Fat Free, Light, Reduced Sodium – What Does It Mean?
June 28, 2009 by Mohamed
Filed under Weight Loss
Food labels can be very confusing – fat free, light, reduced sodium. What can you believe?
If any of these words are used on a product, the product must meet their standard definitions. A word of warning: the words “right,” “smart” and “natural” are not regulated and therefore have no guaranteed meaning.
- Reduced or Less Fat. At least 25% less fat per serving than the “regular” full-fat food cited on the label.
- Low Fat. No more than 3 grams of fat per serving.
- Fat Free. Less than 1/2 gram of fat per serving.
- Light or Lite. At least 50% less fat or 1/3 fewer calories per serving than the “regular” full-fat food cited on the label.
- Reduced or Less Sodium. At least 25% less sodium per serving than the “regular” full-sodium food cited on the label
- Free. This means the food contains no fat or insignificant amounts of fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, sugar, or calories per serving.
- Low Saturated Fat. The food contains one gram or less of saturated fat per serving.
- Low Sodium. This means that the foot contains l40 milligrams or less of sodium per serving.
- Low Cholesterol. This means that the food contains 20 milligrams or less of cholesterol and two grams or less of saturated fat per serving.
- Low Calorie. This means that the food contains 40 calories or less per serving.
- Reduced. This means the food contains at least 25 percent less of a nutrient (such as fat, cholesterol, or sodium) or calories than the regular product.
- Light. This means the food contains one-third fewer calories or half the fat of the regular product, or the sodium content of a low-calorie, low-fat food and that these have been reduced by at least 50 percent.
- Healthy. This means the food must be low in fat and saturated fat and contains limited amounts of cholesterol and sodium. In addition, single-item foods (like bread) must provide at least l0 percent of one or more of the following nutrients: vitamins A or “C, iron, calcium, protein, or fiber. Even stricter guidelines apply for frozen-dinners and meal-type products, like macaroni and cheese.
- Good Source. This means that the food provides l0 to l9 percent of the Daily Value for a particular nutrient per serving.
- High. This means the food provides 20 percent or more of te Daily Value for a particular nutrient per serving.
Here is to your health!
Mohamed
Eating These Foods Could Help You Lose Weight – APPLES!
June 27, 2009 by Mohamed
Filed under Weight Loss
I’m always looking for the magic pill to help lose weight – of course, I know that there isn’t any – but there is a lot of research done around other foods that may aid in weight loss. Here are several foods that could help you lose weight. I’ve tried to document as much detail as possible and provide links to credible sites that offer back-up information — typically these are GOV websites where the research should be valid and credible.
Power Food – Apples
A study was done back in 2003 that wanted to answer the question whether there is weight loss associated with a daily intake of three apples or three pears among overweight women.
The research was conducted by:
Conceição de Oliveira M, Sichieri R, Sanchez Moura A.
Instituto de Medicina Social, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
OBJECTIVE: We investigated the effect of fruit intake on body weight change.
METHODS: Hypercholesterolemic, overweight (body mass index > 25 kg/m2), and non-smoking women, 30 to 50 yrs of age, were randomized to receive, free of charge, one of three dietary supplements: apples, pears, or oat cookies.
Women were instructed to eat one supplement three times a day in a total of six meals a day.
Participants (411 women) were recruited at a primary care center of the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Fifty-one women had fasting blood cholesterol levels greater than 6.2 mM/L (240 mg/dL) and 49 were randomized.
Subjects were instructed by a dietitian to eat a diet (55% of energy from carbohydrate, 15% from protein, and 30% from fat) to encourage weight reduction at the rate of 1 kg/mo.
RESULTS: After 12 wk of follow-up, the fruit group lost 1.22 kg (95% confidence interval = 0.44-1.85), whereas the oat group had a non-significant weight loss of 0.88 kg (0.37-2.13).
The difference between the two groups was statistically significant (P = 0.004).
To explore further the body weight loss associated with fruit intake, we measured the ratio of glucose to insulin. A significantly greater decrease of blood glucose was observed among those who had eaten fruits compared with those who had eaten oat cookies, but the glucose:insulin ratio was not statistically different from baseline to follow-up. Adherence to the diet was high, as indicated by changes in serum triacylglycerols, total cholesterol, and reported fruit intake. Fruit intake in the oat group throughout treatment was minimal.
CONCLUSIONS: Intake of fruits may contribute to weight loss.
Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12620529
Resources:
I’ll present other foods over the next few days.
