
The odds are against you from the start: 95% of all people who lose weight gain it back. Looking in the face of that mountain can be pretty intimidating! So maybe it’s just easier to stay overweight? That is up to you to decide. However, if you can know up front what losing weight is really like, you can better arm yourself for the roller coaster ride that is ahead.
Anything over a 2-pound weight loss per week (after the first week) is not fat loss. It is water, lean muscle, or both. If that disappoints you, then you will really be disappointed to find out that a 2-pound weight loss on any particular week is excellent! Throughout the journey you will find that there are some weeks you will beg for a half-pound loss, because if you are losing the healthy way it is a long slow process. If you can manage to lose 1-2 pounds per week you are on the right track!
You have to exercise. There is no way around it. You must make exercise a part of your life if you expect to lose weight and keep it off forever. Don’t think for one moment that you can exercise to lose weight and then stop. Get used to the idea now of incorporating exercise into your way of life forever. Not only will you lose weight and keep it off, but you will also live longer and fight off many life-threatening diseases!
You have to exercise a lot. Most people who successfully lose weight and keep it off exercise almost every single day. They make it a part of their daily routine just like brushing their teeth. I’m sure you know of skinny people who never exercise, and you don’t think it’s fair. Well, it’s not fair. But those people have a high metabolism, and they are not as healthy as those who do exercise on a regular basis are.
Take the amount of weight you want to lose, and divide it by 2. That is how many weeks it would take you to lose it, if you were lucky enough to lose 2 pounds per week EVERY week. Now take that number of weeks and triple it. It will take you about one and a half times the number of weeks that you think it will to reach your goal weight. Plateaus are inevitable, and you need to prepare for them. Weight loss plateaus can last anywhere from 2 weeks to several months. It takes every bit of patience you can muster up to stick with your way of life during a plateau. To break a plateau you will need to change things around in your fitness regimen and in your daily diet as well. This is when a certified personal trainer is handy!
These cold hard facts may sound harsh, but they are the truth. There is no easy way around it, even though I really wish there was! It is very possible to lose weight the healthy and permanent way. You have to be patient and diligent in your efforts, but you can shed those unwanted pounds and keep them off. The process is long, slow and daunting, but remember that when it comes to weight loss, slow and steady wins the race!
Debelli
03-25-2003, 04:04 PM
This comes from the following site: http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/texts/guide/hmg05_0002.html
FIBER: A SPECIAL CARBOHYDRATE
Unlike other carbohydrates, dietary fiber is unavailable as an energy source. This nutrient cannot be broken down by digestive enzymes and consequently passes through the intestine without being absorbed. Although fiber provides no caloric contribution to the diet, it affects digestion and health in important ways: Some types of fiber bind water, creating a softer stool that passes more rapidly through the colon, reducing the risk of a number of diseases affecting the digestive tract. Certain types of fib er may also lower serum cholesterol, although the mechanism for this function is not well understood. (See the section in this chapter on cholesterol lowering.)
Fiber can be found in abundance in a variety of foods. Unprocessed breads and cereals, fruits and vegetables, and legumes are some of the best sources. Some types of fiber, such as cellulose and hemicellulose, are made up of simple sugars and considere d carbohydrates. Others, such as lignin (a component of the woody parts of plants), cannot technically be considered carbohydrates but, because they are indigestible, are still classified as fiber.
Despite the image you may have of fiber, not all fiber is coarse and rough; fibers vary dramatically in their consistency. While cellulose is generally tough and fibrous, other forms like pectin (a form of hemicellulose) and agar are sticky or gummy.
Scientists divide dietary fiber into two general categories: soluble and insoluble. Soluble fibers dissolve in water and include pectin, guar, carrageenan, gums, mucilage, and oat bran. Soluble fibers are of considerable current interest to researchers because of their apparent role in helping to lower blood cholesterol. Insoluble fibers do not seem to affect serum cholesterol levels, but they do help prevent constipation. Insoluble fibers include cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.
GASTROINTESTINAL EFFECTS OF FIBER
High fiber diets have been advocated to prevent or relieve a wide variety of gastrointestinal problems, from constipation to colon cancer. Apparently, many of these disorders benefit from a softer, bulkier stool that passes more easily and more rapidly th rough the colon. Insoluble fibers such as hemicellulose absorb large amounts of water as they pass through the intestinal tract and thereby facilitate the stool's passage through the colon. That is why a number of laxatives used to treat constipation are little more than concentrated sources of fiber.
