Archive for September, 2009

Lack of Sleep and Overeating

One of the things that causes us to overeat, even when we have the best plan out there and tend to stick to a healthy diet most of the time, is a lack of sleep.  This may be hard to believe since the two don’t seem immediately related to one another, however, there are some solid studies on the fact that sleep deprivation and overconsumption of food are definitely related.  I guess that it sort of makes sense since your body probably thinks it needs more “fuel” since it didn’t get enough sleep, and it seeks out that “fuel” from the food you eat, thereby making you eat too much and then put on weight.

If you’re watching your weight or you are trying to diet, sleep can be one of the critical components of a successful diet campaign since if you are an individual who habitually does not get enough sleep, you may be already having a leg down in the fight to lose excess pounds, which are, in essence, excess calories that are stored in not so glamorous places on your body.  Even if you work really early in the morning, you have to make sure that you are getting at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep per night.  Not only will your body benefit in weight but you will also conceivable extend your life expectancy since sleep is one of the factors that determines your mortality rate and age.

The physiological reason for lack of sleep’s contribution to increasing your waistline through increasing your appetite is that when you do not get enough sleep, two of the key hormones in your  body that control the ever important appetite, leptin and ghrelin, are diminished quite significantly when you don’t get enough shut eye.  These two hormones, when diminished, do not have the power over the body to suppress your appetite when you are satiated.  Because they actually determine your satiety, you essentially don’t have the all important off switch that tells you to stop eating, or your off switch is greatly delayed, resulting in you cramming more pound increasing calories in your body.

In a study, it was shown that people who were sleep deprived for a night had an immediate decline in their leptin and ghrelin levels, to the tune of almost 20%, which helped to determine how much they were going to eat that day.  They almost always would keep eating beyond what they normally would, because their bodies didn’t have that inhibition and off switch that they normally do. This is why they say one of the contributing factors to obesity is lack of sleep.

Healthy Lunch : Kale, Brown Rice, Hummus

I’ve done it again.  I’ve fallen in love with a vegetarian style lunch.  Make that a vegan style lunch this time actually, this dish has no cheese or any other kind of dairy, nor does it have animal protein of any sort.  It is comprised of some of the biggest staples in the vegan and vegetarian diet actually, which are brown rice, wild rice, kale and hummus.  Heck, hummus is a favorite of vegetarians, vegans and carnivores alike.

Hummus is pretty universal, and if you buy or make the kind that only uses oil very sparingly, or not at all, then you are also eating a very low fat, low calorie meal that is satisfying as well.  Oh yeah, did I mention that it bursts with flavor also?  That’s all important as we know, since it is when our tastebuds are bored that we start to go for the most fatty, sugary and flavorful foods that also happen to be the least healthy for us.  How is that?

Well, we are creatures that were born to love food, and we have certain pleasure chemicals that go off allover our body when we eat tasty food, so it only makes sense that would biologically drive us to the tastiest foods, naturally.

So, here’s my awesome, low fat, healthy and fiber filled lunch recipe for a vegan, super cleansing meal.  And it doesn’t leave you feeling stuffed or lethargic afterwards as a lot of other lunch foods can, which is a huge bonus if you take this to work with you for your lunch.

You start off with cooking half wild rice and half brown basmati or whole brown rice.  I prefer to cook mine in a rice cooker as it yields the most perfectly cooked and fuss free brown rice you can make, and you don’t have to be around to cook it, you just throw the water or broth and the rice in the proper measurements in, and leave it alone til it’s done.

I like to cook mine in a vegetable broth, it gives it more flavor and texture.  Then, I take a small zuccini, about half of it, and cube it.  I place this in a steamer along with shredded fresh kale, and lightly steam these two veggies.  These will top my rice, along with a few other goodies that round out this veggie filled lunch.  I also dice fresh tomatoes.

I buy a hummus (or you can make your own) that contains 30 calories per 2 TB.  Some hummus can be double this amount of calories because it’s loaded with oil. Choose one that is made with only tahini, garbanzo beans and other non oil ingredients (but nothing unnatural of course!)

I put about 4 TB of hummus on top of mine, a little sea salt, the veggies and the diced tomatoes, and voila, you have a very filling, healthy fiber and nutrition filled lunch that you can eat day after day because it’s SO good!

Avoid Pigging Out on Football Sundays

Now that the football season is here again, I know that I’m going to have to ramp up for having more willpower since we happen to be the gathering point of all our football watching friends and also we happen to always buy lots of chips, dips and appetizers, on top of a “meal” food like pizza or some other ridiculously fattening fare that makes you think of football sundays. 