Here is to your health!
Mohamed
Asian Weight Loss
June 26, 2009 by Mohamed
Filed under Weight Loss
I’m not quite sure what to call myself. You see, I am African by birth (born in Fort Portal, Uganda) but raised in Canada. I’m not black, but brown. I’m not really Indian – my grandfather was from India – but I’ve never even set food on the Indian continent. So I call myself Asian and sort-of lump myself in with “that crowd”.
Weight loss for Indians or Asians can be difficult due to the traditional foods that are eaten - and today even more difficult due to the amount of fast food available out there whether you live in North America, Europe or in India. Globalization has taken off and while there are a great many benefits – our waistline isn’t one of them.
Problem with indian style cooking is the amount of rich ingredients that are added to the food AND the type of foods eaten!
Most families that eat rice, will eat basmati rice which is generally white. Few will eat brown rice or any other type of rice. Brown rice and curry don’t mix, at least not on my plate.
Have you tried dishes like butter chicken (also called makhani chicken)? It’s made from heavy cream — yummy, but oh so fattening! Like the name, it contains butter, and cream – the thicker the better. The recipe for butter chicken found here http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Makhani-Chicken-Indian-Butter-Chicken/Detail.aspx contains 492 calories, 28 grams of fat, plus 666mg of salt! That’s for a serving of 6 — I don’t know many people that can stop with one serving.
How about another dish that’s one of my favourites – biryani. Yummy!!! Another very (VERY) tasty dish but having watched how my wife and others prepare this, I’m surprised one serving doesn’t cause severe arterial blockage!!! Check out this recipe http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chicken-Biryani/Detail.aspx (you get make a beef biryani as well) – calorie counts for a serving of 7 is 855 calories, 36g of fat, 1,547mg of sodium (salt).
If you’ve never had traditionally cooked biryani – find your nearest Indian friend and ask them to cook it for you! It is really very good.
Most indian foods are also prepared with oil – so you fry the onions or buy pre-fried onions and add other ingredients to it.
…anyway, trying to stop my mouth from salivating even more…
When I was younger it was also very common to have one or several fried foods on the side. Typically samosas – but they are difficult to make and are very time consuming but there are other great fried foods like pakora where the filling is usally potatoe or potatoe and jalapeno, others that come to mind are these patty-like foods that is potatoe on the outside with beef or chicken inside, another similar item is where meat and potatoe are mixed and made into oblong shaped treats — but all of these are fried.
There are plenty more – just can think of what they are called, one that is my favourite is a fried dish that is made by grinding dal and some other ingredients and then deep frying it – dal bhajiya or fried lentil balls. Very good. Trust me.
Now add to all the different types of foods, the deserts. All of them VERY sweet and loaded with sugar. Two classic deserts that come to mind are gulab-jamun. Fried dough smothered in a rich sugar syrup or jalebi – another fried dough that looks more like a pretzel but smothered in rich sugar syrup.
Even our snacks are fattening – like chevdo – again fried stuff.
Then we come to items like naan, roti or even parathas – all are heavy on the oil as most moms (and grandmas) will make these and bind with oil and smother with oil after they’re cooked.
With all this going on can you imagine why asians/indians have the weight and health problems that we do?
So how does one cut back? With great difficult and A LOT of experimentation. When it comes to indian cooking, you have to get the entire family on board otherwise it just won’t work. It’s already difficult to cook some foods – the last thing is to burden the primary chef in your home to do even more!
So when I started my lifestyle change, I had to drop eating all these types of foods and went to a more traditional North American diet. In the process, my stomach built a resistance to hot and oily or spicy foods.
During this time I ate a lot of soups, and salads. I loved sandwhiches as well and was doing the Jared-thing before Jared was doing it.
I lost most of my weight by changing the foods that I ate – ooooh, but how I longed for beef- or chicken-biryani, butter chicken, kuku paka (swahili or coconut chicken). The change here was simple – my wife cooked the same way I just ate a lot less! At my peak it wasn’t uncommon to go through a dozen rotis or even 4 or 5 naans (naans are a much heavier version of roti and are generally made with white flour) and several servings of a main dish.
I cut back where I was having 2-rotis, and no naans. I cut back on fried foods big time, and virtually eliminated sugary drinks in particular soda pop.
One of the side effects of cutting down on indian dishes was that I am not able to stomach the spicy food as much as I used to so am even more careful. My wife and I have mastered a few North American (for lack of a better word) style dishes that make use of pasta, broiled beef and chicken, brown rice, vegetables and other more common ingredients. While I miss the aromatic indian and East African dishes (my wife is from Tanzania) when I look at how much weight I’ve lost I don’t regret not being able to eat them or eating them in moderation.
