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Eating
the Wise Way
Trying to
find the best way to slim down can be very confusing. Book upon book
shouts one answer after another from the store shelves: elaborate
low-fat or high-protein diets, body-sculpting plans almost calling
for a masters in physiology, regimens of nutritional supplements so
complex they'll turn your kitchen into a veritable pharmacy. Diet
gurus preach their doctrines as if they were absolutes and virtually
every guru has a different doctrine.
Despite the impassioned pronouncements from these dietary pulpits,
there really is no magic solution that works across the board.
People put on pounds for many reasons: unhealthy diet, lack of
exercise, emotional problems, even their genes. The old
one-diet-fits-all mentality is fading, and that's good news for you.
In your quest to shed pounds and keep them off, you can choose your
own path, and chances are it will be more successful than any you
might have tried in the past.
The paths are indeed many. A low-fat regimen may be the way to go
for you. Or a slightly higher-fat one. You might want to graze
throughout the day or eat three squares. Choose a Mediterranean diet
or Chinese cuisine. Meticulously count calories or adopt a
calorie-blind, overall healthy approach to eating. Perhaps you'll
cherry-pick elements from several different diets and custom-design
your own.
Know Your Nutrients
To stay on a healthy course, your body requires a variety of
nutrients: water, vitamins and minerals, carbohydrate, fat, and
protein. These last three are the only nutrients that contain
calories. A calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise the
temperature of one liter of water by one degree centigrade. Calories
are the energy that fuels your body.
The calorie-containing nutrient groups package their energy
differently. Fat has nine calories per gram, while carbs and protein
contain less than half that, at four calories per gram each.
Figuring out the calorie content of a particular food from its gram
weight isn't always a simple calculation, though, because the
nutrient groups very often coexist in the same foods. Hamburger
meat, for example, is both protein and fat, and regular milk
contains protein, carb, and fat. Different foods, moreover, carry a
different number of calories per volume. In foods that are primarily
fatty, calories tend to be densely packed, meaning they deliver more
calories for a given volume; in primarily protein foods they are
less densely packed; and in primarily carbohydrate foods, calories
are the least densely packed. For instance, you'd have to eat two
heads of iceberg lettuce (a carb) to get 100 calories, and a mere
tablespoon of butter to get the same number.
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are your body's number one fuel source. This class
of carbon-based compounds includes sugars, starches, and cellulose.
All carbohydrates must be broken down into glucose (blood sugar) to
supply your body with energy. Simple sugars (fruit, honey) and
double sugars (table sugar, milk) are digested quickly and give your
body an energy surge. Complex carbohydrates (starchy and fibrous
foods) are digested more slowly. The glucose that all these
different carbohydrate types supply is your fuel, which you either
use right away for energy, lodge in your muscle cells as potential
energy (glycogen) or, if there's no room left in that inn, convert
to fat and house in your fat cells.
Of all the body's food sources, complex carbohydrates supply the
highest bulk value for the fewest calories. Many are dense in
nutrients such as vitamins and minerals, and complex carbs also tend
to pack lots of fiber, good news for dieters. You've heard it time
and again: High-fiber, whole-grain carbs are far better for you than
low-fiber carbs made from refined flour and sugar, the ingredients
jammed into so many junk foods. Fiber passes out of your body and
leaves behind very few calories. Moreover, it enhances and prolongs
a feeling of fullness by slowing the absorption of foods. In
delaying the absorption of glucose, fiber helps control blood sugar
levels -- a particularly important factor for people suffering from
diabetes. Finally, soluble fiber -- the sort that's found in oats,
beans, and many types of produce -- has been proven to help decrease
LDL (low-density lipoprotein, the "bad" cholesterol) and
triglycerides (fatty particles in the blood that can damage
arteries), thereby reducing the risk of heart disease.
Carbohydrates are the main source of energy for your muscles when
you exercise, and since exercise is crucial to healthy living, your
body needs carbs.
Fat
The message seems loud and clear: Too much fat is gumming up our
arteries, threatening our hearts -- and making us fat. But the truth
isn't quite so absolute. Fat is an essential component of healthy
eating and performs a variety of vital functions. It enables your
body to absorb certain minerals as well as the fat-soluble vitamins
A, D, E, and K. It plays a role in hormone production and
regulation, builds cell membranes, helps keep your skin lubricated,
and plays a role in the healthy functioning of your immune system.
It also keeps you warmer in winter and gives food flavor and
texture.
