Lean and Hard

Authority Nutrition - 8.26.13 by Kris Gunnars

I’m tired of having to constantly defend my position regarding animal foods, so I decided to summarize what I think are the key problems with vegan diets.

There is no one right way to eat for everyone.

We are all different and what works for one person may not work for the next.

I personally advocate consumption of both animals and plants and I think there is plenty of evidence that this is a reasonable way to eat.

However, I often get comments from vegans who think that people should eliminate all animal foods.

They frequently say that I’m giving out dangerous advice, that I must be corrupt and sponsored by the meat and dairy industry, or that I’m simply misinformed and need to read The China Study.

Really… I have nothing against vegans or vegetarians.

If you want to eat in this way for whatever reason and you are feeling good and improving your health, then great! Keep on doing what you’re doing.

But I do have a serious problem when proponents of this diet are using lies and fear mongering to try and convince everyone else to eat in the same way.

Read more>>

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Sorry, juicers. Eating it is good. Drinking it, not so much.

The Verge - 8.31.13 By Vlad Savov

"FRUIT JUICES LEAD TO MORE RAPID AND LARGER CHANGES IN SERUM LEVELS OF GLUCOSE AND INSULIN."

A study published by the BMJ this week affirms one piece of conventional wisdom — that eating fruit is highly beneficial to your health — while refuting another — that fruit juice is just as good as the unprocessed stuff. Analysing the dietary habits of 187,382 subjects over multiple decades, the research team concluded that "greater consumption of specific whole fruits ... was significantly associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes, whereas greater fruit juice consumption was associated with a higher risk."

Type 2 is the more prevalent kind of diabetes and, unlike type 1, can be actively prevented through a balanced diet. The new data from the BMJ identifies blueberries, grapes, apples, and pears as among the most significant reducers of diabetes risk, which echoes findings published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last year. Where the new research goes further, however, is in looking at the effects of drinking fruit juice, which you might expect to be equivalent to eating whole fruit, but turns out to slightly increase your chances of developing diabetes.

In juicing the fruit's flesh away, you remove the dietary fiber and other nutrients that may be contained in the peel, while increasing the glycemic index by making its sugar easier to digest. Diabetes is a disorder of the body's ability to regulate blood glucose levels, which is why you might want to reconsider that glass of orange juice in the morning.

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The Atlantic - 7.19.13 by Paul Offit

At least 15 studies have now shown that vitamin C doesn't treat the common cold.

On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn't. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. "It's been a tough week for vitamins," said Carrie Gann of ABC News.

These findings weren't new. Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. What few people realize, however, is that their fascination with vitamins can be traced back to one man. A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.

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Millions of us have tried going on diets. They are a huge waste of time and a virtual guarantee of discouragement and defeatism. Instead of going on a short-term diet, learn how to substitute. This is what makes for permanent success in the health and fitness arena.

Here's a quote from an article I read recently about Bret Baier, a well-known anchor on Fox news:

"after a while, you become accustomed to what is in your beneficial list and you make that your choice."

That's what substitution is all about. Not starving yourself or sweating bullets trying to stick to some weird set of restrictions (like, you can have as much as you want, as long as it's only the skins of grapes! As much as you want!).


Substituting is simple: You make a list of the stuff that's bad, and another list of the stuff that's good. Then you replace the bad with the good. Every chance you get. Whether you're cooking at home or eating out. What's bad? Simple carbs. What's good? Protein, good (polyunsaturated) fats and complex carbs.

You can't each as much as you want, unless you want just enough to maintain a healthy weight. I'm not that lucky. I don't get to eat as much as I want because, for whatever reason, I want more than I need. So I have to restrict my calorie intake, but eating as much as I need is not that difficult, and the benefits keep me motivated.

An added benefit, though, of substituting good foods for bad ones, is that your appetite is far more controllable. Bad carbs, as we know, cause sugar spikes and are somewhat addictive. The more you eat them the more you want/need them. Replace them with complex carbs and you'll see your cravings diminish to a level that you can control.

