Cold water

Eat that sugary snack cake that you picked up in the checkout line at the gas station and you will have wasted 500 calories. There’s nothing in there that will do you any good. No muscle building proteins. No complex carbs to keep you fueled. No healthy fats keep testosterone levels up. Just simple sugars that will spike your insulin levels and shut off the body’s ability to burn fat as fuel.

The same holds true for what we drink. One huge source of empty calories that many people have a hard time giving up is soda. Most people who think they’ve given up soda do so by switching to the “healthier” diet soda. As if a diet soda has fewer chemicals.

I ran across a University of Texas study recently about diet soda’s impact on weight loss. The study followed 1,177 diet soda drinkers who were either normal or just overweight, but not obese. “On average, for each diet soft drink our participants drank per day, they were 65 percent more likely to become overweight during the next seven to eight years, and 41 percent more likely to become obese,” said Sharon Fowler, M.P.H., faculty associate in the division of clinical epidemiology in the Health Science Center’s department of medicine.

Those aren’t very good odds, as far as I’m concerned.

If that’s not enough, the study goes on to present an additional finding. The more diet soda that a participant drank, the higher their incidence of weight gain. Those who drank the most soda gained the most weight. A direct correlation between drinking soda and gaining weight.

There are many theories on why this is the case. A couple of the most common include:

• By drinking diet soda you’re tricking yourself into believing that this is a healthier option and that you deserve to eat more of other foods to balance things out. How many times have you heard or seen someone order a salad and drown it in dressing? When you’ve loaded it down with high-octane creamy dressing, it ceases to be a healthy choice. That one calorie diet drink suddenly turned into a few hundred wasted calories. Good job!
• The diet soda tricks the mind into thinking it’s getting the sugar it desires and you create a negative hormone response. The body becomes confused and shuts off the fat burning mechanisms and increases cravings for sweets.

So, what should you do instead?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and again, and again. WATER.

Not flavored water.
Not sports drink.
Not coffee (after all it’s water based, right? Sorry, it doesn’t count)

Plain old cold water. That’s right, its boring. But would you rather be a little boring or a lot heavier?

Mmmm! Chicken Pizza!

Eating healthy does NOT mean bland and boring food. They say the
proof is in the pudding. Well, I don’t have a recipe for pudding
today, but how about one for pizza!

Click here for the recipe

PS – This mouthwatering Healthy Chicken Pizza is just ONE of the
197 Healthy and Delicious Recipes my friends over at Prograde
Nutrition have compiled.

Check out the recipe book here

Mom was right. Drink your milk!

In the study, they recruited 56 males aged 18-30 and put them through a 5 day a week weighlifting program. Following the workout sessions, they gave the participants one of three drinks:

• Two cups of skim milk
• A soy beverage
• A carbohydrate beverage

The group that drank milk lost almost twice as much fat as the group drinking the carb beverage. They also gained 40 percent more lean mass than the soy drinkers and 63 percent more than the carb drinkers.

Need more evidence? A study published in Medicine in Sports and Science, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, studied a group of competitive soccer players and determined that post-exercise consumption of chocolate milk had equal or better benefits than a commercial workout recovery drink after intensified training.

Mom was right. Drink your milk! Make mine chocolate please!

But, if you’ve ever tried to keep a food journal you know that it can be quite a hassle.  Logging calories, protein, carbohydrate, and fat means that you have to gather all that info, figure out what it means, and then write it all down.  Once you’ve got it written down, now you have to figure out how to use it.  I’ve got great news for you!

Check out Daily Burn.  They’ve put together a ridiculously simple way for your to track your intake, measure it against your energy output, and learn how you can get and stay on track.  Their food database has a few hundred thousand foods already loaded, taking all the detailed calculations off your shoulders.  If you’ve got an iPhone, they even have an app that you can use to track all your data on the go.

One of the most important parts to the equation is breaking down the macronutrients: protein, carbohydrate, and fat.  Too many people focus on just counting calories and that can be dangerous.  Weight loss is not as simple as ‘calories in vs. calories out’.  Instead, you have to have the right balance.  One-thousand calories of Twinkies is different than 1000 calories of fruits and vegetables.

Carbohydrate is also needed to burn fat for energy. Without carbs, the body looks to break down muscle to keep it fueled up, meaning that you’ll lose muscle while leaving the fat behind.

You should look to healthy options for your carbohydrate and stay away from the “bad carbs”. Good sources include fruit and vegetables. Not only will these sources provide you with carbohydrate that enters your bloodstream slower, giving you energy longer, but they are also better sources of fiber which meakes you feel fuller.

Stay away from the sugary or refined carbs, also known as high-glycemic, such as candy, most cereals, white bread, white rice, popcorn, white potatoes.

The Tri-County Business Referral Group is sponsoring a free seminar titled “Healthy Body, Full Pockets” where you’ll learn tips that you can put into action right away to improve your success. The seminar is scheduled for Thursday, August 6, at 7PM at the Bolingbrook Recreation and Aquatic Center (200 S. Lindsey Lane).

It’s free, it’s sure to be entertaining, and you’re sure to learn a few great ideas. (Best of all, I’ll be the presenter!)

I hope to see you there!

Learn more about the good and bad carbs, and many other topics, by downloading my free report, 13 Fitness Myths Busted! You can get your copy on the right side of this page.

Those fad diets all want you to believe that all carbohydrates are bad and do nothing but add weight. Fact is that there are actually some brain functions that rely solely on carbohydrate. Also, fat can only be burned effectively in the presence of carbohydrate. Without carbs, your body turns to the muscle, breaking it down for energy instead. That’s bad and counterproductive to improving fitness and weight loss.

Learn more about the good and bad carbs, and many other topics, by downloading my free report, 13 Fitness Myths Busted! You can get your copy on the right side of this page.

Go ahead. Get it now!

When: Saturday, February 7 2009
Time: 11:30a.m. – 12:45p.m.
Where: Bolingbrook Park District (BRAC), 200 S. Lindsey Lane