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Archive for the ‘Healthy Food’ Category

In this article we will cut right to the chase and eliminate your guess work about how to master weight management challenges. For weight loss to occur, no matter how you slice it, the calories in food have to be BALANCED.

Yet, the list of biased or simply erroneous beliefs about calorie-for-food conversion goes on almost endlessly. Here, we can quickly shed some positive light upon TWO of the most misunderstood food-calorie-fat fundamentals that continue to exist in the forums of popular myth.

Food-Fat-Calories Misconception Number One:

1. “Calories that enter your body later in the day instantly turn into fat; therefore, do not eat after 6 PM.”

- The actual truth is that a calorie is merely an intellectual unit of measure, without virtually ANY existing bias, prejudice, or preference for time of day. Further, your body “clock,” if you will pardon the expression, works on a 24-hour CONTINUOUS cycle to process the-calories-in-food.

And, the good news about that is you may also ELECT to burn fat cells nearly whenever you wish to, even in the middle of the night, by acquiring the knowledge of how to do this exactly. You are highly encouraged to read additional articles about food-caloric slimming solutions, as this will provide you with more insider details on how to approach this particular aspect of food-calorie-fat application.

Now, see if you share in this second example of misguided thinking about food-caloric consumption.

Food-Fat-Calories Misconception Number Two:

2. “In order to cut calories or lose weight, I can only eat one specific type of food and cannot touch the rest or I will fail.”

- This statement concerning the-calories-in-food is surely FALSE, on two grounds.

First, not only does it serve to build up unnecessary emotional and psychological pressure, but secondly, it also ignores the fact that a detailed study of food-calorie-fat objectives gives you the benefit of knowing that essentially EVERY food has some type of beneficial, contributory, plus UNIQUE nutritional attribute which can assist your overall weight loss goals.

For example, whole dairy milk contains potassium, calcium, phosphorous, and magnesium which jointly assist bones, teeth, muscles, and even your ability to relax. It additionally supplies vital proteins for a more stable dispersion ratio of fat-to-lean-body mass tissue.

You need nutrients from the calories in food to substantiate weight management achievement. The point is, basically EVERYBODY knows that whole dairy milk also gives you a fairly high concentration of saturated fat; yet, you cannot drop a food source from your regimen without replacing it with a more supportive one.

Such knowledge will equally impart to you that the amount of purely “saturated” fat that animal processed products generally contain remains the primary culprit for nutritional problems resulting from food-caloric intake. (This is the reason why pseudo, partial, or complete vegetarians find it much easier to curb body fat accumulation.)

By now you are probably wondering how or where you can get assistance or find clear and dependable solutions to gently, naturally, plus reliably reduce complexities that arise from ingesting the calories in food. In the USA, two superb sources of authoritative, clear-cut information without expense are: 1) the Nutrition Data organization; and 2) the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (a/k/a AJCN).

Nutrition Data is a non-profit, reliable source for unbiased information about food calorie balance and composition. The highest bases of journalistic research provide you with dependable obesity related weight management techniques.

This is also a place where you discover tactics, tips, and tools like online digital and graphically based calorie counters of the utmost precision without cost. And, how you can benefit from seeing immense amounts of accurate, easily visualized data about food-calorie-fat is nearly impossible to measure because the available statistics are comprehensively inclusive and truly vast.

Effectively, all your questions about food-to-calories conversion or exchange can be eliminated forever by consistently utilizing an educational tool like this one. Your second non-profit info source for researching the calories in food is AJCN.

Throughout past years and presently, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition supplies publicly available, written article abstracts that contain the actual study detail / description and outcome of essentially EVERY legal weight loss, fitness, body fat, nutrition, or food-calorie-fat experiment you can imagine.

You can read these two sources and recruit them into your army for fighting against unwanted accumulation of body fat resulting from inaccurate food-to-calories estimation. Nonetheless, until that time occurs, here is a brief, helpful summary of the essential theme you are likely to uncover from their nutrition-focused studies regarding current calorie-for-food utilization:

ONE: Nutritional supplements for weight loss basically show very little concrete evidence for curbing the calories in food or removing existing or unwanted body fat.

TWO: Calories themselves do not exist as material or physical elements — which makes them difficult to see, and therefore hard to measure with complete accuracy. Thus, knowing the following facts gives you an essentially reliable measuring tool:

- One ounce of body fat equals approximately 3,500 calories.

- Losing 500 calories per day equals roughly one pound of body fat lost each week. (For you to know, the average person can lose about 10 calories per MINUTE via medium to moderate intensity aerobic activity.)

THREE: Two types of fat exist in connection with the calories in food — saturated fat, and unsaturated fat. Yet, problematic conditions existing in overweight individuals normally prove to arise from intake of more than 30 grams of TOTAL fat per day.

In summary, the remedy or solution for the above three food-calorie-fat points and more… lies in your employment of a BALANCED combination of aerobic exercise coupled with a mild limit on the upper end of daily calories you consume. For example, eating at or below 30 grams of total fat each day can significantly reduce the existence of non-lean body tissue.

