3 Things I have learned from my little girl

1. If you have sensitive skin that gets dry and itch really easily, nothing beats baby body wash.

Forget the overly-scented florescent blue 'manly' body washes, for me it's Johnson's Head-to-Toe or nothing.

(Great for sensitive skin)

2. If you have curly hair (and I mean REALLY curly hair), pretty much any shampoo is going to strip it and cause to frizz.

If I use the wrong shampoo I end up looking like Will Farrel from Semi Pro.

(NOT the author of Eat Stop Eat)

My hair relief comes from (once again) stealing from my one year old daughter. Nothing beats Baby Shampoo if you have curly hair. Seriously. Give it a try.

(Great for curls)

3. I'm sure any parent will agree that when you are shopping for baby food, you pay little attention to the exact ratio of protein to carbs in the food. You don't examine foods and try to guess whether the protein is slow release or fast release, and I doubt you'd go looking for baby formula with extra added green tea extract.

Nope, the obsessive compulsive nutritionism approach to food goes out the window when you are dealing with little ones.

Instead, you fret over quality. You want food without anything 'added' that shouldn't be added. You want food made from ingredients you recognize.

I go out of my way to avoid baby oatmeal with extra 'stabilizers', or yogurt with thickening agents. It is quality above everything else when dealing with very young children.

In fact, this is where I developed my theory of eating for quality (see the post HERE).

What I beleive to be the optimal way to approach eating, was actually developed during a rather stressful Daddy-anxiety attack while grocery shopping and trying to find yogurt made from whole milk as opposed to 'modified milk ingredients'

(Check out how she goes for the really, really big piece)

So the nutrition advice for today is feed your self the way you would feed a baby..just without the mess

BP

How to Prevent Vacation Weight Gain

I'm back, and it's snowing. Again. This winter has definitely made me start to think about relocating to somewhere warm, at least during the winter months.

(Are you kidding me!? I've got to shovel THAT just to get to the gym?)

The good news is I had a great vacation, and was able to spend a ton of time with the family. The other good news is that neither my wife nor I gained any weight, despite eating "vacation style" for 7 days.

We made a point of practicing the rare art of "fasting to avoid spending tons of cash at the airport" and made sure our fasts occurred during our flight to Florida, and during our flight home.

Worked like a charm.

So here's my tip...If you are planning on going on vacation, keep up your Eat Stop Eat regimen, but make sure to spend the 'travel days' fasting, it will cut down on costs, and lots of calories that you don't really need (I doubt any of us burn a lot of calories sitting on a plane).

Not only was it a great vacation, but last week was also full of some great reviews for Eat Stop Eat.

First, Craig Ballantyne shared some very positive reviews of Eat Stop Eat from his TTmembers site (you can read them here ==> Eat Stop Eat Feedback)

Then Eat Stop Eat was reviewed at Your New Body - You can read this review here ==> Eat Stop Eat Review

Finally, I read a great post at the Skwigg blog, where Skwigg stated that Eat Stop Eat has helped her become a "Happy Eater". (You can read Skwigg's post here ==> Happy Eater)

In an industry full of obsessive compulsive eating, nutritional scaremongering, and food confusion, nothing could make me happier than hearing someone describe themselves as a happy eater.

Really, this should be everyones goal.

BP


No more counting calories to lose weight

The Origins of Obsessive Compusive Eating

I'm snowed in today (gotta love Canadian winters).

In all honesty this couldn't have come at a better time. I have a major speaking engagement tomorrow I have to prepare for, and I have a number of emails I need to get written.

Naturally, since I have a crazy amount of work to do, I started the day off with the perfect procrastination tool - I decided to clean out my in-box.

This quickly became an eye opening expose into the origins of our Obsessive Compulsive Eating craze.

Ever wonder why so many people are so confused about what is good for them and what is bad for them? Well I think I may have found part of the answer. Take a look at the following e-mail subject lines I found in my In-box about caffeine, coffee and tea:

'Coffee linked to lower ovarian cancer risk', 'Caffeine linked to risk of miscarriage', 'Black tea shows blood sugar benefits', 'Caffeine linked to higher blood glucose levels'.

Or, how about Carbs:

'The carb rotation diet', 'eat all the carbs you want', 'carbs kill', 'whole grains may reduce pancreatic cancer risk', 'Good and bad carb definitions misleading says review', 'Carbs linked to obesity', 'Eat all the carbs you want and still lose weight'.

and sugar:

'High Fructose drinks no different to sucrose, milk for satiety', 'mechanism proposed for fructose syrup-obesity link', 'Soft drinks not responsible for obesity – study', 'Fructose linked to fatty artery deposits, study says', 'Study finds no link between sugar drinks and kiddie obesity', 'Should you really avoid fruit juice?'

