Let them eat cake (and Ice-cream too)

I'm back from a busy weekend of cake, more cake and ice cream.

I came out of this weekend with 2 new pieces of knowledge:

1. I am in complete denial that my little girl could already be 1 year old,
   
2. I gained some really cool knowledge about ice cream that I want to share with you.

Ice cream is a perfect of example of my theory that we should only ever eat quality food. If we demand quality great-tasting food, I beleive that ultimately this food will not only taste better, but also be better for us (AND, since there is way less quality food out there then there is crappy food-like products, we end up eating less - which is a good thing).

When it comes to ice cream, I beleive that Haagen Dazs is pretty much the cream of the crop. In the ice cream world Haagan Dazs is the premium brand. It tastes great, but you also pay a lot of money for it.

In fact, it is so expensive that on Friday, when I was out buying ice cream for Brier's first birthday party, I by-passed the Haagen Dazs and went right for the less expensive stuff.

Then, I got curious.

I read the ingredients on the less expensive stuff...this was what was in the vanilla flavor:

Milk Ingredients, Modified Milk Ingredients, Sugar, Glucose, Mono and Diglycerides, Locust Bean Gum, Cellulose Gum, Guar Gum, Carrageenan, Natural and Artificial Flavours.

Now to compare, this is what is in the vanilla flavor from Haagen Dazs:

Cream, Skim Milk, Sugar, Egg Yolks, Natural Vanilla.

I'm sure you can spot the differences.

• 11 ingredients versus 5
• Ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen versus some things that don't even sound like food.
• Cream as the first ingredient in ice-cream, versus milk ingredients
  

So it becomes apparent pretty quickly that the premium ice-cream has food ingredients, while the cheaper ice-cream as food-like ingredients.

But, what about Calories?

Well, the Haagan Dazs KILLS the cheaper ice cream, providing 270 Calories versus 120 Calories per half cup. So if you are watching what you eat and trying to lose weight, this is where it gets interesting.

After all, we all know that a tablespoon full of the good stuff is way more satisfying then an entire bowl of the cheap stuff..but why is that?

Well, The next time you buy ice-cream, look at how it is sold..Ice-cream is not sold by weight, it is sold by volume. So you will buy 2 quarts of ice-cream, not 2 pounds of ice-cream.

And herein lies the mystery of premium quality ice-cream.

The small 500 ml container of Haagen Dazs weighs almost as much as a entire quart of one of the cheaper products.

Haagen Dazs ice-cream is very calorie dense because it contains much less air than the cheaper brands, which is why it does not need all of the extra stabilizers that the cheaper ice-cream contains (Mono and Diglycerides, Locust Bean Gum, Cellulose Gum, Guar Gum, Carrageenan).

The cheaper brands try to get as much air into their ice-cream as possible so that they can fill a big container with less product, ultimately saving money.

So by sticking to your guns and only eating the premium stuff, you end up eating a lot less additives, you get a better tasting product, made from real food ingredients and you get roughly the same calories PER GRAM, with a whole lot more satisfaction.

Demand quality in the foods you eat, and you will end up eating a lot more food and a lot less food-like products. You will also end up eating less often, so even if the quality stuff has more calories, it should all even out in the end.

BP

PS- If you don't think you can lose weight while still enjoying cake and ice-cream at summer birthday parties then you need to check out Eat Stop Eat.

You Don't Make Friends with Salad

Right about now my little brother is killing himself laughing.

As a Simpson's affectionado, I bet he immediately realized that I just quoted the Simpson's in the title for this post.

And while watching the Simpson's family form a Conga line and sing this song to mock Lisa for becoming a vegetarian was entertaining, salads are no laughing matter.

Most salads are wolves in sheep's clothing.

Let me explain..

Almost every big restaurant chain makes the nutritional profile of their meals available on the internet.

I highly recommend you do some surfing and check out the calorie content of some of the salads that are available at your favorite restaurants...of course, do it on your lunch break if you are at work...no slacking ;)

You will probably be surprised when you find that most salad entres have just as much IF NOT MORE calories than many of the traditional entres (the main meals salads, not the appetizers).

