Erika’s Note: If you’re a subscriber, you’re going to want to visit the page to check out this video… trust me.

Were you waiting for the third installment? Well, here ya go!

Check out:

• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 4
  

How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3 is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
2. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 4
3. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bad eating habits, documentary, Fast Food, how fast food affects the body, how junk food affects the body, junk food, unhealthy food

People are lovin’ this thing! I mean, OD’ing on it! Seems like the only ones up in arms about it are deskchair critics like myself, thumping away on our laptops and writing angrily on our blogs. I have to admit. The thing is well received. So much so, that there was a slew of articles written about how “The Double Down Is Less Calories Than The Average Salad… So Let Us Eat Our Two Pieces Of Fried Chicken With Pork And Simulated Cheese In Between In Peace!”

Anyone else hear the record skip? I did.

It’s bull.

Those of us who are calorie counting… I get it. It’s only 540 calories… it’s tempting. But think about it – if you’re really calorie counting, then you know full well what you can get for 540 calories. You know that that’s over 10 cups of broccoli. (Not that you’d actually eat that, but it leads into a larger point.)

Since I brought up broccoli, can we address the primary issue, here? You’re spending 540 calories on two pieces of fried chicken, pork, and a slice of “processed cheese food.” A primary point of calorie counting is the fact that since you are working to limit your intake of food, you make the most out of each calorie you’re ingesting. FiveThirtyEight offers up a pretty good explanation of what I mean:

Here, the Double Down’s credentials are more impressive. Those 540 calories contain 145 milligrams of cholesterol (more than twice that of the Big Mac and about half of the USDA’s daily allowance) — along with 1,380 milligrams of sodium (the USDA recommends no more than 2,400 per day) and 32 grams of fat (65 will keep you slim, says the government). So, for getting only about one-quarter of the calories that you need in a day, you’re exhausting about half your budget of “bad stuff”. [source]

So, let’s keep it real. For those 540 calories, you’re getting nothing but salt, oil, fat, a pickle and a chemical conglomeration that comes out something similar to cheese.

Thus… we come to the REAL problem I have with the food discourse, right now. Why are we comparing a sandwich made of chicken and pork… to a salad? Certainly, we’re ignoring salads with fried toppings and creamy high fructose corn syrup dressings in this conversation… but a salad with actual nutrients to offer the eater is compared to a sandwich made of sadness and skinny chickens? It doesn’t matter where your calories come from as long as the total amount of calories is relatively small? A calorie is just a calorie anyway, right?

Let me make something clear. A calorie is not, in fact, just a calorie. It absolutely does matter whether your calories are coming from sugar, fat or protein. It matters because your body does very different things with each. And there are far too many people profiting off of continuing this perception that calories are just …calories.

Don’t believe me? Check this out:

“If all consumers exercised, did what they had to do, the problem of obesity wouldn’t exist.”

Know who dropped that little tidbit of nutritional science?

PepsiCo’s Chief Executive Officer, Indra Nooyi. Yep.

It’s the eternal passing of the buck. It’s not that “people are eating too much of my product.” It’s not even “people need to exercise moderation.” The message is “if you exercised, you wouldn’t be fat.” The message is also “there is no reason to stop buying my products, because the problem is only that you don’t exercise!” Understand what that means – it completely absolves the company of their share of responsibility in the obesity epidemic. It says the problem is the fact that you don’t move enough, as if that is the only explanation for why people become overweight. It simply isn’t.

The food industry is great at this – guilting the public into feeling bad about exercise (since, let’s face it – many simply do not) and using that guilt to avoid accepting some of the blame. I start to feel like a conspiracy theorist sometimes when I talk about the marketing and trickery used in their language… but at least I’m not making stuff up or pulling it out of thin air.

Because I know this is confusing to many, understanding why a calorie isn’t simply “a calorie,” I intend to spend this week talking about this very subject. So now, the next time some genius tells you “my double down is better than your salad,” you can let them know exactly what they can – and will – do with that double down.

1. Comprehending Calories: The Basics
2. Comprehending Calories: The Role of Carbs In Your Diet
3. Comprehending Calories: How To Properly Read A Nutrition Label

Thoughts? Let’s hear ‘em!

KFC’s Double Down Reminds Us: All Calories Are Not Created Equal is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Double Leg Lifts
2. Weekend WTF: Would YOU Eat Lab-Created Meat?
3. How Many Calories Are You Drinking?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: calorie counting, calories, dirty eating, double down, Fast Food, junk food, kfc, nutrition, pepsi, soda, soft drinks

Some quotes to keep your ears peeled for:

“Don’t think there aren’t flavor scientists sitting in a lab trying to figure out how to make this burger addictive..”

