The Least Healthy Drinks In America

Found this gem on MSN this morning.  It’s a list of the unhealthiest drinks in America.  Here’s a quick sampling:

9. WORST ENERGY DRINK

Rockstar Original (16-ounce can)

• 280 calories
• 0 g fat
• 62 g sugars

And this one:

7. WORST HOT CHOCOLATE

Starbucks Venti 2% Salted Caramel Signature Hot Chocolate (20 ounces)

• 760 calories
• 37 g fat (22 g saturated)
• 85 g sugars
• 380 mg sodium

That’s right folks, start your day off right with 760 calories of fat and sugar!  That’s about three McDonald’s cheeseburgers by the way.  Or how about Rockstar energy drink?  280 calories of sugar in that one.  Sure, it will perk you up for a few minutes but is that really worth it?

The article goes on to suggest some alternative drinks in each of these categories but I still stand by my usual assertion which is, drink water!  There’s nothing better than water.

Full article can be found here.

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Primal Blueprint - Month 1

It’s been a month now since I started experimenting with Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy
and I’m beginning to notice some definite changes.

Cravings

I never realized how much I craved sweets and carbs until I tried to go a few weeks without them.  Wow!  I’ve always though that smokers are weak because they are unable to stop smoking but here I am unable to stop eating candy.  It’s quite literally a compulsion to eat and it’s very difficult to overcome.  Sure, some of you may say, “I can stop eating junk food and chocolate anytime I want.”  Yes, I thought so too but the truth is that it’s a lot harder than you think.

It’s quite clear to me now that my body became addicted to cheap, easy calories in the form of sweets and refined carbohydrates and that addiction proved just as hard to kick as caffeine.  I’m making great progress but it still amazes me how habit forming sugars and carbs are.  No wonder the food industry likes to stuff us full of them, the more we get the more we want.

On The Other Side…

I now realize just how satisfying a good meal can be when you’re not craving carbs.  Here’s my food intake from yesterday.

• Breakfast - A bunch of blueberries and a peach.
• Lunch - Stir fried vegetables with three scrambled eggs.
• Dinner - Chopped salad and a portion of organic beef about the size of a hamburger patty.
• Snacks - A few almonds and figs.

That’s it.  That’s all I ate.  Note that I’m still getting plenty of carbs in the form of fruits and vegetables, I’ve just cut out the junk carbs.  I also haven’t gone insane with the protein intake and converted all my meals to different versions of bacon wrapped steaks.  Instead, I’m eating a nicely balanced diet of fresh ingredients.  End result? I felt great.  Even though this was actually a small amount of calories, I felt amazingly full and had no cravings for more food later on.

Aches and Pains

The aches in my legs have gone away.  I used to have regular pains in my hips and thighs which made it difficult for me to sleep.  Once I stopped jogging, the pains quickly went away and my sleep has never been better (except for last night when my overly rambunctious puppy decided to chase a moth around my bedroom).  At the same time, I’ve actually increased my weight and elliptical workouts so I don’t feel like I’m doing less exercise.  I’m also biking more although I’m still not hiking as much as I would like to.

Problems, Problems, Problems

The only problem I’m experiencing is around food.  I’m still having issues sticking to the Primal Blueprint eating plan for two reasons:

1. It’s not restaurant friendly and a lot of my social life revolves around eating out.
2. I’m not a good cook at home which means most of my meals are variations of stir fries, omelets and salads.

Actually, I suppose this is one problem and not two.  Namely, I severely overestimated my ability to find foods which match my eating plan.  Which is part of the reason I posted my five things to consider before jumping into a new eating plan last week.

I suppose this is what I’ll work on this week, finding new restaurants and new recipes to work on.

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And a big thank you to my friends, you know who you are, who support me even when it’s the middle of the night.

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Five Things To Consider Before Changing Your Diet

Based on my recent experiment with fasting and my current experiment with the primal blueprint, I’ve come up with a few guidelines for myself.  These are things you should consider before changing the way you eat.  I think anyone considering a new diet or eating plan should answer these questions before they make a decision.

