Apr
9
5 Things Which Are NOT A Vegetable
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Nutrition | 8 Comments
I gave a presentation at work yesterday about fitness and health. One of the hot topics seemed to be what is and what isn’t a vegetable. There were people asking if squashes were a vegetable and what about sweet potatoes? Are tomatoes a vegetable? What about pumpkins?
The purpose of a vegetable serving
The problem is that a vegetable serving has two purposes, while people mostly just consider one. A vegetable serving provides you with a lot of nutrients and it also fills you up without providing you with a lot of calories. Vegetables do this by being high in water and fiber, which means they are low on calorie density. In other words, lb for lb, a vegetable serving provides a low number of calories when compared with other foods. Most people ignore this second aspect of vegetable servings while only focusing on the nutrition.
Now before we talk about what IS a vegetable serving, let’s first of all talk about what ISN’T a vegetable serving.
NOT a vegetable serving
Fruit - Yes, I know they say five servings of vegetables or fruits, but they don’t mean JUST fruit. Most people completely ignore vegetables and eat only fruit. Well, as healthy as they are, many fruit still contain a high amount of sugar. Which means they supply your body with a lot of nutrients, but with a high quantity of calories.
Dried Fruit - Even worse than fruit, dried fruit is fruit with all the water squeezed out. That means the sugar load is even higher.
Potatoes (and other high start plants) - Most roots and even most squashes are very starchy. That means they contain a lot of calories and relatively few nutrients. They’re not bad for you and I’m not saying you shouldn’t eat them, but they shouldn’t count as your vegetable serving because they are high in calories.
Juices - No matter what that V8 commercial tells you, juices don’t count as vegetable servings. They typically contain a low amount of water, a high amount of sodium and much of the fiber content is gone.
Grains and beans - Yes, I know they’re plants, but that doesn’t make them a vegetable serving. Guess what, chocolate is a plant too but that doesn’t mean you should eat five servings of it a day. Grains and beans have a very high number of calories in them. Grains, especially in refined form, are something you should try to avoid, not include in your diet.
So what is a vegetable?
First, the following is not a scientific definition of a vegetable. In fact, I don’t believe one exists, although if you know of one, please let me know. We do have a scientific definition of fruit and it actually encompasses many of the things we consider to be vegetables. So if you’re a science major, you’re going to cringe at all the generalizations I make. However, I don’t expect anyone to rush to Wikipedia every time you want to eat something. that means we need to come up with a definition that is more practical. By the way, not all vegetables will fill all of these requirements. That’s fine, these are just guidelines, not absolute rules.
Lots of water content - A good vegetable serving should contain a lot of water. that doesn’t necessarily mean that if you squeeze it, water comes out. However, things have a lot of juice are usually good.
Not too sweet - Unless that juice is really sweet. This is why most fruit, while healthy, aren’t going to count as part of your vegetable serving. Remember, sweet = sugar and sugar = calories.
Leaves are good - Leafy vegetables are great. Spinach, cabbage, lettuce, green onions and a whole other variety of leaves. These are typically very low in calories and very high in nutrients.
Roots are not so good - Many plants store a lot of their energy in their roots. That’s why roots are in many cases very starchy and filled with calories. Potatoes are a great example. Yes, there are exceptions, but most roots are too energy dense to be a really good vegetable serving.
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As you can see, these guidelines aren’t exact. That’s fine. You’re not going to be 100% accurate all of the time, and just making an effort to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables is going to have a positive impact, even if you don’t always pick the right vegetable. Just remember, try to stick with plants that give the most nutrition for the least amount of calories. If you follow that basic rule, you can’t really go wrong.
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Apr
7
I usually link to interesting articles on my weekend roundups. However, I happened to find one article that I thought deserved a bit more discussion. It’s from the New York Times and discusses the limitations of human willpower.
Specifically, the article makes the point that our will power is limited. If we try to use it on something like fitness, we might have less of it for things like finances. Here’s the exact quote from the article:
The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others.
Multitasking Often Leads To Failures
It’s an interesting assertion and one that has a lot of applicability to fitness and health. I know that I can’t focus on more than project at a time. When I try to do too many things at once, I end up overextended and usually fail at all of them. For example, I recently decided to try and expand my interests. So I picked up some language tapes and tried to learn conversational Chinese. I also started music lessons, something I’ve always wanted to do.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t devote enough attention to either of these pursuits and so I ended up doing badly on both. I never had enough time to practice the new words or notes that I learned and my progress was slow from lesson to lesson. Then I decided to focus on just one thing, the Chinese lessons, and delayed the music lessons until next year. All of a sudden, I was making much better progress.