“I don’t know if ‘satisfied’ is the word as much as ‘stuffed’…”

“I’ll eat something that tastes really, really good, and then fifteen minutes later I’ll feel sluggish…”

Definitely food for thought, no pun intended.

Thoughts thus far?

Need to get caught up? Check out:

• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 4
  

How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2 is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
2. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 4
3. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bad eating habits, documentary, Fast Food, how fast food affects the body, how junk food affects the body, junk food, unhealthy food

Today’s topic, for me, is something that even I still am working on. It’s the concept of “slow food.”

If fast food is a restaurant’s streamlining of processes in order to produce a few dishes very quickly, slow food… is anything but.

I have fond memories of dinner as a young girl. We used to sit around the table and laugh at whatever culinary tragedy my stepfather would come up with. I’m serious – this man tried to think of thirty different ways to get me to eat liver. He’d call it everything from “salisbury steak” to “chicken a la king” to whatever other random name he could pull out of the sky, so long as I never realized it was liver.

At the dinner table, we talked. We laughed about our day, laughed at each other’s day, talked about how to make things better, talked about what was needed to do a little bit better in our days, talked about the news, talked about the neighborhood.. we talked. It was our time to grow closer considering how, as a family, we spent the majority of our day apart.

My stepfather’s culinary prowess was… questionable. I’m being generous – his cooking was pretty awful. That’s probably why we did more talking than we did eating at the dinner table. I’m serious. I still have nightmares about that “chicken a la king.” The food, as bad as it was some nights, didn’t change the fact that he put time into cooking dinner, put his foot into the dinner (maybe even literally, considering that taste), together we set the table, sat down together, “enjoyed” our meal together, laughed at our meal together, talked together and were absolutely better for it.

This… is slow food. The concept of  “slow food” negates the idea that a “fine dining experience” can only be had and enjoyed at a “fine dining establishment,” complete with $36 salads and wine sipped from Tiffany’s glasses. “Slow food” is taking the time at home to foster a cozy environment where stories and steaks can be shared at the same time. The same table where kids learn social graces and basic manners becomes the same place where a family can spread a little love across a table.

For me, cooking is cathartic. Thinking of what I can cook takes about two minutes. My daughter comes in the kitchen, stands beside me at the counter, and enjoys naming the veggies as I prep them for the dish. I’ve actually grown to look forward to her tugging my clothing and asking me to let her sniff whatever herb or spice I have in my hand. Together, we sit at the table and eat together and talk. I always beam with pride whenever someone comments on my daughter’s table manners, because I know she’s had lots of practice.

Cooking is how I wind down a long day. I look forward to playing in the kitchen after spending all day being all stuffy and serious. I enjoy experimenting on my guinea pig– er, I mean, daughter to determine whether or not my dish was a hit or a miss.. and if it was a considerable miss, we skip dinner altogether and I make a nice fruit-filled dessert, instead. Either way, we always eat together.

Conversely, fast food undermines that experience. It’s an order that begins usually away from home, and often eating begins away from home, too. Think about it – how often is it that people set a table by placing little individually-wrapped pieces on plates? Giant 30oz cups instead of regular glasses? Because fast food simplifies eating, it simplifies dining. If dining is about ambiance, experience, enjoyment and pleasure derived from the company (even if the only company is yourself)… fast food, again, undermines that entirely.

I haven’t even gone into the biological reasons to have an enjoyable and leisurely dining experience at home. It takes a long time to eat. That’s right. It’s beneficial to you to take longer to eat your food. To keep it short and sweet, it takes about 20 minutes for your body to realize that enough food has entered the digestive system, and that it can turn off the desire to eat. If you’re quickly scarfing down food that already breaks down easily in the system, you’re only going to keep filling your tummy and stuffing your face until you realize… “Ohhhhh, I ate wayyy too much.”

If you are someone who realizes that they’re starrrrrrrrving during their ride home, you’re likely to pull into the next drive thru that appeals to your appetite.You’re in and out of that line in maybe 10 minutes, if it’s rush hour. You might even scarf down your food on the ride home… and that might take you ten minutes. In under 20 minutes, you let your hunger dictate to you that you need to rush to get food, you probably ordered the “most appealing” thing on the menu (which is usually the largest, most fatty, oversalted, probably unhealthy item there is…then again, they all pretty much are), and scarfed it down in less than 20 minutes. Congratulations -  1,000 calories later, you’ve ingested more than you would’ve had that food been sitting on a table in front of you on a plate and enjoyed with company.