Other common gastrointestinal diseases alleviated with fiber rich diets include hemorrhoids, diverticulosis, and spastic colon.
COLON CANCER AND FIBER
There has been considerable speculation that a highfiber diet can help reduce the risk of colon cancer by cutting down the amount of time it takes for the stool to pass through the colon and thereby limiting colon exposure to potential carcinogens harbore d in the stool. Unfortunately, scientific studies have not provided conclusive proof that dietary fiber reduces the risk of colon cancer.
WEIGHT CONTROL
Fiber would appear to be a dieter's best friend: Not only is fiber noncaloric (since it is not digested or absorbed by the body) but some forms of fiber can actually cause you to eat less by promoting a feeling of fullness. From a nutritional perspective, however, fiber is relatively lacking since it contains no vitamins or minerals, and substituting fiber for other foods can reduce the nutritional quality of the diet. In addition, fiber may slightly hinder the absorption of essential nutrients such as ir on and zinc.
FIBER AND DISEASE PREVENTION
Fiber's beneficial effect on heart disease is mediated by the cholesterol lowering effect of some types of fiber. Soluble forms of fibers such as oat bran and the fiber in dried beans and other legumes are capable of reducing cholesterol, although the ins oluble fibers apparently have no effect whatsoever.
The mechanism by which fiber lowers cholesterol is still not completely understood. It has been proposed that soluble fiber may reduce the amount of cholesterol produced by the liver. Another theory suggests that fiber binds to bile acids, removing the m from the body and accelerating the clearance of LDL cholesterol from the body. Research is under way to understand its effects.
Fiber also benefits people with diabetes. Several studies have found that a diet rich in soluble fiber can improve blood sugar control in diabetics and sometimes even help lower insulin requirements.
ADDING FIBER TO YOUR DIET
Abruptly adding large amounts of fiber to your diet can instigate digestive problems, causing bloating and gastrointestinal discomfort with diarrhea and severe cramping. Consequently, you should add fiber to your diet gradually, eating small amounts of fi ber rich foods, or taking small amounts of fiber supplements until your body grows accustomed to its new diet. Additional fiber can then be added slowly until you are consuming a healthy amount.
For most people, fiber supplements may be unnecessary. It is healthier to try first to get fiber from natural food sources by including ample amounts of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in your diet.
EATING SUFFICIENT FIBER
How much fiber is enough? The question is a difficult one since no RDA exists for fiber and there is disagreement among the experts about how much fiber is adequate for optimal health. But despite the lack of a clear consensus, it is generally agreed that U. S. citizens eat too little: A national diet survey reported that the intake of fiber is quite low, averaging only about 7 grams of fiber per 1,000 calories of food eaten (about 14 grams per day for a typical 2,000 calorie diet).
Calculating the amount of fiber in your diet can be difficult. Food labels can often be helpful, but sometimes they report only the "crude" fiber content of foods rather than total "dietary" fiber. (Dietary fiber is a more accurate measure, showing the fiber that actually passes undigested through the intestine. Crude fiber is an oldfashioned, inaccurate measurement that measures the fiber that withstands chemical dissolution in laboratory tests.) (Table 5.1 lists total dietary fiber and soluble and in soluble components of common foods.)
For most individuals, a diet including a variety of fiberrich foods, such as whole grain breads and cereals, fresh fruits and vegetables, and legumes should provide ample amounts of soluble and insoluble fiber.
Debelli
03-25-2003, 04:07 PM
Give Me a Break!! (A Guide to Breaking the Weight Loss Plateau)
by Joanne Bednar
It’s inevitable. Anyone who has lost a large amount of weight (more than 10-15 pounds) has hit one or more weight loss plateaus. The weight loss plateau is a very annoying period of body adjustment, where your body "catches up with itself" so to speak. I hit 2 or 3 of them when I lost my 38 pounds, and I learned a lot from each one of them. I mostly learned patience!
There are two types of plateaus that occur. The first plateau is the short plateau, lasting 2 weeks to 4 weeks. The short plateau is the kind that all active "dieters" run into throughout their weight loss efforts. It is not necessary to make adjustments for this type of plateau, because your body is simply re-adjusting to your new weight. Over time (2-4 weeks) you will naturally start losing weight again, as long as you continue your healthy diet and exercise program. Patience is all you need to get past a short plateau.
