August 2010 Newsletter – The maths of a diet that works for life

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Greetings to you all!

I have just had the pleasure of spending two weeks in Ireland. Besides the beauty of Ireland, I was struck by a couple of things  – the one thing was the incredible quality of the fruit and vegetables, and the other was how, even with a very traditional diet of meat or fish, and potatoes every day, the Irish ate a great deal more vegetables than I see most South African’s eating! Which meant I also saw less examples of extreme obesity in Ireland.

I also came across an old Reader’s Digest dating back to 1982 with a very interesting article on diet.

Here’s is an edited version:

If you are like most people by the time you have reached 25 you may have started to put on weight you don’t need. And if you let yourself gain even 500grams a year, you will weigh 12.5kgs too much by the time you are 50!

Fad diets don’t work because sooner or later people tire of following someone else’s formula, they then go off the diet, return to their old eating habits and regain the weight.

But taking off weight need not be a temporary thing. Nor does it have to be a particularly difficult thing to do, with the right approach. It has to become a way of life – sensible eating and exercising habits that eventually become second nature to you.

If you are willing to face up to some basic facts (like taking accountability for what you are eating and drinking right now), you can cut through the nonsense [of funny fad diets] to simple principles which virtually assure that you will lose excess weight safely and keep it off.

People get fat because of those extra calories they absorb day to day beyond those their bodies need (remember it boils down to mathematics – if you are eating and drinking more calories (energy) than your body needs, you will put on weight!).

Basically if you eat or drink 100 calories more per day than you need to maintain your present weight, you could put on half a kilo in only 5 weeks. That equals more than 5kgs in a year!!

These are easy numbers to ignore at first, being so subtle and insidious! However the reverse can be attained with a similar sly or mild change of eating habits:

If for example you usually have a couple of eggs and two or three slices of toast for breakfast, you are not going to suffer if you subtract one slice of toast. And if you regularly put 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar into your coffee, cutting your intake by half is not much of a hardship.

Consider the amount of weight you could lose in just one year by striving for these other easily attainable diet goals:

• Eat just one pat less of butter or margarine daily and lose 1.6kgs
• Cut out one slice of bread daily and off go 3kgs
• Omit just one pint (500ml) of beer (or coke) per week and you take off 1.5kgs
• Skip 10 (yes only 10!) crisps/chips a week and lose another kg!
• Give up 2 small doughnuts a week and lose another 2kgs
• Cut your sugar intake by 2 teaspoonfuls a day and weigh 1.6kgs less by the end of the year.
• Say goodbye to one slice of cake or a chocolate a week and lose at least another 2.6kgs

If you did all of the above, you would have lost approximately 13.3kgs over the year!

• Portion sizes can also make a huge difference: If you adore a calorie laden dish, doing without it can be hard. An easier way is to have a smaller serving and have extra low calorie side dishes (vegetables and salads) with the meal so you don’t feel deprived.
• And of course looking at your cooking methods too will make a difference – there is no getting away from the number of calories in fat so whenever possible, have your foods grilled, bakes, steamed or boiled – and with fat trimmed away before cooking.

So before we even start to look at adding exercise or other ways to speed up your weight loss, I suggest starting by increasing your food and drink awareness by writing down EVERYTHING you eat and drink for a few weeks. You need to know what you are putting into your body before you can make those small changes that will add up to kilograms lost!

Other tips to speed up your weight loss:

• Exercise! Exercise! Exercise!

Even walking at the gentle pace of around 5km per hour will have you burning 4 calories per minute. That’s an extra 80 calories burnt in twenty minutes or 4.5kgs a year!!

Cycling or speeding up your walking to 7km per hour can change that amount to 7 calories burnt a minute; 140 calories in twenty minutes and a loss of 7.3kgs a year.

• Drink more water – drinking a glass of water before a meal can help keep your stomach comfortable, and make it easier to eat less.

• Eat slowly – chew each mouthful, savouring your food, and chew again! It takes 15-20 minutes for your stomach to signal to your brain that you have eaten enough. By eating quickly you may have satisfied your bodies need for food long before you feel full and stop (which equals more calories consumed!).

• Eat more fibre rich food – Dietary fibre which is found in whole grains, vegetables and fruit takes more chewing than refined foods. Fibre is low in calories and helps digestion. It also fills you up a great deal more than its refined counterparts.

