Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I’ve received the following comments on my entry about the Hungry Man Sports Grill:

Alison said:

Who cares how fattening it is; it tastes soo damn good. I am a girl and a college athlete, ha the other day I ate two haha. It has quickly became my new favorite TV diner. GO SWANSON

Matthew said:

This line is da bomb. All tv dinners suck but these are actually edible and the cheese fries are quite tasty, do em in the oven though the microwave just makes em soggy.

I really don’t know what to think about these comments. The one from Matthew is particularly interesting to me because he states, “This line is da bomb.” That sounds innocuous enough, but how many people actually think of groups of TV dinners as a “line”? Only marketing people and people who SELL TV dinners think of them as a “line”.

Are these comments just a ploy from Swanson to try to soften the hard truth that one of their products has as many calories and fat for an entire day?

The next book that the library sent me was The Raw Food Detox Diet : The Five-Step Plan for Vibrant Health and Maximum Weight Loss by Natalia Rose. Unlike The Raw Truth, this book had far more to print than just recipes. The groups of recipes are only about one-third of the book, with the rest of the book talking about why the Raw Food Detox Diet will make you lose weight.

The premise of this book is that cooked food (along with animal products and artificial chemicals) create waste in your body. This waste (or garbage or toxins) collects in your body, causing you to be overweight. The author tosses out the very existence of fat cells and wants you to believe that you’re fat because you’re constipated.

“It’s much more common to find a body riddled with cells carrying matter that’s not easily eliminated. This is the fundamental cause of our physical and, some would argue, mental ills. Clean, healthy cells maintain homeostasis (the healthy state of balance in the body), which keeps us feeling well.”

“Waste matter in the body is the fundamental source of the excess weight in your body. Get the waste out and you get the weight off.”

Not only are you constipated, you won’t be able to get unblocked without “waste elimination specialists” such as colonics, enemas, massage therapy and yoga positions. Eating healthy isn’t enough to get the waste out of your body. You need to flush it out with an enema.

It took me a while to find a quote in this book that I actually agreed with, but I finally did. When talking about vitamins, Natalia had this to say,

“If you’re eating of nature’s bounty every day, you don’t need to supplement your diet with pills.”

That is true. When you eat a healthy diet, you don’t need to take vitamin or calcium pills. Raw fruit and vegetables along with a myriad of other foods constitute a healthy diet. When you eat a healthy diet, you also don’t need enemas or colonics. Fiber and healthy oils in the right quantities will eliminate any “waste” you many have in your body.

Just like The Raw Truth, this book has absolutely no medical proof backing up their claims about food combinations, enzymes or colonics. We are just supposed to take the author’s word for it. Without the scientific studies to back up these ideas, I have to classify this book in the “quack” category.

After my visit to the raw food bar in Salt Lake City, I decided to research a little more about raw foods and what constitutes “raw.” The first book that the library sent my way was The Raw Truth: The Art of Preparing Living Foods by Jeremy A. Safron. It certainly isn’t the most scientific of the books that the library could have sent me.

The explanation for eating raw foods is based on enzymes. This book states that live enzymes are essential to digestion.

“When a food is exposed to temperatures greater than 116° F (108° F to be safe), most of its enzymes are killed. Enzyme-depleted food can be very hard to digest and gives very little energy to the body.”

This is the premise of the raw food movement. Cooked food is bad. Raw food is best. Dehydrated food is ok as long as it doesn’t get above 108° F. I don’t believe a word of it. It is the responsibility of the idea to prove itself, but this book doesn’t cite any medical or nutritional studies that back up the idea of “live enzymes.” There is no scientific proof of anything and I’m supposed to just believe it because this book said so.

In addition to the lack of proof, the idea slips between nutrition and religion far too easily for me to take seriously. Any food “made with anger” is considered unhealthy, and is on the list of “Biodestructive Foods.” Any food “made with love” or “hand picked” is healing, and is on the list of “Bio-Regenerative Foods.”