This week brings about a new challenge. As we prepare to embrace the slow food movement (a big part of clean eating), this week’s challenge is to dine at home. Every day. No matter what the circumstance… eat at home. If friends are eating out at a restaurant, try to dine at home first. If you break the rule… feel guilty about it. No TV dinners, no processed meals..nothing. If you still have it in the house and don’t want to waste it, go ahead and eat them for dinner… but feel guilty about it and prepare yourself for grocery shopping for next week.

Learn how to cook. Laugh when you mess up, and keep the [slightly- okay, severely neglected] recipes section of this site on hand if you need a little help. But it’s time to start truly detoxing from outside food sources, and beginning to focus

Embracing The Slow Food Movement is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Making It Mo’ Betta: Embracing Vegan Baking
2. No Myths Here: Food Stamps, Food Deserts and Food Scarcity
3. Hierarchy of Food Needs: How Do You Get GOOD Food When There’s No Food?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ating, cooking, dininge, Fast Food, slow food

As usual, a few notes:

“Being overweight is infectious. Friends of those who become obese risk a 57% chance of also becoming overweight.”

Really? Oh.

“Studies have shown that binge eating of sugary sweets can cause an addictive response in the brain similar to illegal drugs.”

Again, really? Oh.

“Stress and depression can be temporarily alleviated by eating. Cortisol, a stress hormone, also causes weight to be retained in several key areas. At 9.6%, America has the highest depression rate in the world. 75% of the population considers itself overstressed, up from 59% last year.”

I wonder why that happens.

“The closer a school is to a fast food restaurant, the more student obesity it has. The average American school is only 600 meters away from a fast food restaurant, a seven minute walk or a far shorter cruise to the drive thru. This may be the reason why childhood obesity has quadrupled in the last forty years.”

“Still not worried?” 10% of national medical costs are spent dealing with complications and disease brought on by obesity – roughly $147 billion tax dollars every year.”

“Brought on” by obesity, or “coupled with” obesity? The two are very different. Type 2 diabetes occurs in “skinny” people, too. Not only that, but the same things that cause type 2 diabetes are the same things that cause obesity, so…. just like a person can be overweight and not have diabetes? A person can be diabetic and not be overweight. The longer we continue that stupid philosophy, the longer we continue to deal with these problems because we insist on attributing it to obesity instead of food.

It’ll be a hilarious day, indeed, when we’ve “cured” obesity and people start to realize that type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure are still around. “Well what the hell happened?” “Gee, buddy, I don’t know…”

“The Obesity Olympics…”

…seriously? [insert confused face]

“Still, we choose what we put into our bodies, right? Not entirely – food deserts, areas with little to no access to healthy foods, exist throughout America, eliminating the option to eat healthily entirely.”

For once, a infographic doesn’t completely ignore this issue.

Your thoughts?

Infograph: Obesity In America is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Infographic: The Skinny on Obesity in America
2. Statistics: Obesity By The Numbers
3. What Does An Overweight Surgeon General Mean To America?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fast Food, infographics, obesity, relationships, schools

I’m with Mark Bittman on the awesomeness of oatmeal, and especially with him on the notion of not overloading it with sugar, and, consequently, not ordering it from McDonald’s. But I wonder about this:

Others will argue that the McDonald’s version is more “convenient.” This is nonsense; in the time it takes to go into a McDonald’s, stand in line, order, wait, pay and leave, you could make oatmeal for four while taking your vitamins, brushing your teeth and half-unloading the dishwasher. (If you’re too busy to eat it before you leave the house, you could throw it in a container and microwave it at work. If you prefer so-called instant, flavored oatmeal, see this link, which will describe how to make your own).

If you don’t want to bother with the stove at all, you could put some rolled oats (instant not necessary) in a glass or bowl, along with a teeny pinch of salt, sugar or maple syrup or honey, maybe some dried fruit. Add milk and let stand for a minute (or 10). Eat. Eat while you’re walking around getting dressed. And then talk to me about convenience.

I often hear this complaint from people who cook directed at people who don’t. The notion basically holds that cooking isn’t as inconvenient as people make it out to be. I don’t know. I make my oatmeal in a pot at home–there’s something blasphemous about microwaving it–but I don’t own a dishwasher, and cleaning up actually is work. Moreover, I’m assuming people standing in that McDonald’s line can, text, tweet, e-mail or whatever while they wait.

