May
19
The Five Rules Of Eating Healthy
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Nutrition | 2 Comments
When I first started turning my life around, I read quite a bit about eating healthy. I looked through magazines, books, blogs and any other source of information I could find. While there was a lot of good advice out there, I felt a little overwhelmed. There was so much information out there, so many tips, so many things to do and so many things not to do. I felt like I needed to analyze every single bite I ate down to the smallest component, total up everything hour by hour and then make careful adjustments meal by meal.
Did I have enough protein today? Better increase that measure of Tofu for dinner by 5grams! Did I have enough vitamin D? How about carbs? Did I eat enough or too many? Wait, I just ate an orange. Oh no, now my vitamin intake is all out of whack! It just felt like there was no way to achieve that perfect diet and if my diet wasn’t perfect then I was in danger of backsliding.
Well, after a year of driving myself a little crazy, I started relaxing. I started trusting my own judgment when it came to food. I started understanding that I don’t need to have the perfect balance of protein, fat and carbs every single day, things will balance out over a few days or a week and that’s just fine. Rather than diving into the minutiae of my diet, I started looking at the overall picture. Over the next two or three years, I developed a few basic rules by which I eat. I find these easy to follow and easy to remember.
Before I list my rules of eating, I would like to give credit where credit is due. One, some or all of these rules were inspired by YOU: The Owner’s Manual: An Insider’s Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger
Please note that over the next week I plan to review each of these in more detail, so I hope you don’t mind the quick treatment they each get in this post. I want to provide people with a quick summary of the rules in general before moving on to detailed discussions.
1. Eat a variety of foods
Most foods are not balanced nutritionally and there are very few if any “super” foods that contain everything you need to consume in the proper amounts. So rather than worry about which amino acid you’re missing out on today, just eat a variety of foods from a variety of cuisines. Don’t restrict your diet too much or stick to only one type of food.
2. If they wouldn’t recognize it in the 19th century, you probably shouldn’t be eating it today
This is a paraphrasing of Pollan’s rule “if your grandmother wouldn’t recognize it, you shouldn’t be eating it.” Well, my grandmother is still alive thankfully and she’d recognize quite a bit of crappy food. So I modified this a bit. Essentially, this is a rule meant to protect you from all the overly processed junk available today. If you showed what you’re about to eat to someone from a hundred years ago, would they recognize it as food or what they wonder what they hell you were thinking about for putting this crap in your mouth? This also applies to heavily processed versions of old fashioned food. For example, pasta is fine, highly processed pasta that went through three factories and two refining processes before ending up on your plate is not.
3. The 1/2, 1/4, 1/4 rule of balanced meals
I’m really sick of trying to measure serving sizes. What the heck is the right serving size for meats? Is a tomato one vegetable serving? What about a large tomato? How can a cup of milk be the same serving size of dairy as a slice of cheese?!? Rather than worry about all this, I just balance my plate. 1/2 leafy or crunchy vegetables like spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers and so on. 1/4 starchy vegetables like potatoes, squashes, beans and others. Then finish it off with 1/4 protein like meat, tofu, dairy or legumes. Will this always be the perfect balanced meal? Not always, but things will balance out over time and at least you won’t drive yourself crazy doing portion control.
4. Eat slowly and enjoy your food.
When you eat fast you eat too much. Eat slow, savor your meal, enjoy the flavors and the food. This was one of the hardest rules for me and one I still struggle with. If you’ve seen me eat, you know I eat fast, but believe me, I eat a lot slower than I used to.
5. Eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re not
The three meals a day plan is for people who’s bodies operate on some abnormal mechanical clock. Stop listening to how society tells you to eat and start listening to your body. If you’re hungry, eat. When you’re not hungry stop eating. If that means eating at 2pm instead of lunch time, that’s fine. If it means not finishing your restaurant portion, that’s fine too.
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That’s it, 5 easy rules to live by that don’t require much in the way of scientific analysis. On Wednesday, we start talking about the first one and what exactly it means.
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Apr
28
Do You Know What’s In Your Food?
