People are forever looking for shortcuts to lose weight. Pills, drinks, weight loss tea, Atkins diet, meal replacements, South Beach, protein drinks, juicers, on and on. The problem in giving a one size fits all approach to weight loss is that we are all different. Some are recently overweight, some have been fighting weight problems for years. Some are genetically disposed to be thin, others genetically heavy. Some are men, others women. Because so many are searching for the answer to weight loss, I want to address some common myths.
Myth: Carbs are fattening.
Truth: Excess calories are fattening. Calories come from carbs, fat, and protein. Carbs and protein each have 4 calories per gram, and fat has 9 calories per gram. Another source I haven't mentioned before is alcohol (7 calories per gram). The main dietary demon is fat. Butter, margarine, oil, mayonnaise, and grease are obvious sources of fat. But there is also, cheese, nuts, peanut butter, and hidden fat in meat. Remember that although some fats are healthier than others, they all are equally fattening. Dietary fat is easily stored as excess body fat; carbs are easily stored as muscle fuel.
Myth: High protein, low carb diets are the best way to lose weight.
Truth: Your best bet is to eat smaller portions and create a calorie deficiency for the day. The type of calories are less important than the number of calories eaten. All calories count. My biggest personal hang up about this type of diet is that it doesn't provide the energy you need to be active. To be your healthiest, you need to control what you eat as well as participate in exercise. Carbs give you the energy you need to exercise. I also don't believe in starting any diet that you can't maintain the rest of your life, and if you plan on living an active lifestyle, this just won't work.
Myth: Food eaten after 8:00 pm turns into fat.
Truth: If you have calories left in your calorie budget, and you are hungry, it's okay to eat late. Better to honor your hunger than end up binge eating.
The verdict is still out if eating late is inherently fattening in itself. The real problem might be what we eat. Binging on ice cream, buttery popcorn, or fudge brownies before bed adds a lot of calories to your calorie total for the day. Be sure you are eating plenty of your calories during the day and not skipping breakfast. This will help you not to binge at night.
Myth: The more you exercise, the more weight you'll lose.
Truth: The more you exercise, the hungrier you will be and the more you will eat. You can spend an hour exercising and burn 500 calories. Reward yourself with a bag of chips and eat 600 calories in 10 minutes. Your body has natural urges to protect itself from wasting away. This is why it is harder for women to lose weight than men. Nature wants men to be lean hunters, and women to be able to reproduce. No offense ladies, I'm not trying to destroy all the efforts of the bra burners in the 70s. The "ideal" man has 4% body fat, and the "ideal" woman has 12% essential body fat. This difference allows women to nourish a baby if she becomes pregnant. Try to get below these levels and nature is going to fight you. Again, you have to create a calorie deficiency through a combination of diet and exercise.
Myth: Train for a marathon, Ironman, Tough Mudder, etc. and the body fat will melt off.
Truth: Wishful thinking. Training for triathlon I burn 5000-7500 calories a week above my basal metabolic rate. If I ate a normal diet of 1800-2000 calories a day, I should be losing about 2 pounds of fat a week. But I've weighed between 149-151 pounds for months. One thing about training that hard is that you tend to be more sedentary the rest of the day. I can tell you that I have gotten much better at napping on the couch over the last several months. Also, I'm not trying to achieve a calorie deficiency, so I tend to eat larger meals and more snacks.
Myth: Exercise kills your appetite
Truth: It does for a short time, but after you cool off and recover, your hunger will catch up with you. Body temperature does show some effect on appetite. So being hot after a gym workout can slow your appetite, but being cool after a pool workout can actually make you hungrier. Try to fill the hunger with a low calorie, nutrition dense snack or meal full of colorful vegetables.
Myth: By exercising you can turn your fat into muscle.