Understanding

Do you know what the heck this new eating plan means?  I’m serious here folks.  All too often I hear of people trying out new foods and new ways of eating without really understanding what they’re doing.  I’m not saying that you need to understand all the little details of nutrition.  I’m saying, do you even understand what this diet means?  Do you know what foods fit into the Mediterranean diet?  Do you understand what are good sources of fat?  Do you know what’s a good source of protein if you’re going vegetarian?  When you say vegetarian, do you mean you’ll eat eggs, dairy or fish?  If you’re going on a low carb diet, what meats are you going to eat and what plants are you going to exclude?  You can’t just say “I’m going to follow such and such diet” without understanding what that diet means.

Long Term

Can you sustain this change long term?  If the answer is no, then don’t bother.  Temporary changes lead to temporary results.  If you’re looking for permanent changes then you should find an eating plan that you can maintain for the rest of your life.  Also remember that making small changes is easier than big.  So if you have a brand new eating plan you want to adopt, you may want to make gradual changes, adopting new habits one at a time without trying for the big bang approach.

For example, I’m still struggling with caffeine but I’m making great progress with lowering my intake of processed sugars and carbs.  So while I may want to adhere to the Primal Blueprint 100%, I’m going to focus on lowering sugars first and then wrestle with my caffeine habit.  One things at a time…

Social Circle

Does this eating plan fit in with your social activity?  Interestingly enough, the main stumbling block to most of my eating plan experiments has been my social life.  Friends want to go out and they’d like to get something to eat.  Very frequently that means going to restaurants which do not serve foods which fall into my eating plan.  So my choices are either to not go out or to not eat while those around me do.  Neither choice is sustainable in the long term.

Fasting for me was almost impossible since many of my social activities revolve around eating.

Price

Can you wallet keep up with your new foods?  If you switched to all organics without finding a cheaper market than Whole Foods, you’re in trouble.  The average meal at Whole Foods will cost you three to four times the average meal at a generic supermarket.  So make sure you find a cheap source of food or make other adjustments to compensate.

This was a big problem for me with going organic until I discovered the farmer’s market and cooking at home.

Choices

Does your new cuisine offer enough choices that you won’t get bored?  If the only thing you’re ever going to eat for the rest of your life is eggs, that’s not a very good plan.  Trust me, eating the same thing over and over gets boring really fast.  Make sure that you have enough options before you start your new eating plan, not after.

I had some issues initially with the Primal Blueprint over this problem since I couldn’t figure out interesting things to eat that didn’t involve a lot of processed sugars and carbs.  Eventually, I resolved this, but it would have been easier had I planned better earlier.

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Hope these rules help you out in whatever new eating plan you embark on.

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REVIEW - Eat, Drink and Be Healthy

I’ve always been a fan of books written various Harvard Schools.  Perhaps it’s the business student in me, but they always seem to be well written, informative, thorough and objective.  So when I saw a national best seller nutrition book written by a pair of Harvard professors, I figured I’d pick it up and see what the fuss was all about.  What I found was a bit more and a bit less than what I expected.

What It’s All About

The authors of Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating have a problem.  They see the new food pyramid that the USDA has come up along with the accompanying dietary guidelines and, instead of seeing a good plan to follow, they find it to be a disaster in the making.  They have a variety of issues with the USDA information, the most important of which are:

• They are not based on science
• They are based on the lobbying of the US agriculture industry
• They don’t make distinctions between good and bad components of the same food group.  Good and bad fats for example.

I tend to agree with all of these issues, especially the second one.  I urge people to remember that the purpose of the United States Department of Agriculture is to promote agriculture.  It is NOT to promote good health.  Most folks I talk to tend to believe that the USDA has their best interests in mind.  The truth is that it does not.  The USDA is not the department of health, nor is it an organization concerned with good nutrition.  It is an arm of the government concerned with the promotion and success of US farmers, cattle ranchers and other food producers.  As such, its dietary guidelines are written in a way which makes them seem healthy but in fact they’re written to promote US farming products.

The authors have gone a step further and identified what they say are the worst issues with the USDA guidelines:

1. All fats are bad - This is wrong, there are many good fats.
2. All carbohydrates are good - Again, wrong.  There are good carbs and bad carbs.
3. All protein sources are created equal - No true at all.  Organic chicken for example is far better than factory produced pork.
4. Dairy products are essential - Not true.  Man kind did not evolve to consume a huge amount of calories from the milk of cows.
5. Eat your potatoes - This is a horrible idea for most people and yet a large majority of Americans consume many of their calories from potatoes.
6. No guidance on weight, exercise, alcohol or vitamins - The USDA pyramid and most of the USDA’s information has no advice on these important items.