So try substitutions rather than going on short-term diets. You'll see that I'm right!

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They say consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Maybe so in some respects, but with fitness, it's the only way to succeed over the long term.

When I was getting my undergrad degree at the University of Florida, I'm proud to say, I never pulled an all-nighter. Not once. I hate the idea itself, but more than that, it's a bad way to study. It just isn't a good idea to take a test after staying up all night, essentially in a sleep-deprived condition. Instead, I preferred to prepare myself for tests over a period of weeks, a bit at a time. It's like they say, the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

How did I lose 130 pounds? By skipping a bite at a time, and working out consistently. And consistency is also the way to maintain your ideal weight. But I found myself getting away from that philosophy without realizing it.

Here's what happened. I indulged too often in my greatest temptation: pizza. So I found that I'd add a few pounds from the pizza pig-out, and have to cut way back during the rest of the week just to stay at my ideal weight over the course of the week. I'd starve, then be so hungry and feel so deprived that the end-of-the-week pizza became irresistible. Then back to deprivation, pizza, deprivation, pizza, and so on and so forth and what have you. Not good. I had to break the cycle.

I did it by eating more during the week so as not to feel so deprived, then doing without the pizza altogether. Which is not to say I won't ever have pizza again, but certainly I won't indulge in it very often. Consistency! It works for me.

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New York Times - 2.20.13 by Michael Moss

What I found, over four years of research and reporting, was a conscious effort — taking place in labs and marketing meetings and grocery-store aisles — to get people hooked on foods that are convenient and inexpensive.

Grant Cornett for The New York Times

On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills and Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. Rivals any other day, the C.E.O.’s and company presidents had come together for a rare, private meeting. On the agenda was one item: the emerging obesity epidemic and how to deal with it. While the atmosphere was cordial, the men assembled were hardly friends. Their stature was defined by their skill in fighting one another for what they called “stomach share” — the amount of digestive space that any one company’s brand can grab from the competition.

James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies.” Getting the company chiefs in the same room to talk about anything, much less a sensitive issue like this, was a tricky business, so Behnke and his fellow organizers had scripted the meeting carefully, honing the message to its barest essentials. “C.E.O.’s in the food industry are typically not technical guys, and they’re uncomfortable going to meetings where technical people talk in technical terms about technical things,” Behnke said. “They don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to make commitments. They want to maintain their aloofness and autonomy.”



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They say you should "Know thine enemy." The better to defeat him, right? This is true about the temptation to eat more than you need to maintain good health and an attractive, strong body. The more you know about the circumstances and conditions that make it difficult to eat right, the better you will be empowered to counter and successfully resist. Hence, this interesting article:

NPR - February 1. 2013 by SHANKAR VEDANTAM

Has the recession made you fat?

To the long and growing list of risk factors known to increase the risk of obesity, scientists recently added a new one: scarcity.

People given subtle cues that they may have to confront harsh conditions in the near future choose to eat higher-calorie food than they might do otherwise, a response that researchers believe is shaped by the long hand of evolution.

Evolutionary biologists have long speculated that in prehistoric times, when the blueprint of modern human behavior was created as our ancestors struggled for survival, gluttony may have been a useful response to scarcity: If you knew — or feared — a famine was coming, it made sense to tuck away as many calories as possible to prepare for it.


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Inkfish - 1.15.13 by Elizabeth Preston

BluePrintCleanse claims that the energy you save on digestion by not eating any real food gets diverted to "other metabolic processes." But Swoap says this is false. Your whole metabolism will slow at once, not just the tasks attached to digesting food. This will make it harder to lose weight.

Before I learned that it costs $65 to $90 to starve yourself for a day, I considered trying one day's worth of "juice cleansing" to put myself into the proper cranky fog for writing this piece. But if I'm going to eat no calories, I prefer to spend no dollars.

What did I give up by fueling myself on solid foods instead of liquefied produce? Really, one day would have been merely dipping a toe into the celery water. If I were a serious client of a juice cleanse company, I would pay for anywhere from three to ten days' worth of bottled juices, delivered to my doorstep in a cooler every morning.