The second type is the long-term plateau, which lasts for longer than 4 weeks. If you go for more than 4 weeks without losing weight, AND you are continually following a nutritious diet and exercise program (in short, you are doing everything perfectly), then you need to make some changes. A plateau lasting for longer than 4 weeks is because you are no longer asking your body to go beyond it’s point of comfort.
Let me explain this further: When you first start a new way of eating and a new exercise program, everything is a total shock to your body. All of a sudden you are filling the body with good healthy food full of nutrients, and you are pushing your body so that it responds to physical activity. You burn a high number of calories because it requires a ton of effort just to do simple exercise. Over time, you adjust and become more efficient at exercise, and it no longer requires the same amount of calories that it once did. If you do not change your activity, and continue to eat the same amount of food, you will eventually stop losing weight. The same principle applies to food. If you cut your calories down to 1500 per day, and lost 15 pounds that way, your new weight may use that 1500 calories for maintenance now, rather than weight loss. It’s as simple as calories in = calories out.
So how do you break out of this long-term plateau? There are several things you can try, but the most important thing to remember is CHANGE. Any change is worth a try to shake things up a bit.
Let’s start with food intake: have you been taking in the same number of calories or fat grams since the beginning of your lifestyle change? If so, then you need to throw your body off, and there are a couple of ways to do this.
You can cut your calories or fat grams by a bit more (not a lot) to adjust for your new weight.
You can try going off your healthy eating plan completely for 3-4 days.
You can actually try increasing your calories or fat grams a bit per day.
You can switch from eating 3 square meals per day to 6 smaller meals throughout the day.
You can eat your largest meal in the morning and smaller meals at lunch and dinner.
You can increase your water intake.
In the exercise department, you need to find ways to further challenge your body. You can try many different strategies:
You can completely switch your exercise method. If you only walked before, you can switch to cycling.
You can introduce cross-training into your program. If you only walked before, alternate it with cycling or aerobics
You can exercise for 5-10 minutes longer each day.
You can exercise harder during your normal session time.
You can introduce interval training, where you alternate intensity levels throughout your workout.
You can add another day of exercise to your week.
You can switch the time of day you exercise.
You can start lifting weights.
You can vary which activity you do first: lifting weights or cardiovascular activity
You can change the time of day that you exercise.
As you can see, there are many different ways to TRY and break a plateau. I recommend that you start by trying 2 or 3 all at the same time. If they don’t work, then next week try some others. It takes some experimenting to find out what will work for you, at this particular time in your weight loss journey. The steps I took to break my first plateau didn’t work to break my second, so be prepared to pull out something else from your arsenal.
You can expect that your new method will become effective within 2 weeks. If you are not seeing any other results, then you need to change your method again. If you are close to your goal weight (or ideal weight within reason) and none of these methods work, then you need to look at 2 factors:
Have your body fat tested. It is very possible that you are already at your ideal body fat level, and your body is not going to allow any further losses.
Accept your new weight, and congratulate yourself for the long, hard road you just traveled!
Debelli
03-25-2003, 04:31 PM
From the MOTIVATION STATION:
The Struggles of Weight Maintenance
by Joanne Bednar
It’s not all a bed of roses. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to hit your goal weight and celebrate, but just because you can finally fit into your dream size doesn’t mean that it’s smooth sailing from now on. I certainly don’t want to discourage anyone from taking the journey to your goal weight, but I do want to let you know before you get there what it is like, at least what it has been like for myself.
During your weight loss journey you will encounter many emotional ups and downs as you glow with pride that you are accomplishing something, or as you continue to endlessly compare yourself those who still have better bodies than you. It’s a long road, and one that comes with many celebrations. Those around you will comment that you’ve lost weight, or how healthy you look. The best compliment I ever received was when a friend of my husbands told me how "athletic" I was looking. Always wishing I could be an athlete, I was thrilled!
When you hit your goal weight, the compliments stop and the watching eyes look closer. They wait for you to screw up and start gaining weight again. They don’t do it maliciously; it’s just human nature. The pressure to stay at your goal weight mounts unbelievably, and the fear that you can’t stay there sets in. Unfortunately, for many that have hit goal, this can lead to an obsession with the scale, and eating disorders. I did get a bit obsessive when I hit goal, but after much self-talk I have learned to accept my new healthy (but not perfect) body, and have avoided going to extremes.