That said, the authors have decided to come up with a better food pyramid and a better set of dietary guidelines overall.  They themselves admit that nutrition research has been a confusing issue over the past few decades.  Nutrition research comes and goes and what was bad yesterday may be good tomorrow.  This is all true, although they make a strong case for most of the flip flops being based on bad science and rumor rather than good science and research.  At the same time, they have collected an amazing amount of data from a variety of sources.  So while this information may change as we learn more about food and the human body, it does represents some of the best science we have today.

The Core

Out of all the data and research which the authors collected, they have come up with a few basic rules for a good eating plan.

• Watch your weight - Yep, it seems almost too basic to be mentioned but it’s worth noting that even the best diet will be bad for you if you eat too much.
• Eat fewer bad fats and more good fats - The book reviews a variety of good fat sources such as fish, nuts and more.  Meats are treated fairly and the book also provides vegetarian options.
• Eat fewer refined grain carbs and more whole grain carbs - I know many of you think carbs in general are evil, but it’s hard to argue with this rule.  If you eat less white bread and more whole grain bread you’re definitely taking a step forward.  Sure, you can take a bigger step by lowering grain consumption overall but one small step at a time.  The authors provide a variety of tips on grains and how to eat them.
• Choose healthier sources of protein - Yes, this goes out to all of you who think your bacon wrapped steaks are a good idea :)  It’s not!  Protein is good.  Healthy protein sources are better.  A reasonable consumption level of healthy protein sources is best.  I liked the authors rankings of protein sources and they also provide a good set of ideas for vegetarians who may struggle to get enough protein in their diets.
• Eat plenty of vegetables and fruits but hold the potatoes - I don’t really need to go into detail on this one, do I?  The authors do and they give a good amount of information about other root vegetables which we may want to avoid like potatoes.
• Use alcohol in moderation - Yep, one small drink a day is good for you.  Note the emphasis on small.  This is not an excuse to drink a six pack a day.  A small drink is a glass of wine or a single beer.
• Take a multi vitamin for insurance - Even assuming you follow their guidelines, the authors believe you should still take a multivitamin every day, just as insurance.  I have to agree.  Considering the cost is around 10 cents a day and there are no negative side effects, I can’t see how this is anything but a good thing.

The rest of the book goes into detail on these rules and gives a whole lot of information on how to implement them.  It also has sample recipes and menus, all of which sounded really tasty.

So Is It Worth Buying?

Depends.  Are you interested in the details or is the quick summary above enough for you?  For most people, I think this book is a bit too much.  You can read the rules above and get 80% of the books value.  Sure, the rest is interesting but it’s very detailed and might bore a lot of people.  For me, it was fascinating, but that’s because I appreciate reading all the little details.

If you’re a beginner looking for ways to improve your diet, this is not the book for you.  You’re better off with something like Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram Your Genes for Effortless Weight Loss, Vibrant Health, and Boundless Energy or YOU: The Owner’s Manual, Updated and Expanded Edition: An Insider’s Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger.  Those are excellent books for beginners looking to learn more about their bodies.  However, if you’re into the fine print of how your body works and want to learn a lot more about proper nutrition, then Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating is an excellent source of information.

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Primal Blueprint, Day 4

A few things I’ve noticed now that I’m paying more attention to them.

The Undying Cough!

If you’ve had a bad cough recently, you can empathize with what I’m about to say.  Yesterday, I was feeling pretty darn well.  My head was clearing up, I had no headache and that crummy “sick” feeling was almost completely gone.  Only one problem, I was coughing.  Now coughing is a natural thing.  It’s your body’s way of trying to get rid of crap in your airways.  So I don’t usually take anti cough medication during the day.  However, what about at night?  As good as I was feeling, the cough was definitely keeping me awake.  It’s hard to fall asleep when every couple of minutes your body is wracked by a coughing spell.  So I did what most normal people do and took a couple of cough lozenges.  Basically, these are bits of candy with some numbing agent in them that makes the coughing trigger go away.  It seemed to work and I fell asleep.  By the way, I never used to take these lozenges before.  I only started doing so a year or two ago when someone told me that needlessly suffering coughing attacks is silly and only leads to prolonging the cough.

