Archive for Diet
Nutrition for children – a plug
Posted by: | CommentsMore super foods
Posted by: | Comments…from Dr. Steven Pratt’s book, SuperFoods RX, Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life:
beans
blueberries
broccoli
oats
oranges
pumpkin
salmon
soy
spinach
Tea (green or black)
tomatoes
turkey
walnuts
yogurt
I personally would take out turkey and salmon (specifically, the farmed varieties) from the list, and replace them with kale, flax, sunflower seeds. Instead of yogurt, I’d put kefir in.
Sleep and weight loss
Posted by: | CommentsSleep problems can be a strong influence on a person’s diet. Studies have shown that individuals who don’t get enough sleep are less likely to cook their own meals. They are more likely eat fast food. According to new research, the lack of nutritional value of restaurant-prepared food can cause health problems for these people in the long-run.
“The amount of sleep a person gets affects his or her physical health, emotional well-being, mental abilities, productivity and performance. Recent studies associate lack of sleep with serious health problems such as an increased risk of depression, obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”
Obviously, the kind of diet you adopt can affect the quality of sleep and the quality of rest and regeneration. The sleep-diet interaction (a body-food dynamic) is another example of how our lifestyle affects the food we eat, which affects how we sleep, which affects our energy level, which affects what we eat, and so forth. Conceivably, one can be caught in this loop, be completely unaware, and continue to tolerate a decreased quality of life — until its too late, and the forces of disease takes over.
Oxidative stress and overconsumption
Posted by: | CommentsThe theory of oxidative stress as the cause of aging and other diseases (developed by Dr. Denham Harmon in 1954) has received considerable support in the last five decades of medical research. Free radicals, the products of food combustion in our bodies, are the culprits of most of the diseases that cause premature death .
Oxidative stress is mainly the result of eating a diet that is too high in calories and too low in antioxidants. In most cases it is made worse because of the “anti-nutrients” that are inevitably part of the typical American diet: sugar, sodas, junk and processed food, saturated fat, processed meat, and mercury-contaminated fish.
Nutritional deficiencies and sugar imbalance (due to insulin resistance) worsen the oxidative stress of caloric overconsumption. It becomes quite clear that the “nutritional abuse” we pile on ourselves is in itself a multifactorial (and systemic) issue.
This is a big ball of wax, wrapped in a layers of ever-increasing misinformation about what foods are supposed to be good for us. (And I’m not even including here the profound “medicalization” of the idea of health.)
There are no simple answers. Effective solutions must include correct, science-based nutritional knowledge. More importantly, we need to develop the ability to understand and manage the change process within ourselves (”eating better and exercising more”). We need adopt a vigilant attitude against the social norm of unconscious, recreational eating.
Everyone’s swimming against the tide…
Why diets fail
Posted by: | CommentsAccording to Dr. Michael Dansinger of the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, a typical diet helps people lose an average of 6 percent of their weight, typically 10 to 15 pounds (5 to 7 kg), and most people put it all back on after five years. Weight loss drugs are similarly ineffective in the long run.
The approach most people use, i.e., managing the macronutrient percentage and/or caloric level, is an incomplete and unsustainable strategy for the most part. Tweaking carbs vs fat vs protein percentages is not addressing the core problem.
People need to create a lifestyle that sustains eating behavior from a “micronutrient” (or a “nutritional density”) perspective. When this is accomplished (more effectively, through a combination of self-monitoring, social support, and continued study and application of palatable recipes that are nutrient rich), the appropriate macronutrient and caloric levels follow.
What is particularly troublesome is that of course most “diets” will fail. How can they not? Most of them do not utilize correct scientific nutritional findings, much less manage the eating behavior in the context of sound cognitive-behavioral principles. Most people are not aware of the stages of change model (Prochaska), and its applicability to changing nutritional habits. Neither are they familiar with the very practical work done by Daniel Kirschenbaum regarding the ‘key truths” about lifelong weight management. Lastly, they have been mostly misled by the plethora of scientifically misleading approaches that in time has already acquired the patina of truth, but are blatantly wrong…
A quick and easy way to lose weight
Posted by: | CommentsWeight loss can occur effortlessly by simply avoiding or minimizing:
- processed foods
- sweets, and other “foods” containing sugar
- white bread and pasta (substitute whole-grain varieties instead),
- foods with a high percentage of calories from fat,
- alcoholic drinks.
In this approach you simply become more conscious of those items that change you body and brain chemistry, more aware of controlling portion sizes, while simultaneously adding more vigorous exercise (a total of 2 to 3 hours a week) to the mix.
In this moderate, “sensible,” watch-what-you-eat approach, you gradually replace poor food choices with healthy ones. You’re likely to decrease overall caloric intake, and with the addition of regular cardio and strength exercises several times a week, you’ll naturally enter into a caloric deficit.
In my opinion and experience, this conservative approach could be effective in slightly overweight people wanting to lose around 5 to 10 percent of their body weight. There is a tremendous payback for this strategy, since even a 10% loss of excess fat (especially if it’s in the abdominal area) yields tremendous health benefits.
Got milk?
