The Wide World of Carbs

Do these foods seem alike to you?

Baked potato
Snickers bar
Pineapple juice
Skittles
Sliced peaches
English muffin
Fig Newton
Popcorn
Green beans
Chocolate iced donut
Honey
Fried rice
Cornbread
Cheerios
Spinach
Lentils

As different as they all seem to be from each other; they all belong to the carbohydrate food group. It's the group that accounts for the largest percentage of food most of us eat. It's the group that confuses many of us as we try to create a nutrient-rich, low-calorie, but flavorful eating plan that we can enjoy as we lose weight.

This week we'll take a look at the foods whose main job is to provide our bodies - especially our brains and nervous systems with energy.

Could I Have Diabetes?

In very simple terms, diabetes is a set of health conditions that come about because the body has become unable to process glucose (sugars) properly.  In  a normal, healthy person, the sugars from food sources are broken down and utilized for energy or stored for future use with the aid of the hormone insulin.  A person who has type 1 diabetes is unable to produce insulin.  A person with type 2 diabetes is still able to produce insulin, but his or her cells are unable to respond to it. In both cases too much glucose ( sugar) can build up in the blood and other tissues, and - if untreated - can damage organs and blood vessels.

Like high blood pressure, you can develop type 2 diabetes and not be aware of it.  The sooner you know if you have diabetes, the sooner you can take steps to control it and prevent complications, so it's important that everyone know what to watch out for. 

Yesterday, we talked about the fact that being overweight or obese dramatically increases your risk of diabetes. It is such an important factor, that just reducing your weight by 7 - 10%, if you are overweight, can enable you to avoid developing diabetes.

It's also important how - or rather - where you store your fat.  If you tend to have a big waist and abdomen, rather than big hips and thighs, your risk of developing diabetes is higher.  Lose the ab fat and watch your risk go down.  In women, a waist circumference greater than 35", and in men, greater than 40", increases your health risks.

Other signs and symptoms that may indicate insulin resistance or diabetes include:

• Frequent trips to the bathroom to urinate
• Unquenchable thirst
• Unexplained, unusual fatigue or weakness
• Tingling or numbness of fingers, hands or feet
• Blurred vision
• Dry, itchy skin
• Bruising or cuts that are slow to go away

If you have any or a combination of those symptoms, and have not had a recent blood test for your blood glucose (sugar) level, please ask your health care provider to schedule that simple lab test for you.  Diabetes is one bullet you definitely want to dodge!

The food group most closely associated with diabetes is carbohydrates. Carbs are either loved or loathed by people who want to reach a healthy weight, and it's a complicated food group to decipher. And that's what next week's posts will be about --- all about the world of carbohydrates!

Dodging the Diabetes Bullet

Preventing life-altering chronic illness like type 2 diabetes is one of the best reasons to strive to reach and maintain a healthy weight.

This information comes from Bob Green's Best Life website; it was written by Janis Jibrin, M.S., R.D., Best Life lead nutritionist


Seven percent of the population has diabetes--that's 21.6 million people! The number jumps to 9.6 percent for people age 20 years old and up, and it strikes a whopping 21 percent of Americans age 60 and above. As we get older, more of us will succumb to the disease. Fortunately, most cases of diabetes can be prevented by good diet and exercise habits. That means that right now is the perfect time to adopt the healthy habits, such as the ones below, that can reduce your diabetes risk.




Get moving. Exercise (both cardio and strength training) makes your muscles' cells more sensitive to insulin, the hormone that removes sugar from the blood. Plus, it helps you lose weight and maintain your weight loss. To lose weight, work up to 60 minutes of cardio six days a week. To reap the benefits from strength training, do at least 12 reps of at least six different exercises two or three times a week.




Switch to whole grains. Whole wheat, corn and wheat bran have been strongly linked to diabetes prevention. But oats and barley also appear to reduce diabetes risk. The less refined the grain, the better (think steel cut oats versus rolled oats) because it takes your body a lot longer to convert coarsely ground grain into blood sugar than it does for refined grains.




Reach/maintain a healthy body mass index. Body mass index, or BMI, is a measurement of height to weight. A BMI between 18.5 and 24.9 is considered healthy; 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight; and 30 and above is obese. To find out your BMI, use the National Heart, Blood and Lung Institute's BMI calculator:
Body Mass Index calculator

Tomorrow:

Could I Have Diabetes?