This morning I woke up and I felt worse than before.  The headache was back, the throat felt worse than ever and I felt generally crappy.  So is Mark right?  Is coughing something we should put up with even at the expense of sleep?  Was the cough lozenge a good way of covering up the symptoms but a bad way of getting healthier?  The answer is, I have no clue.  This could just be a bad cold that came back or it might be that I blocked one of my body’s necessary ways of getting rid of disease.  My sample size of 1 is simply not enough data, but it is something to think about.

I wonder how many other ways we have of circumventing the body’s natural function in the name of comfort.  There’s a study I read a while back on how some necessary nutrients are no longer in our foods because we insist on cleaning them up.  That’s right, dirt has nutrients and when you insist on making all your food perfectly clean, you lose out on a lot.  Same applies to medication which reduces fevers.  Fevers are a way for our body to make it tough for viruses and bacteria to live inside us.  When we suppress those fevers, we often make it easier for infections to persist.

So is all medication bad?  Is all treatment unnecessary?  Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far.  However, this is giving me a lot of food for thought.  I think that, as I progress along this two month experiment, I will try to avoid all unnecessary medicine, even things as simple as throat lozenges, and see how I do.

Chocolate Tasted Funny!

Yes, that’s right, I had a sweet tooth breakdown yesterday.  I was in a candy store and there was maple fudge (my favorite!) and I just craved it so much that I broke down and bought a small piece.  Guess what?  It tasted WAY too sweet.  Just four days after starting, something that would have tasted perfectly fine to me before, now tastes way too sweet.  Again, this is just a sample of one, which means that in the long run, this might be meaningless, but I find it encouraging that the cravings for processed sugar are less and less frequent.  Maybe I can finally kick this candy addiction once for all!

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All in all, I’m liking this new lifestyle, although I’m still having difficulty finding good things to eat.

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Primal Blueprint, Day 2

It’s been two days now since I started on this new plan and there’s good and bad news.

Bad News

• Still struggling with a cold.  This has nothing to do with the Primal Blueprint though, I got this cold two days before I started living by Mark’s plan.  Still, it’s a bit frustrating to wake up every day with a sore throat and a headache.  I wonder if my new lifestyle is making things worse or better but I suppose there’s no way to really know that.
• Experiencing the same issues I did when I first tried out intermittent fasting.  Namely, going out with people becomes very difficult since most restaurant meals are not even close to the Primal Blueprint.  Still, with enough planning, I’m finding that I can go out and still stick to this plan.  Mexican restaurants seem good (hold the rice), seafood places are good (again, hold the high carb sides) and sushi places are great (avoid the rice and order sashimi).
• I’m going through a lot of cravings for sugar.  Good thing I started this AFTER I got rid of most of the sugars in my diet last month or else I doubt I could stick with it.  There’s an important lesson there by the way, don’t try anything drastic like this without some gradual changes, you’ll greatly increase your chance of success.
• Not sleeping well, but this could be related to the cold.  I’m trying to avoid taking any medication for this illness but that’s difficult when I’m staying up all night coughing.  What’s worse, losing sleep or taking a cough suppressant?  There’s valid reasons for coughing but my body needs sleep!
• I miss my runner’s high.

Good News

• This is forcing me to cook at home more, which is good.  I’m greatly enjoying finding out how good of a cook I am.  So far I’ve realized that I make a pretty kick ass omelet, stir fry and fish.
• My body feels great even though I’ve been working out while sick.  I’ve been doing 25 minutes of high intensity weight lifting followed by 10 to 15 minutes of low intensity elliptical with a lot of walking and biking thrown in for good measure.  My muscles and joints are experiencing no pain, probably because I haven’t been jogging in two weeks.  Of course, I’m going to see if this has any negative side effects at the end of July, when I do a physical.
• I feel like I have more energy than I did before, which is promising considering the fact that I’m sick and haven’t been sleeping well.  I’m not falling asleep in meetings or in front of the computer, even without caffeine.  we’ll see how I feel when this cold is done.
• My weight is down by several lbs.  This is essentially meaningless though since weight fluctuations over a couple of days can be attributed to the normal metabolic process rather than any changes in body composition.

