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Archive for the ‘Diet’ Category

In fact, fiber is great for your over all health as well, not just weight loss. But before we discuss what makes it so awesome, what is fiber anyway? It is a component (for lack of better word) in many fruits and vegetables that is in layman’s  terms a filler. It fills up your stomach but our digestive system cannot actually absorb it. So while you feel full (and you are) you don’t actually get any calories from the fiber that makes you feel full.

Not surprisingly all the foods high in fiber are also low in calories. Which makes them an excellent addition to any diet. Who wouldn’t want a food that makes you feel full without a ton of calories attached? In addition to this, fiber also acts as a colon cleanse. Since our body cannot absorb it, it moves through the colon cleaning it of bacteria, toxins and any other waste. Fiber just gets better and better doesn’t it?

To maximize the above effects you should drink plenty of water after consuming foods rich in fiber. The water makes it swell, which will make you feel full faster and will improve its effectiveness at cleaning colon. It is recommended to get 40 grams of fiber a day, but if you didn’t eat a lot of fiber before, you should scale it up slowly and allow your body to get used to it.

So what foods are rich in fiber? As was mentioned above most fruits and vegetables have it, but the ones that contain the a large amount are: green peas, figs, raisin bran, spinach, apricots, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, apples, plums, pears, cherries, carrots, Brussels sprouts, nuts, tomatoes and lettuce.

Quite a list, so you should have no problems getting the 40 grams a day, and will have a large enough selection to not eat the same thing every day.

Dark chocolate is indeed good for you. Surprised? I know I was somewhat surprised. I mean, it’s chocolate, dark or not I’d assume that it is about as good for you as a any other candy bar. Apparently I was wrong, according to an article that was recently posted on Yahoo news titled “25 ridiculously healthy foods” dark chocolate made #25. Here’s the part about dark chocolate:

“25. Dark chocolate
Thank you, dark chocolate, for making us feel good—not guilty—about dessert. Dark chocolate is filled with flavonoid antioxidants (more than three times the amount in milk chocolate) that keep blood platelets from sticking together and may even unclog your arteries.It may also help with weight loss by keeping you feeling full, according to a study from Denmark. Researchers gave 16 participants 100 g of either dark or milk chocolate and two hours later offered them pizza. Those who consumed the dark chocolate ate 15 percent fewer calories than those who had milk chocolate, and they were less interested in fatty, salty and sugary foods.

Try a chocolate with 70 percent or more cocoa. Two tablespoons of dark chocolate chips with fresh berries as a midafternoon snack or after-dinner dessert should give you some of the heart-healthy benefits without busting your calorie budget.”

You can read about what other 24 foods made this lis by following this link: 25 Healthy Foods

Of course one must always keep in mind the fact that while theoretically the foods listed in that article are good, the reality may not always be that way. But that is a subject for a later date.

Everyone knows that soda (Pepsi, Coke etc.) is bad for you. Doesn’t really take a genius to figure that one out, I mean just looking at the label you can see that it contains sodium, carbohydrates and lots of sugar, while not containing anything good. You might as well pour sugar into water and drink that (which is what soda really is anyway. Unfortunately the reality is that soda is even worse than it looks, when it comes to weight loss.

As I had pointed out in the diet basics post, the food and the way it is prepared has progressed a lot, while human’s digestive system is mostly the same as it was thousands of years ago. And soda is one of the most obvious examples of how this affects people in their every day lives.

Did you know that human body does not recognize calories contained in liquids? That means that you could drink 2000 calories worth of soda and not feel any less hungry than you did before? Just think how much you would likely eat if doing so did not satisfy your appetite? Probably lots more than you currently do. So, why in the world does human body not recognize calories contained in liquids? As pointed above, because we still have the same digestive system that humans had thousands of years ago, yet the food preparation has changed a lot.

The reason our bodies do not recognize calories in liquids is because the only naturally produces liquid that contains calories is milk. Milk that is designed to be consumed by a baby (that needs all the calories it can get) and has an obvious natural limit since a mother only has so much milk in her breasts. As such our bodies simply didn’t need a mechanism to recognize calories in liquids, and unfortunately food preparation has progressed at a much faster rate than our bodies are able to adapt.

There is of course nothing that you can do about this, but it is something to be aware of. When you drink your coffee, energy drink or soda, no matter how many calories they contain your body will not recognize them and you will feel just as hungry as you did before. As such you should try to eliminate most of the calorie containing liquids from your diet. Drink your tea or coffee without sugar, cut back on energy drinks and obviously completely eliminate all soda (diet or normal doesn’t matter.) It’s not easy (I love soda) but it is a necessary step to achieve fast weight loss results.

PS: What do you know, I make this post and 2 days later I read this article on yahoo’s front page Soda is bad for you where it is explained in more scientific details why sodas are very, very bad for one’s health.

Diet – many people have a love/hate relationship with this word. But why do you even need to diet in the first place? Shouldn’t our body (which is pretty smart about other things) self regulate and stay healthy on its own? Yea, that would be nice, but there are two problems here because of which that will never happen.

First and rather obvious is the ability of our bodies to store extra calories as fat, which can be burned in the future for energy. Of course, this worked a lot better a few thousand years ago where food was scare and people might’ve gone a few days between eating. In today’s world with plenty of easily available food (for the most part) such built-in mechanism isn’t of as much use as it used to be.

The other problem, and it is the reason why one must diet is that human body simply hasn’t adapted to the way food and food processing changed. Think about it, the way food is being processed changed drastically in the last hundred years, yet our bodies are the same as they were back then. The food contains elements today that our bodies simply can’t deal with – from high fat foods to foods with lots of cholesterol etc etc.

For example a watermelon contains lots of sugar – but since it’s a natural food, made by nature, you would be hard pressed to eat enough of them to get any illnesses. On the other hand candy contains lots of sugar but is a processed food, the kind of food that didn’t exist even a few hundred years ago, as such our bodies aren’t able to deal with its contents. eating candy you can easily get diabetes. In fact I herd a story of a guy who ate 10 pounds of candies over a week (don’t ask me why in the world he did that) and got a diabetes. Something like that would be nearly impossible with a natural food.

As such the basics of a diet would dictate that one should try to stick to natural food (foods found in nature) and try to avoid anything processed. Of course a diet like that is too extreme for most people (I certainly know I am not going to be able to stick to a diet like that) but it’s still a great guideline for a diet.
As such you should try to include as much fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds as you can in it, of course lean meat and none bottom feeder fish is great too.

This post was inspired by something I read on some weight loss blog not long ago. How do you handle your diet during holidays? With Halloween coming up and Thanksgiving not far away this is a popular topic. Trying to resist all that candy on Halloween isn’t easy. And saying “no, no thank you, I am on a diet” when someone tries to hand you a plate at the table during Thanksgiving will be even worse.

So, how should you deal with it? In my opinion you should have at it and enjoy yourself! Come on now, chances are you are still going to eat some candy or what have you during a holiday, it’s just too tempting not to. So instead of trying to stick to your diet, failing then feeling all negative about that, why not take a break from your diet and eat what you want for a day? Obviously don’t go completely crazy with the food but it’s ok to have some sweats and there is no need to beat yourself up about having a slice of a cake.

In fact a number of people advocate having one cheat day a week, where you don’t need to follow a diet and can eat what you want. Doing so will make sure that you won’t have any pent up craving for some none-diet-friendly food. Obviously you still have to control how much you eat and trying to win a pie eating contest is not advised.

So go ahead, take a break from your diet for a day and eat some candy, have some cake and fill yourself with stuffing – it’s alright to do it. In fact it’s probably better to do it this way compared to losing control and going on an eating binge!