Super-size the Healthy Way

Summertime and the gardens are full of green, yellow, and red fruits and vegetables!

And there are no better food groups to super-size for nutritional value and filling up on a low calorie eating plan.

That's the idea behind a way of eating called Volumetrics.

Basically, Volumetrics is designed around the idea that people like to eat. Literally. We like the ritual of eating. We like to chew. We like for the process to last a while until we feel satisfied. We don't like the idea of our 400 -calorie meal being about 1 cup of rice and that's it. We don't want to feel deprived.

So nutritionist Barbara Rolls, PhD, designed an eating plan that allows you to eat more, fill up, but not gain a lot of weight. What's the secret?

The hook of Volumetrics is its focus on satiety, the feeling of fullness. Rolls says that people feel full because of the amount of food they eat -- not because of the number of calories or the grams of fat, protein, or carbs. So the trick is to fill up on foods that aren't full of calories.(webmd)

In other words you can pile your plate high with foods that have a high water and fiber content like fruits and vegetables and eat a lot for very few calories, as opposed to the small amount of fattening food you would have on your plate for the same number of calories.

Rolls suggests visualizing it this way:
for the same number of calories, you could have a big bowl of vegetable soup, or 1/6 of a cheeseburger. Which would you be able to spend more time eating? The soup....so, the soup would actually be a more satisfying meal.

So to feel satisfied and lose weight, go ahead and pump up the volume and super-size your servings of fruits and vegetables this summer!

You can learn more about Volumetrics here.

Top Ten Lists

I am a huge fan of any article that lists the TEN BEST or the TEN WORST of anything. I figure it simplifies my life to know these things.

webmd.com, one of my favorite wellness websites, has listed the TEN WORST foods for your weight and health that are probably lurking in your refrigerator right now!

To find our what they are and how to make healthier subsitutions, click here to see the worst foods in your fridge.

Anything surprise you? Probably not, if you have been following our blog. But since it is summer time and the season of salads, please take extra care not to over serve yourself when it comes to salad dressing. Too much ranch dressing and you may end up with the same numberr of calories in your innocent salad as you might have had in a Big Mac.

Just Do It!

When you see those words "Just Do It", what instantly comes to mind?  I am willing to bet you were seeing the Nike "swoosh" before you got to the word "it"!  Why? Our brains are wonderful computers for making associations.

If you think about it a little more, you'll admit you are probably *programmed* to associate many sights, sounds  and smells - as well as words - with FOOD and eating!

Try reading these words:

Movies
Carnival
Thanksgiving
Birthday

Did you instantly visualize:

Popcorn
Corn Dog ( or funnel cake - depending where you live!)
Turkey with all the trimmings
Cake

This instant association of people, places and things to fattening foods can lead to overeating and destruction of a healthy eating plan.
But luckily, we can use the same power of association to program ourselves to do something else instead of eating. Especially at holiday time.

Here is the newest thing to put in your weight loss "tool box":

There's no mistaking what it stands for, is there?

STOP.

Here's how to use this mind - tool. We mentioned self-talk before and what a powerful technique it is just to start thinking of yourself as a healthy-eater. The things you say to yourself are important!

"I don't eat junk food."

"I used to drink real soda, but I don't anymore."

"I only eat small portions."

"I only eat when I am hungry."

Simple thoughts, but if you say them to yourself enough, you begin believing them and seeing yourself as someone who has a completely new, different way of relating to food, and eating. Each time self-talk prevents you form over-eating, you  gain new confidence -- and food isn't as powerful over you as it used to be.

Use the stop sign as an extra image to visualize when you are in a situation that tempts you to steer off course.

Let's say you have had breakfast, a snack, lunch, and a healthy snack like triscuits and string cheese. It's 3 p.m. and a colleague's retirement party is starting - complete with iced cake, nuts, mints, chips and punch. You really aren't hungry and you aren't even really craving sugar, but ...it's there. What do you do? When you are at the party, near the buffet, just visualize

.

You can use it anyway you want -- you might say to yourself, stop - do I really want this enough to blow my eating plan for today?  The stop sign gives you time to re-group and make a decision. Even if the decision is that you will have a small piece of cake and then hit the gym for an hour!

So when it comes to using visualization techniques...just ...

