old school nutrition advice, still the best after fifty years!
There is a mountain of conflicting health advice these days – how do you sort out the facts from the fiction?
Such a great question but unfortunately even the most knowledgeable fitness experts don’t have the straight up answer. Although the best fitness and nutritional information is logical, new discoveries happen daily and it’s a tough job for anyone to keep up!
For example, all salad is good for you – right? Wrong. Did you know that Wendy’s Taco salad boasts a whopping 730 calories, 20 grams of ‘bad fat’ nad almost the entire days quota of sodium. Add the bread, crackers or pop and you’ve about the same ammount of energy as three chocolate bars. And how about hitting your arteries with some good old comfort food, like Stoffers Macaroni and Cheese? Each package has half a days saturated and trans fat (12 grams), whopping sodium levels and almost 500 calories. Although it may be lower in calories than some pre-packaged foods (such as Shepards Pie) there is more to a ‘good food’ than just the calorie count.
So who has the accurate information? Although I’d love to say […]
the power of food
Food is a powerful part of our lives; it joins our friends together, alters our emotions, energizes us, controls our health, and plays a defining role in determining our body shape. Simply put, we can’t survive without it -but there’s also a flip side.
The past five years working and specializing in obesity has really opened my eyes to the heart-breaking things that happen behind closed doors, in the lives of many of these people. Just like many powerful things, there are people who abuse, in the case of food it is usually to connect with certain emotional satisfactions. If you have friends or family in this situation, you can’t truly be of any help at all until you understand their logic and driving force behind their behaviour.
Some people make food their greatest focus, the centre of their universe. They think about what they are going to have for dinner all day, where they are going to have it, what they are going to wear when they eat it, and perhaps even what they are going to watch on TV when they eat it. Everything in their house […]
thinking outside the breakfast box
Is breakfast a frantic grab of coffee-spilling rush as you run out the door in the morning?
Relax – skimping on the most important meal of the day is often due to lack of knowledge, not lack of time.
The past decade has seen a gigantic amount of controversy over these low-fat but high carbohydrate ‘perfect breakfasts’. Many foods could be labeled mistakenly ‘healthy’ just because they are low in fat. The reality is, if you meal fails to contain a balance of fat/carbohydrate and protein, you may hit hunger over-drive and energy slumps far before you need to.
The main point is that there is nothing vastly different about breakfast than any other meal, and a balanced meal contains approximately 20-30% fat, 40-50% carbohydrate and 20-30% protein. For example; you probably would not aim to eat potatoes alone for dinner, but include meat and vegetables. Eating a bagel with a slab of cream cheese with your coffee is pretty much equivalent, nutritionally speaking, as eating potatoes alone for dinner..
The challenge is not about subtracting from your morning bagel or cereal, it is about adding to it. Expand your dietary […]