Oh, and pile on the beer or other alcoholic beverages that are bound to be consumed and you have a recipe for unavoidable weight gain every start of the NFL season.  At least that’s how it works for me and my fiance. 

We almost always put on weight during the football season, however I’m determined to not do it this time.  It seems like that one little day of pigging out nonstop leads to a barrage of eating badly and wanting MORE MORE MORE.  More fat, more sugar and more heavy, stick to your thighs good.  Sure, it tastes great while you’re eating it, but it leads to a bigger overall appetite, a slower pace mentally and physically, and countless Mondays hung over from drinking on Sundays.  Not a good combo, my friend!

So, my strategy this time is to actually do what I always do, which is work at my “other job” for half the time on Sundays that people are here, which will inevitably keep little paws out of the cookie jar, so to speak. And by cookie jar, I mean keep it out of the endless bowls of chips, pretzels, fattening sour cream based dips, cheesy surprises, sauerkraut balls, mini pigs in a blanket, and all the other good, greasy fare that tends to go with those fun football sundays.  There’s a huge part of me that loves the whole ritual, but my body definitely does not appreciate it in the end. 

I looked at pictures of myself after football season last year, and my face looked puffy and unhealthy, and that made me really think about what I was putting into my body.  Not just on Sundays either, it’s because it’s a domino effect, and it always ends up trailing out into the whole week, or at least into Monday and Tuesday. 

That adds up to a lot of calories and a lot of careless meal choices that can’t be reversed except with a lot of discipline and dieting for the next several months.  If you’re a victim of football sunday overeating, take my advice, sit out at least one part of the day, and join the rest of the buffet in the evening, so at least you won’t be eating all day long and be able to stop the unstoppable inertia of overeating.

New Review : Caralluma Product

Carallluma fimbriata is another one, like the all too popular hoodia, that is a plant who is from the succulent family. Succulents look like cactuses, or cacti, and I supposed you could call them from the cactus family as well.

Caralluma is a plant that, when ground up and turned into a powder, or shoot, if eaten straight in it’s native land, far far away, will curb your appetite, and can even help to curb your thirst. It is another plant that is used by tribesmen to help stave off their hunger and thirst for longer periods of time so they can get more important things done eating.

Leave it to us diet-obsessed Americans to find these types of miracle plants, and use them as ingredients in diet and appetite suppressing products designed to help us lose weight. Well, that’s exactly what’s been done, and the product I’ve reviewed is Caralluma Burn, which is a pure Caralluma diet supplement that does not contain any of those additives that make you feel like you want to jump out of your own skin like caffeine or any other types of harsh stimulants.

The problem with these types of diet aids that use stimulation as their main way to suppress hunger is that they often leave the person hungrier than they ever were when they wear off. This product is unique in that it does not use any stimulants, as a lot of hoodia products do, to aid you in your strike against hunger to help fulfill your weight loss goals, rather it just uses the power of this unique caralluma plant to ward off hunger and help your blood sugar remain stable for hours on end so that you can begin to burn your calorie stores and reduce your overall weight.

After all, weight loss is by it’s very definition a loss of excess calories, and in order to do that, you have to intake less. Caralluma Burn helps you do that by reducing cravings and appetite. Read on for a full review of the Caralluma product.

Regina Benjamin, Surgeon General “Too Big”

Obama’s selection of a highly regarded Doctor for his choice as the new Surgeon General has some raising their eyebrows.  People are questioning whether the selection of an overweight woman is the right message to send to the American public, who is already suffering high rates of obesity and related illnesses and what many call an “obesity epidemic”.  The problem, many say, is that the position she is in is specifically related to the public’s health and wellness, and having someone in the position who is overweight and may be put at higher risks for obesity related disease herself is just not setting the best example in these times when obesity is frowned upon, yet so prevalent.

I’m kind of torn here.  While I think it’s great that she is a woman and also a minority, with the administration shattering so many ethnic boundaries with it’s appointments, I do have this one part of me that thinks maybe she should be someone who sets the example of being within weight and fitness guidelines that promote the greatest health.  If she were the Attorney General, I could care less, but because her position is so specifically health related, I feel a bit differently about it.

On the other hand, I feel like women, and men, are put under such a microscope when it comes to their weight, that a part of me feels like someone who is not of the ideal weight and has extra curves is a good example to women who feel they have to be a size 2 to be anything these days.  It’s such a double edged sword, especially for women, that I tend to go both ways on it, especially myself being a woman who suffered an eating disorder in my youth due to the societal pressure to be supermodel thin back then (which still, in my opinion, continues on today although the pin thin idea has eased a bit).