Truth: Fat and muscle are two separate entities and are not interchangeable. Fat does not turn into muscle. The reverse is also true. If you have been exercising and stop for some reason, your muscle is not going to turn into fat. Ever buy an untrimmed brisket and see how there is a layer of fat on the meat? You have a layer of fat over your muscle just like that. Create a calorie deficiency and you body will convert the layer of fat into energy it can use and the fat layer will shrink. Eat more calories than you burn and your body will store the excess calories for later and the layer of fat will grow. Work your muscles and the muscle fibers grow and expand. Stop working the muscles and the muscle fibers will actually shrink.
If there is one common theme in all this it is that if you want to lose weight, you need to create a calorie deficiency, either by consuming less, burning more, or a combination of the two. Personally, I feel that if you do it all through diet alone, you are cheating yourself out of the health benefits of exercise. If you try to do it all through exercise, it will be a long, slow road, and if you continue to ignore a diet low in saturated and trans fats, you will not realize all the health benefits you should.
Showing posts with label fat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fat. Show all posts
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Dietary Fats
Dietary fats are the fats that we eat. Although we have been taught by media and diet fads that fats are bad and should be avoided, that is not entirely true. Some fats should be avoided, but others are necessary.
Remember that there are three macronutrients. Carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Each provide energy, among other things, for the body. On the energy scale, carbohydrates and proteins are tied at 4 calories per gram. Fat more than doubles the energy it has at 9 calories per gram. Keep this in mind when you are eating your fats. An equal portion size of fat has twice as many calories as protein or carbs. Therefore, they should be used sparingly if your aim is weight loss or weight control.
Eating fat is not the only way you get adipose tissue on your body. Your body also makes its own fat from excess calories to store energy for later.
Fat is an essential nutrient. Therefore, any diet that eliminates all fat from your intake is not healthy. Fat lubricates joints, insulates nerves, supports a healthy immune system, forms the cell membrane of every cell in your body, and is necessary for absorbing and storing fat soluble vitamins. The fat soluble vitamins are A, D, E, and K. These vitamins need some fat in your diet to be absorbed, and they are stored in the fatty tissue of your body.
Just a side note, be careful not to megadose on these vitamins. Unlike water soluble vitamins which are washed out of the body and need to be constantly replaced, the fat soluble vitamins can accumulate to a toxic level in your body. This is not a concern if you get your vitamins from a healthy diet, but if you supplement with vitamin pills, it is something to watch out for.
There are two bad fats that you should strive to exclude from or limit in your diet. On food labels, you will see a category for "Total Fat." Under that you will see listed "Saturated Fat" and "Trans Fat." These are the two fats you want to limit in your diet.
Trans fat is considered the worst of the fats. It is a fat that is found sparingly in nature. Mostly, it exists through man made processes call partial hydrogenation. It's a chemical change that I'll leave up to you to google if you want to know more. What is important for you to know now is that this fat increases LDL cholesterol and decreases HDL cholesterol. As a refresher, LDL is the bad stuff. Think of the first L as lousy. HDL is the good stuff. Think of the H as healthy. This is the fat that you should avoid like the plague. Read your food labels and shun any food products that list any trans fat. In the ingredient list you can also look for the keyword "hydrogenated." It will indicate a trans fat in the product. Trans fats can be found in ANY processed food, so check them all. Food processors like them because they are inexpensive and last a long time.
Saturated Fat is the next bad fat. It does not need to be avoided, but should be limited. Saturated fat comes mainly from animals. It's the marbling in your rib eye, the 7 of your 93/7 ground beef, and what makes your bacon sizzle. This fat raises LDL levels and increases risk of type 2 diabetes. Apart from animal products, it is also found in coconut oil, peanut oil, and palm kernel oil
Saturated fats and trans fats are usually solid at room temperature(with the exception of the oils listed). Use this rule of thumb to help you identify a fat on the fly if you're not sure what type it is. Solid fats are typically bad fats and should be avoided or limited.