My favorite Salad at Boston Pizza has over 1,000 Calories! The salad I like at Kelsey's has over 800!

The bottom line is that a lot foods get a halo around them because they are 'healthy'. When you hear people complaining that they "eat like a bird" but still can't lose weight...typically this is because they are assuming some foods are healthy and low calorie, when in fact they are not.

Quick quiz, if you were to order a snack at Starbucks, which of these options has the least amount of calories

a) The blueberry Oat Bar
b) The Banana Loaf
c) The Espresso Brownie
d) The Multi-Grain Bagel

The answer is C) The Espresso Brownie.

Watch for wolves in sheep's clothing when you are eating at restaurants and fast food places. These days the 'healthy' option isn't always the best option.

BP

PS - Here is a great email that I received form Denise...

I just wanted to let you know that I've had real success with Eat Stop Eat in just a short time. I've lost 10 pounds since April by fasting 1-2 days a week. On top of that i've increased weights in my deadlifts and kettlebell training as well as increased in pullups. I plan on continuing the Eat Stop Eat program forever. -Denise

I love the fact that she is losing weight AND getting stronger! Keep up the great work Denise!

Montreal, Snow Storms and the role of carbs in weight loss

It's been a crazy week for me. I was in Montreal for the weekend, checking out the local cuisine. I had some very tasty duck, and some amazing raw fish at Buona Notte (I highly recommend this restaurant!) Unfortunately, on Sunday I was caught in that huge snow storm that pummeled southern Ontario. Needless to say, what should have been a 6 hour drive home ended up taking almost 11 hours!

By the time I finally got home I was so behind on work that I had to spend the last couple days trying to get caught up on emails. One of the emails I received had a really great question asking whether it's carbs or calories that causes weight gain. I've copied the question and my answer below...

Hi Brad,

I've read your book Eat Stop Eat and I'm wondering whether you would have written it differently now that you've read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes. I mean, in your book you still write as if the amount of calories matter and as if you shouldn't differentiate between them. What Taubes has found is that the only thing you really can say is that too many Carbs are unhealthy.

George

And here is my answer:

Hi George,

Thanks for the email and for the excellent question.

I have read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and was very impressed with its content. I believe that Taubes has accurately pointed out the health issues surrounding a high sugar intake. However, I do not believe that he accurately analyzed the data regarding the correlation between total calories and obesity.

Taubes examined studies containing diet record data and concluded from this research that the obese do not eat any more calories than non-obese people. Unfortunately, we have learned from the work of Brian Wansink that obese people tend to under report their caloric intake by as much as 30% when using diet records. This phenomena has been noticed by other researchers, and has been written up as an extremely important confounder in weight loss research. (For a great write up on this point you can see a Trial by Steven W. Lightman et al. published in the New England Journal of Medicine, volume 327 (37), 1992.)

For this reason I would not have changed any of my recommendations in Eat Stop Eat if I had read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" before I began writing.

I think that the points that Taubes makes about sugar are accurate, and I do believe that one or two 24 hour periods of complety no sugar (like during the Eat Stop Eat method of fasting) is beneficial to human health, yet I also believe that the only way to reduce body weight is through a negative caloric balance, and the best way to ensure that the majority of that weight loss is fat is by using the combination of caloric restriction and resistance exercise (the two keys to Eat Stop Eat's success).

I hope this answer helps,

Brad

To learn more about the benefits of short periods of flexible fasting for weight loss, visit http://www.eatstopeat.com

Why Starbucks is Like Godzilla

On Monday I had a chance to catch up with one of my good friends who has spent the last five years living in Japan. He was back in Canada for a wedding, and since I haven't seen him in years it was definitely time to catch up.

Of course, the conversation eventually turned to Nutrition, and I learnt an eye-opening fact about some disturbing trends in Japan.