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Nutrition, Research | 2 Comments
There’s a new poll out from the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The poll asked 500 people about the calorie contents of their food. Care to guess the result? If you guessed that most people don’t know what’s in their food, you’d be right. You can find the article on the CSPI site here.
Don’t Eat What You Don’t Know
I don’t go to restaurants unless I know what I’m eating. For local restaurants, that means asking them what they put in their food and how they prepare it. For chain restaurants, it means not eating there unless they publish their nutritional content on their premises. On premises means right there where you eat the food, not on the website. Website nutritional info is great mostly for regretting what you just ate and doesn’t really help you make an informed decision when you order.
Let Your Voice Be Heard
If there’s a restaurant that does not publish nutriotional information then tell them you won’t be eating there anymore and then tell them why. Enough of these opinions will make a difference.
Make Your Vote Count
I’m not a fan of big government. I don’t think government should tell us what to do or how to behave. I do however believe that governments have a role to play in making sure we have enough information to make an informed decision. So I support government efforts to force restaurants to display nutritional information. Let you congress man or woman know that you’d appreciate this sort of information and that your health is more important than lobbyist dollars.
Read Those Labels
Once you have the information, don’t forget to use it. Information is useless if it’s not used. Read it and then base your food decision on it. If enough of us make healthy food choices, maybe restaurants will offer more healthy options.
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I know people who will spend hours researching the best shampoo for their pet or the best school for their kids. Why not spend a little of that time researching what you’re eating? The results may surprise you.
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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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Mar
7
Premeal Fat, It’s Good For You!
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Nutrition | 2 Comments
A decade or two ago, fat was evil! Everyone was into low fat diets and trying to eliminate all fats from their food. A decade later, and it was carbs. Carbs were the root of all that was bad in life and fats were great. I’d like to think that we’ve swung back into balance these days. At least I hope that most people realize that neither carbs nor fats are evil and both are necessary parts of our diet. That said, there are good fats and there are bad fats, just like there are good carbs and there are bad carbs. There are also good and bad times to eat these nutrients.
The Positive Benefit of Fat
Fat is necessary for a variety of bodily functions, you probably knew that already. However, what you may not have known is that fat is also a trigger for hormones that signal your brain and stomach when you’re full. That’s right, consuming fat will cause you to feel full and stop eating.
How Can We Use This?
If you’re like me, and your body tells you you’re full two hours after your chow down on a whole buffet, this trick might help you out. Before a meal, eat a little bit of healthy fat. That could mean 5 or 6 almonds, or perhaps a little bit of avocado. Whatever it is, don’t overdo it which means keep it under 100 calories. Make sure to do this 30 minutes or so before you eat your meal.
The fat you just consumed will trigger hormone production which should be hitting your brain right about the time you sit down to eat your meal. End result, you feel full and eat less.
Don’t Overdo It
Be careful not to turn this little trick into a trap. You want just a little bit of healthy fat. So a bit of olive oil and cheese might be good but a big piece of bread with butter and olive oil is too much. A few peanuts is ok, a whole bag of cashews is too much.
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Your body is a wonderfully constructed system for processing food. Get to know it this system and how it communicates. Listen to those signals and start generating them yourself. The body is a great ally to have in the struggle for good health.
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Feb
29
The 20 Worst Foods In America
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Nutrition, Research | 3 Comments
I linked to this article on this weekend’s roundup, but I thought it deserved a full discussion. It’s a link from Men Health.com and it discusses some of the worst foods available in restaurants today. The restaurants in question are chains, so you may see these dishes almost anywhere in the US.
The link to the full article can be found here.