In cities where there is a large concentration of particular ethnic groups, the health services generally will provide information to help those groups work through weight issues in a language more atune to that group. So when I attended pre-diabetic clinics when my weight peaked I did get a lot of information about changes that could be made to foods that I ate daily. The assumption was not made that everyone is the same – this helped a lot and made me more at ease at attending these sessions.
They also didn’t segregate groups – the Indians were with the Chinese, were with Poles and so on – we all learned from each other.
If you’re unsure about what services are offered in your community, contact your local health center – most have departments for diabetics or may have a dietician on staff with whome you can speak to. Also speak to your doctor as they may be able to provide additional resources to help you.
Losing weight needs to be a conscious decision you take and it’s something you have to follow through – but it is something that can be done by the average joe or jane.
Here is to your health!
Mohamed
What Things Do You Need To Lose Weight?
June 25, 2009 by Mohamed
Filed under Weight Loss
I was visiting Steve’ Weight Loss Blog at http://www.4point6.com/page3/page3.php (I’ve only started to visit Steves’ blog and really like it, I’m sure you will enjoy it as well) and he had a good post today about weight loss toys which got me thinking about my own weight loss and my dozens of attempts at losing weight before finally admitting that I had to do something and now — and losing the weight.
Think about this:
- Do I need a pedometer before you start walking?
- Do I need a kitchen scale before you learn how to eat in moderation?
- Do I need a track suit before I go out to the park?
These are only things. They will not help you lose weight.
How will having a pedometer help me lose weight? You can still walk. You probably own a watch and know when you’ve been out for about a hour. Is the pedometer aiding in the weight loss? No.
Why not take measurements? Waist, thighs, neck and use that as a measure of how well you are doing? If you are diligent about exercise and go out daily for 30 minutes or more then over time your waist will decrease. Your neck size will grow smaller and your thighs will be better toned and you will build some muscle.
Granted they may help you in your weight loss goals. It’s nice to be comfortable when you go out for a walk, and having a pedometer will tell you how many steps you’ve taken. But in the end does it even matter that I’ve walked 1,000 steps or 10,000 steps? Isn’t what matters the fact that I’ve gone out and become physically active?
Weight loss toys and gizmos are just another excuse to put off making those important lifestyle changes that will help you lose weight. There are many other obstacles we put into our own path – how about New Years Resolutions? Useless waste of time. Have you stuck to yours? Why should you wait until January 1 of the new year to decide to do something? Why not start RIGHT NOW.
Why justify an action to put off making a change?
How often have you said this to yourself… “This will be my last [fast food meal/binge/whatever] and then I’ll start my diet.” – you know what you’ve already set yourself up to fail and you probably will fail. I speak from experience, I did that and sometimes still do that.
I didn’t take action until my doctor gave me no other option – lose weight, or die. Plain and simple. How could I leave a new wife behind? Pretty selfish, wouldn’t you say? I wanted to have a life with her – we wanted to get ahead in life materially and spiritually. We wanted a family. Can’t do much of anything if you’re dead – or worse (yes, there is something worse than death) – living under constant assistance knowing that the choices you made have put you into the state you are in.
To answer the question “What things do you need to lose weight” – NOTHING. You need the will, and the motivation to start right now. Today. You could even start at lunch time, even if you’re going out for lunch. Ask for a soup and salad, opt for water instead of a high-calorie drink or even have a juice or milk. That is action. That is what will get results. And you need the results to keep you motivated.
Do you have something to say? I welcome your comments!
Here is to your health,
Mohamed
Setting Up Your Walking Program For Best Results
June 25, 2009 by Mohamed
Filed under Weight Loss
Walking is great exercise, it is easy and fun and you do not need to spend hundreds of dollars on fancy equipment, or clothing! All you need is an objective in mind, a good pair of walking shoes and comfortable clothing and you are good to go.
Why walk to lose weight?
Walking is one of the easiest ways to be physically active. You can do it almost anywhere and at any time. Walking is also inexpensive–all you need is a pair of shoes with sturdy heel support. Walking may:
- Give you more energy and make you feel good.
- Reduce stress and help you relax.
- Tone your muscles.
- Increase the number of calories your body uses.
- Strengthen your bones and muscles.
- Improve your stamina and your fitness.