The first few days of deprivation would, in theory, "cleanse the blood" and release toxins from my tissues that have been slowing me down and making me sick. I'd give my colon a break while "sweeping" it out. The latter days would boost my immune system and "fight off degenerative diseases." After all that detoxifying and boosting, I would feel energized and restored. I might even have lost a few pounds—but it's about health, not weight.



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Either you've said it or heard it: "When I was younger I ate everything in sight and was thin as a rail. Now I eat a single donut and put on five pounds!"

I can tell you for certain that I gave not a moment's thought to my eating when I was 16, and I was a skinny guy.


I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted it. And look at me! But then a few decades passed and I weighed more than 300 pounds. What the hell happened?

This is what I think:

It's not that something mysterious changed and my metabolism suddenly slowed to a crawl. It's that I was always eating more than I was burning, but since I was still growing and developing, the extra calories went into producing that growth. I was getting heavier, but it wasn't fat. It was muscle, bone, blood, etc. Add to this the fact that I was very active: I was always on the move and playing sports in school.

But as I got older, I became less active and my body, no longer needing to build, started storing fat. I kept eating what I wanted, but burned and used less. So I put on a few pounds of fat every year. Maybe noticeable, but not alarming, really. With those extra pounds came increased difficulty in moving around, so I became even less active.


From 175 to 180. Then 180 to 185. No big deal. Then I hit 190 and decided to diet. I dieted and lost 20 pounds. Yay! But then I went back to the usual over-eating and under-exercising and started the process over again. This happened maybe 3 or 4 times until I gave up.

Finally, after all these years, I've found a way to limit my caloric intake and eat a nutrient dense diet as a way of life, and have also developed the habit of exercise. The cycle has been broken and I'm not looking back. Except for writing about it. :-)

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PACIFIC STANDARD - 12.27.12 by Elizabeth Weil

Almost three million people have watched “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” Alec Baldwin publicly lost 30 pounds by following Lustig’s rules and giving up toxic foods...

Among the least likely viral megahits on YouTube is a 90-minute lecture by the food scold and pediatric endocrinologist Robert Lustig, entitled “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” He delivers it in a windowless room at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. The talk is simultaneously boring and powerful, combining the gravitas of a national health crisis, the thrill of conspiracy theory, and the tedium of PowerPoint slides. Midway through the talk he scans the hall for approval. “Am I debunking?”

The UCSF extension students mutter “yeah”—most of them, at least. Lustig has a way of seeking validation and pissing off people at the same time. His combined love of showmanship and need for approval led to acting in 12 musical-theater performances during his three years as an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His greatest role yet may be as the loudest, most contrarian voice in the public-health debate over why we get fat and what we should do about it.

Read more>>

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Anyone who's making progress on their fitness goals might well feel a bit of terror at the approaching pig-out holiday season. You may feel like a wildebeest swimming across a croc infested river, nostrils flared and eyes bulging. Here are a couple of simple tips to keep the 23-foot monsters away.

1. Don't go to parties or holiday meals hungry.

For some reason, who knows why, the turkey always takes longer to cook than we think. After years of experience you'd think we'd learn. We get invited to a holiday meal being told it will be served at 2. First, that means 4. Second, why does it have to be so late anyway?



The trick is to eat something healthy before you go so you aren't ready to strip the meat off the still-uncooked bird with your teeth and damn the consequences, when it's not ready as promised. You'll be immune to the teasing aroma that would otherwise have you drooling saliva for 2 hours. So when you're finally (finally!!) served, you'll be able to...

2. Eat what you like in moderation.

See how it works? The goal is to get through it without inhaling 2-weeks' worth of calories and gaining 5 pounds overnight. This is made much easier if you aren't that hungry to begin with when faced with those tempting-yet-unhealthy sides and sweet treats.

No need for snacking on the bad stuff circulating before the main course. No need for seconds and thirds. People will marvel at your self control when you say, no, thanks, not realizing that you just aren't that hungry!

