Nutrition

I read so much about nutrition - most of which is crap (in my opinion!)... but here's something that makes sense to me. It is pretty much what I go by these days - and reading it I thought "couldn't have put it better myself", so I thought I'd share.

It's from http://www.ausrun.com.au/runners_world/training/healthtipslosingweight.html

The Grape diet, the Watercress soup diet, the low carb/high fat protein diet, the Eat-what-you-like-but-only-after1pm-diet. If they worked we wouldn’t have an obesity problem, says Alison Walsh, Runner's World dietician..

There’s an array of diet books, celebrity diets in magazines and on television, meal replacements, milkshakes and magic pills that claim to burn fat off while you sleep. We should have nations of healthy, fit, slim Aussies and Kiwis. Yet statistics on overweight and obesity have never looked so grim, with half of women and two thirds of men fitting into these categories. Some experts predict that if the current trend continues, by 2020, 75 per cent of the Australian population will be overweight or obese.

1 DON’T START ANYTHING YOU CAN’T DO FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE In other words, don’t diet. Diets involve restrictive, anti-social meal plans. They can leave you mentally and physically drained. When you go on a diet, you ultimately have to come off it. But when you resolve to alter your eating patterns gradually to a healthier way of eating, you should be able to maintain this for life.

Initially, despite symptoms such as hunger, headaches, lightheadedness, and nausea, dieting can produce feelings of euphoria as your weight rapidly decreases. This encourages you to continue dieting – and creating metabolic havoc. Rapid weight loss (greater than half to a kilo a week) is usually just loss of water and carbohydrate stores, and then muscle tissue through protein stores. When you go back to your usual way of eating, you have less muscle and your metabolic rate is lower. You’re burning less energy because you now have less muscle. Your body is in starvation mode – it’s expecting to be starved again, so it will store more of what you eat. And so you put the weight back on and feel like a failure. But it’s the diet that has failed. Your only failure is not realising that to lose weight permanently, you need to change your lifestyle. And yo-yo dieting can be more dangerous to your health than consistently staying at a slightly higher body weight.

2 DON’T LET THE SCALES RULE YOU When you start changing your lifestyle your aim is probably to lose some body fat, become a more comfortable shape and clothing size, and feel more energetic. All of these things you can measure yourself, without a scale. The scale merely tells you how much of you there is, not how much body fat you have lost. So ignore it. The figure it gives you is not as important as how you feel, your state of health and general well being. If you need a number, use your weight along with other measures of health, including blood pressure, cholesterol levels, blood glucose levels, and levels of stress.

3 EXERCISE REGULARLY As a runner or walker you probably do this already, and feel the benefits. Like a way of eating that can be followed long term, an exercise program is similar. You may need to adjust your program at different life stages (during illness or pregnancy, or cutting back a little as you get older), but keeping active in some way is essential to attain and maintain a healthy weight.
Exercise not only burns up energy (kilojoules) as we train, but also increases the metabolic rate up to about 10 per cent for up to 24 hours after exercise. So as a regular exercise, you are using more energy just sitting still than people who don’t exercise.
Besides cardiovascular exercise, resistance training is important to maintain muscle and strength. More muscle means a higher metabolism, which in turn burns more energy.

4 DON’T SPARE THE WATER Dehydration is common in many people, particularly in those who exercise regularly. We lose fluid through sweat, urine, and breathing. A good rule of thumb is to drink two litres each day, plus the fluid lost in exercise – so, if you sweat out a litre of fluid in your daily training session, you would need to have roughly three litres of fluids a day. Some water is gained through food, but the rest we need to drink.
Water is a great choice because it contains no kilojoules, no chemical additives, and is usually freely available. That makes it perfect for those wanting to lose weight. Worried about water retention? Unless you have a medical condition, don’t be. Your body is very efficient at expelling what it doesn’t need.
You also should include some low-fat mil in our daily fluid intake. (See rule number 5). Sports drink can be a useful supplement to a healthy diet, when used to hydrate in particular exercise conditions.
Other fluids such as juice, cordial, soft drink, alcohol, tea and coffee should be kept to a minimum.

5 DON’T BE AFRAID OF DAIRY Calcium-rich foods are essential for healthy bones, and dairy foods have plenty. Not only are they naturally rich in calcium, but the lactose (milk sugar) in them enhances absorption of calcium. From a weight-loss perspective, low-fat dairy foods can also be of benefit. A diet high in dairy calcium has been found to decrease fat stores and dairy foods are far more effective at facilitating this than calcium-fortified non-dairy foods.
If you’re lactose intolerant, calcium-fortified soy foods are still going to help keep bones strong. Whether you get calcium from dairy or soy sources, aim for three serves of low-fat calcium-rich foods daily. One serve is two slices of low-fat cheese, or 250ml reduced-fat milk, or 200g yoghurt.

6 EAT PLENTY OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES They’re low in kilojoules, easily digested and have plenty of vitamins and minerals.

The current recommendations are two pieces of fruit and five vegetables daily, and very few of us are getting that much. A serving of fruit is defined as one medium piece of fruit (eg apple, orange), cup of fresh or tinned fruit (go for varieties in natural juice), ¼ cup dried fruit, or ½ cup of fruit juice (beware, as this does not have the same “filling” value as actual fruit). A serving of vegetables is seen as cup of salad vegetables, 1 medium potato, or ½ cup of cooked vegetables. Eat a wide variety, as this ensures you consume plenty of different vitamins, all needed for energy and vitality. A good guide is to include at least three different vegetables every day, of different colours.