One thing is for sure, her credentials are awesome.  She has been an advocate for the health care of the less fortunate, which definitely gives her a few notches up with me, and she has won awards for excellence in her profession.  Not to mention, she just looks like a really nice and generous woman.  I wish her the greatest luck in her new job, and also with all the criticism from people who can’t understand the appointment of a larger woman to this role!

Asparagus : A Great Diet Food

If you don’t mind your pee stinking from eating what is actually my personally favorite veggie, then you may really want to consider incorporating asparagus into your diet – quite a bit, if you are a person who is mindful of their figure.  It’s actually been revealed as an excellent diet food for a few reasons that you may not even be aware of.

Not to mention, asparagus has a naturally wonderful flavor and texture that make it one of the favorite veggies by many people, including myself.  You can make it super fancy with some lemon juice and olive oil on the grill, or you can simply steam it and put a little low fat butter or butter spray and sea salt on it for a delicious treat that adds fat fighting and nutrition to your complete meal.  Shoot, I could make a whole meal of asparagus, that’s how much I love it, and I don’t even feel like I’m being “good” when I eat it which I think is part of the appeal.  When it is cooked right, it tastes like something that is rich because it is so flavorful, so you get the best of both worlds with this food.

Let’s talk about calories. It’s hard to believe, but asparagus only contains about 26 calories per CUP!  That’s pretty amazing, considering you can have four cups of it and still only round out to about 100 calories, and if you use spray butter instead of the real thing for flavoring, then you’re really not adding anything else to your meal calorie wise.  I will many times eat an entire bag of the brand that I happen to like called Hanover, which is just the tips and spears, so it’s the most tender part of the veggie.  You do have to be careful not to eat too far up the stalk, as it gets very fibery and not flavorful.

Another relatively unknown fact about asparagus is that it is a pretty potent diuretic, which means it makes you urinate more, so you eliminate more of your
excess water weight, which means less bloat and less water weight around the areas where it matter most, so you can fit into your clothes more easily.  It’s a great detox food for that reason.  But the fact that it’s a diuretic isn’t the reason for that funky smell it emits in your urine, that’s because of a chemical that is unique to asparagus that chemically reacts with your urine to create that icky sewage smell.  It’s still worth it in my book!

Make Your Breakfast Biggest Meal

Part of the reason that the US has so many problems with obesity is portion control.  If we could just grow out of this “bigger is better” mentality, then we would be able to shake a lot of the obesity epidemic as well as all the health problems that always seem to go in tandem with obesity once and for all. But alas, we don’t seem to learn, and we keep eating the wrong things and the wrong portions.  I’m really hoping that with all this new healthcare program talk going on that healthcare plans offer real incentives to eat right and stay at a healthy weight.

For example, my significant other’s company he works for  gives him so many dollars for every preventive program he goes to.  So, if he participates in a wellness program or a checkup of some sort, he gets money in a special account. Great idea and a great incentive for staying healthy!  One of the things we Americans get really wrong is the importance of making breakfast the biggest meal of the day.  Instead, we tend to load up our plates with fat and calories more so at the end of the day, and because of that, we experience weight gain and weight that is hard to take off due ot the fact that we aren’t really burning any of it off after we eat it.

Think about it, and it makes sense.  Why would you “fuel up” your body at night when all you’re going to do is go to bed in the next few hours, where that food does not get burned off and instead is much more likely to be stored as excess fat somewhere on your body?  I’ve tried to convert to this way of thinking, and I’ll admit, at first it seemed weird to me because I was used to eating more at night.  I think eating more at night was a big part of my relaxation routine though, and it was a way of rewarding myself after a long day’s work.

Now, I’m trying more to think of breakfast as being the time to indulge in a little more calorie intake.  Not only does it help me think more clearly at work and let me have a more productive morning, but it also provides me fuel right up to lunch, whereas before I would be starving by about ten o’clock in the morning for a snack because my breakfast was too small.  Oh, and a nice byproduct is weight loss and ease of weight maintenance too!

Eating Slow Aids Digestion, Makes You Thin

I’d always marveled at what a slow, slow eater my mom was. She’d sit there and talk or read in between bites, and you’d always be done with your plate while she still was looking at a half plate or sometimes even a virtually full plate of food left in front of her.  Another thing about my mom is that she has ALWAYS been thin.  She has never been one of those people to put on and take off the same twenty to thirty pounds.  She may waver in the five pound range, but never anything beyond that.  While I assert that a lot of her eating habits, including eating slow, contributed to this serendipitous ability to maintain a weight her whole life, I do believe that eating slow has been a major part of that for her.

