What’s a Normal Portion Size?

by | Apr 7, 2014 | Portion Sizes | 0 comments

Fish We tend to eat what’s on our plate. Most of us have a hard time stopping at satiety or assessing caloric count; we therefore rely on outside cues and eat the unit offered, believing that that unit is what normal people eat.

So restaurants influence how much we’ll eat just by deciding the serving sizes, and those are unpredictable and range from petite to colossal. A study published last year surveyed 245 restaurant chains and found that entrees averaged 674 calories, appetizers 813 calories, sides 260 calories, salads 496 calories, drinks 419 calories, and desserts 429 calories. Combine just two portions and you’re way over the Institute of Medicine’s recommended 640 per meal, and these calorie counts are averages — Olive Garden’s Chicken Alfredo has 1,540 calories a plate.

A new commentary by Deborah Cohen and Mary Story in the American Journal of Public Health has an interesting suggestion: Let’s standardize portion sizes in restaurants.

Portion distortion

There are standards for screws, nuts and bolts, argue the authors. Portion sizes are established for packaged foods. Alcohol is standardized: A standard drink contains about 0.6 ounces of ethanol in the U.S. (the U.S. alcohol unit is more generous than the U.K. one), and would therefore amount to a large 12-ounce glass of beer, 5-ounce or half a glass of wine or a tiny 1.5-ounce shot of vodka. This enables people to gauge their alcohol consumption, knowing that it takes about an hour to metabolize each unit of alcohol. Most states outlaw all-you-can-drink sales of alcohol — you’re free to order as many drinks as you wish, but it’s illegal to automatically refill your glass.

Yet when it comes to restaurant food serving sizes are all over the place, making it very difficult to practice portion control unless you can consult calorie charts and bring along measuring cups and scales. Palm-of-your-hand tricks for estimating the meat portion hardly work for amorphous foods that take the shape of a deep plate. Portion control relies totally on consumer education, but why not enlist the provider — who after all has much better access to measuring cups — for assistance?

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Low Carb Mag April Edition

by | Apr 4, 2014 | Diet, Exercise, Low carb diet, Natural food, Nutrition, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Cover_PageHello and welcome to another new edition of Low-Carb Mag

Since making the magazine free last month we have been absolutely astounded at the amount of people who are now downloading it.

Our daily download rates have gone up by nearly 10 times which is phenomenal. I am really, really pleased that we have managed to get to the free download stage of our evolution sooner than expected as that means so many more people who want this information will
be able to get it.

Also – this month we’ve taken away the need to give your email address or anything like that in order to download the magazine – it is totally free and open for everybody to download from anywhere you want.

If you have a website please feel free to use the embed code on your website. And if you’d like us to make you an official partner just send me an email and we’ll put you on our official partners list – with a link back to your website. There are some serious advantages
of becoming an official partner.

Our next great piece of news is the Low-Carb Paleo Show has finally started. This is a light hearted look at the world of Low-Carb and Paleo – but with some seriously useful information all mixed into the format.

You won’t want to miss it!

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Now Saturated Fat Is Good for You?

by | Apr 3, 2014 | Food Choices, High Fat Diet | 0 comments

Fat A recent article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) puts to rest a decades-old myth: Saturated fat is NOT bad for the heart. This is news I’ve long suspected! And we now have science to support it. Fat is not the enemy when it comes to cardiovascular disease, weight gain, brain health, and so many other issues. It turns out that sugar — in all its many guises — is the real culprit for making you fat. What it also means is that because sugar causes inflammation throughout the body, it increases your risk of cardiovascular disease — and just about everything else!

We’ve all been sold a bill of goods about so-called healthy low-fat foods like cookies and muffins. When you begin to read labels, you’ll quickly see how much sugar is added to just about everything, especially to low-fat foods. When the fat is removed, so is the flavor. To make it more palatable, sugar, sugar substitutes, and salt are added in its place. And as you continue to read labels, I think you’ll be surprised by how much sugar is also in so-called healthy foods, like yogurt, tomato sauce, many fruit juices — even some salad dressings.

I can tell you without a doubt, it’s the sugar that so many of us struggle with, not the fat. Think about it. It’s NOT the burger with cheese and bacon that’s the issue. It’s the ketchup, the bun, and the fries. These are all carbs that instantly raise your blood sugar, because they are higher on the glycemic index than plain old table sugar. This is what I mean by sugar in all its guises.

Foods with little fat and loaded with sugar don’t leave you satiated after a meal — at least not for long. We need the fat to feel sated. Without it, we crave more sugary foods — until we learn to switch to or at least incorporate better food choices. It’s like being on a blood sugar roller coaster. Your body is subjected to the blood sugar highs and lows, and you literally NEED the sugar to feel OK when you’re in one of the lows.