When your body is getting the nutrients it needs to function well, you are less likely to be hungry. Fruit and vegetables can be quite filling, and because they are high in nutrients may help stop you overeating higher kilojoule foods. They are a great source of fibre, and can assist bowel problems and high cholesterol levels.

In winter, you may need to rely more on tinned and dried fruit, and that’s fine in limited quantities. But summer brings a delicious array of berries, stone fruit and melons. Start the day with a fresh fruit salad and you’re halfway to your daily requirement.

7 EAT SMALL PORTIONS OF FOOD REGULARLY THROUGHOUT THE DAY Dieters sometimes make the mistake of skipping between-meal snacks. Some even believe that skipping breakfast will help them burn fat faster. Nothing could be further from the truth! A healthy breakfast is essential to kick-start your metabolism after a prolonged fast overnight. Every time we eat the body must use energy to break down incoming nutrients. Small frequent meals help to keep the fire burning for longer, rather than one large meal flooding the system every six hours or so.

Eating smaller meals more often can also stop you developing a ravenous appetite, and eating everything in sight. The key to success is ensuring our regular small meals are healthy ones. A chocolate bar for morning tea and chips mid-afternoon will stimulate your metabolic rate but will also add a sizeable amount of kilojoules and fat to your food intake. Try having a piece of fruit or two for a mid-morning snack; boost your calcium intake and satisfy your sweet cravings with a low-fat yoghurt when the munchies hit mid-afternoon.

Keep an eye on serving sizes. Think of whether you really need to eat until you are full. It’s okay to leave food on a plate, and certainly not a waste. The waste is when you eat the food because you feel guilty for throwing it out. You become a human garbage bin and your waistline and health may well pay the price. If it’s a nutritious meal, keep leftovers for the next day. Feel free to bump up the quantity of vegetables you eat at a main meal, but keep your protein and carbohydrates serves moderate.

8 SAVOUR YOUR MEAL Eat slowly, and chew well. When’s the last time you sat at the tale for an entire meal? Too often, we tend to rush through a meal to get n with whatever else we need to get done. Get the family to eat together at the table, turn the television off, and have some good old fashioned conversation. You’ll be surprised at what this can do for your relationships as well as your waistline!

When you eat food quickly, our body does not have adequate time to send a message to your brain to say you’re full. So you often end up with that stuffed full feeling and wishing you hadn’t eaten those last few mouthfuls. Eating like this ever day means you are likely taking in more kilojoules at each meal than you need to. Eating too quickly can bring on indigestion and flatulence. Make an effort to really try to taste the food and feel the textures in your mouth. Train yourself to chew each mouthful eight to 0 times before swallowing, or put your knife and fork down in between each mouthful. Try to use meal times as a chance to switch off from everything else.

9 VEG OUT WEEKLY Besides adding variety to your evening meals, choosing a vegetarian meal once or twice a week can decrease fat intake without you even noticing it. Vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index than those who eat meat. With lean meat cuts available, there’s no need to go completely vegetarian to maintain a trim and healthy physique, but a well planned vegetarian meals will do you good. They tend to be high in fibre and therefore quite filling and seeking out vegetarian options may introduce you to a new cuisine.

Experiment with lentils, legume (such as borlotti beans, four bean mix, chick peas, kidney beans), firm tofu (cook before eating), or low fat veggie burgers (aim for 97 per cent fat-free ones). There are also many other great vegetarian protein alternatives. To get you started, browse the recipes on www.sanitarium.com.au.

10 ENJOY A TOAST OCCASIONALLY While it’s fine to enjoy a glass or two of red now and then, if you want to lose body fat, keep our alcohol intake down. Alcohol is loaded with kilojoules and they’re not the nutritional kind. One standard drink contains 300 to 450kJ and most drinks served are not on standard drink – from 1.5 to two standard drinks is the common measure. When alcohol is in the bloodstream, it is used as energy before fat, protein and carbohydrate are. It can prevent fat from being burnt up as energy, so fat consumed in the diet is more likely to be stored.

According to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHM-RC), males should consume no more than fur standard drinks a day, and for women, no more than two. Everyone should include two alcohol-free days every week. This recommendation covers the detrimental and harmful effects of excess alcohol consumption, but not the amount that can be consumed before you gain weight. The approach we are suggesting does not ban any food or drink, but is about balance. So if weight loss is your aim, cut back on the alcohol.

11 GET GOOD SLEEP Three things that suffer when life gets hectic: nutrition, exercise, and sleep. Sleep is crucial to your body’s capacity to recover. It is particularly important if you are unwell, or have been exercising, as your body needs time to repair damaged muscles and cells, and make them stronger for the next run or walk.

It is tempting to go to bed later, or get up earlier, to get a little more done in a busy life, but this will soon catch up with you. Your concentration will suffer, your energy you’ll be more susceptible to illness floating around. Your running will also suffer. Being tired can also lead to bingeing on high-fat, high-kilojoule foods, especially in the late afternoon or after dinner. So see sleep as a great investment for keeping healthy and trim.