As a summary, here’s the list of the 20 worst foods along with their calorie numbers:
- Worst Food - Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing - 2900 calories
- Worst Starter - Chili’s Awesome Blossom - 2710 calories
- Worst Nachos - On The Border Stacked Border Nachos - 2740 calories
- Worst Pasta - Macaroni Grill Spaghetti and Meatballs with Meat Sauce - 2430 calories
- Worst Pizza - Uno Chicago Grill Chicago Classic Deep Dish Pizza - 2310 calories
- Worst Fish - On the Border Dos XX Fish Tacos with Rice and Beans - 2100 calories
- Worst Chicken - Chili’s Honey Chipotle Crispers with Chipotle Sauce - 2040 calories
- Worst Chinese - P.F. Chang’s Pork Lo Mein - 1820 calories
- Worst Dessert - Chili’s Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie with Vanilla Ice Cream - 1600 calories
- Worst Breakfast - Bob Evans Caramel Banana Pecan Cream Stacked and Stuffed Hotcakes - 1540 calories
- Worst Steak - Lonestar 20oz T-Bone (no sides) - 1540 calories
- Worst Burger - Carl’s Jr. Double Six Dollar Burger - 1520 calories
- Worst Salad - On the Border Grande Taco Salad with Taco Beef - 1450 calories
- Worst Sandwich - Quizno’s Classic Italian (large) - 1510 calories
- Worst Kids’ Meal - Macaroni Grill Double Macaroni ‘n’ Cheese - 1210 calories
- Worst Mexican - Chipotle Mexican Grilled Chicken Burrito - 1179 calories
- Worst “healthy”Burger - Ruby Tuesday Bella Turkey Burger - 1145 calories
- Worst Supermarket Meal - Pepperidge Farm Roasted Chicken Pot Pie - 1020 calories
- Worst Drink - Jamba Juice Chocolate Moo’d Power Smoothie - 900 calories
- Worst Fast Food Chicken Meal - Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips from McDonald’s (5 pieces) with creamy ranch sauce - 830 calories
Lesson 1, Educate Yourself
I think the first lesson learned is to educate yourself. Many of these restaurants post nutritional information on their websites of have them available on site. This information is there for you to use so please don’t ignore it.
Lesson 2, Personal Portions Aren’t
All of these meals are supposedly single serving. That means they’re usually supposed to be eaten by one person. The one exception being the starter which is usually shared, but that one is even worse since it’s meant to be eaten in addition to your meal. The truth is that restaurants serve you too much food. So either avoid restaurants like this or decide ahead of time to cut these portions in half and take the rest home.
Lesson 3, Customize
If you read the full article, you’ll see some of the advice they give you on how to make these a little healthier. Most of it revolves around things like asking for no rice on your burrito or avoiding the ranch sauce on your salad. In many cases you can take something that’s unhealthy and make it a little bit healthier. You’re still not going to end up with a healthy meal, but at least you’re not in instant heart attack land. So ask the waiter for no rice, fruit instead of the mashed potatoes and the dressing on the side. If they won’t do it, you’re in the wrong restaurants.
Lesson 4, Fried = Bad
Of the meals that are up there, the ones you cannot fix, even a little bit, are usually the ones which involve frying. The Awesome Blossom for example. Sorry folks, but deep frying your food is not healthy. It hasn’t been healthy in the past and it’s not healthy now.
Lesson 5, Covering Your Food With Melted Processed Cheese = Bad
Again, take a look at those meals up there. Even better, go to the Men’s Health site and look at the pictures. How many of them look like they’re drowning in melted cheese? Some cheese is fine. Using it as dressing and coating your food with it? Not fine.
Lesson 6, Healthy Restaurant Dishes Aren’t Healthy
Salad sounds healthy, right? So does chicken and how about that power smoothie? All perfectly healthy choices. Well, unless you happen to be buying the ones on that list. A salad with over 1000 calories, most of them fat! A smoothie (and I loved that “power” in the name) with almost 900 calories! These choices might be billed as healthy but they most definitely are not. Don’t assume what the restaurant calls healthy really is. Look at the nutritional information and judge for yourself.
Lesson 7, Beware the Sidedishes
That steak on the list doesn’t look too bad. 20oz steak for only 1500 calories? That’s reasonable. Well, first of all it’s not, but it’s even worse when you add another 1000 calories in potatoes and bread. Side dishes are sometimes not counted in restaurant calories information and desserts most definitely are not. So be aware of this and don’t assume that calorie information you read is giving you the full picture. Again, educate yourself and don’t be afraid to ask your waiter. Remember, it’s quite literally your life on the line.