Based on the lack of supporting evidence, this book assumes that you are already convinced that eating raw food is the way to go. Over half of the book is devoted to recipes, most of which utilize blenders, dehydrators and a lot of allowing things to sit in bowls of water. The pictures look appetizing, but many of the recipes seem to be trying to recreate old favorites (like fruit pie) without cooking.

The Raw Food Movement is lacking enough proof for me to take it seriously. The food at Living Cuisine was delicious and I enjoyed the atmosphere. I eat most of my fruits and vegetables in the raw form, yet I can’t accept the philosophy of raw food. The reason I eat raw food is that it tastes better. Unless I learn how to be a better cook, raw fruits and veggies taste better than the overcooked and soggy versions of themselves. It has nothing to do with “living enzymes” and everything to do with taste as far as I’m concerned.

I hear people say it at Weight Watchers, “This dieting is just too expensive.” There is an attitude in the world that eating healthy food is more expensive than eating whatever is handy. I’m not buying it.

The truth of the matter is, we SAVED money when I started eating healthy. Fresh veggies are a little more expensive in the winter, but not nearly as expensive as the frozen dinners that I was buying. You don’t need to shell out the bucks for Lean Cuisine in order to eat less calories, you just need to be willing to plan ahead.

Pre-packaged fresh vegetables (like the kind you find in a vegetable tray) are more expensive than the uncut variety. If you’re willing to wash and prepare your own food, you can save a lot of money. The prices for fruit and vegetables are highly dependent on the season. If you buy what is in season, you can usually save money and still enjoy fresh produce. Sure, you might be a little sick of clementines this time of year, but they disappear after January, so enjoy them now.

Rice is CHEAP if you buy it in bulk. It keeps for a long time and it is a healthy carbohydrate to supplement your diet. Brown rice and wild rice varieties tend to have more fiber, so watch for sales on them and stock up when they their price falls down to the white rice prices.

The most inexpensive meat I have found is the frozen chicken breasts that you can buy in a huge bag. One of those bags will feed us for a month. That’s ten bucks of meat for an entire month for two people. Dried beans are another source of protein that are very inexpensive and will store for a long time if you buy them in bulk.

It seems to me that you can feed a family on very little money and keep it healthy as long as you’re willing to put in the work of planning and preparing everything. Sure, ramen noodles are cheaper than Lean Cuisine, but fresh veggies with rice and beans beats them both.

This article about flaxseed oil is pretty interesting. There is no proof yet about all those supposed benefits of flaxseed oil, but it DOES give some good information about how to eat it.

• Yahoo! Health Expert Blogs Eat Right, Stay Fit – Facts About Flax

I wrote earlier about taking flaxseed oil on this entry:

• Starling Fitness » Following the Rules

Back then, my evaluation of the benefits of adding oil to my diet were as follows:

The truth of the matter is, I haven’t noticed a big difference by adding healthy oil into my diet. My nails are growing well. My hair is a little less dry. Other than that, I haven’t noticed anything. I started adding it to my diet because Weight Watchers told me to. I’m just following the rules. I like the Flaxseed oil. It tastes nutty. In all sincerity, though, I’d rather use those two points I allot every day to something else.

After almost a year of following the rules, my evaluation is basically the same. I don’t notice a huge benefit from my two teaspoons in my All Bran every morning. There is a minor benefit that I didn’t mention before and that’s…

Man, I don’t know how to say it politely, so I’ll just say it impolitely. The only other benefit that I’ve noticed from regularly adding flaxseed oil to my diet is looser bowels. Going to the bathroom is much easier for me and I tend to have a regular “movement” every morning as long as I have a cup of All Bran and two teaspoons of healthy oil every day for breakfast.

It’s uncomfortable to talk about, but it’s a REALLY important thing for me. Severe stomach pain is the reason I started eating healthy. Being able to stop taking Metamucil every day feels like an accomplishment. It’s worth the repetitive breakfast every morning to be able to live without the pain.

