Nutrition Myths:
5 Ways You’ve Been Duped Out of The Body You Want
Good News!
Quote #7:
“A man’s health can be judged by which he takes two at a time – pills or stairs.” – Joan Welsh
Quick Tip #7
Do your knees hurt? Check your shoes. If you’re wearing high-heeled sneakers like Nike Shox, or most basketball shoes, that could be part of the problem (high heeled = the heel is higher than the toes, anything other than essentially flat). High heeled sneakers shift all of your weight forward from your hips to your knees – putting much more stress on them and making your more prone to knee pain and/or injury, in addition to tightening your calfs. Switch to a flatter athletic shoes like the Nike Free Trainer.
Recipe #7: Hawaiian Pizza
Even pizza can help you get the body you want. Starchy carbs are not evil, but an excess of them is. Try as often as possible to eat your starchy foods after you workout and/or for breakfast, they’ll be more likely to be taken up by your muscles rather than your fat cells. Click here to enjoy what you eat while losing fat.
5 Ways You’ve Been Duped Out of The Body You Want
By Josef Brandenburg
1. Fruit Labels are Truthful:
Let’s get this out of the way right now, food labels are designed to sell food, not to tell the truth. It is perfectly legal for food manufacturers to put out-right lies in big, bold letters on their products. Case in point: PAM.
PAM cooking spray is sold as “fat free.” Normal people would think that “fat free” means that there is no fat inside that can of “fat free” PAM. Ironically, fat free PAM is actually 100%, PURE FAT. Check the ingredients list, the first ingredient is “corn oil.” All oils are, by definition, 100%, pure fat and nothing else
How can they possibly be allowed to label pure fat as “fat free”? A simple FDA labeling loop-hole (and there are many!) that says, “so long as there is less than 0.5g of fat per serving, then you may label your food as fat free.” So, the serving size of “fat free” PAM is .3g, or a 1/3 second spray – there should be over 700 serving per can (you and I both know you cannot make 700 meals with a single can). Since, there isn’t .5g of anything in the serving it can, with all legality, be labeled as “fat free.”
Solution: Read the nutrition facts label (ignore the %), and look at the serving size, total number of calories per serving and read the ingredients. This is where the actual truth of the food lives. Food manufactures have the FDA’s blessing to lie to you on the front. It is buyer beware.
2. Skipping Meals Will Help You Drop Fat:
In fact, the opposite is true. In Japan, sumo wrestlers have discovered something very effective for massive weight gain (fat, with not much muscle) – skipping breakfast! When you wake up you’ve been without food for 6-12 hours, depending on how long before bed it was you ate your last meal, this means that your body has essentially nothing to run off of. This, in turn, means that your metabolism stays depressed until your first meal, and that in the mean time your body is burning muscle – NOT fat – for fuel. This is the worst case scenario if you want lasting fat-loss in stead of temporary (mostly muscle and water) weight loss.
Solution: Eat breakfast (duh!), no matter how short on time you think you are. Click here for a link to extremely quick breakfast ideas – one is as quick as 1 minute to prepare. If you can’t wake up 5-10min. earlier (prepare and eat) to take care of your physique, then you should probably give up now.
3. Smoothies are Healthy
While my smoothie recipe would make a very healthy, lean-body breakfast or post workout meal, what you will find commercially available would be the equivalent of drinking almost two an a half 12oz. cans of regular Coca-Cola with NO protein to speak of either – that’s a recipe for weak flabby arms, and a big old belly. (A medium Banana Berry Smoothie from Jamba Juice has 93g of sugar and 4g of protein, and a 12oz. can of Coke has 39.9g of sugar).
Solution: Tell the guy at the smoothie counter to hold the juice and add the protein powder. Pick the flavor you want, and tell them to hold the sugar (honey, juice, sorbet…), and pay for a scoop or two of protein powder so that you end up with just fruit, yogurt, protein and ice and maybe Splenda too. Or, just make it yourself at home.
4. Low-Fat Fruity Yogurt Is Good For You
Low-fat or fat-free “fruit” containing and/or flavored yogurt is essentially candy in a cup. An 8oz. serving of fruit flavored fat-free yogurt has 250% more sugar than it’s non-fruit flavored counterpart. There are 43 grams in a single cup! That’s the equivalent of eating 1.5 cups of mini-marshmallows! Tooty-fruity, big-fat booty:-)
Solution: Buy your own fat-free yogurt, preferably FAGE, and add real fruit to it. It tastes better, actually has protein and fiber, and no where near as much sugar as the pre-mixed stuff.
5. Moderate Drinkers Live Longer
From very respectable sources, you’ve heard over and over again, “people who drink 1-2 alcoholic drinks per day live longer than those who do not drink at all.” What they don’t tell you is that the research that “proves” this is questionable at best.
The researchers divided people up into three categories: Group A: heavy drinkers, Group B: moderate drinkers, Group C: non-drinkers. Then, over time they gathered data on how long these groups lived. The problem is with Group C which had both those who do not drink because they choose not to (a very small number of people), AND those who CANNOT drink because they are either former alcoholics or are so sick that they just can’t drink. Former alcoholics, and people who are so sick that they can’t drink do not live very long.
When you average the short life spans for the very sick and the former alcoholics, with the much longer life span of the choice-non-drinkers, you get a number that appears to be smaller than the number for the moderate drinkers.
Furthermore, if you currently average 1-2 drinks per day you could drop between 13.5 and 27 pounds in a year if you stopped (those numbers are for very small drinks: 5oz. of wine, 12 oz. of beer – you have never seen a 12oz. glass of beer at a bar in your life).
Solution: Don’t kid yourself. Drinking is something you do because you like to do it, NOT because there are any well established health benefits associated with it. Red wine has some good stuff in it because it’s made from whole grapes, not because there is something special about alcohol. So, you’d be better off eating the whole grapes. The less you drink, the better off you will be. That doesn’t mean don’t ever drink, it just means be aware of what moderation really means – infrequent.
The First Quarter of 2007 is Gone!
How much of the fat that you said you’d lose this year is gone too?
If you don’t know, or don’t like the answer click here to get yourself started to dropping 1, 2 or 3lbs per week now. Don’t let the rest of the year slip away without achieving your fat-loss goals.