The bigger thing here is understanding why people go to McDonald’s in the first place. I strongly suspect that the entire experience is comforting. In a day of constant work, pushes and pulls, you have this one clean place, which is the same everywhere, dispensing joyful shots of sugar and salt. That’s just me thinking about how I’ve eaten the past–and also how I eat when my brain is crowded with everything besides what I’m eating.

I think what Bittman urges in his writing is is consciousness. He wants people to think hard about what they’re eating. I strongly suspect that people go to McDonald’s for the exact opposite reason–to get unconscious. Understanding why that it is, goes beyond our food. It’s about how we live.

One of the reasons why I find the dialogue here, at BGG2WL, to be so valuable is because its an open and honest place for us to discuss our feelings about our own health, wellness and how our habits either contribute to or harm both. We are a collective of individuals actively concerned with our health, and we stand together to try to help one another by way of enlightenment. Take what you can use, leave aside what you cannot. We do that pretty well, here.

That being said… a very important element of emotional eating is brought up here, and that’s the issue of “someone else taking care of you.” That’s what he’s referring to, right? The idea that, in the middle of a long day, you can unwind and not worry about this one thing for this allotted time while these [trusted] people give you what you want exactly when you want it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging and admitting to that.

Yet and still, you have to consider what you sacrifice when you make these kinds of decisions: you’re ultimately entrusting your health and well-being (and, ultimately, your weight) to someone else who does not care more about you than they do their profit margins.

I can vaguely remember reading a book and hearing about this kind of feeling – the feeling of liking someone catering to you – as a draw that restaurant companies use to their advantage. In fact, it was in reference to a… let’s just refer to it as a massive coffee (and pastry… and oatmeal?) chain that’s almost as prevalent as the golden arches. When asked why the chain was so successful, the response was “It’s about warm milk and a bottle; if I could put a nipple on it, I’d be a billionaire.”

I understand the feeling. It’s nice to “not have to do [something],” for once. It also serves the problem of leaving yourself open to having to deal with someone else’s standards in regards to what is acceptable to feed you when you ask for it. McDonalds’ fruit and maple oatmeal – which was actually sued in Vermont because there’s no maple in it – isn’t just fruit, cream and oats. It’s all kinds of stuff that isn’t, for our purposes here, clean:

Oatmeal
Whole grain rolled oats, brown sugar, food starch-modified, salt, natural flavor (plant source), barley malt extract, caramel color.

Diced Apples
Apples, calcium ascorbate (a blend of calcium and vitamin C to maintain freshness and color).

Cranberry Raisin Blend
Dried sweetened cranberries (sugar, cranberries), California raisins, golden raisins, sunflower oil, sulfur dioxide (preservative).

Light Cream
Milk, cream, sodium phosphate, datem, sodium stearoyl lactylate, sodium citrate, carrageenan. [source]

And looking at the details, the oatmeal in and of itself has almost as much sugar as the fruit blend, which should be the natural source of sugar in the list, anyway. At 32g of sugar total… 14g of it existing for very little reason… I question whether or not its worth it to take steps backwards from my goal just to “be taken care of for once.”

Food, no matter how much we try to emotionalize it – “it” being the preparation and intake of food – and no matter how much we try to simplify it, serves one primary purpose in our lives: nourishment. We can never forget that, because it goes right back to the last paragraph in that quote:

I think what Bittman urges in his writing is is consciousness. He wants people to think hard about what they’re eating. I strongly suspect that people go to McDonald’s for the exact opposite reason–to get unconscious. Understanding why that it is, goes beyond our food. It’s about how we live.

The bottom line, without question, is consciousness. Awareness is what grants you the ability to spot opportunities to correct your behavior. Awareness is what enlightens us to make better choices. Really, awareness is how you develop the ability to learn new behaviors and identify how the changes you’re making in your lifestyle are benefitting you. You become aware of the problem, you correct, you notice how your corrections change your life and you develop a new system that comes complete with the reward of a changed life and, ultimately, a changed body.

So yes, you do have to understand why that is – why you eat emotionally and desire to be taken care of in this way – and what you can do to fix that… but in the meantime, that oatmeal ain’t gon’ cut it.