Taming the Hunger Beast

Re-vamping your way of eating in order to eat more healthy foods and to lose weight can leave you feeling hungry for a while until your apostate, metabolism and digestive system adapt. For the first time in a long time, you are probably down-sizing your portions, choosing lighter, less calorie-laden, less greasy, fatty foods and you may be eating less often. If your body is used to being stuffed all the time on 2500 calories or more, you may feel hungry if you suddenly cut that too 1500 calories per day.

Try these strategies to control your appetite.

Eat regularly. A consistent eating schedule can help tame your appetite. Break that 1500 calories up into 6 eating sessions every day.  You will be surprised how quickly your stomach and your brain will adapt to the idea that there will be "just enough" food coming in about every 3 hours.  Make sure most of your meals and snacks include high-fiber foods such as berries, dark green veggies and whole grains (an easy snack is a little single-portion box of shredded wheat -- with or without milk).

Stay hydrated. Drinking at least six cups of water each day can help keep you satisfied with less food. Remember - sometimes we reach for snacks when we are really thirsty! Add lemon or even cucumber slices to quench your thirst.  Craving a sweet drink? The sugar-free "straws" of Crystal Light are a good option.

Use the 10-minute rule. When hunger strikes between meals and snacks, set a timer for 10 minutes, do something distracting, and then reassess whether you're still hungry. This also gives you time to figure out how to have a healthy snack if you decide yep, you are really are hungry.

Check your emotions. Ask yourself if you're hungry or just bored ....or tired....or lonely. In other words, what really needs to be fed and nourished?

The good news is that in time your body - and mind - will adapt to your new way of eating.

Changing for Good

The phrase Changing for Good - in terms of changing your weight - can have a double meaning: one, being that changing your habits so you lose weight is a "good thing", and second, that we hope you are losing weight for good - or permanently!

Helping you understand  how to change so permanent weight loss is possible is one of the goals of this blog, and one of the research models I base much of my teaching strategies on is described in a book that is titled - you guessed it -

Authored by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClimente, with John Norcross in 1994, Changing for Good describes the six-stage process that successful self-changers cycle through on their journey toward  positive lifestyle change.

 

Most diet workshops and programs actually start you out at stage 4 - equipping you with a calorie counter and a shopping list. That's starting with ACTION. And some people are ready to start there, because they have processed the first three stages already - maybe even more than once.

 

Briefly, stage 1 is denial, or Pre-contemplation - you don't want to think, hear, or talk about losing weight. You think of yourself as "big-boned." or healthy just the way you are.

In stage 2, you open the door to the thought that maybe you could stand to lose weight - nothing fits, or your doctor has told you your diabetes is caused by overweight, or you are finding it hard to bend over to tie your shoes. So you start thinking: what should I do? You are in Contemplation The best thing that can happen here is that you start listening and gathering information from reputable sources. Ask people who have lost weight how they did it. Sometimes people stay stuck in the "thinking" stage for years....the classic contemplator will by the magazine with both the headline "Lose 5 Pounds This Weekend" and the picture of a Double Dark Chocolate layer cake on the cover --- eventually deciding to bake the cake and eat it too.

 

Sooner or later, successful self-changers make the decision to move on to the third stage - Preparation. They make a phone call to a doctor or nutritionist or Weight Watchers to get help making a plan to change.  They definitely plan to actively start a new way of life within a month. To  me this is the most important stage of all.  Some of you reading this are in this stage now and some have completed it already - how do you know? The preparation stage is all about PLANNING!

 

Your plan for successful weight loss is going to  include all of these: a short-term and long-term weight goal, an eating plan with your daily calorie range and the kids of foods you will be eating, resources for nutritious recipes and foods that you will actually eat and like; tools like a food diary and the Hunger Scale to help you learn about your own eating patterns; ideas for what to do INSTEAD of eating when you you know you really aren't hungry or when you are dining out or at parties, and a plan for getting regular physical activity.  When you have all these plans in your "tool box" you will be well-equipped for the next stage:

 

Action or Doing It! The action stage is actively "dieting" when you are losing weight...although, like the exercise guru Richard Simmons, I like to call it live-it, not die-it.  A good eating plan for losing weight should be one that you can use as the basis of your everyday eating from now on - not something you go off of so you can return to your former way of eating. Those days are gone. because as we said yesterday, if you keep doing what you always did, you'll get what you always got ( extra pounds!).

 

Stage 5 and 6 provide for the rest of your life -- they are Maintenance and Termination. In the maintenance stage, you enjoy your goal weight and new habits for "good", but you may slide back or relapse from time to time.  Been there before?  It's ok, just recognize it, go back to your basics and start over.