Now, when you read that food label, you might see that total fat is listed at 5 grams, trans fat at .5 grams, and saturated at 3 grams. 3 grams + .5 grams = 3.5 grams. So if total fat is listed at 5 grams, where are the missing 1.5 grams? It's there, but in my opinion this is a shortfall of the food labeling system. Of course, I understand there are space limits on food packaging so some things will have to be left off.
The missing fat is a combination of our two healthier fats, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.
Monounsaturated fat is found in nuts, avocados, canola oil and olive oil. It helps to lower LDL and increase HDL cholesterols. So here we finally have a fat that actually can help you with your cholesterol. But these fats still have 9 calories per gram, so we should be careful not to go overboard with them.
Polyunsaturated fat is found in fatty fish like salmon, vegetable oil and corn oil, walnuts, and sunflower seeds. This fat also improves blood cholesterol levels, and includes the group of Omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3s are proving themselves to be very beneficial to your heart.
These two fats are usually found in a liquid form at room temperature. As a rule then, at room temperature, liquid fats are typically healthy, solid fats are typically not.
In my daughters' school, they have a system of teaching nutrition by dividing foods in to "go" foods, "slow" foods, and "no" foods. Using this method, I would break the fats down like this: Trans fat is a no food, saturated fat is a slow food, and mono and poly unsaturated fats are go foods.
Take some time while shopping and make sure that your food products have the fats you need, and avoid the fats you don't. A diet that is low in fats will be lower in calories. It will also be healthier for your heart as long as you are careful to choose which fats you eat as part of your necessary macronutrient.
Remember that there are three macronutrients. Carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Each provide energy, among other things, for the body. On the energy scale, carbohydrates and proteins are tied at 4 calories per gram. Fat more than doubles the energy it has at 9 calories per gram. Keep this in mind when you are eating your fats. An equal portion size of fat has twice as many calories as protein or carbs. Therefore, they should be used sparingly if your aim is weight loss or weight control.
Eating fat is not the only way you get adipose tissue on your body. Your body also makes its own fat from excess calories to store energy for later.
Fat is an essential nutrient. Therefore, any diet that eliminates all fat from your intake is not healthy. Fat lubricates joints, insulates nerves, supports a healthy immune system, forms the cell membrane of every cell in your body, and is necessary for absorbing and storing fat soluble vitamins. The fat soluble vitamins are A, D, E, and K. These vitamins need some fat in your diet to be absorbed, and they are stored in the fatty tissue of your body.
Just a side note, be careful not to megadose on these vitamins. Unlike water soluble vitamins which are washed out of the body and need to be constantly replaced, the fat soluble vitamins can accumulate to a toxic level in your body. This is not a concern if you get your vitamins from a healthy diet, but if you supplement with vitamin pills, it is something to watch out for.
There are two bad fats that you should strive to exclude from or limit in your diet. On food labels, you will see a category for "Total Fat." Under that you will see listed "Saturated Fat" and "Trans Fat." These are the two fats you want to limit in your diet.
Trans fat is considered the worst of the fats. It is a fat that is found sparingly in nature. Mostly, it exists through man made processes call partial hydrogenation. It's a chemical change that I'll leave up to you to google if you want to know more. What is important for you to know now is that this fat increases LDL cholesterol and decreases HDL cholesterol. As a refresher, LDL is the bad stuff. Think of the first L as lousy. HDL is the good stuff. Think of the H as healthy. This is the fat that you should avoid like the plague. Read your food labels and shun any food products that list any trans fat. In the ingredient list you can also look for the keyword "hydrogenated." It will indicate a trans fat in the product. Trans fats can be found in ANY processed food, so check them all. Food processors like them because they are inexpensive and last a long time.