The Comforting Side Of Food is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Side-Effects of Obesity: “Overweight Is The New Norm”
2. Building A Home Workout Routine: The Side Bend
3. No Myths Here: Food Stamps, Food Deserts and Food Scarcity

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, emotional eating, Fast Food, fast food restaurants, mark bittman, mcdonalds, mcdonalds oatmeal, oatmeal, the atlantic

A big part of this is… you guessed it – fast food. I have a gripe with eating places where I can’t entirely confirm everything in my dish. I have a gripe with eating places where most of what they serve on the menu is shipped there pre-made, only ready to be dropped in a deep fryer or tossed in an oven somewhere (and that’s fast food or regular restaurant.) I’m sure there are some much healthier fast food joints out there, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ll get on my soapbox about fast food another day, but I did want to share this video that was the start of my research into what the hell we’re eating at fast food joints. I really dig this guy and the info he has to share, so I hope you like it too. : )

Re-Thinking Fast Food: Reading What You’re Eating is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. Can Fast Food Ever Be A Part Of Clean Eating?
2. Does Your State Allow Fast Food Purchases On Food Stamps?
3. Q&A Wednesday: I Work In Fast Food And Want To Lose Weight! Help!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fast Food, kfc

I’ve been reading through this site, and I thought if you haven’t seen this photo story from TIME, you’d be interested.  It’s not the Hungry Planet series that shows what families around the world purchase to eat, but one about what individuals eat along with thier weights and caloric intake.  It is interesting to find that many people around the wold eat more that 2000 calories a day, but dine on homemade/unprocessed foods and maintain active lifestyles so they remain in a lower weight range.

This series of photographs comes from a book by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio titled “What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.” I’m getting this darn book.

The link contains Time’s sampling of what’s within this book – 16 different diets of 16 different people across the world, including their height, weight, occupation and a brief explanation of how their diet has affected their lives.

I find a lot of things about this to be interesting:

The lack of sugar in each diet is, dare I say it… jarring. Seriously – I’m pretty sure that the largest amounts of sugar in a diet were probably found in the American diets.

The young girl, Tiffany, who subsists on fast food all day (the college-aged diet?) She seems to be benefitting from the runoff of a high teenaged metabolism, at age 21. As with all people, the more you age, the more you have to change or scale back in the interest of weight management, though… so I guess I’m just curious about that.

Rick, “The Candidate For Obesity Surgery.” I know it’s going to feel like I’m going in on him, but I’m not – there’s just a lot here that I see that sounds vaguely familiar. For starters, he “admitted to lapses of willpower and some days ate much more.” I’m not surprised. Not because “well, he’s fat,” but because I question thelogic behind “just use your will power!!!!”

Secondly, let’s talk about the amount of sugar in his diet… even as his “recommended diet.” The bagel… the granola bar… the Lean Pockets… the “Italian” dressing… the 100 calorie packs… the cookie crisps… the vegetable juice? Lots of hidden sugars. If he’s having lapses in will power, what do you think he might be overindulging on? Probably more sugars.

Thirdly, look at all those brand names. Jennie-O. Smart-beat. Quaker Simple Harvest. Lean Pockets. Green Giant. Ragu. Jell-O. Splenda. Nabisco. Planters.V8. Splenda. There’s about as many brand names here as there are in a grocery store. That’s a LOT.

Now, it says that he has since had the surgery for which he qualified and is at home recovering and losing the weight… and for that, I am glad. I just genuinely hope that he’s also getting some form of therapy to manage the rest.

The 99lb acrobat? Let me tell you something. Any pound of that body that isn’t bone… is muscle. In order to pull off that pose? That girl is all muscle, so that 1700 calories makes a ton of sense. You have to feed muscle if you want it to grow. Pork, eggs, yogurt… all totally make sense to me.

The model who is 5’9.5″ at 135lbs who eats 2400 calories a day… the paragraph at the end of her description said that she “says she felt good about her weight and her health, but lamented that because she was the perfect weight for her size four body, and not skinnier, she was making much less money.” I wonder if she’s active and muscular at all, and that’s why she’s seen as “not skinny enough.” A lot of the models that I know of are her height and around 120lbs or so. It’s wild to me that she’s “not skinny enough.” Yowzers.

There are individuals on this list whose diets go far enough up toward 5,000 calories a day. Fishermen, acrobats, herders… very active people, very active lifestyles. Thoughts?