You can read more about what it takes to be successful at changing yourself by visiting this link:

Overcoming Obstacles to Weight Loss

 

Prochaska's stages of change aren't meant to be read as a straight line, from point A to point B, but rather like a spiral. And that's a realistic, forgiving way to look at ourselves and our weight loss journey.

If Nothing Changes, Nothing Changes

This is an old saying that can be applied to all kinds of life situations, including weight loss.

In many support groups, it's put another way:

If I keep doing what I always did, I will keep getting what I always got.

You can read these blog posts and other internet articles on weight loss and nutrition,  pick up healthy living magazines, even buy books and dvd's on exercise....but until you make the decision to change your habits, your weight will stay the same -- or increase.

That sounds like a simple concept, but here's what often happens:

We want to lose weight. We want to be "in shape". We want to fit into a smaller size, have lower cholesterol, be able to run up the stairs. Then we study how to make that happen: plan meals, count calories, buy low-fat foods, exercise. But when it comes to day to day living, we often fall back into comfortable old habits because they are familiar- it's easier to grab a vending machine sweet roll than cook oatmeal; it's too hard to resist the burger and fries and dessert at our favorite lunch spot; we get sleepy in the afternoon and need that soda and Hershey bar for a pick-me-up caffeine boost; we're too tired to exercise after work, so we snack our way through until dinner; we have a sweet tooth craving, so we sneak downstairs for ice cream in the middle of the night. In other words, we just do what we have always done.

So for another day, nothing changes, and it follows, for another day nothing will change.

I also work with people who want to quit smoking and this is an issue we work on too. How to get from the "Wanting to" to the "Doing it".  One technique is to tell yourself you are now a person who has an eating plan. Say to yourself: "I used to eat junk food. But now I choose healthy snacks." "I used to skip breakfast, but now I have a bowl of high fiber cereal every morning." "Food used to control my life, but now I choose to be in control of what I eat and when I eat." We are own own worst enemy, and we have to convince ourselves and believe in ourselves that we are capable of change.

Once you start thinking of yourself as being someone who DOES those things you have learned about, you will find it much easier to put it into practice.  Next step: create and commit to your plan!

Milk: The 1% or Less Campaign

Right here in West Virginia, we are fortunate to have nationally recognized health promotion innovators, research and wellness campaigns...and I am not referring to Jamie Oliver's food revolution. Today I want to explain why you should switch to fat-free milk - and that led me to recall a highly successful marketing campaign designed by one of my former professors, Dr. Bill Reger-Nash, and his colleague Steve Booth-Butterfield.

Today marketing wellness with catchy bill-boards and ads are pretty common-place (think "Click-it or Ticket"), but that was not the case in the mid-1990's when Dr. Reger-Nash set out to educate north central West Virginia about the health risks associated with consuming whole-milk. Alarmed by facts like this:
the amount of saturated fat in one glass of whole milk is the same as five strips of bacon,
and concerned about the rate of high cholesterol and heart disease in West Virginia, Reger-Nash and Booth-Butterfield designed the 1% or Less campaign ,

using few words, but lots of images to get the message across that just switching to 2% milk was not enough. To really reduce the risk of heart disease, you have to switch to milk that is 1% milkfat or less. Why target milk? Because they determined that milk is the primary daily source of  saturated fat for most people.

The terms 2% and 1% make us think that we are getting much less fat than whole milk because we naturally assume whole milk is 100% fat. But whole milk is actually about 4% butterfat per serving. It follows then that the lesser-fat milks are: 2% (roughly) and 1% (roughly) butterfat, and that in fat-free milk , nearly all the butterfat has been "skimmed" off- hence the name "skim milk".

A look at the labels will show you how much you can save in terms of calories and saturated fat by switching the milk you buy and consume:

You can see that about half of whole milk's 150 calories per serving come from fat, and most of the fat is the artery-clogging saturated kind. Do you see that 25% of your recommended daily allowance of saturated fat is coming in that one glass of milk?

Switching to 2% milk gives you about 1/3 of your calories from fat, so really we should be calling it 34% milk! And only a 20 calorie difference. Now let's look at our really low-fat choices:

Opting for a cup serving of 1% milk instead of whole saves a whopping 40 calories and  cuts the calories from fat from 70 to 20, and the grams of saturated fat from 5 to 1.5!  Even better -- make the move all the way to skim ( or fat-free) and you have saved 70 calories per serving and get no fat whatsoever from your milk. 