The Big Bang Theory of Fitness Rarely Works
A similar thing happened when I first started working on my fitness. I wanted to accomplish everything the first week. I had an exercise plan, an eating plan, a plan to cut down on sodas, a plan to jog more and a plan to come up with more plans. It was crazy. I split my will power and focus among so many things that there was no chance of me being successful at any of them.
It Takes a Month To Form a Habit
A few miserable weeks later, I started with a new approach. I made gradual changes, one or two at a time. No big bang theories for me. No more trying to do everything at once. Instead I picked one or two things and worked on them until they no longer seemed like work. Remember, it takes at least a month for something to become a habit and you need something to become a habit before you move on to the next thing. I waited until a change had become ingrained into my life before moving on to the next change I wanted to make.
Prioritize Your Goals
There are probably a few things you want to do. Some of them may be health related and some may not. They all require focus and attention, which means you can’t do all of them at once. What you need to do is be selective. Make a list of the goals you want to accomplish and the things you want to do. For example, here is my list:
- Save money by eating at home more
- Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
- Get my graduate degree
- Eat more vegetables
- Learn another language
- Learn a musical instrument
- Start a hiking blog
- Start a movie blog
- Get a promotion at work
- Weigh 200lbs
- Run marathon
These aren’t in order of priority and I don’t think I could easily prioritize them since they’re all so different in terms of time requirements. However, I can already see a few that I simply don’t have time for. For example, #3, 7 and 8 are all long term goals that require quite a bit of work. I just don’t have the time right now to work on an extra two blogs since a lot of my time for the next two years is going to be devoted to school. #5 and #6 are similar in that they’re learning a new skill. I doubt I can do both at the same time so one of them will have to go.
So after looking at all of these things, I can cut down my goal list to the following:
- Save money by eating at home more
- Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
- Get my graduate degree
- Eat more vegetables
- Learn another language
- Get a promotion at work
- Weigh 200lbs
- Run marathon
Now if I do #4 and #8, that probably means my weight will go down. So let’s remove #7 since I’ll be working on it through other goals. #1 and #4 are related, so why don’t I just combine them into one goal that will be easier to follow.
- Prepare at least two vegetable base meals at home per week
- Get rid of excess furniture and clutter in home
- Get my graduate degree
- Learn another language
- Get a promotion at work
- Run marathon
So now I have 6 goals. It’s still a lot but, since each of these is different, I can probably manage these as is. When school starts, I might want to cut back my language lessons but we’ll see.
Try It Yourself
This isn’t a hard exercise. Just write down a list of very specific goals. They can’t be too general like “I want to be healthy.” Instead, they need to be as specific as possible. Then take a look at your list. Is there a lot of overlap? Are there goals that can be combined? If you have too many similar goals, you’ll never accomplish them all. Make sure you pick a few that you can work on at the same time. That means you shouldn’t pick two goals that have the same time requirements. For example, if you pick two goals, both of which require you to go to some kind of weekend lesson, you probably should eliminate one of them.
What you end up with should be a short list of goals or things to do. Each of them should be unique and there shouldn’t be much overlap in terms of requirements from you. Now you can start detailing each of these goals with specific steps you need to take.
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It’s easy to write down a bunch of things you want to do. Unfortunately, trying to do them all at the same time is a sure way to set yourself up for failure. Pick your battles and your goals. Do a few things, do them well and make them into a habit before you move on to something new.
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Apr
6
For the first time in my life, I went to Sunday church services. Actually, this is the first time in my life that I’ve been to any church services. Now before you have a heart attack mom, I’m still Jewish. 
However, my wife and I went to the dedication of our month old nephew today. It was a very pretty ceremony. Congratulation to my wife’s sister and her husband on a beautiful baby boy.
And on that happy note, here are some articles I thought you mind find helpful and/or interesting:
From Reuters we have this article debunking some of the myths around water consumption. Turns out, drinking a lot of water may not be the detoxifier some people have claimed it was. Now, don’t go crazy here and stop drinking water altogether. The article simply states that the old myth of 8 cups of water a day may be a bit overdone. Just drink when you’re thirsty and make sure you hydrate while exercising and you should be fine.
@Reuters
This article isn’t directly health related but it’s an interesting read nonetheless. Take a look at some of the details the articles discusses about the connections between big tobacco and health research. Unfortunately, many of the health researchers you trust may be paid by industries like tobacco, beef, farmers and others who don’t have your best interests in mind. Next time you read some research that sounds too good to be true, take a look at who’s funding the study. You might want to rethink what you just read.
