Are Calories Good or Bad?

Q. Is calorie a bad word?

A. No, it’s not bad—just misunderstood! Most people who use the word calorie simply don’t know what it means. Also, in my experience, most people to go pale at the mere mention of the word. Based on those facts alone, I would eliminate calorie from the English vocabulary if I could.

Q. Why is calorie such a misunderstood word?

A. The American public has been told, time and time again, that people who consume more calories than their bodies burn will gain weight. As I explain in The Diet Solution: Start Eating and Start Living, this statement is only partially true. All calories are not created equal; calories consumed from healthy foods and unhealthy foods are quite different.

Q. What exactly is a calorie, then?

A. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th edition), a calorie is “a unit equivalent to the large calorie expressing heat-producing or energy-producing value in food when oxidized in the body.” In plain English, a calorie is a unit of energy released from the food you eat to power the body.

Q. How are calories “burned”?

A. The body needs energy from food—calories—to perform many functions, the most obvious of which are physical activity and exercise. However, the body also requires energy to function at the most basic level: to breathe, digest food, and maintain organs and systems.

Q. How many calories should I eat each day?

A. The short answer is “enough.” The calories you consume must provide enough energy for your body to perform all necessary functions and activities—and bring about optimum health. The long answer is that the number of calories needed varies from person to person and depends on weight, foods consumed, sleep, stress and activity levels, age, and a long list of other factors that affect metabolism. In The Diet Solution: Start Eating and Start Living, I provide a calorie equation to help you estimate, according to these factors, how many calories you should consume to lose weight or maintain weight. It also includes charts to help you choose the right sources of those calories to support your efforts.

Q. Is it possible to eat too few calories?

A. Believe it or not, yes! The most serious problem with low-calorie diets is that although they may bring about weight loss, they also can cause serious health problems. One common side effect of low-calorie diets is muscle breakdown, which can occur when the body doesn’t consume enough calories from protein. Especially vulnerable is the heart, a muscular organ. If a person does not consume an adequate amount of calories each day, the heart muscle begins to break down, possibly leading to serious cardiac conditions (e.g., cardiac atrophy).

Q. What are the consequences of following low-calorie diets off and on over time?

A. Low-calorie diets typically do not supply enough energy to keep organs and systems healthy. In effect, they can lead to malnourishment. For clients who have repeatedly followed such diets, I recommend high-calorie meal plans that will provide their organs with adequate fuel to repair themselves and regain healthy function. Most of my clients are surprised, at first, to see how much food they can consume on a healthy weight-loss diet—not to mention the high level of health that they can achieve.

Q. Hey, wait—didn’t you say that you don’t like the word calorie? Then why does the Diet Solution Program suggest calculating calorie requirements?

A. In the Diet Solution Program, calorie calculation is simply a means to an end. You use the ideal number of calories that results from the equation to determine the correct number of servings of each food type for each meal. That’s it—from that point on, you can forget about counting calories!

Q. If I don’t count calories, then how will I control my eating habits?

A. Use the Allowable Servings Guide in The Diet Solution: Start Eating and Start Living to plan meals. However, over time, you will learn how to meet your body’s nutritional needs without referring to the servings guide. Humans are born with the ability to “know” when the body has received enough nourishment and when it needs more. My professional experience indicates that, unfortunately, most yo-yo dieters and other people who have battled weight problems don’t know how to “listen” to the body’s cues in response to the foods and portions they consume. The good news is that this ability can be (re)learned.

Q. What do you mean by “listen” to my body?

A. The Diet Solution Program is a lifestyle shift that teaches you how to determine the best foods and portions for your metabolic type. Even after just days on the plan, you will learn to pay attention to how you feel after eating. For many people, this experience of “listening” to the body will be new. However, by letting your body be your guide, you will learn how to eat your way to optimum health.

Q. Can I really expect to maintain a healthy weight without counting calories or referring to servings guides or other charts?

A. Yes! It’s how I live my life now, and you, too, can learn to recognize when your body is adequately nourished. After many years of dieting, I reawakened my body’s innate ability to tell me when I’ve had enough food and when I need more by following the same plan I present in the Diet Solution Program. Every day is different; some days I require more food and others less, depending on my levels of exercise, stress, and even hormones. But I don’t need to count calories to know whether I’ve had enough; my body tells me, and I know how to listen. Whatever you do, don’t be lured into the trap of forever counting calories, because that approach is not sustainable—or healthy—in the long term.