Things To Try Out This Week

• Need to see if I can have a good meal at an Indian restaurant.  I LOVE Indian food and I’m going to have an issue with a diet that does not allow me to eat it.
• Need to go hiking, something I promised myself I would do regardless of the Primal Blueprint.

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Overall, I’m liking this new way of living.  Of course, it’s only been two days…

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Am I Getting Enough Protein?

Since I eat a primarily vegetarian diet but I still work out a lot, I often get people who ask me if my training suffers due to a lack of protein.  They ask me if I use a protein supplement and if so, which one would I recommend.  Now I know that my diet includes enough protein, but I wanted to show all of you something interesting.

How many of you know how many grams of protein are in a single serving of chicken or a glass of milk?  How about an egg?  How many of you know how many grams of protein the human body needs?  My guess would be very few, which is not an accusation by the way, I didn’t know myself until I started 60 in 3.  Which is why I think a lot of these protein supplements companies are making money when they really shouldn’t.

The Advertising

We’ve all heard the advertising.  It’s unavoidable on TV or at the gym.  Buy the supplement and like magic, your muscles will tone up.  You’ll be ripped and toned within a week, all thanks to this wonderful protein shake or powder or bar or whatever.  Yah, right, if only it was that easy.

First, How Much Do We Need?

The human body needs about .8 to 1.8 grams of protein per kg of body weight.  I would like to emphasize that this is per KILOGRAM, not per pound.  For those of you more comfortable with the English system, a kg is 2.2lbs.  So your protein requirements could also be expressed as .37g to .82g of protein per lb of body weight.

That’s a range because some of us need more and some need less.  The more you use your muscles, the more you need because protein is used to repair all the damage you do to your muscles when you move.  So if you’re a serious body builder, you need .82 grams of protein per lb of body weight.  If you’re a serious couch potato, you need .37 grams of protein per lb of body weight.  If you’re somewhere in between, you’re going to need to judge for yourself.  As for me, I work out 5 days a week and I’m active on the weekends, so I’m going to assume .7 grams of protein per lb of body weight.  All of these numbers are per day by the way, so since I weigh 220lbs, I need 154 grams (220lbs * .7 gram per lb) per day.

Second, Are We Getting Enough?

That glass of milk I drank this morning?  8.4 grams of protein.  The 2 egg omelette I had with it?  14 grams of protein.  So it’s 8am and I’ve just had 22.4 grams of protein.  4 ounces of cottage cheese with my salad for lunch?  14 grams of protein.  2 slices of cheese for an afternoon snack?  another 14 grams.  A cup of tofu with some stir fried veggies for dinner?  20 grams of protein.  By the way, these are small servings.  At the end of the day, I’m at about 100 to 120 grams of protein.  Which leaves me around 30 to 50 grams short of my daily goal.  So yes, I drink a protein supplement with a bit more milk.

However, what about you?  Are you vegetarian?  If not, you may be surprised at the amount of protein you’re getting.  One burger patty?  22 grams of protein.  1 cup of chicken breast pieces scattered over a salad?  43 grams of protein.  That’s FORTY THREE!  Think about that for a second.  If I take my vegetarian diet with its small portions of dairy, tofu and eggs and add just a little bit of chicken on my lunch salad, I’d be getting my 153 grams of protein.  For you serious meat eaters, a 9 ounce sirloin steak has EIGHTY ONE grams of protein.

What am I trying to say?  Well, unless you’re a serious vegetarian or vegan, you do NOT need a protein supplement.  Yes, that’s true even if you work out a lot.  You’re getting more than enough protein if you just eat a healthy, balanced diet with a small amount of lean meat.

One Last Thing

For all of you who see these commercials, I want you to remember one more thing.  protein doesn’t build muscles.  Protein is the raw material that your body uses to build muscles IF you give it the incentive to.  If you eat a lot protein without working out, all you’ll get is fat. There is no magic in that protein supplement that will get you toned and ripped without exercise.  Protein will only help if you’re willing to do the work.

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Save your money and your calories.  Avoid the protein supplements and focus on working out and exercise.

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