Only the very young toddlers need the benefit of whole milk. After age 2, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends feeding your child a low-fat or fat-free milk.

And note that as the fat is reduced in the type of milk, so is the available cholesterol in the milk!

"But my family won't drink blue milk!" I've hard that complaint before and naturally, I have a suggestion!

Trials have shown that it takes about 3 weeks for us humans to adapt to a new taste.  My best suggestion - especially for those people who drink a glass of milk is this: when you are switching from whole milk, buy equal amounts of whole milk and fat-free milk. (I prefer the milk that is labeled fat-free rather than "skim" because it seems to have a "thicker" consistency -- more like whole milk). Then start mixing them each time you serve them or drink milk yourself.  Keep it up for three weeks, gradually increasing the amount of fat-free milk until you have gotten used to  the fat-free.

I know this works! It worked for me and for my family! In fact, I never even told my family I was doing it and they have all been happily drinking fat-free milk for years!
If you feel the need to "step-down" from whole, to 2%, to 1%, and then skim, that's fine too.
And what about Dr. Reger-Nash's 1% or less campaign in West Virginia?  Pre-and post-campaign surveys showed that the percentage of people buying lower-fat milk had nearly doubled six months following their marketing efforts.

So keep drinking milk for its protein, vitamin and calcium benefits, Just remember-- for health and weight reasons you want your milk to be 1% or Less!

Do you super-size at home?

You may be sabotaging your weight loss plan without even knowing it when you prepare your meals at home.

Have you noticed how LARGE china dinner plates have gotten in the last few years? They are colorful and beautiful, but sometimes they are so big that they won't even fit in our standard size kitchen cabinets!  It's true that even the dinnerware manufacturers are contributing to our obesity epidemic because we put the plate on the table and then proceed to fill it up! And if you - like me - were raised to clean your plate, you can be getting 1000 calories or more at dinner time - even when the food is cooked in a healthy way-- all because you are unaware that you are getting more than a single serving size of most of your food. Those calories add up!

So step one is to make a 9" dinner plate your standard size. That may be what you have, but often this is called a "luncheon" plate. Some folks I know choose a salad plate and say they still get enough to eat. You can look at standard Chinette or paper plates -- these are usually 9" in diameter. I am adding an image of what we call the "portion plate." It's a tool for teaching people the recommended sizes  for food servings.

Step two is to divide your plate in 4 equal parts. Put mixed salad greens and veggies in 2 sections. Put a healthy lean protein - maybe a chicken breast, lean grilled beef, broiled fish fillet or beans - in 1 of the 1/4 sections.  This space is large enough for a deck of cards - which just happens to be the size your protein should be!

In the final quarter of your 9" plate put 1/2 cup whole grain: this could be whole wheat bread, brown or wild rice, couscous or barley, for example. Or, you can skip the grain and add another vegetable.

Changing the size of your plate automatically reduces the amount of food you serve yourself. Dividing your plate into fourths and changing the foods you put in each section helps you learn what the correct portion size is for each food group -- and that helps you limit the number of calories you will consume at each dinner.  I bet you will be surprised to find that you feel satisfied, but not stuffed, when you design your dinner around the "portion plate". This may be the change you need to trigger your weight loss.

Portion Distortion

Bigger is Better!  That's a phrase many of us came to believe if we grew up in middle class America: grow up, get a job, get a bigger car, a bigger house and a bigger paycheck than your parents did. Well, at least as far as cars go, many of us have started to change our minds as fuel costs skyrocketed. And now it's time for us to change our minds about the portion sizes we put on our plates.

In our country, we can still find an amazing amount of food for comparatively little money, and that is part of what feeds our weight problems ( pun intended!) The Whopper, the Bacon-ater and the Monster Thickburger are hamburger structures that are almost too big to handle and hundreds of calories more than we need to fuel us for one meal.

Today, I am adding a link to an interactive "quiz" from the CDC.gov website.  It's quick, easy, entertaining, and -hopefully- will be a wake-up call about how the drastic super-sizing of the portions we serve ourselves, and are served by the food industry, have contributed to the still-increasing obesity and overweight issues we face today.

Portion Distortion Quizzes, 1 & 2

Is There a Better Butter?

Winding up our tour of fats: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, let's take a look at the favorite fat-flavor for many folks: butter.

