Finding the Right Foods: Healthy AND Delicious

I believe that the key to a successful fat loss plan is consistency, particularly with the food you eat. If your food doesn’t taste good, chances are you’ll crave the other options that could sabotage your efforts. Fat loss is a marathon. It doesn’t happen overnight. You need to find a system that works for you personally, and it has to be something you can do over a period of time.

The goal is to create a lifestyle change that is not temporary, but permanent. When you read a diet book that promises change but under extreme circumstances, you need to ask yourself whether or not you can do it long term. If not, you need to find something else.

Most of your fat loss is going to happen outside of the gym. I would be so bold as to say that the majority of it is going to happen in the kitchen. Finding foods that are healthy and delicious is how you are going to execute this plan of yours successfully until your reach your goal, or better yet, eat healthy forever.

One of my go-to healthy and delicious meals is oatmeal. When many people think of oatmeal their first thought is “boring.” That is why you need to spice it up a bit. Here’s my recipe to turn oatmeal from a boring meal into something you’ll want to eat every day.

½ cups oats

1 ½ cups of water

5 medium strawberries, sliced

1 tsp. cinnamon

10 almonds

Pour the oats and water into a pot and bring to a boil. Once it’s boiling reduce heat to low and stir occasionally for 5 minutes. While this is happening slice your strawberries. Once the oats are ready pour them into a bowl, sprinkle your cinnamon on top, and add the strawberries and almonds. It’s really that easy.

You can honestly replace the strawberries for any berry, and the almonds for another nut. It’s up to you. Like I said, success is going to happen when you find a plan that works for you. The most anyone can do is make suggestions, and educate you on the foundation of building a food plan that is meant for fat loss.

Let me know what you think of this recipe if you try it, or what changes you make to better suit you.

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Fight Cancer With Food!

According to the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), although there is no food that will cure cancer, there are arrays of different foods that will help people who have been diagnosed battle cancer, as well as help protect people who don’t have the disease.

Dr. William Li, director and president of the Angiogenesis Foundation, states that one in two men and one in three women in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer. Yet, with the right diet, you can take a big step in reducing your risks. According to MesotheliomaLawyerCenter.org eating the right foods is especially important to people who are at risk for developing cancer, whether it be due to exposure to toxic substances like asbestos, or from a history of cancer in your family.

Fruits

Fruits are healthy for anyone, but when it comes to fighting cancer, many fruits are considered “antiangiogenic” foods because of their distinct compounds. For example, blueberries, a great source of Vitamin C and K, also contains anthocyanins, a strong phytochemical that has cancer-fighting agents and helps with memory loss. Other fruits that are beneficial in battling cancer include:

• Apples: Apples contain a powerful phytochemical called quercetin, which is known for its cancer-fighting abilities, as well as several flavonoids and triterpenoids. Per the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), flavonoids contain anti-cancer mechanisms that help fight inflammation, metastasis, and more.
• Cherries: Cherries contain high amounts of cancer-fighting agents such as anthocyanins, as well as potassium, and Vitamin C.
• Cranberries: Cranberries also contain high amounts of flavonoids, including flavonols, anthocyanins, and proanthocyanidins, all of which will help battle cancer and promote overall wellness.
• Grapes: Grapes contain high amounts of resveratrol, a potent phytochemical that fights inflammation, slows the growth of cancer cells, and hinders tumor growth in several body parts.

Foods Rich in Folate

Research has suggested that people with a diet that contains high amounts of folate-rich foods will have a better chance in fighting off cancer. Furthermore, males who eat the recommended amount of folate daily decrease their risks of getting pancreatic cancer significantly. Examples of folate-rich food include:

• Orange juice
• Most breakfast cereals
• Salad with spinach and/or romaine lettuce
• Beans, including pinto, black, navy, lima, and kidney beans
• Collard and turnip greens
• Lentils
• Cabbage
• Avocados
• Okra
• Broccoli
• Beets

Spices

Spices are typically used to add flavor to food, but several spices also have strong cancer fighting properties, such as antibacterial agents that help to ward off inflammation, infections, and poor health.

