Month: June 2016

[Here’s the next post in the series of guest posts on healthy diet and lifestyle from Dave Banko.]

One of the interesting experiments performed on ‘What’s the Right Diet for You?‘ assessed the effect of being tired on the decisions you make about what to eat.

The participants were divided into 2 groups: one group was given a good night’s rest and the other was forced to stay up until early in the morning. The next morning, both were sent shopping and given identical lists of types of things to purchase, but not given specific items.

When the groups finished shopping, their shopping baskets were compared and the results were astounding! The well rested group made excellent choices: lots of fresh fruits and veg, whole foods, and lean meats. The tired group purchased a lot of sugary and high fat items with a calorie content more than double the amount of the rested group!

Why is this?

When we are tired and drained of energy, our natural preservation mechanism is to quickly boost our energy levels, so we crave sugary and fatty foods.

Making good choices in this state will take every ounce of will power to overcome this fundamental self-preservation instinct.

This also relates to the discussion in my previous blog post about how when we are drained after exercise we crave sugary and fatty foods, but eating them would wipe out the positive weight loss effects of the exercise.

How do we counteract this? First and foremost is to get enough rest. I’ll be writing another post about the additional benefits of a good night’s sleep, and this is certainly one of them.

We live busy lifestyles though, and can’t always get enough rest or do things when well rested. In this case, the best thing to do is make a plan while rested. If grocery shopping, make your list in advance while rested, then stick to it when shopping!

In the end, knowledge is power. Just knowing what our bodies want helps us to make better, healthy lifestyle decisions!

As always, please contact me at daveb.uk@hotmail.com if you have any questions or comments. 🙂  [Crew Dog: Or comment below.]

[Here’s the next post in the guest post series on healthy diet and lifestyle from Dave Banko.]

There is a lot of content available regarding the importance to weight loss of drinking plenty of fluids. I’m including this blog post for completeness, but won’t really spend a lot of time on it.

Below is a great diagram from a post called 11 Reasons Why Dehydration is Making You Fat and Sick.

Just remember to be drinking the right kinds of fluids: plenty of water (perhaps with a squeeze of lemon or other fruit/veg infusion) and green/herbal/fruit teas and limit or eliminate sugary and/or caffeinated drinks. Check the labels and you’ll be surprised how many drinks contain sugar, fructose, and a chemical sweetener.

Please contact me at daveb.uk@hotmail.com with any questions or comments.  [Crew Dog: Or comment below]

[Crew Dog NOTE: For more information on proper hydration, such as getting water from foods, times when you need to increase your fluid intake, and what can happen if you drink too much water (hyponatremia), see this Mayo Clinic post.]

[Here’s another guest post from Dave Banko on healthy diet and lifestyle.]

This may sound counter intuitive, but the worst thing you can do to lose weight, particularly to burn fat, is to starve yourself.

Your body has a primitive defense mechanism for self-preservation to protect fat reserves in the event of actual starvation, going back to days when the availability of food was cyclical. When no calories are coming in, your body slows the metabolism down to conserve energy (making you feel lethargic and moody) and consumes muscle and organ tissue along with the fat to protect reserves and supply the brain and red blood cells.

You will lose weight, but not all of it will be fat, and this method can have serious negative effects on your overall health.  As soon as you start eating again, most of the weight comes back on as your body rebuilds.

Consuming calories, even a small amount, stimulates the metabolism and releases fat reserves.  This is also another reason breakfast is so important, as you haven’t been consuming calories for 8-12 hours overnight.

In ‘What’s the Right Diet for You?‘ scientists stress 80% of successful dieters start with breakfast.

A good breakfast including protein (eggs, fish, poultry, other lean meat or high protein legume) and complex carbohydrates in fruit and whole grains, and, of course, one or more glasses of water, is the perfect way to kick-start your metabolism and fat burning for the day.

Adding a cup of tea or coffee isn’t the end of world, unless you are also cutting down on caffeine. 🙂 I would avoid fruit juice as it has a high concentration of sugar without the fiber naturally found in whole fruit to slow down its hit to your blood stream.  Also be careful of hidden sugar in spreads, commercial cereals and even muesli.

However, you don’t need a lot of calories to trigger the fat burn which is why the 5 and 2 diet can keep the calorie content on the fasting days to 500-600 total calories. But even the 5 and 2 diet encourages breakfast on fast days to get you going, and regular eating on non-fast days.

Be sure not to fast on consecutive days, and eat properly on the days in between fasts.

According to the National Institute of Health, women should consume a minimum of 1200 calories per day and men should consume a minimum of 1500 calories per day for a healthy metabolism, appropriate balance of protein, fat, fiber and carbohydrates, and avoidance of malnutrition.

If intermittently fasting (this should only be for 2, at the most 3, non-consecutive days per week and for no longer than 12 weeks) the minimum should be 500-600 calories per day on fasting days, and 1500-1800 calories on the non-fasting days.