Negative Calorie Effect in Foods

Whatever food we eat, our body has to work hard to digest it and absorb. Some foods need more energy than the others in the process of digestion. It is likely that there may be certain foods that require more calories to digest than the caloric content of the foods themselves. In fact there are certain foods
in nature which possess this property. Such foods may be termed as negative calorie foods because these foods take these extra calories from the body fat. Similarly there may be foods that require the same amount of calories as the calorie content of these foods. Such foods are effectively of zero calorie.

The secret of negative calorie effect lies in the fact that these foods use more calories to digest then actual calories. The overall effect of these negative calorie foods in our body is that of using calories from body. These foods are mostly
natural plant foods like vegetables, fruits, beans, lentils and legumes.

If you eat a food high in fat, your body will expand almost no calorie and the fat very easily goes to your waistline. On the other hand, the more you eat these negative calorie foods, the more you have a feeling of fullness, thereby leaving a little chance of eating other fatty and oily foods. The other important thing about these negative calorie foods is that these can form part of a perfectly balanced diet.

There are a large number of foods that combine low calories, delicious taste, and excellent negative calorie properties. Include these foods in your daily meals. You will get maximum benefit if you eat them in raw natural form, with little butter or oil. The most important thing about these negative calorie foods is that you will never feel hungry if you are on a diet with negative calorie foods.

Copyright 2004 P. Mehta

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A typical sushi meal for me is the one with California rolls. It tastes so fresh it’s quite heavenly for me. There are many other varieties but what I mentioned works just for me. But can sushi and other healthy foods like organic or raw make you fat?

The mentioned sushi meal has ideally 140 calories, 2 grams of fat, and 20 grams of carbohydrates and 10.5 grams of protein. This data is according to the Healthy Weight Forum. Don’t let the numbers fool you, it can do harm to your diet if you are not careful.

Low calorie foods like sushi and other healthy meals should still be considered like any other meal: it raises our insulin levels if we ate too much too often making fat burning harder.

The Mindset of Eating Less…Often

I am not really much of a believer when it comes to the typical 5-6 meals a day to lose weight or burn fat. Not only is it hard to monitor calories that way because you have to eat less more often, in the beginning it can really be hard because you tend to eat more than you should, especially when you are not the type who wants to count on calories.

Eating often creates a rise in insulin in our body making it store fat instead of using it. It is our body’s indicator that we have an ample supply of energy to use. So the additional calories that comes from food will be stored as fat. We cannot dictate our body when to store or not store fat.

Low calorie foods like sushi and other healthy meals should still be considered like any other meal: it raises our insulin levels if we ate too much too often making fat burning harder.

Eat Less Sensibly

Our body does not need so much food so often. So eating like 2-3 ordinary or healthy meals a day to burn fat is more effective than 5-6 meals a day. This ensures our insulin levels do not get so high.

Another tip is to eat a protein source or a fat source along with carbohydrates. Doing this slows the absorption of carbohydrates thus insulin levels does not get so high.

Do not allow your insulin levels to go so high so that it will not store body fat. If you want to eat sushi and other healthy foods, allow yourself to eat less often so that calories in your body will come from your stored fat reserves making fat burning a lot less easier than pressuring yourself to workout so much.

One of the most interesting foods that often appears on the negative calorie food list is pineapple. Among negative calorie foods, pineapple is probably the highest in calories, so how can a fruit with a solid amount of calories be a negative calorie food?

Well in the negative calorie foods diet, there are many different factors in determining the amount of energy it takes to burn various types of negative calorie fruits and vegetables, and total calories is only part of that equation. While pineapple has a lot of calories for a negative calorie food, pineapple is still a fruit, meaning it has far fewer calories than grain, meat, or most other foods of the same size.

Another huge benefit to pineapple, and part of the reason that pineapple remains a negative calorie food, is that it contains an enormous amount of vitamins and dietary fiber (think cleanse the system good). Add low calories with heavy vitamins and high fiber, and the digestive enzymes go wild over this fruit, causing some who believe in the negative foods diet to strongly approve of pineapple as a great negative calorie food.

I’m personally a huge fan of pineapple, since it is one of the more filling of the negative calorie foods, and gives a lot of energy, vitamins, and fiber that you need to get through a day. Whether or not pineapple actually has a true negative calorie effect is hard to say, and pineapple seems one of the least likely fruits or veggies on the negative calorie foods list to actually have a negative calorie effect, but even if it doesn’t, pineapple is an extremely healthy fruit that has everything you need to get your digestive and metabolic systems working at full throttle.

Pineapple has the expected large amount of vitamin C, and nominal amounts of Vitamin A, calcium, and even some iron. The biggest positive of pineapple is the huge amount of dietary fiber, as well as the good types of carbs that give you energy and keep your system balanced. If you love the flavor of pineapple and are like me, you can woof down this negative calorie treat by the can.

A very important point when looking for negative calorie fruits such as pineapple: pay attention to the ingredients. Many companies that produce pineapple add extras like sugar or high fructose corn syrup – avoid these cans of pineapple at all cost. Look for the pineapple whose ingredients read simply: “Pineapple, Pineapple Juice.” That should be all you see in there. If not, look for another can of rings or slices…or even better, buy it fresh if your local supermarket has it available.