• Oregano: Oregano contains arrays of powerful antioxidant agents, including quercetin. As aforementioned, quercetin is a powerful cancer-fighting agent. One teaspoon oregano equals eating two cupfulls of grapes.
• Garlic: Research suggests that garlic helps fight a series of different types of cancers, including colon, prostate, and stomach cancer.
• Curcumin: According to the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, curcumin may be linked to preventing brain cancer. In addition, a 2008 Cancer Prevention Research study suggests that curcumin helps to stop breast cancer cell invasion and movability.

Regardless of the type of cancer, eating the right foods is a powerful start in ensuring you’re doing your best to protect yourself.

This information was provided by Kaitlin Wilson of MesotheliomaLawyerCenter.org. Her organization specializes in asbestos cancer legal issues and has state specific information for all 50 states, including states with high incidence of asbestos cancer such as California, Florida, and New York.  

Why You Should Cheat

Photo Credit: http://www.ariix.com

 

Cheat day: a designated day where one purposefully strays from their typical eating habits to devour endless amounts of delicious, naughty foods to satisfy physiological and psychological needs.

When it comes to fitness and nutrition, the idea of a cheat day has been a disputed topic among experts, practitioners, and internet trolls for many years. One of the first known mentioning of the approach can be traced back to 1999 where Bill Phillips encourages a “free day” in his book Body-For-LIFE. Over a decade later, Tim Ferriss suggests a similar idea in his best-selling bible The 4-Hour Body. Clearly this idea is sticking around.

Maybe you have heard distant ramblings of cheating on your diet from the dark corners of your gym’s locker room, or perhaps you read it in a respected book. You know it is good to cheat but you don’t know why. In order to better understand the art of cheat days it is better to step back and look at the core of reasoning behind it all: a hormone called leptin.

What the heck is leptin?

Leptin is “a protein hormone produced by fatty body tissue and believed to regulate fat storage.” Thank you, Google – but it is a little more than that.

Leptin is the reason why you see so many people drop a lot of weight at first and then struggle to get rid of those dreaded “last few pounds.” Its main function is to regulate hunger, food intake and energy expenditure and is produced in your fat cells. Therefore, the more fat you have on your body, the higher your baseline level of leptin is.

It also directly influences the production and secretion of hormones that regulate metabolism, such as thyroid hormones T3 and T4. A higher leptin level equals a higher T3 and T4 count, which allows for faster fat burn. On the flip-side, lower leptin equates to lower T3 and T4. That is why the more fat you have the faster you can lose it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that leptin levels are relative to your caloric intake. When you want to lose fat you need to create a caloric deficit. A caloric deficit means that your leptin levels will drop but that also means a drop in fat loss because of your lacking T3 and T4 hormones, so in return your fat loss goes from a sprint to a crawl. This creates a nutritional catch-22. Let’s recap:

You need to eat less to burn fat, but eating less produces less leptin. The less leptin you produce, the hungrier you become and the more likely you are to eat more than you should.

This can get extremely frustrating. Therefore it is necessary to make your goal revolve around keeping leptin levels elevated while restricting calories. Based on what you just read that might sound impossible, but it isn’t.

Enter, cheat day.

We’ve already established that leptin levels decrease while in a caloric deficit. It is the periodic “bump” in leptin that will help you avoid fat loss plateaus and lose fat faster by creating a caloric surplus (read: eating a crap ton) on your cheat day. This will create enough of a boost to prevent all the negative effects of low leptin levels from wrecking havoc on your body.

How often you cheat depends on your current diet and fitness level. The more restricted your calories are, the more often you will need to increase leptin levels. The same goes for those with a lower body fat percentage.

It has also been researched to take it all one step further and combine your feasts with intermittent fasting to experience the best of both worlds: enhanced metabolic hormonal output with increased growth hormone production. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Incorporating cheat days into your approach has the physiological benefits outlined above, but it is also wise to consider the (not-so-solid) psychological benefits of removing dietary mental shackles with freedom and choice. Strategically eating what you want one day of the week and still reaping all the benefits of fat loss can be a great mental motivator.

What are your thoughts on cheat days? Do you cheat on your diet?

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