So let’s not kid ourselves anymore about what’s really making us fat. Sugar is the leading culprit today in causing inflammation. Here are some specific stats from an article printed in February 2014 in the Journal of the American Medical Association [JAMA], which are worth sharing: Read more

5 Beginner-Friendly CrossFit Workouts

by | Apr 2, 2014 | Exercise | 0 comments

Fit Woman It’s nearly impossible to talk about fitness trends without CrossFit entering the conversation. This high-intensity workout program of constantly varying functional movements has swept the nation and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. “The great thing about CrossFit is that it can work for anyone,” says Nick Lobotsky, CrossFit Level 1 trainer and full-time coach at CrossFit NYC. “We have everyone from ex-football players to ballerinas to grandmothers who come in.” And for good reason. All CrossFit workouts, or WODs (Workout Of the Day), are scalable to each individual’s fitness ability.

From bodyweight-only routines to workouts with weights, your first WOD doesn’t have to be scary. But it should challenge — and change — you. And the workouts below will do just that — without putting you on your back. But before we get into some of these heart-pumping beginner WODS, let’s get familiar with the CrossFit lingo.

Box: A CrossFit gym
WOD: Workout Of the Day, as posted on CrossFit.com or determined by your coach/box (typically only about 20 minutes). If you’re wondering why many WODs have names, it’s because these are workouts that come up over and over again: It makes them easier to remember.
AMRAP: As Many Reps/Rounds As Possible, in regards to number of reps or round in a timed workout, you want to complete as many as you can
For Time: Your goal is to finish the prescribed workout as quickly as you can
Score: The total number of reps/rounds completed in a workout. If you’re scoring rounds, you’ll tack on the additional reps you completed if you were into the next round but didn’t complete it (i.e., 8R + 12 would mean eight rounds complete and 12 reps into the ninth round when time expired)
Rx’d: This is written after your score if you did each exercise of the workout without any modifications, meaning you completed it as prescribed (i.e., 7R +16 Rx)
CrossFit Games: The Superbowl of CrossFit, where the most elite in the sport come to compete and be crowned the World’s Fittest Man and Woman (current title holders: Rich Froning (three-time winner) and Samantha Briggs)
CrossFit Open: CrossFitters can register online, then compete in a form of CrossFit Games alone or at their box

While the true CrossFit experience will take place at your local box with a team of athletes sweating right alongside you, it’s possible to get in on the action just about anywhere on your own. These beginner-friendly yet challenging CrossFit workouts will get your feet wet, and might just inspire you to commit to the program.

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Mediterranean Diet Breakfast

by | Apr 1, 2014 | Low carb diet, Nutrition | 0 comments

Fruit In Greece, they have a saying: “Eat like a king in the morning, like a lord at lunch and like a beggar at dinner”. This proverb stresses the importance of breakfast in our diet, and yet a lot of people still skip it as a meal.

Breakfast is the first meal we have after a long fast. The etymology of the word breakfast means literally “to break the fast”, meaning that it is the meal which interrupts the night fasting, i.e. the period of the night, during which we do not consume any food.

After 8-10 hours of sleeping without food, the energy reserves in our body have diminished and certainly our brain and body need “fuel” to function correctly.

The importance of breakfast is major, when we want to increase our efficiency at work and at school, as it seems that people who have eaten breakfast are more concentrated and more vigilant. On the other hand, people who don’t have breakfast tend to be more tired and lazy. This is due to the reduction of the blood glucose levels. We should also know that glucose is the food of the brain.

Unfortunately, a lot of people, young and older, don’t eat breakfast, either because they underestimate or ignore its value, or because they think that the daily stress and lack of time keep them from dedicating a few minutes of their day in their nutrition and in themselves. Many people think that having a large breakfast will make them gain weight. However, scientific studies disprove them, since they suggest that people who eat breakfast are more likely to lose weight and tend to keep this lost weight. On the other hand, skipping breakfast leads to excessive food intake later throughout the day, less control over the quantity and quality of the foods that are consumed, as well as wrong messages of satiety.

Breakfast is that meal of the day which should provide us the necessary energy to have a kick start in our day. Therefore, if you are interested in having a better performance at work or at school, a good breakfast will help you “wake up”. According to research, people who eat breakfast are more energetic and do better at tests or their work than those who skip breakfast. Furthermore, studies in children have shown that consumption of breakfast improve memory and have a positive effect in the processes required to retain new information. On the contrary, a hungry person can be apathetic, indifferent or even lazy, when assigned with difficult tasks. Adults and mostly children who skip breakfast are more likely to be obese, since they eat larger portions at lunch or tend to nibble snacks that are usually unhealthy and rich in fat and calories.

Impressive findings of many studies show that people who have breakfast make more balanced choices for their diet throughout the day. Specifically, it has been shown that the percentage of fat they take is significantly lower. These traits of a balanced diet where also apparent in laboratory test – people who did not have breakfast had higher concentrations of blood cholesterol.

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