Stop counting calories and download your own copy of these Fat Burning and Healthy Meal Plans right away.

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How to reduce your risk for Heart Disease the Natural Way

Are you one of the millions of people that is suffering from heart disease or even worse? Have already experienced a heart attack.

These days it’s difficult not to meet someone who is either suffering from heart disease, has had a heart attack or has been told they are at risk for heart disease. It’s just about as common as meeting someone with brown hair. Unfortunately, the media and even many well-meaning doctors are completely misinformed on how to tackle this growing epidemic. It’s the number one killer in the US and plaguing many other countries as well.

What are we to do?

The best plan of attack is to combat the risk factors the best we can.

Use the following 5 tips to get you started on a heart healthy plan:

1. Drop the smokes. Yes, smoking has been shown to be one of the biggest risk factors in heart disease, mainly because of all the toxic chemicals added to cigarettes (not that I’m recommending tobacco or anything.)

2. Walk, walk, walk. If finding time for a structured exercise program is just too much of a challenge right now, just start by walking. I have known many people who have strengthened their heart and reversed severe conditions by getting outside and walking. If you can, find a scenic route. There’s nothing more calming than the outdoors. (I highly recommend whistling and singing while you walk. It makes for happy thoughts.)

3. Calm down. By this I mean, don’t stress about the stuff you don’t have to. This is actually a very funny statement coming from me who used to stress about everything! Deadlines, laundry, work, family… you name it, I stressed about. Not until I realized that this would kill me no matter how healthy my food was did I drop the stress and pick up the laughter. Right now as I write this newsletter, I’ve got more things that need to get done today than are humanly possible. My reaction “Haha..better put my Superwoman shirt on”

4. Do not and I repeat, do not go on a low-fat diet. Your heart condition may get worse in your attempts. Drop the bad fats (like hydrogenated oil and the nasty oil in French fries and donuts) and start eating more healthy fats like coconut oil, olive oil, salmon, walnuts and whole organic eggs.

5. Do not be afraid to eat saturated fat. If read “The Truth About Saturated Fat” in The Diet Solution Program you know that eating saturated fats is not what is causing people to get heart disease. It is processed foods, sugars and an overabundance of refined carbohydrates that is making this country so sick.
Even tackling each one of these tips one at a time will get you closer to a healthy heart and a lifetime of good health.




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Is Whole Wheat Bread fattening?

People often think they are doing something healthy for themselves by switching their white bread for whole wheat bread. Although this is a better option than white, whole wheat bread can still be preventing you from losing your unwanted weight.

I am not a big fan of bread or bread type products. Actually, I think most people could feel a thousand times better if they stopped eating so much bread every single day. Toast for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, bread basket at dinner…we could feed a small village with the amount of bread I see some people consuming in one day (or several villages depending on who you’re talking about).

No, I am not saying to never have bread ever again (Hey, its life, you gotta enjoy it, right?). What I am saying is that 4-5 servings of some kind of bread type product every day is making thousands of people gain weight, preventing them from losing their unwanted weight and worst of all, bringing about diseases like Type 2 Diabetes and Heart Disease.

I don’t eat very much bread at all and I really don’t even miss it. I guess I have just come to enjoy all the other delicious food I eat each day that I don’t even feel bread is missing from my meal plans.

Here are my “bread free” strategies and exactly how you can lower your own bread intake each day:

1. When you think of breakfast, don’t automatically think toast, bagels, or a roll. A couple of hard boiled eggs over sliced tomatoes is delicious. You can also make a quick batch of oatmeal and add walnuts and berries. How about cottage cheese and pineapple? The breakfast options are endless.

2. Pack snack foods and take them with you to work. In less than 2 minutes, I can throw natural peanut butter, raw almonds, dried fruit (no sugar added), an apple or banana and baby carrots all in a bag and be out the door. Taking these food items to work with you will help you stay away from the employee room bagels or donuts. (Don’t even get me started on how evil donuts are). Slap some peanut butter on an apple and munch away at that, all while making fun of the people eating donuts (Just Kidding, that’s not nice.)