Obviously, you cannot live on carbs and protein alone. But it is
indeed true that you can have too much of a good thing. Fats teem
with calories and tend to be low in nutrients. Most nutritional
guidelines today recommend that people trying to lose weight derive
no more than 30% of their calories from fat, and some professionals
set that figure lower.
A word of caution about food labels: They can be very misleading
when you're trying to determine how many calories you'll derive from
fat in a given food. Labels on ground beef and milk, for example,
list fat percentage by weight, not calories. So milk that is labeled
as 2% fat-and touted as "low-fat"-does indeed have 2% fat
by weight, but in terms of calories, it comes in at more than 35%.
And "extra lean" ground beef, which might be labeled as
10% or even as low as 7% fat (the percentage by weight), actually
derives as much as 65% of its calories from fat. It's all because
fat is much denser in terms of calories than either carbs or
protein.
Not all fats are equal. Saturated fat -- completely saturated with
hydrogen -- tends to be solid at room temperature and is most
commonly found in animal fat. Saturated fat abounds in butter,
cheese, eggs, red meat, and coconut and palm oils. It's notorious
for raising cholesterol and promoting heart disease.
There are several unsaturated fats -- fats that are not saturated,
or not completely saturated, with hydrogen. Polyunsaturated fats are
prominent in corn, soybean, safflower, and sunflower oils. One type
of polyunsaturated fat, omega-3, is found in most varieties of fish
and is associated with a decreased risk of heart disease in certain
people, probably because it can lower LDL cholesterol. But
polyunsaturated fats are not all good news. In unadulterated form,
polys have been shown to also lower high-density lipoprotein or HDL
cholesterol, the "good" cholesterol that whisks LDL out of
the bloodstream. Furthermore, of all fats polys, when heated, are
most likely to form the DNA-damaging free radicals that are
implicated in cancer.
Some polyunsaturated fats have hydrogen artificially added back to
make them solid at room temperature. These are called partially
hydrogenated, or trans, fats. They're found in crackers, commercial
cookies, and most margarines. (The harder the margarine, the more
it's hydrogenated, and the worse it is for you.) Trans fats can
increase your chance of heart disease by lowering HDL and raising
LDL. Moreover, when heated and reheated, as they are in fast-food
restaurants that crank out chicken nuggets and French fries, trans
fats form dangerous free radicals.
You can avoid a lot of these risks by sticking primarily with
monounsaturated fats -- resident in avocados and olive, canola, and
peanut oil. Monounsaturated fats slightly lower LDL while slightly
hiking HDL, thus helping prevent heart disease. Evidence suggests
that olive oil may also play a role in preventing cancer. That's
partly because olive oil is rich in plant-based antioxidants, which
"mop up" the marauding free radicals that can damage DNA.
If you have a choice, reach for the olive oil, not the margarine or
butter. And watch out in particular for trans fats. They're likely
be haunting those boxes on your grocery store shelf and those
deep-fried meals in your fast-food restaurant.
Protein
Protein seems to have an enduring mythological status in the
American diet. You are what you eat, the saying goes, and the
popular notion is that dietary protein is imbued with miraculous
properties that can make a person strong and lean. Not surprisingly,
most Americans overconsume protein. Even without the myth, that
wouldn't be hard to do. Protein exists in almost everything you eat.
You'll find it not just in meat, poultry, fish, dairy products,
beans, and nuts -- foods that are predominantly protein -- but also
in some fruits and vegetables.
Why do you need protein? It's made up of amino acids, the building
blocks of all the tissue in your body -- hair, skin, internal
organs, and muscles. That doesn't mean protein is a magic muscle
builder. You strengthen your muscles through exercise, not by
overeating protein. But protein is important. In addition to
building tissue, protein preserves the immune system, manufactures
the enzymes and hormones that regulate bodily processes, and -- in
the absence of sufficient carbohydrates and fat -- serves as fuel
for the body. (Carbs, which are more easily digested, are the body's
fuel of choice, followed by fat.)
If all protein foods were pure protein, weighing in at four calories
per gram, overeating them wouldn't necessarily be bad. The problem
is many protein foods come bundled with fat, at nine calories per
gram, and worse yet, that fat tends to be saturated fat. Because of
the fat connection, calories in predominantly protein foods are more
densely packed than calories in predominantly carb foods, so you'll
tend to eat more than you need for your basic fuel requirements if
your diet is rich in protein foods.
Too much protein will just add to your waistline. Yes, you need it,
but remember, a little goes a long way.
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