And these were all just from January!

By constantly reporting on small little snip-its of research, writers can definitely create great headlines, but they do it at the risk of confusing their readers.

In academics, you constantly have to make sure you are aware of the total body of research. Which is just a fancy way of saying you need to know all the research on a certain topic, and how all this research fits together, before you should comment on that issue.

I feel comfortable talking to you about fasting, because I have spent years studying it. However, if I started reporting on one single paper that I read on Cardiovascular disease, then I would be doing you a major disservice as I do not know the total body of research on that topic.

It is this quick "snip-it" approach to reporting on nutrition and health that I think plays a role in people's obsessive compulsive eating. We only hear little tiny pieces of the story and very rarely do we hear about the nutrition "big picture".

Always remember when you read anything about nutrition that you must consider how this one little article fits into the total big picture.

BP

For Any Candadian Parents...

For any Canadian parents who have young children, the following press release was sent to me this morning....

Four varieties of My Organic Baby cereal recalled, possibly rancid

OTTAWA - The Canadian Food Inspection Agency and a Vaughan, Ont.,-based company are warning the public not to consume four types of My Organic Baby cereal for infants, saying the product may be rancid.

My Organic Baby has issued a voluntary recall for 227 gram boxes of Barley, Brown Rice, Oatmeal and Multigrain cereal - all with 'Best By' dates of April 2008 and June 2008.
The affected product has been distributed nationally in Canada.

There has been one reported reaction associated with consumption of the cereal.
Consumers are warned that if the cereal has an unusual odour, or smells 'off' it should not be consumed. If an infant has been fed any of the products, parents are advised to monitor for possible symptoms of illness, and discontinue use.

Consumption of rancid food can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3ll5AxA00EaNhwFxkhByWdAoGYw

More info on Working out while Fasting

John Barban did a similar experiment to mine, measuring his blood sugar while completing a workout.

You can read about his finding by visiting here==> 

http://womensworkout.blogspot.com/2008/01/working-out-on-empty-stomach.html

BP

You can learn more about the combined effects of exercise and fasting for weight loss by visiting www.eatstopeat.com

Fasting Benefits Your Heart

My mom sent me a text yesterday about a study out of the University of Utah. Apparently, according to this study, people who fast one day a month are 40 percent less likely to be diagnosed with clogged arteries than those who did not regularly fast.

Sounds like great news, especially if you are like me and fast 6 to 8 times per month.
Unfortunately, after looking over the study, I did a google search to see what the newswires were reporting and found some very disheartening news bytes.

According to an article I found on Yahoo News, when asked to comment on the study Dr. Raymond Gibbons of the MayoClinic (who was not involved in the study), stated "Fasting resets the metabolic rate".

Now I'm not sure what Dr. Gibbons meant by "resets", and he was probably speaking about long term chronic fasting,but the author of the article on Yahoo News added these words after Dr. Gibbons quote "slowing it down to adjust to less food and forcing the body to store calories as soon as people resume eating".

These words cannot be Dr. Gibbons. They just can't be. There is no way I can accept that a former heart association president would make such an incorrect statement, especially since it was in reference to a 24 hour fast.

This begs the question, why is the mainstream media so afraid to tell people to eat less? Why is it that when research on the benefit of brief periods of fasting comes out, people have to comment on the dangers of long term chronic fasting.

Instead of just explaining that as little as one 24 hour fast per month can reduce your chances of being diagnosed with clogged arteries, they have to start digging to find something,(completely unrelated to the study), so they can throw some negative comments into the fray.

If you've read Eat Stop Eat, you know that metabolism doesnot decrease during brief fasting. In fact, evidence suggests that it may even go UP!

I know it will be an up hill battle, but my goal is to make the use of brief periods of fasting a respected and established method of weight control...because it is easy and because it works.

Are you fasting today?

BP

EAT STOP EAT, its easy, its effective, and new research suggests it's good for your ticker!

Cereal, Kids and Diabetes

I woke up early this morning to find the following email in my in box from the American Diabetes Association.

"The number of children and adolescents with type 2 diabetes is on the rise as more and more kids become obese. The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention co-sponsored the latest efforts of the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP) to provide parents and teens with the tools necessary to reduce their risks of complications related to type 2 diabetes and manage their disease."

Considering the post I just wrote about snack foods and breakfast cereals, I thought this was very timely.

BP

Why should I eat more herbs and spices?

You may have noticed that part of my "mantra" for healthy nutrition includes eating lots of nuts, herbs and spices.

There is a very good reason why you should include as much variety of thse foods into your diet as possible...

Back when I worked in the supplement industry I was always amused when ever I looked through the list of potential new ingredients that had strong supporting research behind their effects.