Love it on popcorn, on home-made bread, melting on mashed potatoes...when we think of richness in association with food: we think of butter. Butter, of course, comes from an animal, so we know it is going to have cholesterol and saturated fat. A tablespoon generally has 100 calories. Many of us associate butter with fattening foods, so we opted for margarine instead when baking, coking, and topping our foods.

Now we know that many of these traditional margarines - which also weigh in at 100 calories per tablespoon serving, are a mixture of different fats, including saturated fat and the dreaded trans fatty acids ( trans fat)! Check the label of the old stand-by stick margarines like Blue Bonnet and Fleishman's, and you will see the words "partially hydrogenated ...oil" in the ingredient list.

So you must be thinking that we can't really win....either way, we get pure, artery-clogging fat of some sort with every bite.

Well, not so fast.....a newer type of buttery-tasting spread has been created - the soft, tub margarine - from seed and plant oils that do not contain trans fats. Some tub margerines still do have trans-fats, so you have to put those label-reading skills to use.

Yet another type of soft tub margarine that is made from plant extracts called "sterols" or stanols" actually helps to lower the level of LDL or "bad cholesterol" in the blood without lowering the HDL or "good" cholesterol. Those margarines, like Benecol, Promise, and Smart Balance, are more expensive and really can benefit adults who are trying to control their cholesterol levels by lifestyle changes. At my house we have the plant-sterol margarine for the parents and a less expensive tub margarine for the younger ones.

The American Heart Association advises us to choose a margarine with liquid vegetable oil (like soybean or canola) as the first ingredient on the label, no more than 2 grams saturated fat per tablespoon ,and that is trans fat -free. Soft margarines that fit the AHA guidelines include Country Crock Calcium Plus Vitamin D, Smart Balance, Fleishmann's Light, Parkay with Calcium, Blue Bonnet Soft Spread, and trans-fat-free I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

Calorie-wise most of these spreads will still have about 100 calories per tablespoon, so don't feel that you can binge on your new "butter" because it is trans-fat -free. It's still a fat...which means high in calories for a very small serving.

But when you absolutely, positively have to have a "butter": your healthiest choice is non-hydrogenated soft margarine.

Fats: The "UGLY"!

Well, we have finally reached what another nutrition blogger calls the Darth Vadar of Fats - not the Good (MUFAs and omega-3's ), not the merely Bad ( saturated fats), but the truly UGLY: the trans fatty acids - or trans-fat.

Trans fats usually start out as a relatively decent unsaturated or poly unsaturated fat like sunflower or soybean oil, then undergo a process called hydrogenation. Hydrogenation turns a simple fat into something akin to a super-saturated fat product - one that has no nutritional value, and no use for our bodies - unlike all the other fats. It does two things very well, though: makes us fat and hardens and clogs our arteries.

What are common trans-fats? Think Crisco.....it is basically trans-fat personified.....partially hydrogenated cottonseed (and other) oils. Many margarines are loaded with trans fat. So are many packaged snack foods, fast foods, and fried foods, and convenience foods like boxed macaroni and cheese.  Even simple snack crackers we buy in vending machines and feed our kids may be loaded with trans-fats. 

How can you tell if a food has a trans-fat in it? You have to look at the label on your food product:

I hope  you are noticing there that along with the trans fat, this food would also include saturated fat too. That's usually the case.

The National Academy of Science (NAS) which advises our government and the public about nutritional requirements states that "trans fatty acids are not essential and provide no known benefit to human health", and further, that as trans fats increase levels of LDL cholesterol  (bad cholesterol), trans fats also lower levels of HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol); thus increasing the risk of coronary heart disease".

Trans- fats are so bad for us that the recommended allowable amount in our daily diet is less than 2 grams!The NAS actually has said there is no safe level at all.

Processed foods abound in trans-fat!  What is a processed food? Well, one kind of processed food is something that doesn't grow in a garden or occur in nature ( again, think Crisco, margarine, TWINKIES!).Now here is the tricky part -- and the reason why we HAVE to become super-sleuths as label-readers-- trans fats are everywhere and packaging cannot always be trusted!

Thanks to the NAS and other regulatory agencies, food processors now have to disclose the amount of trans fat on every label. But here is the little glitch in the system: if the amount of trans fat is .5% or less per serving, they don't really have to list it.....so you have to read further down on your label to see if the words "partially hydrogenated" are in the ingredients!