According to my friend, Starbucks is making a push to get a foot-hold in the Japanese market. Kind of like Godzilla, only without the death and destruction.

While this shouldn't be shocking to any of us (after all, while visiting China I saw a Starbucks INSIDE the forbidden city!), what is shocking is the effect that Starbucks is having on some of the Japanese nutrition customs.

In Japan it is a centuries-old tradition that you don't drink while walking.

And this poses a huge dilemma for the Starbucks crowd.

Since space is very hard to come by in Japan, many of the Starbucks shops are walk-up "express" versions with little to no seating. Basically, if you want your Starbucks, you are going to have to walk with it.

And guess what - People are walking with their Starbucks. Starbucks is single-handedly destroying centuries of Japanese tradition.

This is a perfect example of a soon-to-be extinct custom that once prevented people from eating while they are distracted. And it fits perfectly with the stories I have been telling you from the book,"Mindless Eating".

In this incredible book there are examples of many other mindless eating methods that have replaced our own nutrition customs. (i.e. If you read it you'll find out what eating in front of the TeeVee has done to us, rather than eating around the dinner table).

So not only are these eating customs "sacred", but they also serve a purpose. In fact, I believe that the disappearance of traditional eating customs is one of the largest factors in our current obesity problem.

If you don't already have your own set of "nutrition customs" perhaps it's time you thought about adopting some.

Here is an easy one for all of you commuters out there. For the rest of this week, do not eat in your car. You can drink, just no food. This rule will help you keep your car clean AND save you from some mindless distracted eating.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes.

BP

PS- Summer is here so...

...strength coach John Barban is back running his summer conditioning camp. You can read about the first day of camp HERE.

Fasting Diet, Circuit Training

Is There a Conspiracy to Make Us Fat?

Thanks to some very frustrating airport delays yesterday, I managed to finish off "Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink.


This book did not disappoint me. Almost every page had great facts about the way food is marketed and the factors that make us decide to eat. This book is definitely in my list of top-ten must-read nutrition books.


I've been racking my brains trying to figure out the top lesson I learnt from this book so that I could share it with you, and I think I have it.


You know how everybody these days seems to be blaming the food companies for our obesity problem? - As if it's some giant conspiracy?


Well the number one thing I learnt from "Mindless Eating" is that there is no "fat conspiracy".
Food companies do not care if you EAT their foods. They only care if you BUY their foods and continue to BUY their foods.


The people at McDonalds don't care if you buy a happy meal, turn around and throw it in the garbage, just as long as you buy the happy meal.


Also, food isn't designed to be "fattening" (Whatever that means). Food is designed to be inexpensive for the companies to make and desirable enough for you to repeatedly purchase.


This is the great conspiracy. Yes food companies, restaurants and shopping centers go to great lengths to figure out how to make us BUY there food, but we are the ones making the decision to EAT the food.


And this is where some of the great ideas from "Mindless Eating" come into play.
Do you remember the picture of the four glasss I posted on my blog on Monday (look below)? Every glass in the picture contains 1 and a half cups of fluid, except for the small squat one, it has 2 cups.


This is reffered to as the "horizontal-vertical illusion". If you picture an upside-down capital "T" where both the horizontal line and the vertical line are the same length, we will always see the vertical line as being longer.






So if you were to fill the small cup to almost the top, like most of us do, it would contain a little over 2 and a half cups of fluid.


So a morning cup of orange juice could actually be a morning 2-and-a-half cups of orange juice. This could account for an extra 33 grams of sugar and 165 Calories!


This is just one great example of how our assumptions combined with some excellent marketing get us to buy more and consume more. If we can become more aware of these "overeating ques" that are around us every day, then we can be more aware of ways to avoid them.


BP

Fasting Diet, Circuit Training

3 "Magic" Fat Loss Ingredients

Every morning I go through the exact same routine.

I get up. I make some oatmeal. Clean the kitchen. Go up stairs. Brush my teeth. Turn on my computer. Check my email. Then I laugh (or sometimes cry) while reading all of the new stories about the latest and greatest "fat loss" ingredients.