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I'm going to go out on a limb and say, unequivocally, that you cannot - repeat, cannot - lose weight and get lean and hard, or stay lean and hard, without taking control of what goes in your mouth. Exercise alone won't do it. Fad diets won't do it. The necessary ingredient in the fitness recipe is policing what you allow into your mouth and down your gullet.

The reason for this is simple: It's far easier to say no to calories you ingest than it is to burn calories through exercise. How long do you have to spend on a treadmill to burn off the calories you took in in the seconds it took to inhale that brownie? Food for thought, eh?

Many of us act as if other people control what we eat. We behave as if we have no choices! How so? Anyone who works for a company or is a member of a club, for example, will often face the challenge of unhealthy foods being on offer at meetings or special events. With the holidays coming up the trickle will become a flood... cookies, pies, pizzas. cakes, they will be offered to you over and over. But here's the question: Do you have to partake?

20% off your entire purchase with code WINTER12. Valid 11/1-11/10/12

What about family gatherings? Keeping in mind that there are things that will be available that are no problem from a health and nutrition perspective, do you have to eat the bad stuff? Do you have a choice?

Look at it this way. If you had an allergy to nuts that would cause you to swell up and be unable to breathe, would you be able to say, no, thanks to the peanut butter cookies? You betcha. So would it be so terrible to say no thanks to the sugary treats and fat-laden indulgences? I don't think so.

Some of us have this self-imposed rule that we live by: If it's free, you have to eat it! I prefer to live by this rule: I'll eat what I choose to eat, not what others choose for me.

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Halloween is history, but Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up, so let's consider how we've done so far. Don't want to think about it? Alright, here are some neat Halloween facts to entertain you...


Read more from Livestrong>>



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Why do fad diets fail? Why do things fall when you drop them? These two phenomena are almost as common, and happen to be based on straightforward laws of physics that control the workings of the universe we live in. There's a hypothesis in science that says there are infinitely many universes, and anything you can imagine, and quite a lot that you can't, is happening in an infinite number of them. So we can surmise, if this is true, that somewhere out there there are places where things don't fall when you drop them and fad diets work beautifully. But we don't live in any of those places, so let's focus on this place.

Fad diets are popular, usually, because humans want to get quick results for very little effort. And because we are gullible. But here's the thing: Fad diets are, by definition, weird. They have in common this attribute: They promote eating in ways that are highly unusual and impossible to maintain over any reasonable length of time. Think about some of them: The Soup Diet. The Grapefruit Juice Diet. The Paleo Diet. The No Carb Diet. The Cookie Diet. The Desert for Breakfast Diet. Just to name a few.



So why don't they work? (And by "work" I mean result in weight loss that can be maintained permanently.) They don't work because they can't be maintained. Who can stick with cookies forever? Maybe the Cookie Monster, but no one else. Soup? You'd get so sick of it you'd be ready to do bodily harm to the next person who dares come between you and a solid food meal.

So what does work? What can be maintained for the rest of your life without feelings of deprivation? A nutrient dense, calorie sparse diet, with enough calories to maintain a healthy weight, can be maintained because it avoids addiction to high carb foods that cause the sugar high, sugar crash cycle. It works because it creates a healthier, more energetic body that is its own reward. And it works because it acknowledges the laws of physics that govern the universe we find ourselves in.

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No one likes to be wrong. That's why it's so difficult even to consider the possibility of it. There's the old joke about the guy who says, "I made a mistake once. I thought I made a mistake, but I was wrong." For some of us it's not only difficult to admit error, it's downright torture. There are a few people I know who, as far as anyone can remember, have never, ever admitted to a mistake.

Where's this leading? We are continually assailed with advice about fitness. One of my earliest memories is of my mom telling me that the men at the service station used Coke (the soft drink, not the controlled substance) to de-grease nuts and bolts, so think about what it would do to my teeth. Yikes. She was wrong about the nuts and bolts, right about the sugar being bad for my teeth. What other fitness "truths" have we picked up along the way that are really and truly flat out wrong?