Posted by: | CommentsThere is still widespread belief that ingesting high amounts of dairy products is a healthy practice, because of milk’s high calcium content. Actually, drinking lots of milk is very prevalent in bodybuilding circles as a weight gaining food (alongside high animal protein consumption). What can be more wholesome than milk, right? This is what Walter C. Willett and Meir J. Stampfer of the Harvard School of Public Health have to say about drinking milk:
“… it promotes overconsumption of dairy products, recommending the equivalent of two or three glasses of milk a day. This advice is usually justified by dairy’s calcium content, which is believed to prevent osteoporosis and bone fractures. But the highest rates of fractures are found in countries with high dairy consumption, and large prospective studies have not shown a lower risk of fractures among those who eat plenty of dairy products. Calcium is an essential nutrient, but the requirements for bone health have probably been overstated. What is more, we cannot assume that high dairy consumption is safe: in several studies, men who consumed large amounts of dairy products experienced an increased risk of prostate cancer, and in some studies, women with high intakes had elevated rates of ovarian cancer. Although fat was initially assumed to be the responsible factor, this has not been supported in more detailed analyses. High calcium intake itself seemed most clearly related to the risk of prostate cancer.”
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Weight loss success and the “false hope syndrome”
Posted by: | CommentsGina Kolata’s book Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss – and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (2007) is a great read. It provides a historical perspective of our society’s preoccupation with obesity, weight loss, and dieting as a socio-economic phenomenon. It’s also an interesting critique of the weight loss industry, a multi-billion dollar system that primarily feeds on what some researchers have termed the false hope syndrome.
Why is dieting the (seeming) exception to the principle of psychology that “if a behavior is not reinforced, it should extinguish?” Given that most attempts will ultimately result in failure (i.e., significant weight loss is difficult to maintain), why does cyclic “dieting” endure? Surely there are reinforcements to the behavior?
In fact there are, according to P. Herman of the University of Toronto, one of the researchers Kolata interviewed for the book:
1) The simple act of declaring that you’re going on a diet makes you feel better. You feel empowered and in control of your life.
2) There are rewards, as when the weight peels off in the beginning. When failure inevitably arrives, the dieter has two choices: (a) to conclude that one didn’t try hard enough (or long enough); and/or (b) to state that all one’s previous diets (and strategies) were based on erroneous information: “This time it’s going to be different.”
In addition, and this is not mentioned in the book, there is the social reinforcement around the “dieting” behavior itself. The informal reinforcement (via attention) of one’s dieting buddies or even one’s officemates. The exhilaration of losing the initial pounds, etc. fueled and compounded by what is essentially an extremely functional community of oscillating commiseration and celebration.
Most diet books, if not the whole weight loss industry, are configured to take advantage of this psychological dynamic — exploiting the weakness and vulnerability of the individual’s desire to change for the better and remove the social stigma of being overweight or obese.
The sustainability factor of a diet
Posted by: | CommentsWhen humans are allowed to eat as much as they want of high quality, high nutrient, wholesome food, studies have shown that they can be satisfied with as little as 1,500 calories. When given refined and processed food, these same people will consume as much as 3,000 calories to feel equally satisfied.
Lessons learned: the quality of the food (in terms of nutritional density per calorie) has an effect on satiety levels, and in the long term, will determine the effectiveness of a weight management strategy. Caloric restriction, without regard to optimizing nutrient content, is difficult to sustain over the long run. I think this is one of the main reasons why typical (i.e., nutritionally defective) “dieting” has a built-in negative loop that makes it extremely difficult to practice and maintain as a lifestyle. It becomes very draining, psychologically and physically, to sustain a non-optimal, low caloric diet over the long haul. In contrast, a high nutrient, mostly plant-based, wholesome diet has its own “positive feedback loop” that makes it easier to maintain as a long-term practice.
Inspirational wellness model: “The Other Dr. Ruth”
Posted by: | Comments
Ruth Heidrich, Ph.D. is a six-time Ironman Triathlon finisher, holder of more than 900 gold medals from every distance from 100 meters to ultramarathons and triathlons. She has completed more than 60 marathons all over the world and has held three world fitness records in her age group at the Cooper Clinic in Dallas, Texas. She was named one of the “Top Ten Fittest Women in North America” in 1999. When she was seventy years old, Heidrich had the bone mass density of a woman in her early thirties and a resting heart rate of forty-four. Since being diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of forty-seven, she has won more than nine hundred athletic trophies and medals and has been cancer-free for more than twenty years. She is the author of A Race For Life, The Race For Life Cookbook, and Senior Fitness: Empowering Your Golden Years. She has been vegan for 25 years and a daily runner for 39 years.
Here’s her daily (vegan) meal plan:
Breakfast:
”Served in a LARGE bowl. All items are raw.
Lots of greens for the base: 3-4 leaves of Romaine, 1 stalk kale, 1 stalk of celery, 10 sprigs of parsley or cilantro. Slice and add 1 large carrot, 1/2 mango, 1 large banana, and half dozen large, seeded Globe grapes. Top off with 1 rounded Tbl of B12-fortified nutritional yeast, and 1-2 Tbl of blackstrap molasses.Because I eat this after my daily workout, this is served late and I eat no midday meal.”
Supper:
“Lots of greens for the base: 3-4 broccoli florettes, 2-3 stalks of kale, 1 stalk of celery, 1/4 unpeeled English cucumber, 1/4 head of green or red cabbage, 1 large carrot, 1/2 red (or orange, green, or yellow) bell pepper, 1/2 large field tomato, half a head of garlic (about 6 cloves) Half of a yam or sweet potato, raw.On top of the above ingredients, to 1-2 cups of prepared salsa (mild, medium or hot), add 1 Tbl of regular mustard, 1 Tbl of flax seed, freshly ground.”
Dessert:
“A base of blueberries (fresh or frozen, depending on availability and season) – 1/2 cup; 1/2 cup of a second fresh fruit (e.g. strawberries, bananas, grapes,); top with a small handful of walnuts, and 1Tbl. blackstrap molasses.”
Snacks:
“For those times when the hunger pangs strike, I eat carrot or celery sticks, grapes, dates, and in the evening, plain air-popped popcorn.”