It is an absolute mystery to me why, after over 20 years of failed promises, we still turn to magic ingredients and magic foods for fat loss.

What shocks me even more is that we are still hoping to find something we can eat that will cause us to lose fat. It is almost becoming an oxymoron.

We are looking for something to consume that will make us consume less!

Here are just some examples of magic foods and ingredients in the new today:

Recent research (performed in a test tube) suggests that extract from Chilli peppers may stop fat growth. According to this research Chilli extract may hold the key to preventing immature fat cells from developing into mature fat cells.

In a different study, it was suggested that spearmint tea can not only lower a man's sex drive but can also decrease the amount of hair on a women's body. (Admittedly, this isn't fat loss research but if you think the body builders in your gym smell bad now, wait till they read this research and stop brushing their teeth for fear that they may be lowering their T levels!)

Finally, more research shows that dairy calcium (but not calcium supplements) can cause a decrease in the amount of fat in your blood after a meal.

I can't really tell you too much about this study because I stopped reading after the first page that mentioned that the study was funded by the Danish Dairy Research Foundation and the Dutch Dairy Association!

A Dairy Foundation and a Dairy Association funded the study, and the study found that dairy calcium, but not calcium supplements had weight loss benefits? Please.

Now honestly, there is some merit to this research. Eating more spices on your food is definitely a good idea. Eating foods that contain calcium is also a good idea.

However, thinking that taking chilli extract pills or consuming 3 bowls of ice-cream per day will make you lose weight IS NOT what you should be taking away from this research. (Nor is skipping your morning tooth brushing!)

If you want to lose weight there are only three things you need to do, and you don't need to read any research to do them.

Firstly, find a nutrition plan that works for you.

Secondly, get active. And I don't mean walk on the elliptical for half an hour every other day, I mean get a real work-out program and challenge yourself.

The third and last thing you need to do is to stop (or don't start) falling for the media's version of the latest and greatest fat loss research. It will only lead to disappointment and is usually a very poor and hyped up version of what the research was really telling us.

These are the real 3 "magic" fat loss ingredients!

BP

Eat Stop Eat

The Newest Diet Study - What does it really tell us?

By now, you have probably heard about the latest study – You know the one that “proves” that the Atkins diet is superior for weight loss?

So let me just clear this up right now. The results of this study prove one thing and one thing only – diets work.

In fact, after reviewing this study, and all of the commentary, posturing, crying and bickering that it has caused, I have come to the conclusion that this study proves that the very best thing you can do for weight loss is:

Eat less, but enjoy the foods you eat. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and lots of herbs and spices. And maybe most importantly, spend less time stressing over the types of food you are eating

In other words - Cut your calories in a way that works for you. ( It might take a bit of trial and error, but it will be worth it.)

Now here are the facts from the study…

311 overweight, pre-menopausal women were divided into four groups and were asked to follow one of the following dietary programs: The Atkins diet, the Zone diet, the LEARN diet or the Ornish diet.

Each woman was put in one of these groups and received a copy of one of the popular weight loss books. Each woman then met with a registered dietitian once per week for 8 weeks learning “the ins and outs” of their assigned diet.

After these classes the subjects were “set free” to follow the diet for 12 months, with the exception of a couple of visits to the lab and some unannounced phone calls where the researchers asked the subjects to recall what they had eaten in the last 24 hours.

What happened?

As expected, all 4 groups ate fewer calories during the study than they were eating before the study – so all diets “worked” to help cut calories.

And each group lost weight with most weight loss happening in the first 2 months. (After this point for all diets, the weight loss tended to slow or even creep back up).

The Atkins style diet had the best weight loss during the first 2 months and over the 6-month study. That’s why you see Atkins being crowned the king of weight loss diets.

However, by end of the 12-month study, the results tended to “even out”. And by the end of the study, the Atkins diet was really only better than the Zone Diet (which isn’t a bad diet on it’s own).