There isn't any harm in being wrong about a lot of things, but health and fitness mistakes can be costly and frustrating. For example, the idea that you can get toned through exercise alone is one that leads to failure and disillusionment every day. Good strength training and cardiovascular exercise  can build muscle and burn calories, but this is not enough. Diet is a far more powerful way to trim excess fat and, in conjunction with the right exercise, give you a lean and hard body.

Another old but oh-so-wrong bit of classic fitness dreck is the one that says you get lean and toned by doing light weights and lots of reps, and a bulky, ape-like look using heavy weights and few reps. Doesn't work that way. Building strength and muscle mass is difficult to accomplish and requires working muscles to the point of almost-failure and eating a good, healthy diet.

So, rather than cling to those old, tried-and-proven-false fitness myths, do some research and get the facts. It's the age of information, so let's take advantage of that and update our database of knowledge.

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Losing weight doesn't have to be about enduring tasteless foods. Frankly, the thought of having a carrot or celery stick as a snack leaves me shuddering in revulsion. What's the point? I might as well try to fill up on cardboard. No, I eat a limited number of calories, but I enjoy what I eat. I find healthy recipes that taste great and satisfy me, and I keep getting new ideas for meals I've never tried.

Here's an excellent article that shares how to add great taste to your meals without unwanted calories as part of the deal.

5 Ways To Get More Taste And Fewer Calories From Your Food

Enjoy!

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(Photo: Sugar Shock Blog)

Everyone knows that nicotine from cigarettes is addictive. Not only that, it'll destroy your health and possibly kill you. People who have never used them stay away, and current users are either trying to quit or seriously thinking about it. Illegal drugs are addictive. And bad for you. And expensive. Most of us stay away from them. Gambling and alcohol can be addictive for certain people. Unfortunately you won't know you're one of them until you're addicted.

What about food?

First, what does it mean to say that something is addictive? Let's go to that old fount of all knowledge, Wikipedia:

"Addiction is the continued use of a mood altering substance or behavior despite adverse dependency consequences, or a neurological impairment leading to such behaviors."

If certain foods are harmful to your health, alter your mood, and create dependency, what would you call them? Addictive?

According to this article in The Independent:

"Food addiction could be one of the reasons behind the rising number of individuals suffering from eating disorders and obesity, scientists have said.

Food is not currently included in the official diagnostic manual of addictive substances, but scientists believe excessive over-eating shares many of the psychological characteristics associated with other addictions, such as gambling and compulsive stealing."

What I experienced certainly fits the bill. Simple carbs absolutely altered my mood. They provided empty calories and spiked my glucose levels. And they made me crave more. How about you?

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Who can forget the fat-free yogurt on Seinfeld that turned out to be fat-full? Everyone was scarfing it down and feeling good, thinking they were enjoying a healthy treat, only to find that they were all mysteriously putting on major poundage.

The same thing can and does happen more than you might think. Stuff is marketed as being healthy, low in fat or sugar, chock full of vitamins, calcium or fiber, so you snatch it up and pay out the nose for it, but don't lose an ounce or notice one bit of difference in your wellbeing. What's gong on?

If you don't pay attention to what's really in some of these foods, you'll end up like Seinfeld and friends, that's what's going on.

Take a look at some of the worst offenders, like protein bars, bran muffins, low-fat salad dressings, and yogurt, on livestrong.com... and don't shoot me, I'm only the messenger.

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"According to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, nutrient-dense foods are those foods that provide substantial amounts of vitamins and minerals and relatively few calories" (Wikipedia).

The way I think about food has changed over the past year. It used to be that I'd categorize the desirability of possible meals by how good they'd taste and how filling they'd be, and the more of those things, the better. That type of thinking led me into a cycle of addiction to energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods, obesity, a shortened life-expectancy, and all sorts of related health problems.

Now, when I consider the goodness and desirability of possible meals, I think about how I can pack as many great nutrients into as few calories as possible and have it all taste good to boot. With this kind of thinking I've lost 125 pounds so far, and shed some serious health problems along with those pounds. For me it's all about packing in the nutrients, not the calories.