@The Boston Globe
Michael Pollan is one of my favorite authors. I highly recommend his books, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
@The Times Online
There’s nothing too new in this article from the Los Angeles Chronicle about how to control your weight, but it’s well written and has some good points that can never be repeated too often. If you’re really serious about getting fit, have a plan. Come up with goals, write them down and then figure out how you’re going to achieve them. Anything else is almost certain to end in failure.
@Los Angeles Chronicle
And in a bit of random trivia and you may or may not like, here’s a chart showing who really owns the big “organic” food companies in the US. It’s interesting to see that almost all the names we associate with healthy products are actually owned but the companies we associate with mass market junk food. Remember that next time you’re in the supermarket. It’s why I usually try to shop for my food at places like a farmers’ market or a local produce store that deals directly with local farmers and growers.
@Good Magazine
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Apr
4
Exercise Induced Headaches
Filed Under Exercise, Work Out | 2 Comments
My wife suffers from the occasional migraine. It used to be much worse but after some recent medical treatments, things have gotten better. In fact, the migraines seemed to go away. So she finally felt confident enough to start exercising.
She started slow. A pilates class, a yopa class and some aerobics classes. Nothing too hard or strenuous. Since those seemed to go well, she figured something a bit harder might be fine too. So she signed up with a personal trainer and tried a session of weights and resistance training. For the next three days, she suffered from horrible migraines.
She proceeded to do some research online and found out about exercise induced headaches, something I was completely unaware of. It seems like some people will get anything from mild headaches to serious migraines following any sort of strenuous exercise and that weight lifting is particularly common as a cause.
After seeing her struggle with the pain and feeling helpless to help, I thought I would share what we found with all of you so that we could help prevent this pain in others.
Ways To Avoid Exercise Induced Headaches
- Stay hydrated - No need to overdo this with those huge bottles of water. However, drink a bit of water between each one or two sets of exercises.
- Warm up and cool down - Don’t just start and stop high intensity workouts. You need to start slow and end slow to give your body a chance to adjust.
- Try to stay away from a lot of high impact exercises - That means elliptical is better than jogging and swimming is better than almost anything else.
- Avoid bent over exercises - One of the suspected causes of exercise induced headaches is blood flow to the brain. So be careful with any exercise that has you bend over like dead lifts.
- Talk to your doctor - There are some medications that could work. Since exercise induced headaches seem to be related to blood flow, medications that constrict blood flow might help. Please do NOT take any medications without first consulting with a doctor.
For additional information, check out the following links:
Drew Baye’s high intensity training
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That’s all we’ve found so far. Hopefully, once my wife feels better and returns to the gym, I can give you a bit of an update on how well these tips helped. One thing to note, she was doing fine with her aerobics and pilates classes, some of which do involve light weight lifting. So it’s not all exercise which causes this.
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Apr
2
My March goals were:
- 215lbs - I didn’t quite make it last month, so I’m hoping to do it this month. I want to see a whole week in which my morning weigh in is under 215lbs.
- Marathon Training - I am starting my training for the Maui marathon on the 8th. I have a detailed training plan that a friend worked up for me and I want to make sure I follow it.
- Higher Weights - I also want to improve my weight training this month by increasing the weight I use on at least 4 different exercises. That means I’m going to pick one exercise a week and increase the weight.
- Better Eating - Along with the no candy on weekdays rule, I want to make an effort to avoid buffets. These are my weakness as I love food so much that I usually keep eating it even if I’m full. I want to see if I can go a whole month without buffets.
So how did I do on these goals?
215 lbs
I wanted to have a whole week where the scale showed 215lbs or below. I almost got that. The entire last week of March the scale was showing 213’s and 214’s, but one day it showed a 215.2 or so. By the way, I don’t normally weight myself everyday but this was specific to achieving this goal. I’m going to count this goal is 90% successful. I clearly came very close although I didn’t quite achieve my success criteria. Still, I’m close enough to move on to the next weight goal.
Marathon Training
Marathon training is going great. I’m up to running 8+ miles on the weekend. The only bad part is that I’m going to have to find a different marathon since it turns out the Maui marathon I signed is on the same weekend is my grad school sessions. School being a higher priority, I’m planning to sign up for a different marathon at about the same time.
Higher Weights
Mission accomplished. I increased the weights I use on three different exercises and also increased the number of push ups I do.
Better Eating
I managed to avoid all buffets with the exception of one dinner with my wife. Even that one went well since I limited myself to one plate and no desserts. However, I did have some issues with candy when, this being Easter season, a lot of people brought chocolates in to work and social gatherings. My will power failed me and I did overindulge.
GOALS FOR APRIL
- 213lbs - I want to see one whole week in which that scale says 213lbs or below.
- Marathon Training - Continue marathon training.
- Better Eating - Back to basics, less candy and keep up the “no buffets” rule.
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What are your goals for the month of April?
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