3. Don’t depend on sandwiches as lunch every day. How about some salmon, broccoli and brown rice? Leftover chicken from last night and a sweet potato? Imagine that lunch is another version of dinner and not just a mid day sandwich inhaling contest.

4. Make “the bread basket” a once-in-while experience. You really do not need to be serving a bread basket for dinner at home if you are offering healthy carbohydrate choices like salad, cooked vegetables, brown rice, millet, or quinoa.

5. Oh, and how could I forget? Don’t think that eating “100% Whole Wheat” is any better. It is still refined flour (maybe just not bleached) and a huge contributor to weight gain. I could go on and on about this but I have covered all the details about how detrimental wheat products are to your weight loss efforts in Chapter 9 of The Diet Solution Program.

Start to think outside the “bread box” today for healthy alternatives to your daily bread intake. What one thing can you do today to get started?

Magic Foods For Optimal Health

If there was a magic food that would cure everything (weight gain, heart disease, aging, your annoying boss) would you eat it? Of course you would!

Unfortunately, I can’t say I have found that one magic food yet (as soon as I do, I promise to let you in on it). The good news is there are several foods you can eat that give you some extra bang for your buck. By this, I mean, not only are they tasty and healthy additions to your meal plans, they also provide a chock full of antioxidants to your body.

What exactly are antioxidants?

Antioxidants have been all the rage for quite some time now, but many people don’t know exactly what they are. Antioxidants are substances or nutrients in our foods which can prevent or slow the oxidative damage to our body. When our body cells use oxygen (in almost everything we do each day), they naturally produce free radicals (by-products) which can cause damage. (Exercise is a good example of a healthy activity that naturally produces free radicals.) Antioxidants act as “free radical scavengers” and help prevent and repair damage done by these free radicals. Health problems such as heart disease, macular degeneration, diabetes, and cancer are all contributed by oxidative damage.

You can see how it’s important for us to get these “free radical scavengers” into our bodies each day, especially if we have made exercise a part of our daily routine.

What foods contain antioxidants?

Lucky for you and me, the list of foods containing antioxidants is pretty extensive: vegetables, fruits, most nuts, fish & shellfish, red meat, grains, eggs, chicken and garlic are just a few examples of some great, healthy foods that will get you your daily scavengers (and all foods that are part of your Diet Solution Meal Plans).

There are some foods that are particularly high and famous for their free radical destroying abilities.

Acai Berries

Acai is a fruit that grows on the Acai Palm Trees in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil. The Acai berry is small in size (smaller than a grape) and is dark purple in color. Although Acai may be small in size, it is jam packed with antioxidants and amino acids, and is thought to be one of the most nutritional fruits of the Amazon basin. Acai has 10 Times the antioxidant power of red grapes and twice that of blueberries.
With that being said, I am not going to tell you that this fruit is the cure all for everything that ails you (like many internet sites trying to sell their Acai berry supplements and going a bit overboard with their claims). The Acai berry is a wonderful antioxidant and it is a great addition to your healthy meal plan, but not a magic potion that will cause the weight loss many make it out to be.

Green Tea

Green tea, black tea, oolong tea, and white tea all come from the same tea plant, Camellia sinensis. All teas from the camellia tea plant are rich in polyphenols, which are a type of antioxidant. Whether it’s green or black, tea has about 8 to 10 times the polyphenols found in fruits and vegetables (although the types of antioxidants are a bit different).
You can see how including a cup or 2 of tea can be a great way to get a mega dose of antioxidants into your day. However, just as people have taken information about the good ‘ol Acai berry too far, they have done the same with green tea. Yes, it is a wonderful addition to any diet, but it is not the miracle drink many people make it out to be. Studies have shown that it may have some metabolism increasing effects and assist the body in fat burning but drinking jugs and jugs of it all day is not going to guarantee long term weight loss. One to two cups is more than enough to receive its benefits. We also want to remember that tea does contain caffeine and some people need to be careful with their daily caffeine intake.