For a couple hundred dollars, PR Newswire will print whatever you want them to. That explains this bit of propaganda from the National Dairy Council.

• Happy News – Study shows benefits of dairy products – PR Newswire

All this reporting would be great news, if it were true. However, the study that they were referring to is available for all of us to read. No matter how much they get it wrong, the findings of the scientists at Purdue University were the exact opposite of what was reported:

• Dairy products do not lead to alterations in body weight or fat mass in young women in a 1-y intervention — Gunther et al. 81 (4): 751 — American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

This study took 155 women and placed them on various diets for one year: low dairy, medium dairy and high dairy consumption. Despite the varying levels of dairy, there was no change in body weight or fat percentage.

No matter what the National Dairy Council tells you, milk doesn’t magically make you skinnier. No matter how many times they misquote the research, we finally have the ability to find out the truth about nutrition. Dairy may be an important part of a healthy diet, but it isn’t a magic diet drink any more than any other diet hype you might see.

If you work in an office, I’m sure you will understand this dilemma. Since last Monday, the breakroom has been filled with treats. The nice lady who says hello in that sweet voice brought each employee an individually wrapped gift of her famous gingerbread. A huge plate of various treats was abandoned at the front desk. That skinny wench who always has a candy dish on her desk has added a never-empty platter of chocolate chip cookies. Plus, on Friday, there’s the potluck.

How can you hope to keep eating healthy when all of this is surrounding you?

How To Survive Christmas in the Office:

• Plan, Plan, Plan: If you eat a healthy breakfast, bring a healthy lunch and plan for a light dinner, you can easily allocate approximately 300 calories for treats. That gives you the freedom to try the yummy things that come your way.

• Imagine The Office As a Huge Garbage Can: Remember when I said that you should regift or throw away any treats that you cannot have in your house? You can also bring them to the office. The 20-somethings in the mail room alone could wipe out all the treats that have been haunting you in your house. Plus, if the office is a huge garbage can, you don’t want to eat anything that was left in the breakroom, right? It would be like eating out of the garbage.

• Treat Potluck Differently: The last two years, I treated the potluck Christmas lunch a little differently. I brought a vegetable platter and another healthy dish that I enjoy eating. I only ate what I brought. No one even noticed that I didn’t eat any of their food. They were all too interested in their own plates. I just sat down and ate what I would have normally eaten for lunch and no one was any the wiser. If someone asked if I tried the best of the treats, I replied truthfully, “I didn’t get any of that. I’ll have to go back for some.” I never went back, but by then, the casual banter had moved onto the latest office gossip.

• Avoid The Temptation: When the breakroom is filled with treats and goodies, sometimes it’s easier to avoid the room than to keep from indulging. Throw on your coat and take a walk outside for your break. The cold air is invigorating and the exercise will remind you why you eat healthy in the first place.

• Exercise A Little More: If your plan allows for 300 calories for goodies, think about how many extra treats you could eat if you did an extra half hour on the bike. I don’t recommend this as an all-year practice, but a little more exercise at this time of the year can mean the difference between enjoying the holiday or feeling deprived.

Sometimes I felt like the entire office was trying to get me to “fall off the wagon.” That’s not really the case. So much of our celebrations revolve around food that some people don’t know how to have a good time without it. All they are trying to do is bring a little cheer into the office. It’s your responsibility to accept the cheer without eating the food. You can do it!

You see them almost every day. Maybe they wave at you when you get into your car in the morning. Maybe you talk over the latest on those warm summer evenings. You know their first names and they offer to take care of your dog when you go on vacation. And… they bring huge plates of yummy treats to you for Christmas.

How To Handle Neighbor Treats:

• Accept Them Graciously: They are just trying to say thank you for being a good neighbor. They don’t need to know that you haven’t eaten chocolate for three months. Graciously thank them for the present and be glad that they spelled your name right.

• Decide What You Want: Do they look good? Do you even want to keep them? If you do, separate out your portion from the rest of the family’s portion.