You see, when you eat slow, your brain has time to catch up to your eating speed and tell you to put a lid on it, you’re done.  Have you ever noticed that when you scarf down two plates of food, that you inevitably feel ridiculously full and almost ready to vomit about twenty minutes to a half hour later?  It’s as if you’re food has expanded in your stomach.  But what that really is, is that yes, it does expand a little, but what it really is is that your brain finally had time to catch up with your mouth and tell you to stop eating.

The brain takes a while to send the signals to your stomach that you are full, so this is why it’s actually important that you take your time eating.  Eating more slowly also provides another important function, which is to help your digestion go smoother.  Instead of a bunch of food hitting your stomach all at once like an onslaught, forcing your stomach to make a lot of hydrochloric acid to digest and break it down, you’re allowing your stomach to have the time to make adequate digestive juices to accurately digest your food.

Because of this, you also may experience less indigestion and gas afterwards, because your stomach was able to do it’s whole job without being rushed.  Another great reason to eat slowly is that you will enjoy and appreciate the flavors and other nuances of the food you are eating, making it less likely that you will binge and go for that second plate which you almost never need.  It can be a great diet aid because of this.

Depo Provera and Weight Gain

A recent study has shown that the method of birth control where you get a shot in the arm about once every three months, known best by the brand name of Depo Provera, may cause a weight gain in specific women who are susceptible to it, that may be very hard to shed once it is put on, potentially putting them at risk for all those headaches that are associated with a higher weight like difficulty breathing, diabetes and the like.

Depo Provera is already not without it’s critics.  Many believe that it causes a higher risk of strokes and other health problems that make it not even worth the convenience it offers to women who want to use a birth control method.

The weird part about the weight gain experienced on Depo Provera is that women who were already mothers and of a normal weight were at the highest risk of early weight gain while on the contraceptive, most of them citing an almost immediate increase in their appetite after getting the injection.  The larger appetite may be explained by the alteration of hormones that are involved in hunger and satiety in the body, caused by the contraceptive method.

The study to see which women were at higher risk involved women of quite a few ethnic backgrounds, so it should have been a pretty good study outcome.  The women who gained about 5% of their current body weight within six months of getting the injections were the most likely to also continue on with the weight gain trend throughout the years.  The interesting part is that the women who gain weight early on and quickly with Depo Provera were identified as much  more likely to continue that trend than the women who were on it and gained weight at a slower pace from the onset.

For that reason, Doctors should recommend that patients who see this high increase in weight very early on the shot should seriously consider going on something different as an option so that they do not put on weight and jeopardize their health. My personal opinion on the shot is that there are better options.  I think that it causes too many complications in my opinion to be a viable birth control option that minimally interferes with a woman’s health.

What is a “Flexitarian”?

I found this concept to be intriguing, partly because I think it’s kind of how I tend to eat.  You see, I go through periods where the smell and sight of meat, especially red meats, kind of makes me sick.  For example, the other weekend I got some tritip beef and the smell of the raw meat made me just about want to gag. I hated that the cooking of this meat made our whole downstairs smell for hours, and the smell somehow was nauseating to me.  I try to take these kinds of cues from my body as signs that I just shouldn’t eat meat that day.  Some days it might be very appealing, and I’ll opt for that steak though.

The flexitarian diet is basically one that is primarily vegetarian but you can incorporate an animal fat into your diet once daily. As long as it’s a healthy meat preferably. This is a bit different from the typical American diet where people eat meats with almost every meal, for example, some sausage for breakfast, some lunch meat on a sandwich for lunch and some chicken for dinner.  This type of diet can tend to be high in saturated fat and also not easily digestable, putting more strain than necessary on the digestive system and the bowels.

Flexitarians get the best of both worlds without overdoing it in the meat department.  You can eat a vegetarian or vegan meal for breakfast and lunch, and then try a healthy, organically produced meat for dinner, but still watch your portioning, and you may see your signs of health improve because you’ve converted to a mostly plant based diet, whis is excellent because you are getting a lot of phytonutrients, tons of natural chlorophyll and antioxidants, and tons of naturally cleansing and regulating fiber.

Some of the meal ideas you can use are things like brown and wild rice with some avocados and tomatoes chopped over it (one of my faves), maybe a veggie sandwich if you’re at a restaurant, or a salad minus the meat but with a healthy portion of low fat cheese and an olive oil based dressing, a bowl of lentil soup, the possibilities are endless and if you go to a restaurant that caters to vegetarians, then you have all that many more choices.