Peer pressure around the holidays
I don’t think there’s an area in life where there’s more peer pressure than in eating- especially around the holidays!
In the past, when I have gone home to visit the family, there’s this false notion that I don’t like anything. My family completely bought into the low fat/high carb craze of the 1980’s, and still think that is just how people should eat. When I cut down on eating pasta (a staple food in my family growing up) about 10 years ago, suddenly, I was the one that wouldn’t eat anything. He’s picky! He’s obsessed!
Funny, because all I had done at that time was cut down on certain specific carbohydrates. I think the problem was that, like many people, they did not want to look at themselves and analyze their own eating habits- so it was much easier to categorize me and cast my eating habits aside (without even looking into the reasons or positive benefits a lower carb diet may provide!).
This Thanksgiving, I was reminded a bit of this while celebrating with friends. While I fully realize that Thanksgiving is not a time to preach or tell people how to eat, the subject of tryptophan came up at the dinner table. It always does! Many people think the amino acid l-typtophan in the turkey is what makes people tired after the meal. But of course as we know, it’s the carbs! So I pointed this out. “It’s not the tryptophan, it’s the carbs.” Well that was turned into the joke of the night, so everything after that was “No it’s the carbs!”. It was pretty funny, but at the same time, I think impossible for people to believe!
Not much of a chance of cutting out carbs at a Thanksgiving dinner, but some smart decisions can be made. Do you really need to pile on huge helpings of stuffing, mashed potatoes, rolls, and have 2 desserts?
I believe the trick to avoiding most of the inevitable peer pressure at holiday meals is to fill your plate. But, fill it with the good stuff like green salad and turkey. Take small amounts of most of the other items, so you don’t have people asking you “didn’t you try the ________”? it’s SO good, you should try it!” For dessert, ask for a small piece of pie. Yes, you might still be mocked, but if you just tell everyone you are SO FULL from dinner, they will back down.
December here we come! The average American puts on 10 pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Stay tuned and don’t be one of them!
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A Healthy Thanksgiving?
Pretty much anything I can write here, coming from a health and fitness site, will probably sound like preaching and taking the fun out of one of America’s favorite holidays!
I’m not going to take a lot of time to berate people over eating poorly on Thanksgiving.
But, here are a few quick tips to enjoy the day and keep you health:
1. Do some exercise, but don’t feel like you have to run a marathon to burn off all the calories you are about to consume. Just going for a walk in the morning and after dinner is great!
2. Enjoy dessert, but keep the not-so-fun carbs to a minimum. For example, it’s perfectly fine to skip the potatoes and rolls, since you will likely be getting plenty of other carbs in your meal!
3. Keep alcohol to a minimum. This will surely impair your judgment and you will almost certainly overeat!
4. Don’t skip meals. Even if you are eating your Thanksgiving feast in the mid-afternoon as many people do, don’t allow yourself to get super hungry in the attempt to enjoy your food more! You will definitely overeat and pay for it with an expanding waistline if you do.
Also, inevitably, someone will point out that eating all that tryptophan from the turkey is what makes you tired. Nonsense! It’s the carbs, not l-tryptophan that causes you to crash after Thanksgiving.
Have fun & enjoy the day!
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11 – Fast food survival tactics
(duration 18:03)
Scientists claim junk food is as addictive as heroin
http://www.grist.org/article/scientists-claim-junk-food-is-as-addictive-as-heroin/
The more junk food you eat, the more you’ll find yourself having to exercise
Rodents are really a poor model to understand human psychology and even physiology
Lots of carbs coupled with lots of fat is a double metabolic wammy!
“Addiction” label can easily turn into self-fulfilling prophecy
Self-responsibility is key to taking charge of your own healthy and fitness
The 30 Worst Fast Food Restaurant Choices
http://features.fitnessmagazine.com/30WorstFastFoodRestaurantChoices.html
Beware big buns, which equate to excess carbs and thus fat storage
Look for fresh veggies, rather than deep fried madness (which can be loaded with free radicals)
If you need to do damage control for a bad meal, make sure you supplement with anti-oxidents
Beware a high carb to protein ratio (aim for 1 to 1)
Use nuts to obtain your good fat and energy and look for healthy salads with adequate protein
Nutrition protein bars will do in a bind much better than most fast food
Study: 40% of U.S. May Be Obese by 2018
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/17/health/main5683256.shtml
The Obese Don’t Always Know It
http://www.livescience.com/health/091117-obesity-body-size.html
Self-acceptance is a major component to coming to terms with one’s health and fitness ideals
Life is about flourishing instead of doing damage control!
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Why eating breakfast is important in staying fit (Part 1 of 2)
Lots of people who are trying to lose weight will skip breakfast in the attempt to avoid calories.
In yet another counter-intuitive aspect of fitness and weight loss, skipping breakfast is actually more likely to lead to weight gain than weight loss.
The reasons are:
1. By skipping breakfast you are ensuring that you will have less energy and more hunger throughout the rest of your day, and this will lead to more sugar cravings and overeating.
2. Eating breakfast will allow your body to feel more nourished and satisfied, making portion sizes smaller and easier to manage.
3. When you allow yourself to go without food for long periods of time (15 or so hours from the night before if you wait until mid-day to eat!), your body act like you are in starvation mode- and store calories as fat in anticipation of another long period of time before eating again.
Next up: What constitutes a healthy breakfast?
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The Ultimate Tea Diet- Hype or Miracle Weight Loss?
As a daily drinker of tea, I am a big proponent of it’s health benefits, which include a high amount of anti-oxidants. I 
was excited to come across the book, The Ultimate Tea Diet, the other day at the bookstore!
Although I do love tea, I was pretty skeptical of what looked like another gimmicky-type diet with no scientific backing.
However, I think the author, Mark “Dr. Tea” Ukra, may be onto something.
He recommends drinking as much green, black, oolong, or white tea as you’d like. He claims that tea will “help us lose weight, reduce our cravings for sweets, suppress our appetite, increase our insulin’s effectiveness, lower our cholesterol, and stimulate thermogenesis, which helps the body burn fat for energy.” Sounds great! But the scientific studies showing this are lacking.
So is it bunk?
While the use of caffeine is a universal claim to help in weight loss, it’s actually another ingredient that the book discusses which was enlightening to me. L-theanine, actually counteracts the harmful effects of the caffeine in tea (which is already much lower than coffee and soda). This has been backed up by clinical studies referenced in the book.
Also, as we have covered before, green tea in particular contains EGCG, which increases the rate and efficiency of fat burning.
What about the diet part of it?
The author recommends eating 3 meals a day, and sticking with low fat and moderate carbohydrates, but no processed white carbs. Avoiding white carbs like rice and sugar is an excellent idea, but this is where Healthy Mind Fit Body will part with the Ultimate Tea Diet.
While the tea certainly can be a useful supplement to a healthy diet, ideally, you would want to eat much more fat that what Dr. Tea recommends. By going with a low fat diet, you are missing out on some important nutrients, as well as some tasty foods!
So my assessment is:
+ on the tea
+ on cutting out of the bad, processed carbs
- cutting down on fat
So drink up, but do not skimp on your fat intake!
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