Look at making small comfortable changes to start with – things you know you can easily sustain - and then weekly or monthly looking at what other changes you can effortlessly make. Focus on the big picture of reaching a sustainable healthy weight and please, please ban those fad diets forever to the binJ!!!

Wishing you well until next month

Kind regards

Lesley Wood

021-4182843

082 3 782 782

www.weight-masters.com

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Postscript  - The Dark Side of Vitaminwater

By John Robbins  -  Author of The New Good Life, Diet For A New America, and many other bestsellers

Posted: August 5, 2010 07:00 AM

Read More: Coca Cola , John Robbins , Vitamin Water , Vitamin Water Lawsuit , Vitamin Water Sued , Vitaminwater , Living News

Now here's something you wouldn't expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company's vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?

In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that "no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage."

Does this mean that you'd have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named "vitaminwater," a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?

Or does it mean that it's okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?

In fact, the product is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny's worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. And the amount of sugar is not trivial. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage.

Is any harm being done by this marketing ploy? After all, some might say consumers are at least getting some vitamins, and there isn't as much sugar in vitaminwater as there is in regular Coke.

True. But about 35 percent of Americans are now considered medically obese. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight. Health experts tend to disagree about almost everything, but they all concur that added sugars play a key role in the obesity epidemic, a problem that now leads to more medical costs than smoking.

How many people with weight problems have consumed products like vitaminwater in the mistaken belief that the product was nutritionally positive and carried no caloric consequences? How many have thought that consuming vitaminwater was a smart choice from a weight-loss perspective? The very name "vitaminwater" suggests that the product is simply water with added nutrients, disguising the fact that it's actually full of added sugar.

The truth is that when it comes to weight loss, what you drink may be even more important than what you eat. Americans now get nearly 25 percent of their calories from liquids. In 2009, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, finding that the quickest and most reliable way to lose weight is to cut down on liquid calorie consumption. And the best way to do that is to reduce or eliminate beverages that contain added sugar.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in its vitaminwater line, paying basketball stars, including Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, to appear in ads that emphatically state that these products are a healthy way for consumers to hydrate. When Lebron James held his much ballyhooed TV special to announce his decision to join the Miami Heat, many corporations paid millions in an attempt to capitalize on the event. But it was vitaminwater that had the most prominent role throughout the show.

The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, alleges that vitaminwater labels and advertising are filled with "deceptive and unsubstantiated claims." In his recent 55-page ruling, Federal Judge John Gleeson (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York), wrote, "At oral arguments, defendants (Coca-Cola) suggested that no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage." Noting that the soft drink giant wasn't claiming the lawsuit was wrong on factual grounds, the judge wrote that, "Accordingly, I must accept the factual allegations in the complaint as true."

I still can't get over the bizarre audacity of Coke's legal case. Forced to defend themselves in court, they are acknowledging that vitaminwater isn't a healthy product. But they are arguing that advertising it as such isn't false advertising, because no could possibly believe such a ridiculous claim.

I guess that's why they spend hundreds of millions of dollars advertising the product, saying it will keep you "healthy as a horse," and will bring about a "healthy state of physical and mental well-being."

Why do we allow companies like Coca-Cola to tell us that drinking a bottle of sugar water with a few added water-soluble vitamins is a legitimate way to meet our nutritional needs?

Here's what I suggest: If you're looking for a healthy and far less expensive way to hydrate, try drinking water. If you want to flavor the water you drink, try adding the juice of a lemon and a small amount of honey or maple syrup to a quart of water. Another alternative is to mix one part lemonade or fruit juice to three or four parts water. Or drink green tea, hot or chilled, adding lemon and a small amount of sweetener if you like. If you want to jazz it up, try one-half fruit juice, one-half carbonated water.

If your tap water tastes bad or you suspect it might contain lead or other contaminants, get a water filter that fits under the sink or attaches to the tap.

And it's probably not the best idea to rely on a soft drink company for your vitamins and other essential nutrients. A plant-strong diet with lots of vegetables and fruits will provide you with what you need far more reliably, far more consistently -- and far more honestly.

To learn about inexpensive and healthy foods and beverages, and practical steps you can take toward greater quality of life and economic freedom, read John Robbins' critically acclaimed new book The New Good Life: Living Better Than Ever in an Age of Less. For more information about his work, or to sign up for his email list, visit johnrobbins.info