Saturated Fat is the next bad fat. It does not need to be avoided, but should be limited. Saturated fat comes mainly from animals. It's the marbling in your rib eye, the 7 of your 93/7 ground beef, and what makes your bacon sizzle. This fat raises LDL levels and increases risk of type 2 diabetes. Apart from animal products, it is also found in coconut oil, peanut oil, and palm kernel oil
Saturated fats and trans fats are usually solid at room temperature(with the exception of the oils listed). Use this rule of thumb to help you identify a fat on the fly if you're not sure what type it is. Solid fats are typically bad fats and should be avoided or limited.
Now, when you read that food label, you might see that total fat is listed at 5 grams, trans fat at .5 grams, and saturated at 3 grams. 3 grams + .5 grams = 3.5 grams. So if total fat is listed at 5 grams, where are the missing 1.5 grams? It's there, but in my opinion this is a shortfall of the food labeling system. Of course, I understand there are space limits on food packaging so some things will have to be left off.
The missing fat is a combination of our two healthier fats, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.
Monounsaturated fat is found in nuts, avocados, canola oil and olive oil. It helps to lower LDL and increase HDL cholesterols. So here we finally have a fat that actually can help you with your cholesterol. But these fats still have 9 calories per gram, so we should be careful not to go overboard with them.
Polyunsaturated fat is found in fatty fish like salmon, vegetable oil and corn oil, walnuts, and sunflower seeds. This fat also improves blood cholesterol levels, and includes the group of Omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3s are proving themselves to be very beneficial to your heart.
These two fats are usually found in a liquid form at room temperature. As a rule then, at room temperature, liquid fats are typically healthy, solid fats are typically not.
In my daughters' school, they have a system of teaching nutrition by dividing foods in to "go" foods, "slow" foods, and "no" foods. Using this method, I would break the fats down like this: Trans fat is a no food, saturated fat is a slow food, and mono and poly unsaturated fats are go foods.
Take some time while shopping and make sure that your food products have the fats you need, and avoid the fats you don't. A diet that is low in fats will be lower in calories. It will also be healthier for your heart as long as you are careful to choose which fats you eat as part of your necessary macronutrient.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Everything you need to know to lose weight.
Here's what you need to know to lose weight.
1. Your body uses energy for all of its chemical reactions. The chemical reactions are what we refer to when we talk about your body's metabolism. That includes muscle contractions (from walking to your heart beating), hormone creation, repairing cells, creating new blood cells, growing hair, digesting food, etc.
2. If you eat more calories that your body needs, your body stores most of the extra energy in fat cells.
3. If you eat less calories than your body needs, your body takes the extra energy from fat cells to make up the difference.
4. A pound of fat contains 3,500 calories. So when you accumulate an excess of 3,500 calories, whether in a weeks time, a month or a year, you will have added 1 of fat to your body.
5. When you create a 3,500 calorie deficiency from your diet to your body's need, you will have "burned" 1 pound of fat.
6. If you eat exactly as many calories as you "burn", you will reach and equilibrium and neither gain nor lose weight.
So losing weight becomes as simple as burning more calories than you eat. To know how many you eat is easy to find out, though it will be some work to find the info and add it up.
1. Your body uses energy for all of its chemical reactions. The chemical reactions are what we refer to when we talk about your body's metabolism. That includes muscle contractions (from walking to your heart beating), hormone creation, repairing cells, creating new blood cells, growing hair, digesting food, etc.
2. If you eat more calories that your body needs, your body stores most of the extra energy in fat cells.
3. If you eat less calories than your body needs, your body takes the extra energy from fat cells to make up the difference.
4. A pound of fat contains 3,500 calories. So when you accumulate an excess of 3,500 calories, whether in a weeks time, a month or a year, you will have added 1 of fat to your body.
5. When you create a 3,500 calorie deficiency from your diet to your body's need, you will have "burned" 1 pound of fat.
6. If you eat exactly as many calories as you "burn", you will reach and equilibrium and neither gain nor lose weight.
So losing weight becomes as simple as burning more calories than you eat. To know how many you eat is easy to find out, though it will be some work to find the info and add it up.
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