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The 20 dishes on the list are just samples of the awful fare available at generic restaurants. Your best bet is still to make your own food. Barring that, make sure you educate yourself about food in general and restaurants specifically. Make the right choice about where to go, what to order and how much of it to eat. Remember, the restaurant doesn’t care about your health, only about your wallet.
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Jan
30
Addicted To Drugs
Filed Under Health, Money, Nutrition | 7 Comments
For most of last year, I was caffeine free. I had kicked the caffiene habit back in 2006 and I stuck to my guns most of the way through 2007. However, towards the end of 2007, I decided to see if I could use caffeine as a substitute for my sugar cravings. I would drink an occasional diet coke if I felt the urge to snack on chocolate or candy bars. This seemed to be working and I thought I had things under control. Unfortunately, my recent surge of travel has tossed all that out the window.With the time zone changes, the constant meetings, endless restaurant meals and an expense account that makes little things like sodas seem meaningless, my caffeine habit has grown from a controlled experiment into an out of control issue. Now if you read the title of this post, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with drug addiction. The fact is that caffeine is a drug. It is a stimulant and you can in fact get addicted to it. Unfortunately, most people refuse to believe that. Tell them that they’re addicted to caffeine and they’ll say “no way! I just need that morning coffee to get out of bed.” Well, I am addicted to caffeine.
So What?
The first question is, so what? So what if I need/want/crave caffeine? Is that bad? And the answer is, absolutely. There are a variety of ways in which caffeine harms your life. They range from physical to financial to a few less tangible. Let’s start with health.
Health Impact of Caffeine
Here’s a list of potential side effects of caffeine taken from the University of Columbia’s health information site.
- Osteoporosis
- Birth defects
- Miscarriages
- Infertility
- Cancers
- High blood pressure
- Premenstrual syndrome (PMS)
- Ulcers and heartburn
- Fibrocystic breast disease
- Heart disease
That’s right, caffiene can increase your chance of all of these conditions. Sure, it’s not as bad as smoking, but it’s pretty bad.
Financial Impact of Caffeine
Want an extra million dollars when you retire? Take a look at the Latte Factor. It’s a term that’s been bounced around quite a bit in the personal finance side of the internet. It essentially says that cutting out small expenses can have a huge impact on your overall financial health. Here’s a link with more information.
Because most of the past few week’s travel was for business, I kept all my receipts and added them up when I did my expense reports. A quick check showed that the latte factor was absolutely accurate. In fact, it seemed to be underestimating things. On average, I spent about $6.50 EVERY DAY on caffeinated drinks. By the way, I don’t drink coffee, so all of this money is being spent on relatively cheap sodas. I can only imagine the daily caffeine bill of someone who likes high priced Starbuck’s lattes.
The Intangible Effects
Didn’t have enough caffeine this morning? You’re going to experience:
- sleepiness
- feeling overtired (from not having had any caffeine to energize you)
- a terrible headache (when you abruptly stop having caffeine regularly)
From the University of Columbia’s health information site
- anxious
- excitable
- restless
- dizzy
- irritable
- unable to concentrate
- gastrointestinal (GI) aches
- headaches that don’t seem to go away
- trouble with sleeping
From the University of Columbia’s health information site
Worried about the environment? That drink container has an impact.
- The amount of glass bottles Americans throw away every two weeks would have filled both World Trade Center towers.
- Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to rebuild our commercial air fleet every three months, and enough iron and steel to supply all our nation’s automakers every day.
- Throwing away one aluminum can wastes as much energy as if that can were 1/2 full of gasoline.
From the Clean Air Council
Bottom Line
Every time you pick up a can of soda or a cup of coffee, you are making a decision to pay money in return for destroying your health and the environment around you. What kind of a decision is that? To me, it’s a choice I’m no longer willing to make. My little experiment became something much worse and I have no desire to keep going. So as of today, it’s no more caffeine for me. I’ll take the pain of withdrawal for the next few days. In the end, it’ll be worth it.