So no matter what the front of the package says...even if it says "low-fat" or "fat-free" or "no trans-fat"....if the ingredients say partially hydrogenated, you'll be getting the worst of the worst in the world of fats: trans-fat!

Tomorrow: more on avoiding this superfat!

Lighten UP Your Holiday!

When I think about 4th of July weekends, I think of food even before I visualize the flag or fireworks!

I grew up in southern West Virginia, and summer holiday weekends always included pies, s'mores, huge bowls of potato salad, green beans cooked forever with bacon or ham, corn on the cob and that West Virginia specialty: hot dogs smothered with with chili sauce and coleslaw.

I think I gained five pounds by writing that!

Are you planning to picnic this 4th of July?

Believe it or not, it is  possible to lighten up all those dishes and not completely ruin your weight loss plan.

Potato salad and cole slaw are both, of course, mayonnaise-based, and mayo is a prime source for saturated fat.  Fortunately there are good low-fat mayonaises on the market now...even one that has olive oil in it!
So look at your recipes and see where you can substitute low-fat or fat -free ingredients for the saturated fat.

Careful label reading is a must. Don't simply trust the front of the package; often a food may be marketed as "low-fat" - yet when you examine and compare various products ( like hot dogs) you may find out that they aren't such calorie or fat bargains after all.

Choose a turkey hot dog usually which has 100 calories and about 3 grams of saturated fat - instead of a beef hot dog and you will save about 50 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat. Top with traditional mustard and onions instead ( I know, a sacrilege to those of us who grew up near Charleston or Huntington!) and the calories and fat go down even more!

Steam your green beans and season with a sprinkle of sesame seeds, almonds or grated Parmesan cheese and forget the bacon grease, sugar and ham seasoning - they will be just as tasty.

Baked beans have about 1 gram of sat.fat - so substitute them for buttered corn, and you'll also get a protein boost!

Base dessert around watermelon or angel food cake which is usually very low calorie and virtually fat- free - and you save hundreds of calories!

Here are some more recipes to enjoy this weekend! Hope you have a wonderful Fourth of July!

http://lowfatcooking.about.com/od/summer/a/lowfat4thjuly.htm

Fats: The "Bad"

Whole milk, fried chicken, bacon, butter, Big Macs, coconut .....what do these foods have in common?


They are all high in saturated fat.  When we talk about a low-fat diet, a healthy-heart diet, or a healthy weight eating plan, these are the kinds of foods we want to find substitutes for, because while all fats are  higher in calories per gram, these are loaded with the kind of fat that raises the bad (LDL) levels of cholesterol in our blood. Again, saturated fat will stay solid at room temperature...like the skin on a piece of chicken. 

The National Cholesterol Education Program recommends that your saturated fat intake be less than 7% of your total food intake daily. That is, if you are following a 2,000-calorie diet, you should not consume more than 14 grams of saturated fat each day. Seven  percent of a 1500 calorie diet would be about 11 grams of saturated fat each day.



To give you an idea of how the above foods measure up and just how easy it is to consume way too much saturated fat:


A glass of whole milk has 146 calories and about 5 grams of sat. fat.
A KFC fried chicken breast has 470 calories and 8 grams of sat. fat.
Bacon: see the white fat on a piece of bacon? That is what saturated fat looks like.  A serving of bacon typically is 160 calories and more than half of those are from saturated fat.
A pat of butter is about 100 calories, 11 grams of fat and 7.2 of them are saturated.
A cup of coconut is like a Whopper! 283 calories and 24 grams of saturated fat; that one ounce you are likely to eat on a piece of cake or pie? Still has 8 grams of saturated fat.



And that Big Mac?
540 calories and 10 grams of saturated fat!



Remember, these foods that have saturated fat usually also have other fats - generally polyunsaturated and trans fats - in them also. and the more fat, the higher in calories and the smaller the serving size should be for us to keep from gaining weight.



Cheese is an example of a food most of us ( I'm raising my hand high) love, and it's also a food that can have a high level of saturated fat: 5.6 grams in a slice of American cheese.  Same for an ounce of Colby cheese, 6 grams of sat. fat in an ounce of Cheddar.  How much is an ounce? About the size of a pair of dice!



So while the healthy MUFAs and Omega -3 fats do play a role in a healthy diet, plan how often you will have unhealthy saturated fat in your meals and what size portion you will have!