The list typically looked something like this: Green tea extract, cinnamon extract, raspberry extract, pine nut extract, curcumin, cayenne pepper extract, mint, basil, rosemary...

Notice anything about this list?

These are all ingredients that you could be adding to your diet, especially if you are following the principle of nutrition by addition. Many of these ingredients are currently being studied for their potential to have positive effects on some very important markers of health, such as helping to manage healthy insulin levels, cholesterol levels and some of the more complex areas of body weight regulation.

The funny thing is, I often wonder if these ingredients would still be considered potential "functional foods" if we ate them more often. I believe that nuts, herbs and spices are one of the missing links in North American Health. If we ate them more often, then we would be regularly reaping their health benefits, and wouldn't need some fancy label like "functional foods" to describe them!

Take pinolenic acid for example. This compound is currently being studied for its potential beneficial effects on several ofthe 'hunger hormones' that regulate our feelings of hunger.
This ingredient has some big potential and, most likely will be available in a pill sometime in the very near future.

Of course, instead of buying the pill, you could always get it in its natural form by adding a handful of pine nuts to your salad.

A perfect example of Nutrition by Addition and the importance of eating a variety of nuts, herbs and spices.

BP

PS - Here is what Craig Ballantyne had to say after he read Eat Stop Eat:

"This book will question everything you've ever been told about eating for fat loss. Bodybuilder mags have hyped up their eating & created inhuman workout programs for one reason - to sell supplements. That's right. Most nutrition programs are "designed" just to sell you stuff like protein powder and expensive post-workout sugar drinks. Brad's book turns the industry upside down and shows you how to eat normally, while making one slight, easy change that could bethe missing link in your fat loss nutrition program."


You can learn more about fasting for weight loss by going here

Nutrition by Addition & The Book "Deceptively Delicious"

I've always been a fan of nutrition by addition. The idea that you have to constantly avoid the foods you like in order to eat healthy is nonsense. Sometimes the best way to add nutritious foods to your diet is by adding them to things that are traditionally "bad" for you.

Take chocolate cake for example. I love chocolate cake (actually, I love anything chocolate). One single slice of chocolate cake can have as much as 300 Calories, 40 grams of sugar and almost no fiber. But, if you top that piece of cake with a whole cup of raspberries you add only 60 Calories, with over 8 grams of fiber, and over 30 mg of Vitamin C. A perfect example of nutrition by addition!

Yesterday, my wife picked up a cookbook that she heard about on Oprah. It's called "Deceptively Delicious" and it is written by Jessica Seinfeld (Yes, she's married to Jerry). As usual I was skeptical, but WOW this book is full of great ideas for nutrition by addition!

I highly recommend "Deceptively Delicious" to anyone with picky eaters in their household, or who are looking for creative and fun ways to practice nutrition by addition.

BP

Why are Fruits and Vegetables so Important?

Ever wonder why health experts always recommend eating lots of fruits and vegetables? Well, I can't speak for everyone, but my reason is simple: I recommend fruits and vegetables because it is impossible to get fat from eating them!

In fact, I think when it comes to fruits and vegetables, You just can't eat too much of them.

Here is an example to illustrate my point. A typical bacon double cheeseburger contains around 700 Kcals. Well, to get that same amount of calories from only eating fruits and vegetables you would have to eat:

• 1 cup of strawberries
• 1 cup of blueberries
• 1 cup of sliced pear
• 1 cup of sliced cucumber
• 1 cup of chopped peppers
• 1 whole banana
• 1 cup of cherry tomatoes
• 1 whole sweet onion
• 1 cup sliced mushrooms
• 1 third cup of sliced almonds (thrown in to add some protein and fat)

It takes over 9 cups of Food just to equal the same amount of calories in a bacon double cheeseburger! To give you an idea of what all this food would look like take a look at this picture:

(one of these foods does not belong!)

In case you are wondering what that would look like put together into a meal, check out this picture:

(A salad for four, with a massive fruit dessert, or one bacon double cheeseburger, hold the fries)

Now, lets say that you need to eat about 3,500 calories to start putting on fat. If you were to try and eat this amount of calories from only fruits and veggies, you would need to eat that fruit salad (which could easily serve two people) and that veggie salad (which served four people at my house) FIVE times per day! Trust me, I had a hard enough time trying to get through one serving by myself, doing five in a day is next to impossible!

And this is the miracle of fruits and vegetables, they taste great and they take up a lot of space.

Here is where it gets really fun...If you make a point to eat lots of fruits and vegetables you can also eat things like a bacon double cheeseburger. Take a look at the picture of the salads and burger again. The total calorie content in that picture is around 1,400 Calories. A number low enough that just about any one would LOSE weight eating this amount of calories! In fact, you could easily throw in a good breakfast and still be eating around 1,700 calories, and be very, very full.