Pomegranate

The pomegranate is a popular exotic fruit whose origins are from the Middle East and Asia. It is also known as the granada, grenade, and the Chinese apple.
Aside from its rich flavor and the number of ways to eat and drink it, studies have shown that pomegranate contains more antioxidants than green tea, cranberries and even red wine.
Pomegranates have also been shown to promote healthy blood pressure levels and low cholesterol. Pomegranates may be especially helpful for men as studies have concluded that it may help prevent prostate cancer and growth.

How can I incorporate these great foods into my daily meal plan?

1. Start your day with one cup of green tea. I say the morning, so the caffeine does not affect your sleep that night. You can sweeten your tea with Stevia, Xylitol, Agave Syrup, or a small amount of raw honey.

2. Eat a pomegranate as your fruit of choice with breakfast, lunch or snack or drink 2-4 ounces of pomegranate juice. I suggest mixing your 2-4 ounces with water and sip alongside one of your meals.

3. If getting in antioxidant rich foods each day is a challenge for you, you can supplement with an antioxidant supplement. Prograde, one if the very very few supplement companies I trust, has a powerful antioxidant supplement I highly recommend. It contains a high-octane extract blend of coffeeberry, pomegranate, green tea, acai berry, wolfberry and Biovin grape.



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The Best Way To Fire Up Your Metabolism, Burn Fat Fast and Develop Lasting Health

Ask ten people what type of exercise they should be doing to burn fat and fire up their metabolism and they’ll all probably tell you the same thing. They’ll tell you that you need to do 30-40 minutes of moderately-paced aerobic exercise on a treadmill, elliptical machine, stair climber, etc. for 3-5 times per week.

They’ll probably also tell you that more is better…4 times per week would be better than 3, and 5 times per week would be even better.

People will tell you this because that’s been and continues to be the mainstream recommendation for fat burning by many fitness professionals. Get in a certain target heart rate and stay at that heart rate for 30 minutes or so, several times per week. I am here to tell you there is a better way.

Sure, you’ll burn some calories while you’re running to nowhere on a treadmill, but you won’t make a complete physique transformation with this type of exercise alone.

In fact, this type of exercise can actually be counterproductive to burning fat. Here are just a couple of reasons:

Long duration, lower intensity aerobics calls upon your stored body fat for energy during the sessions. While this may sound good, this can actually cause your body to create more body fat in reserve after the workout is over to have ready for your next workout.

Yikes!

What’s worse, this type of exercise when done frequently as typically suggested, trains your cardiovascular system to be efficient. Again, while this sounds good, your heart and lungs can actually reduce their capacity for work as they are getting more efficient at doing easy work (your long duration, low intensity aerobic workouts), which reduces their ability to handle stress.

This can lead to a host of other problems including higher change of heart attack. You are only working within your current aerobic capacity because you’re never challenging it to go beyond what it’s capable of. And anything that is easy will not yield results even close to what’s challenging for the body to accomplish.

Instead, you should be challenging the body to increase its capacity, so that it is stronger and able to deal with stress more easily. How is this done?

The fastest and most efficient way to rev up your metabolism, burn fat faster, and develop lifelong health and fitness is to add lean muscle to your body through resistance training – period. You want life changing results in the quickest possible time? Get stronger and build some muscle. When you add lean muscle to your body you’ll be literally turning your body into a fat burning machine!

Let’s say that you were eating the amount of calories that allow you to maintain your current bodyweight, but began to add lean muscle to your body through proper resistance training…you’ll need to use some of those calories you’re eating to feed the new muscle, creating a calorie deficit in your body.

In addition, when you stimulate your body with proper resistance training like I teach my students, the repair and growth process will call upon your stored body fat for energy. This calorie deficit combined with the repair and growth process will allow you to burn fat all day long, every day. You’ll even get these fat burning effects when you’re sitting around doing nothing at all.

Also, properly conducted resistance training actually increases your heart and lung’s capacity for work. By placing intense demands on your body, it is forced into being ready for anything you throw at it. This makes you more resistant to cardiovascular health problems that plague most people…even those that exercise with aerobics frequently.

And the beauty is I’ve discovered that you don’t have to spend much time working out to get the fat loss effects, and strength and muscle gains that will create this environment…you can actually get it done with 2 or 3 weekly workouts that last between 20 and 30 minutes, and even less time at an advanced level.

And it’s easy to make this type of exercise part of your life because of its efficiency…and it will help keep you lean and healthy for the rest of it…muscle is the stuff that fat burning furnaces are made of!