And you know what? The total weight loss wasn’t that impressive – with the Atkins dieters losing 12.5 lbs in 6 months. That’s 0.5 lbs per week. Good, but not eye-popping results.

But here’s the kicker. It’s hard for me to understand how overweight woman (averaging 180 pounds and over 40% bodyfat) can eat less than 1400 calories per day for 6-months and lose only lose 12 and a half pounds. There is something very wrong here.

Looking at the data, I noticed that all of the diets saw a small slow increase in their calorie intake over the year. And honestly, this was probably due to huge errors in dietary recall. Most people can’t accurately describe what they had for lunch, so this measure isn’t worth the paper it was written on.

Dietary recall is a scientific method for measuring caloric intake that has been under a large amount of scrutiny in the past years.

Imagine having someone call you on the phone and ask you to describe all of the foods you had eaten over the day. Imagine the types of mistakes in sizes and types of food that could be made in this type of interpretation and then imagine the kind of effects that this could have in a scientific study.

Now also imagine that you SIGNED UP for a weight loss study, so you are already motivated to eat less and you are also insecure about the amounts and types of food you eat.

For true research, diet recalls are a horrible tool. Plain and simple.

I also noticed that none of the diets were true to their form.

Take a look at the “high protein Atkins style diet”. After 2 months the subjects reported a protein intake of 95 grams. But at 12 months it was down to 82 grams. How is this high protein? It’s not even 0.5 grams per pound of bodyweight!

And check out the “Ornish Low fat diet”. At 2 months fat made up 21% of their caloric intake, at 12 months it made up 29.8% of their calories. This is a far cry from the 10% that Dr. Ornish advocates.

Because the subjects had such a hard time sticking to the diet plans, I don’t think that this trial proved that any one diet was better than the other. It did prove that the diet with the lowest carbohydrates had the quickest weight loss. And it did show that diets high in fat can still have health benefits. Most likely, the health benefits are the result of the reduced calories and the associated weight loss as all the diets were associated with health improvements.

Of course, proponents of each diet are all crying foul. They’re complaining about the study design, the subjects, the poor compliance to the diet plans…but most importantly they’re complaining because they make money by selling you their programs!

Its funny…Dr. Ornish said that the study was flawed because most participants couldn’t follow the Ornish diet. That doesn’t make the study flawed - its makes the diet flawed.

And that’s exactly what this study proves…it is very difficult to follow these prescribed diets. These people don’t know you. They don’t know what you like to eat or what you do for a living. They simply design a diet that makes a lot of sense on paper, and prescribe it as a cure all.

The bottom line is…this study still not help end the debate over which diet works best because there IS NO DEBATE. Eating less works! End of story. The rest of it is just people making simple diet advice into confusing pseudo-science so they can sell you their programs.

Eat less, but enjoy the foods you eat. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and lots of herbs and spices. And maybe most importantly, spend less time stressing over the types of food you are eating.

BP

What's Interesting about this study?

27 obese patients were subjected to a ten day fast consisting of 250 Calories per day. The Subjects were divided into two groups, a group that exercised and a group that did not.

After ten days:

• Both groups had similar weight loss.

• The exercise was well tolerated without problems.

• The loss of muscle was significantly less in the exercise group.

The authors concluded "This may indicate that muscular activity is useful in aiding adaptation to fasting and may orient weight loss preferentially towards fat mass."

While certainly not earth shattering...the part that is very interesting to me is that this study was published in 1975!

So, we had a vague idea over 3o years ago that exercise was needed to maintain muscle mass while dieting. Yet, nowadays we still argue about protein ratios, carb cycling and meal frequency and supplementation. Seems like something was lost in the last 30 years!

Simple truth - Just like Schrub et al. hypothesised over 30 years ago, if you are dieting and you want to preserve muscle mass, lift weights.

BP

Deconstructing Nutrition – The Thermic Effect of Food

Before I get started let me just say that this was by far the most difficult research project I have done to date.

The amount of misinformation, conflicting results, and misinterpreted data out there on this topic is amazing.