• Regift Them: If you don’t want them, send them to someone else. There is no shame in regifting. When they ask if you baked them, tell them no, but you hope they like them.

• Freeze Your Portion and Ration Them Out: Decide how many calories a day you can spend on treats and separate them into daily servings. Freeze any servings that will take you longer than a week to eat. This way, you can enjoy your Christmas present well into January.

• Worst Case Scenario – Throw Them Away: If you can’t regift them and you seem to be unable to ration your portion out, then throw them away. It’s better for them to go to waste than to go to your waist.

Because I have been eating healthy for so long, we rarely get neighbor treats anymore, but when we do, I look forward to giving myself a rare gift every once and a while. I have finally learned how to live with tempting foods and deal with them in a healthy manner. You can do it too!

I’ve been meaning to write about this new way of eating that I have found to really help me lose weight. I’ve been really happy with it and I found it by accident over the Thanksgiving holiday. I SLAM-DUNKED Thanksgiving by exercising a lot on the two days that we were visiting family. I ate a lot, but I made up for the extra calories by exercising.

After all that exercising, I was tired, so Sunday and Monday, I rested. Because I wasn’t exercising, I didn’t eat as many calories. I limited myself to my daily allotment only. The Tuesday weigh-in, I had lost 3.6 pounds, which is HUGE for me. I seriously thought it must have been mostly water.

Since that method worked for me, I followed it exactly the same way the week after Thanksgiving. I exercised a lot and ate all the calories that I earned. On Sunday and Monday, I rested and ate substantially less calories. My second weigh-in following this regime had me lose .8 pounds, which is even more amazing. For me to lose two weeks in a row is phenomenal. The third week, I lost .2 pounds. That’s a loss for three weeks in a row. I haven’t had this much success since I first started Weight Watchers. This is the fourth week on this plan and I’m hoping for a real loss this week. I guess we’ll see.

I thought I had invented a new way of eating, but then I found out that this regime has been around for a long time. It’s called Zig-Zagging and it was developed by Frederick C. Hatfield, Ph.D., MSS. He calls himself Dr. Squat. Here’s a synopsis of the concept of Zig-Zagging:

• Welcome to Dr.Squat – The Zig Zag Diet

I don’t agree with everything he says. This is his advice for caloric restriction days.

“Your reduced intake of calories makes it almost impossible to get all of the nutrients your body needs to remain healthy and active. So, it’s important to supplement your diet with vitamins, minerals and other carefully selected substances to ensure maximum progress toward your fitness, health and fat loss goals. So, you MUST use nutritional supplements!”

That’s bunk. The healthiest foods are low in calories and all it takes is a little planning to fit them into your lifestyle, even if you’re really busy. He’s trying to sell you nutritional supplements, so take some of his advice with a grain of salt.

I think the most important part of this program is that I exercised like crazy on the days that I ate more calories. On the days that I ate fewer calories, I didn’t exercise, so I didn’t put my body into shock. Additionally, the calorie-restricted days were the two days before my weigh-in. I might not have invented this idea, but it has been working for me better than I have had in a long time. I kind of wish someone had told me about this idea before I had to go and invent it on my own.

Via: Mary’s fitness blog – the zig-zag scores again

This entry on Washington Post’s website reviews a series of books that deal with food and hunger.

• The Washington Post – Eating . . . by Josh Friedland

Hunger: An Unnatural History by Sharman Apt Russell: This looks like the most interesting book Josh reviews in this entry. He says:

Russell attempted to experience true hunger herself through fasting. But she gave up after just four days, not from hunger pangs, she says, but out of ennui: “I didn’t want food anymore. I wanted the meaning behind food. I wanted to go for a walk. I wanted to clean the house . . . . I was bored. So I ate an orange.” Hunger is much easier to take when it’s optional.

Hunger can be used as a weapon in political protests. Hunger can be used as a torture in concentration camps. Hunger can be used as a religious practice. Our bodies are so much more than just the flesh and bone and food to fuel them with.