- Lower your risk of chronic diseases, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
- Give you an opportunity to socialize actively with friends and family.
For all of these reasons, people have started walking programs.
Is it okay for me to walk if I am trying to lose weight?
Answer the following questions before you begin a walking program.
- Has your health care provider told you that you have heart trouble, diabetes, or asthma?
- When you are physically active, do you have pains in your chest, neck, shoulder, or arm?
- Do you often feel faint or have dizzy spells?
- Do you feel extremely breathless after you have been physically active?
- Has your health care provider told you that you have high blood pressure?
- Has your health care provider told you that you have bone or joint problems, such as arthritis?
- Are you over 50 years old and not used to doing any moderate physical activity?
- Are you pregnant?
- Do you smoke?
- Do you have a health problem or physical reason not mentioned here that might keep you from starting a walking program?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, please check with your health care provider before starting a walking program or other form of physical activity.
How do I start a walking program?
L eave time in your busy schedule to follow a walking program that will work for you. Keep the following points in mind as you plan your program:
- Choose a safe place to walk. Find a partner or group of people to walk with you. Your walking partner(s) should be able to walk with you on the same schedule and at the same speed.
- Wear shoes with proper arch support, a firm heel, and thick flexible soles that will cushion your feet and absorb shock. Before you buy a new pair, be sure to walk in them in the store.
- Wear clothes that will keep you dry and comfortable. Look for synthetic fabrics that absorb sweat and remove it from your skin.
- For extra warmth in winter, wear a knit cap. To stay cool in summer, wear a baseball cap or visor.
- Think of your walk in three parts. Warm up by walking slowly for 5 minutes. Then, increase your speed and do a fast walk. Finally, cool down by walking slowly again for 5 minutes.
- Do light stretching after your warm-up and cool-down.
- Try to walk at least three times per week. Each week, add 2 or 3 minutes to your walk. If you walk less than three times per week, you may need more time to adjust before you increase the pace or frequency of your walk.
- To avoid stiff or sore muscles and joints, start gradually. Over several weeks, begin walking faster, going further, and walking for longer periods of time.
- Set goals and rewards. Examples of goals are participating in a fun walk or walking continuously for 30 minutes.
- Keep track of your progress with a walking journal or log.
- The more you walk, the better you may feel and the more calories you may burn.
Experts recommend 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most, if not all, days of the week. If you cannot do 30 minutes at a time, try walking for shorter amounts and gradually working up to it.
Safety Tips for your walking program
Keep safety in mind when you plan your route and the time of your walk.
- If you walk at dawn, dusk, or night, wear a reflective vest or brightly colored clothing.
- Walk in a group when possible.
- Notify your local police station of your group’s walking time and route.
- Do not wear jewelry.
- Do not wear headphones.
- Be aware of your surroundings.
How do I stretch?
S tretch gently after you warm up your muscles with an easy 5-minute walk, and again after you cool down. Try doing the stretches listed below. Do not bounce or hold your breath when you stretch. Perform slow movements and stretch only as far as you feel comfortable.
Side Reach
Reach one arm over your head and to the side. Keep your hips steady and your shoulders straight to the side. Hold for 10 seconds and repeat on the other side.
Wall Push
Lean your hands on a wall with your feet about 3 to 4 feet away from the wall. Bend one knee and point it toward the wall. Keep your back leg straight with your foot flat and your toes pointed straight ahead. Hold for 10 seconds and repeat with the other leg.
Knee Pull
Lean your back against a wall. Keep your head, hips, and feet in a straight line. Pull one knee to your chest, hold for 10 seconds, then repeat with the other leg.
Leg Curl
Pull your right foot to your buttocks with your right hand. Stand straight and keep your knee pointing straight to the ground. Hold for 10 seconds and repeat with your left foot and hand.
Hamstring
Sit on a sturdy bench or hard surface so that your left leg is stretched out on the bench with your toes pointing up. Keep your right foot flat on the floor. Straighten your back, and if you feel a stretch in the back of your thigh, hold for 10 seconds and repeat with your right leg. [If you do not yet feel a stretch, lean forward from your hips until you do feel a stretch.]
Taking the First Step
- Walking correctly is very important.
Walk with your chin up and your shoulders held slightly back. - Walk so that the heel of your foot touches the ground first. Roll your weight forward.
- Walk with your toes pointed forward.
- Swing your arms as you walk.
If you walk less than three times per week, give yourself more than a week before increasing your pac and frequency.
Here is to your health!
Mohamed