The dictionary defines a calorie as a unit of heat energy. It is also defined as a unit of energy-producing potential equal to the amount of heat that is contained in food and released upon oxidation by the body. When making the distinction between a chemistry calorie and a food calorie, we must clarify the difference in quantity. The food calorie is equal to 1000 chemistry calories.

Now that we have addressed the mathematical and chemical analogy of calorie, let’s look at what the calorie means to you, a food consumer. A calorie is the way we measure the energy potential of food. It is also the way we determine if we are overeating and consuming too much potential energy for our bodily functions. If we consume too much energy, our body stores it for future use. This makes us become obese. If we don’t consume enough for our daily use, we can become anorexic.

In order to maintain optimal health, and our optimal body weight, a calorie requirement that is specific to our unique needs must be obtained. Once we are aware of what our calorie needs are we can tailor our diet to fit those needs

One of the most difficult situations to overcome is that of the need to diet. Once we have determined our calorie requirements, if we also need to diet and lose body weight, we are faced with cutting our calorie intake. Having been slightly overweight most of my adult life, I can tell you this is a difficult struggle. Combining the need for fewer calories, and the increased need for exercise, is often a daunting task for an individual. It is also a very difficult one to maintain.

There are products on the market today that make calorie counting easier than ever, and there are diet plans that make substitution of diet foods easier than ever. What they have not invented is a way to boost will power, which would make the struggle easier than ever. Those products are worn on some part of the body, and tabulate for us what our calorie expenditure is during the day. What we need is to take this one step further, and have an instrument that can also calculate our calorie intake and leave us with our available consumption balance. If you overeat, there could be a warning sound from the calorie counter. If the sound is quite embarrassing, you wouldn’t have to worry about overeaters!

The road to good health is not an easy one for most. It should be one of the easiest things we have to do, since good health is something we should have spent a lifetime incorporating into our daily routine. But what we find most of the time, is that we make very little time for our health, and even less time for our understanding of the calorie and its effect upon our body. When we do take notice of the bugle around the waist, we want the quick fix for the problem, diet and exercise are to difficult and take too long. But they are the only alternatives that work.

So as you go about your day, think about the calorie. Think about what it means to your waistline and your health. Proper understanding, consumption levels, and a maintenance plan make for a healthy, high quality life.

Fast food calories have become front and center on the fight against obesity in America. As part of the health care reform legislation that President Obama recently signed there is guidance for both restaurant chains and vending machines. The legislation basically requires posting of nutritional data for the foods and beverages that are being sold.

Counting fast food calories

The new laws should make counting fast food calories easier but the real trick is to get consumers to read the labeling and put it into context. On average a healthy daily calorie amount is between 2000 and 3000 calories depending on your weight and activity level. An athlete can definitely get away with more calories because they burn them regularly. The normal person though needs to look at how many calories are in a fast food meal as a part of their complete goal for daily caloric intake.

Though there are many fast food restaurants that get the attention like McDonald’s and Burger King it really comes down to the person’s choices at any fast food restaurant. When you go into a McDonald’s you will probably not be surprised that a Big Mac is high in calories or even a Whopper at Burger King. The calories in Big Mac are about 576 while for the Whopper the calorie count is 670. What can be more surprising are that certain chicken sandwiches, fish sandwiches and even salads can top the list of high fast food calories.

A favorite of mine, especially during lent are the fish sandwiches at both BK and McDonald’s. The calories for a Filet-O-Fish are 380 calories and for the BK Fish Filet sandwich are 630. Could these choices be made healthier? If you decided not to include the tarter sauce or the cheese you would definitely shave some off the calorie count but will you? Let’s face it anything with cheese, bacon or special sauces is going to be high in calories. This is for all fast food restaurants even those you might think are “healthier”.

SuperSize Not Required

A pet peeve of mine is the supersize options that some of these restaurants offer. When I walk up to the counter I already know that I am making a tradeoff between healthy food and my time. Typically I try to buy sandwich only options with water. That definitely helps keep the calorie count down but even if I break down and want to buy those fries and a drink the checkout folks need to be specifically told that you want the small size. If you don’t say it they will at the very least give you a regular which if you add those calories together can be as high as those of the sandwich you just ordered. I think we might be up to half the recommended calories we should have in one day.

Salads

The biggest myth about choosing better at fast food restaurants is that salads are the best choice. Fast food calories can easily be found in the choices you make when buying the salad. I know I can be pretty guilty when it comes to salad dressing choices. A creamy dressing like Ranch can easily up the fast food calories in your meal. The problem with the dressings and some of the crispy chicken type options is that though the overall calorie count may be low the types of calories can be killer. The fat calories are much higher in these types of dressings so you need to choose better, lighter dressings.

Yes, I know the reality of making choices when you are in a hurry. Try to study up on the calories when you actually have time to sit and review them. Many resources are coming online to help you count calories. One that I looked at for this article is one that appears to be run by About.com at http://caloriecount.about.com/ but I am sure more will keep coming online that will help you keep track of your fast food calories.