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The Real Truth behind Organic Foods

Many people are unaware of what organic food really is. It seems that everywhere we go now, someone is promoting something that is “organic”. Are these foods worth your time and money?

It almost seems like some people are afraid of organic food. Could this be possible? Are people afraid that eating one morsel of organic food is going to somehow instantly initiate them into the organic food cult where you’re only allowed to wear sandals made from tree bark and deodorant is prohibited?

I swear I have had people say to me “Well, you can’t be that organic because you wear make-up and you don’t smell.”

What? That’s not what organic means at all! All it means is that the food or the product has been grown the way mother nature intended: without the use of chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. In other words, naturally!

Are some people afraid of the price? Organic does not automatically mean “break the bank”. Many times when I compare the price of the organic food versus the conventional food, they are only a few cents different. In the case of the bag of organic carrots I bought today for my lunch, they were the exact same price as the conventional ones. Imagine that!


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The Truth About Cholesterol

I am going to let you in on something shocking. Cholesterol is not the major culprit in heart disease. I know this may be hard to believe after all we have heard about the dangers of high cholesterol from our doctors, and the media. But the truth is, it is not the cholesterol levels themselves or the cholesterol containing foods that are the culprits in heart disease, it is those foods and any other thing that causes inflammation in your body that is the major cause of heart disease (as well as diabetes and high blood pressure).

What is cholesterol and why do we need it?

Cholesterol is a soft, waxy substance found among the lipids (fats) in the bloodstream and in all your body’s cells. It’s an important part of a healthy body because it’s used to form cell membranes. Cholesterol also aids in the manufacture of bile (which helps digest fats), and is also important for the metabolism of fat soluble vitamins, including vitamins A, D, E and K. It is the major precursor for the synthesis of vitamin D and of the various steroid hormones (which include cortisol and aldosterone in the adrenal glands, and the sex hormones progesterone, the various estrogens, testosterone, and derivatives ).

How could something so good be so bad?

Cholesterol has been wrongly accused because upon inspection of the arteries of someone at risk for a heart attack, levels of cholesterol and plaque build up are very high. Cholesterol is actually being transported to tissues as part of an inflammatory response that is there to repair damage. It will only lodge itself onto the artery and cause plaque if the artery has become damaged. Inflammation in the artery is what causes this damage. In fact, it is now known that the coronary disease that causes heart attacks is now considered to be caused mostly from chronic inflammation.

To blame cholesterol for heart attacks would be the equivalent of blaming increased police security in a high crime area. It was not the police that caused the crime, they were just placed there in response to the crimes.

A more important question to ask ourselves, is how do we decrease the amount of inflammation in our bodies so that cholesterol will not bind to our arteries?

We must decrease all of those things that we do that cause inflammation and increase things that decrease inflammation. First and foremost we must stay away from foods that cause inflammation in our bodies. Any food that causes a fast rise in blood insulin levels will quickly cause inflammation in the body. These foods are sugar, white breads, most dairy products and almost all packaged and processed foods. What does this leave you with? Fresh, wholesome foods such as fruits, vegetables, lean animal proteins, nuts, and lots and lots of water. Also, taking in lots of omega-3 rich foods will dramatically decrease inflammation in the body (salmon, organic eggs, walnuts and sardines).

What about your cholesterol medication?

Some may be thinking, it is just easier to take a pill and not have to change what I am eating. But you may want to think twice considering the side effects of statins (cholesterol lowering drugs). The most common side effects reported are fatigued, headaches, nausea and the most common of them all, severe muscular pains and muscular degeneration. If you remember that cholesterol is essential for the formation of cell membranes, taking a drug that is drastically lowering cholesterol may be causing membrane damage in neural and muscle tissue. Most people on statins complain of neck, back or leg pain.

Millions of Americans are now on cholesterol lowering drugs, but the number of people suffering from heart attacks and heart disease is only increasing. Let’s take a personal responsibility for our health and truly get to the root of the problem. Managing your diet and staying away from those foods that are causing an inflammatory response in your body is your first step to decreasing your chance of heart disease and heart attacks.

Get Started on Your Own Weight Loss and Health Goals right away with these Simple and Effective Healthy Meal Plans.