Posts Tagged ‘calories’

Calorie counting is destructive. The initial goal should be to get strong and fit. Counting calories can make many dieters weak. Being hungry all the time is counter productive.

Calorie control equals weight management to most people, and even the medical experts think this is true. What calories really do is different from the hype. When the weight loss industry capitalizes on the proven benefits of cutting calories, what they are doing is promoting a way to utilize diet in an unhealthy way.

Caveman Diet

Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (USCF) say their research has shown people on a high protein diet combined with plenty of vegetables show dramatic health improvements. These include weight loss, and lower blood pressure. What they are talking about is a diet that is considered similar to the “Hunters Gathers” or caveman diet.

Dr. Tim White a paleobiologist from the University of California Berkley said: “Our Biology is still basically the same biology that we had as hunters and gathers 100,000 years ago in Africa.” Dr. White said the constant physical activity that the cavemen had to undertake to hunt and find food kept them fit, lean, muscular and active. Their diet consisted of large amounts of lean meat, and vegetables.

Robert Lustig, MD. an endocrinologist at UCSF, said that people on the diet have experienced a regression of their diabetes as a result, to the point they are effectively cured.

Dr. Kim Mulvihill, a reporter from CBS tried the diet herself and doctors recommended she should stay on the diet permanently. Her cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar levels dropped dramatically over a few weeks. After seven weeks she was no longer pre-diabetic, and by combining the so called paleo diet with a weight loss program she lost thirty pounds.

Fish

Another article talked about people who eat fish as their primary source of animal protein. They reported lower glucose concentrations with a reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Researchers at the University of Valencia reported in the journal Nutricion Hospitalaria that there are benefits from a Mediterranean diet high in fish consumption. This study showed the benefits of the omega 3’s in fish. Omega 3 from fish and grass fed meat controls inflammation. Micronutrients from both vegetables and fruits also, turn off inflammation.

Inflammation

There are a good number of studies that show weight gain may be linked to chronic inflammation. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition researches looked at nine years of data tracking 1,222 adults and found that weight gain was associated with an increase in chronic inflammation. This may be why weight gain is associated with heart disease and cancer. Both these conditions are associated with chronic inflammation.

Counting calories is counter productive, especially when you buy 100 calorie packs of pure carbohydrates in the form of crackers of cookies. The only weapon against obesity is whole foods diet with all the omega 3 fatty acids and nutrients your body need.

A diet based on vegetables, and fruit with some high quality protein is better than a calorie restricted diet for weight management. A nation that has embraced calorie counting as a way to control weight is deluding itself into thinking that saving calories can repair the damage done by faux foods. By changing your goal from weight, to having more energy by becoming healthier your will achieve a consistent weight.

Losing weight the American way means easy breezy and versatile.. The one thing about research is the ludicrousness of the study doesn’t matter. It seems any study can come up with potentially accurate information. The one thing is I am hoping is the studies didn’t cost a fortune. There is no reasonable price for these studies.

The Large Fork Study

The first one is hard to be discrete when practicing. Researchers from the University of Utah in the Journal of Consumer Research found the larger your fork and the bigger you bite when you eat, the less you will probably end up eating when you are in a restaurant. They used two sizes of forks in a popular Italian restaurant to measure how much people ate, and found that the participants (who used a pitch fork) ate less than those with smaller ones. I am not sure what size folks were used but if you are going for results the bigger the better.

Further testing showed that when the participants were presented with plate loaded with food, those with large forks ate considerable less than those with small ones. The amount of food consumed was not influence by fork size when they were given small serving.

This means when you use a large fork always order a super sized plate of food. This will help at buffets where you can load your plate to overflowing.

Remember this doesn’t work for all settings. When this was tried with volunteers in a laboratory, the results were the opposite; the participants with the small forks ate less than those with the larger forks. So when you eat in a laboratory leave the pitch fork home.

The Neat Method

The next innovative way to lose weight has been put into practice by millions of people. It is often called Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT), simply put, it is the movement you do outside structured physical activity.

This is wonderful news to those that don’t like to move around much. All you have to do is start to fidget, with such activities as pacing, if lying on the couch chewing gum will do, and talking even if to yourself will burn some of those nasty calories.

At work drum your fingers against your desktop, while bobbing your foot under the desk. This is called incidental physical activities. On plane flights the person that squirms and shakes his legs may be annoying, but he is burning more calories than you. Your best bet is to emulate his movements, instead of complaining. .

To lose weight you have to mean business, so if you are right handed, shove food in with your left hand. Expect some misses, so wear old stained outfits. When you test these methods you will be doing it blindly, there isn’t much information on how long you have to do it to see results. Because the researchers care so much about your health, they didn’t bother to tell you the best foods to eat, or how to make fidgeting a lifestyle. I am sure there is another expensive study in the future, which will address those issues.

The disclaimer, check with your health care provider before embarking on losing weight with these methods. These are meant to bridge the gap, when simple calorie counting is too much trouble.

I don’t count calories. Calorie counting I find to be both counter productive and an impediment to a healthy diet. It has taken some years to come to this conclusion. It’s not that calorie counting is not only useless it can be dangerous. Personally I have no intention of drinking Diet Coke or using artificial sweeteners. The question is do I want to poison myself to cut calories. Neither will I opt for a low fat variety of a whole food product. When calorie count mentality is out for the count health will win out.

Main Stream Diets

This is what I have against most main stream diet plans. They go with the flow and use  America’s perception of what getting slim is about. We would be a slim nation if we just ate whole unadulterated food.

What I find is that the popular diets get repeat business, by using the wrong guidelines, calories in and calories out. Weight management in this country is counter intuitive. It is becoming more and more desperate as people balloon off the charts.

Calorie Counting isn’t a Promising Solution

Bariatric sugery, and gastric bypass are drastic attempts to fix a problem that is so out of control. Part of the reason things have gotten to this point is we are relying on the calorie content of foods. Some of the heavily looked up terms are calories in strawberries, calories in apples and fruit calories. These terms get anywhere from 75,000 to 240,000 of look ups per month. Look where this information has taken us. We now can eat less fruit and vegetables and substitute them with 100 calorie snack packs of cookies.

Count Nutrients

Instead of counting daily calories a far better approach would be to count the nutritional content of the day’s food. Weight management should be about much more than calories. It shouldn’t be about how slim we can get, but on how healthy we can become. With that as a goal we will be able to maintain our idea weight. What we should want is a incredible body that functions incredibility.   

This is another way to look at what we do to ourselves, that no other species does.

 Can you give me the calorie count, before I indulge in some nutrient dense food?