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Dec
17
Is A Vegetarian Diet Healthy?
Filed Under Eating Healthy, Nutrition, Protein | 3 Comments
As long time readers of 60 in 3 know, I’m vegetarian. To be a bit more specific, I’m a lacto-ovo vegetarian, which means I still eat eggs and dairy products. Over the past year, I’ve had a few questions from readers about why I chose this diet and do I recommend it for health reasons. So I wanted to review a few things that readers might find useful.
Is a vegetarian diet healthy?
Not necessarily. After all, a vegetarian diet could mean nothing but soda and potato chips with a few twinkies thrown in. That qualifies as vegetarian and yet it’s definitely not healthy. Being vegetarian does not automatically mean being health, you still need to try and balance your diet and you still need to make an effort and look for healthy foods.
Is a vegetarian diet unhealthy?
Again, not necessarily. As long as you put in a bit of effort to balance your diet, a vegetarian diets can be very healthy.
I heard vegetarians are missing some nutrients like protein or b12
Incorrect. A balanced vegetarian diet has all the nutrients you need. I get plenty of protein even without any protein supplements. As for B12, there are many vegetarian items like soy milk which are fortified with it. Vegetarians also get plenty of iron.
Vegetarians eat a lot of soy, which I hear is bad for you
Some vegetarians eat a lot of soy products, and there are a few rumors about soy which make it sound unhealthy. Thus far, I haven’t seen any real studies to indicate it’s a bad food item. Even if it was, I’m not that concerned. Since I eat a balanced diet, soy isn’t really my main food staple.
So is a vegetarian diet healthier than a diet that includes meat?
Not necessarily. In fact, a diet that includes some meat is probably healthier than a purely vegetarian diet. Lean meats like venison, fish and so on are healthy and, in combinations with plenty of fruit and vegetables, make for a very healthy diet. This type of diet is just as healthy if not more so, than a balanced vegetarian diet.
So are you saying most meat eaters are healthier than vegetarian?
Unfortunately no. Most people who include meat in their diets, especially in the US, eat way too much meat. In addition, the meat they consume is unhealthy. If you want a healthy diet that includes meat then you need to stay away from fast food meats, most beef and most pork. Stick to things like lean fish, some turkey and wilder game like venison or rabbit. Commercially raised meat is too full of fat and other crap to be healthy.
Do I have to give up steaks to be healthy?
No. I eat a healthy and balanced vegetarian diet but even I occasionally indulge in unhealthy items. For example, that chocolate mousse I ate last night certainly wasn’t #1 on the vegetarians top 10 healthy items list. So yes, you can occasionally indulge. However, unhealthy meat should not be a part of every single meal as it is today. Try to eat meat once per day, limit your quantity and pick out healthier meats. If on occasion you choose to indulge in a unhealthy steak, that’s fine, just don’t make a habit of it.
So why did you choose to be vegetarian?
Three reasons. First, vegetarian diets are generally healthier for the environment. Second, it was easier for me to explain to my family and friends that I won’t eat any meat rather than start explaining to them which meats I will or won’t eat. Oddly enough, being vegetarian is far more acceptable than being a healthy meat eater. Tell people you eat no meat and they’re fine, tell people that you only eat turkey and venison and they think you’re some survivalist nut. Finally, it’s just easier for me to look for healthy vegetarian options than it is to find healthy meat options. Again, odd but true. It’s a lot faster to find a healthy option among the nonmeat options than it is in most restaurants’ selection of meat dishes.
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To be honest, if it was easier to find healthy meat sources that were easy on the environment, I probably would still be eating meat. I have no moral issue with it and I did find it quite tasty. Unfortunately, our society is set up around cheap, factory farmed beef, chicken and pork and those I simply won’t touch. So yes, you can be just as healthy eating meat as you can being a vegetarian. However, you still need to balance your diet and you definitely need to make smart choices in what you choose to eat.
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