When aiming to lose weight, average women should aim for a weekly total of 8,400 to 10,500 calories per week and men, 10,500 to 12,600.  If you are heavier or very active, this target should be higher.

When I started this new healthy eating lifestyle (I prefer not to call it a diet, because I will be eating this way for the rest of my life), I weighed 351 lbs (having peaked at 365 lbs) and consumed around 5,000 calories per day.

I tried and failed with numerous starvation and detox diets.

Eating to lose weight made absolutely no sense to me, but I tried it anyway, and my successful weight loss convinced me.

Eating the right foods, in the right combination and at the right time of the day made me feel better, gave me plenty of energy, and made it easier for me to eat less (you may not feel ‘full’ but you will feel ‘satisfied’ and for longer), and the weight melted off.

At the time of this writing (17 months after starting to change the way I ate), I’m down to 218 lbs and working to lose the last 8 lbs to get down to my military weight of 210 lbs.

Every now and then, I still have bad days where I blow the diet, and it shows on the scale the next morning. My natural inclination is still to stop eating to counter my binge from the day before, but I remind myself how my body works, and then go cook my 2 whole egg cheese & veg omelette to have with my morning fruit, full fat natural yogurt, whole grain toast, lemon water, and tea (no sugar), and I’m right back on the program. The weight keeps coming off.

For more information on eating to lose weight, here’s a good blog post from My Fitness Pal.

Feel free to contact me at daveb.uk@hotmail.com with any questions or comments.  [Crew Dog: Or comment below.]

[Here’s the next in the guest post series on healthy diet and lifestyle from Dave Banko.]

One of the main debates in our Facebook weight loss group was whether we should focus on reducing carbs or fat. When focused on weight loss alone, studies have repeatedly shown a ‘low fat’ diet loses more body fat over the same period than a ‘low carb’ diet.

Having said that, there is more to consider for a healthy lifestyle than weight loss alone.

Let’s first separate carbs into complex carbohydrates, which tend to have a low glycemic index (GI), and simple carbohydrates like sugar, fructose and processed grains (skin, husks and other fiber removed), which have a higher glycemic index.

Take an apple for example. An average-sized apple is about 65 kcal and 14g of carbohydrates. The carbohydrates are complex because the natural sugars are locked with the cell structure. This naturally provides fiber so, when you eat an apple, it takes time for your digestive system to break down the cell walls and release the sugar. The cell walls also provide fiber and other nutrients to the body even after releasing the sugar.

When you drink apple juice, the sugar has been squeezed out of the cells of the apple.  There is no fiber to slow down the processing, so the apple sugars are immediately digested and hit the blood stream causing a spike in sugar levels and the need for insulin similar to drinking a commercial cola or other syrup-based drink. As a result, while I eat lots of whole fruits, I no longer drink fruit juice or syrupy drinks. Click on this link to read an excellent article illustrating the difference.

Fat, on the other hand, is dense and energy packed. It takes a lot longer to digest, so eating fat will not cause a spike in blood sugar. Dietary fat becomes an energy source in the blood stream, and any excess energy (no matter the source – whether fat, sugar, carbs or protein) will be converted and stored as body fat to use as an energy reserve for another time when you need it.

For me, I found fat in foods more satisfying in taste and the feeling of fullness than low or no-fat foods. I was satisfied with 1 150g pot of full fat natural yogurt where 2 150g pots of no-fat yogurt still left me longing for more.

In investigating low or no-fat products, I found that because removing the fat leaves the food tasting less satisfying, many manufacturers have compensated by increasing sugar or chemicals to fool your body.  The increase in sugar again leads to the blood sugar spikes which can lead to diabetes.

Since I have a family history of diabetes, I steer clear of anything that can serve as a precursor to becoming diabetic myself.

The negative to fat, of course, is the amount of calories it packs in a small amount of food. If you are satisfied and stay within your calorie targets, it’s fine – remember the French high fat diet is the 7th best in the world; but overeat a little, and it adds a lot of calories.

My personal diet includes a balance of protein, complex carbohydrates (low GI) and full fat items. I’ve gone to more natural foods and avoid processed foods and chemicals wherever possible.

I am not a doctor, and you may have a medical history or condition which requires you to go a different direction with your diet. This is fine, because I’ve hopefully shown that while there are general principles to follow, there is not one diet that works for everyone. Please seek medical advice when putting together any program.

In an article by the BBC on Low Carb vs Low Fat debate, Prof Susan Jebb of Oxford University (and one of the ‘What’s the Right Diet for You?’ team) sums it up like this:

“The investigators rightly conclude that the best diet for weight loss is the diet you can stick to. All diets ‘work’ if you stick to an eating plan that cuts calories, whether from fat or carbohydrate, but sticking to a diet is easier said than done, especially given the prolonged time it takes to lose weight.”

As always, feel free to contact me at daveb.uk@hotmail.com if you have any questions or comments, and good luck!  [Crew Dog: Or comment below.]