Here's a great article that lists some awesome nutrient-dense foods. Once you've learned to identify them, the trick is putting them into tasty, calorie-sparse recipes. Obviously, there are scads of ideas on the internet, and you can learn to make them up yourself through some trial and error. A couple of great categories for putting these awesome meals together are soups and salads, just because they both can handle lots of excellent ingredients.

For example, instead of potatoes and pasta in your soups, add beans and vegetables. And in your salads, instead of the boring iceberg lettuce, make them out of spinach, carrots, walnuts, cranberries, avocados, etc. There's almost no end to the number of delicious superfoods you can easily pack into these two types of meals.

When you eat like this you're accomplishing two excellent things. You're keeping your calories down in order to get rid of fat, and you're enhancing your looks, health, fitness and longevity at the same time.

So, pack in the nutrients, not the calories!

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The word "diet" is not bad, per se, but its typical meaning relates to something bad: That is, when it refers to an eating plan that, by its very nature, is doomed to failure. Anyone who has struggled with weight issues knows that most diets fail. Like me, they have dieted over and over again and, while they did lose weight at first, they inevitably gave up and gained it all back and then some. Why is this such a common pattern? I'll offer 5 simple reasons in this post.

1. They are overly restrictive.

Any eating plan that results in weight loss must cause you to run a negative energy balance. In other words, you have to be taking in less than you are using up. No way around it. But many diets make that negative balance too large. They bring some very impressive results, but always lead to intense feelings of deprivation and inevitable binging. A sustainable weight-loss plan should run a small negative balance that, over time, brings huge results. Beware of any diet that promises to cut 30 pounds in 30 days. Even if it worked, you'd probably put on 45 pounds in 45 days after that.

2. They include bad carbs.

For a diet to be sustainable over the long haul, it can't leave you feeling like you're starving to death, or have you dreaming about consuming an entire bag of chips or box of donuts. Diets that include simple and highly processed carbs will cause sugar spikes that leave you craving more of the same. When I tried these I'd end up eating 4 lo-cal meals in a single sitting just because I'd be so hungry. What works is an eating plan that is nutrient dense and calorie poor, not tiny amounts of calorie dense and nutrient poor foods.

3. They don't include exercise.

As I've written before, research has consistently shown that both diet and exercise are essential to any successful attempt to become lean and hard. Exercise transforms our bodies at a cellular level and makes us feel more energetic and less prone to regaining the weight we've lost by dieting alone.

4. They don't seem doable.

It's been shown that successful changes are the ones we can see ourselves making. The single change that got the ball rolling for me was switching out complex carbs for simple ones, which my oldest son happened to mention he was trying almost one year ago. It sounded doable to me. If you'd asked me then how confident I felt that I could make that change on a 1 - 10 scale I would have given you a solid 9. I could see myself doing it. Later one, once I began to feel stronger and less hungry, I could see myself cutting my caloric intake. Later still, after I'd lost about 20 pounds, I could see myself joining a gym and working out regularly. It's important that you make changes you can actually see yourself making successfully, even if you don't make them all at once.

5. They don't taste good.

This is one reason I failed at diets that had a specific menu. If I don't enjoy what I'm eating, how can I I keep eating it? I've tried diets before that told me exactly what I could have for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I hated them, and I can promise you I got off them as soon as I got within shouting distance of my goal. And then I went back to eating what I liked and gained all the weight back. What I do now is sustainable because I enjoy the recipes I've come up with. There's been lots of trial and error and there will be more, but it's got to taste good if you're going to keep doing it.

Ultimately, most diets fail because they are unsustainable, and if you can't do it for at least a year, it's pretty much a waste of time. I like this quote from an interview with Dr. John Berardi, a very successful fitness coach. When asked about some of the most important lessons he's learned about helping people over the years, he said this:

I also learned that all the technical, scientific recommendations in the world are meaningless...if you can't actually follow them for at least one year. Because that's how long it takes to make a sustainable, jaw-dropping transformation.

 In other words, if you can't sustain it for at least a year, it won't produce awesome results.

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