For this reason, I have had to break this topic up into three different parts

PART I

The thermic effect of food is the energy your body requires to digest, absorb and dispose of the nutrients that you eat. It is often abbreviated as TEF and is usually sited by diet gurus and fitness experts as the reasons why you should or shouldn’t eat a certain way.

Through a quick scan of the internet, I found the following claims:

• The more often you eat, the higher your metabolic rate
• Protein increases your metabolism by 40%

So it would make sense that eating multiple small high-protein meals would be the best way to increase your metabolism.

While this theory sounds great, let’s look at what the research has found…

Firstly, the one thing that all the papers I read agreed upon was that the number one factor that affects your TEF is the total amount of calories you eat.

Researchers have calculated TEF to be roughly 10% of your caloric intake.

Therefore, if you eat 1,000 Calories, you raise your metabolism by about 100 Calories and if you eat 10,000 Calories, you will raise your metabolism by about 1,000 Calories.

The majority of the thermic effect occurs in the first hour after eating, but depending on the size of the meal the effect can last from anywhere between 5 and 24 hours. It seems that the thermic effect will last until all the calories from your meals have been metabolized.

This leads us to the theory of eating frequent small meals.

From what I can tell, the idea that food frequency affects the amount of calories you burn is very debatable.

A few papers have found that eating one large meal has a higher thermic effect then many small meals. And a few papers have found that eating several small meals has a larger effect then one large meal. The rest have found no difference.

And to me, this makes the most sense.

If you eat 2,000 Calories, you will have to burn about 200 calories just digesting, absorbing and disposing of the nutrients you have eaten.

It does not matter whether you ate all 2,000 Calories at once, or spread them out through multiple small 500 Calorie meals. The total volume of calories remains the same and therefore so does their effect on your metabolism.

So far, the Thermic effect of food can be best summed up as –

“Eating increases your metabolism”

For the average person, eating around 2,500 Calories a day, the Thermic Effect of Food will increase your metabolism by between 200-300 Calories.

Here’s the kicker - If total calorie content is the best predictor of your TEF, it’s not as if you are going to eat an extra 5000 calories so you can burn an extra 500!

Luckily, there still may be ways to affect your metabolism through the foods you eat. In Part II I will break down the effect the different macronutrients have on your metabolism.

BP

Working-Out and Fat Loss

Ever wonder why some people can exercise religiously for months and not lose any weight?

Every now and again I run into this type of woman at the gym. She is on the elliptical everyday at 5:30 AM, and when I'm leaving the gym at 6:30 AM, she's still on the elliptical.

When I'm back in the gym around 7 PM, she's there again too, running through all the weight machines.

The problem is, no matter how hard she pushes herself she's still not losing weight. The answer to her weight loss goals is in her nutrition plan.

To get the best results out of any program you must not only have a great exercise plan, but a great nutrition plan as well.

And a new study has shown us just how important nutrition is for fat loss.

In this study, women exercised on a treadmill until they burned a set number of calories. The women were then asked to guess how many calories they burned during the workout.

The subjects were also told to eat at a buffet and try to eat the same amount of calories that they had just burned during the workout. Think you could do that?

Shockingly, the researchers found that the women over-guessed how many calories they burned by 300 to 400%! And, they ate double to triple the amount of calories that they had actually burned during the exercise!

Are you undoing all the benefits of your workout by eating too much?

Are you giving yourself "free reign" nutritionally just because you worked out?

It's a common myth in the fitness industry that you can eat anything you want after your workout and it won't become fat. It is also a myth that you need large amounts of calories in order to "recover" from your workout (a very small amount will do).

When left to eat as you please, your mind and body will try and convince you to overcompensate and eat more than you normally would.

So don't shoot yourself in the foot and waste all that hard exercise by eating too many calories, especially in your "post workout meal".

Always remember that the best approach to getting the body you want and the performance you desire is by combining a solid exercise program with a sound nutrition plan.

BP

Fasting Diet, Circuit Training