There is no such thing as "ending your diet" once you get to your goal weight. I want to make this very clear because I was also under the delusion that I would be able to start eating more, and fatty foods again. Don’t get me wrong, I knew I couldn’t start eating the way I was before my lifestyle change, but I had hoped that I could eat healthy for 2 meals a day, and eat whatever I wanted for the third meal. When I started to do this I immediately began to gain a few pounds back, and I had to put a stop to this behavior, much to my dismay.
What I have learned is that the more time goes by, the easier it is to stay at goal as far as food is concerned. I truly believe that it takes your body a while to adjust to the new you, and eventually you can start introducing some foods back into your life, like real butter and real mayo (in smaller quantities, of course) without gaining weight. Rather than eat whatever I want for the third meal, I have found that I do maintain by eating whatever I want only 3 times a week. It is better than the once a week I limited myself to as I was losing, so hopefully that offers you some comfort!
You WILL have to exercise for life to maintain your new weight. There is no way around it, so you might as well accept now that you will need to find a way to make exercise a part of your daily life forever. About halfway to my goal weight, I decided that I would cut down my 6 days a week routine to 3 days a week once I hit goal. As I neared my goal, I also realized that not only did I have to continue my 6-day per week routine, but also I had to exercise longer and harder to take off those last few pounds. For a short period of time I even exercised twice a day, determined to hit my goal weight. After about three weeks of torture, I began to loathe exercise and my knees and ankles were suffering. I realized that there was no way I could continue this, and I also realized that it wasn’t normal, or something I could continue long term. So I went back to my normal routine, and increased the intensity of my workouts, and the duration by about 10 minutes a day.
I did finally take of those few pounds, and while the intensity of my workouts has remained high, the duration went back to a normal 30 minutes. Unfortunately that meant gaining back about 2 pounds. After weeks of agonizing over it, I finally came to the conclusion that I had to learn to accept my new weight. After all, I was at 20% body fat, in a size 4-6, and the healthiest I had ever been in my entire life. Over the last year as I have fought to maintain my weight, I have been able to cut back to 5 days per week instead of 6. Maybe someday I can even cut another day out, but I’m not worried about it. Fitness has become an intrinsic part of my life, and I believe that I will not feel as good mentally and physically if I cut down further.
I can tell you why I am able to cut down. It’s because I lift weights more often, and I lift heavier weights than before. This, in turn, is allowing me to take in more calories (or burn off less by exercising only 5 days instead of 6). That also explains why you cannot cut back on exercise just because you hit goal. You are taking in a certain number of calories from food each day, but you are also burning off a portion of them. If you cut back to a 3 day per week routine, you will not burn off those calories you once did, and you will gain weight. There will be some flexibility with your exercise schedule once you switch to maintenance, you just have to find what works for you.
The purpose of this article is not to frustrate you or disappoint you, but rather it is to encourage you to make a lifestyle change that is a permanent one, rather than opting for the fad diet. Those who do maintain their weight loss have the same traits in common: they are physically active, and they have permanently changed their eating habits, they watch portions, and many even continue to write down what they eat. Sounds simple enough, but as you have learned from my experience, it is not always easy. If you are not willing to do what is required to hit your personal goal weight, then you may just need to settle on a higher goal weight, and there is certainly nothing wrong with that. But for those of you who are determined to hit your dream weight and stay there forever, you should know that it is going to take some continued effort, long after you hit goal.
Debelli
05-10-2003, 06:30 PM
Good site to view some info on the GI & GL
CLICK HERE TO VIEW GLYCEMIC INDEX & GLYCEMIC LOAD INFO! (http://www.fatfreekitchen.com/glycemic-index.html)
Debelli
05-10-2003, 06:32 PM
If anyone has PCOS, this is a good article to read:
CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE ON PCOS & GI (http://www.ovarian-cysts-pcos.com/glycemic-index.html)
Rosalie
07-30-2003, 11:54 PM
Moving Up.
cherylco
07-31-2003, 01:50 PM
Sugar Blues
by William F. Dufty
is an excellent book on how sugar infiltrated our society. Really interesting.
Debelli
08-14-2003, 07:56 AM
This site has some great information in regards to servings according to your caloric intake, among other very useful information. Do check it out and if you can see the PDF version on your computer, try to print it out for yourself.