In fact, I did just that. With one exception. I added 150 Calories in the form of icecream to the Fruit bowl.

(Looks great, but even this was a massive amount of food to eat)

So for the day, I had two hard boiled eggs for breakfast, a massive salad for lunch (which took a lot of effort to finish), a bacon double cheeseburger for dinner and a very large bowl of fruit and ice-cream for dessert, and still managed to eat under 2,000 Calories AND I was absolutely stuffed by the end of the day.

Bottom line is if you concentrate on eating lots of fruits and vegetables, you can have treats like icecream and burgers.

BP

Fasting Diet, Circuit Training

Marketing to Kids

I read today that the UK consumer watchdog group "Which?" has 'condemned' the use of superheros in advertising to children, particularly by large food companies such as Kellogg's.

I also read that Nickelodeon will stop allowing its characters to be used in 'junk food' advertising. The group last week said that as of January 2009 its licensed characters on food packaging will be limited to 'better for you' products, in accordance with government dietary guidelines.

Advertising does play a role in our continuing obesity crisis, but I question if this is the right decision. From working in the food and supplement industry I know that the target 'consumer' for kids products is not the child, it is the child's mother. After all, typically a 5 year old doesn't go out and by frosted cereals, mom buys them for the 5 year old.

So, if we want to lower the amount of junk food in children's diets, perhaps we should spend less time looking at how often superman appears on packaging (which really only appeals to the child) and more time examining the supposed health claims that are increasingly appearing on labels and packaging (which appeals to the moms)

BP

Eat Stop Eat

Nutritional Boobytraps

I'm putting the finishing touches on my book so I am going to be slim on the posts this week.

A couple quick points:

Don't fall for the 100 Calorie snack craze. The goal is still to get you to eat more.

Don't fall for the massive guilt trip that's constantly being laid on us about the way we eat. If you've had some fruits and vegetables today you are doing OK. Keep aiming to get in as many veggies as possible, but don't sweat it too much. I'm starting to think 12 servings is a ridiculously unrealistic goal.

BP

Fasting for Weight Loss

The "Secret" to Fat Loss

Can I eat carbs with fats if I am dieting?

Which fats are better, monounsaturated fats or polyunsaturated fats?

Is it true that I shouldn't eat after 7 pm?

How much protein do I have to eat to lose weight?

I get one of these questions at least once a day over at www.grrlathlete.com. When it comes to dieting, people are just plain confused. And no wonder, if you search "dieting" on amazon.com you will find that there is over 14,000 books available on dieting. Each with their own set of rules and gimmicks.

In last Friday's health section of the Toronto Star, Megan Ogilvie wrote a very interesting article about the amount of diets that are out there.

According to the article, Megan has been on 55 diets in the last 56 weeks. She has had varying degrees of success with each diet. According to Megan, the key problem with diets is that "Unless you are an expert in nutrition you could easily fall for a diet fallacy".

So true .

Megan then goes on to say that, "diets that promote health weight loss- and prescribe it in a healthy way are the minority in this mega-business".

Again, very true.

The fundamental "problem" with diets is that they all work in theory. Anytime you lower your calorie intake below your daily need, you will lose weight. And, we know from previous research that if you are lifting weights while on ANY of these diets you will not lose any muscle mass.

Therefore, the very best diet for you is the one that fits your lifestyle and that you can stay on for an extended period.The more limited the diet is, and the more crazy rules you have to follow, the more likely you are to fail.With this in mind, here are my five golden rules of dieting.

1. Lower you calories to a level where you will see 1-2 pounds of weight loss every one to two weeks. Typically, this is about 500 to 750 Calories below what you would normally consume.

2. Eat as many fruits and vegetables as you possibly can. Fruits and veggies are the cornerstone for any successful diet or nutrition plan.

3. Eat foods you like. Let's face it. If you don't like oatmeal, then trying to follow a diet that calls for oatmeal for breakfast is going to be painful. Pick foods you like, just make sure the portions are correct.

4. Lift weights to preserve muscle mass. We know from research that the number one way to ensure you are burning as much fat as possible is by resistance training. Our Turbulence Training program has been designed to ensure you burn as much fat as possible by helping you preserve muscle mass. You can check out Turbulence Training HERE.

5. Record what you eat. I know you are probably sick of hearing me say this, but I believe recording what you eat is the key to successful weight loss.A good diet is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Most likely, you are going to be dieting for anywhere between 6 and 12 weeks, sometimes much longer. It is vitally important to your success that your diet is realistic, and built around foods you like.

Ignore diet fads. They will only cause you to become frustrated.

BP

PS- You can read Megan's article HERE

Fasting Diet, Circuit Training