Worldwide: A Day’s Worth Of Food In Calories is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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2. Body Image, Self-Worth & Sexuality: Dark Skin, A New Documentary
3. No Myths Here: Food Stamps, Food Deserts and Food Scarcity

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: diets, Fast Food, processed food

It’s a simple idea, really. And, like many simple ideas, a big one. Starting officially at 12:01 a.m. on March 8, Taco Bell will attempt what CEO Greg Creed calls “…definitely the biggest launch in Taco Bell history.” It’s the Doritos Locos Tacos, which loosely translates to a taco shell made out of Doritos.

Though most likely developed by a stoned college kid in his dorm room many years ago, the concept was initially proposed by the Frito-Lay company (a subsidiary of the PepsiCo Corporation, also Taco Bell’s former parent company) in January of 2010, and first tested in Toledo, Ohio, in September of last year. “People at Frito-Lay have been amazing to work with,” says Creed of the partnership, and both companies fully expect the first type of Doritos Locos Tacos, the popular Nacho Cheese flavor, to be one of many (Cool Ranch being the obvious runner-up, though there are currently 123 different flavors of Doritos worldwide to choose from).

Taking a first look at the Doritos Locos Taco (again, it’s a taco shell made out of Doritos), let alone tasting it (and yes, it tastes pretty much like Doritos), it’s easy to be surprised at amount of detail involved in the process of its creation. For one, there was the issue of shape. Doritos, historically, are shaped like triangles, and triangles (despite the probable conclusion of the above-mentioned stoned college kid) do not make good taco shells. The first solution to this problem was simply to put Doritos seasoning on a Taco Bell taco shell, and predictably, this solution failed. According to Steve Gomez in product development, “What we learned was that Doritos lovers and Taco Bell lovers, have really big expectations for this idea.” And so Gomez, along with his team, and the product development team at Frito-Lay, went about creating a new kind of dough that mimicked the traditional Doritos recipe yet was thicker and held less air, so as not to break — this new dough was also pliable enough to be formed into the shape of a workable taco shell. Four separate factory lines were then built for the specific replication of this shell, and on March 8, more than 60 million of them will be shipped all over the country. [source]

So, basically… they’re combining forces to create one mighty morphin’ power processed product?

Weekend WTF: Taco Bell + Doritos = Doritos-Flavored Tacos? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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2. Taco Bell Thinks You’re Stupid: Try The Drive-Thru Diet!
3. Weekend WTF: News Flash – Doritos Are Good For You!!!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: culinary tragedies, doritos, Fast Food, processed food, taco bell, tastebud tomfoolery

Be glad you’re not in the UK right now, because we know you’d be beating down the doors of your local Burger King just to get your hands on the limited-time-only “Sprout Surprise Whopper,” featuring that most beloved of burger add-ons, Brussels sprouts.

Brussels sprouts are apparently associated with the holidays in the UK (maybe they are here too, though I’ve never come across it), so the King has created a Whopper topped with sprouts and emmental cheese.

Said someone in charge of culinary development at BK UK with a completely straight face:

We believe that taste is king, and as such, we wanted to create a recipe that would challenge existing sprout perceptions, and genuinely make sprouts a flavour to be reckoned with.

Judging by this statement on the BK UK Facebook page, it appears that even in Ol’ Blighty the response to the Sprout Whopper wasn’t exactly oohs and ahhhs: “[S]orry to hear some of you weren’t too keen on the idea of the Sprout Surprise Whopper yesterday, but we’re confident that The King can make even Brussels Sprouts taste good!” [source]

Even though this is in the UK – it would be clearly labeled a result of “food policing” in the US – I still have questions.

The article was dropped on the FB page with the question of “while i’m sure it’s unhealthy and all that, could it be considered a “cleaner” alternative?”

I know my answer… but what’s yours?

And furthermore… what does it take for you to consider a fast food restaurant “clean” or is “cleaner” acceptable?

Can Fast Food Ever Be A Part Of Clean Eating? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Re-Thinking Fast Food: Reading What You’re Eating
2. Clean and Healthy Eating on Food Stamps
3. Does Your State Allow Fast Food Purchases On Food Stamps?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: burger king, clean eating, Fast Food

Erika’s Note: If you’re a subscriber, you’re going to want to visit the page to check out this video… trust me.

This is the final clip in the “How Junk Food Affects The Body” series. After seeing it all… what are your thoughts? Any epiphanies out there?

Need to get caught up? Check out:

• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
  
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 4
  

How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 4 is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
2. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2
3. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bad eating habits, documentary, Fast Food, fast food swindle, fast foods, how fast food affects the body, how junk food affects the body, junk food, unhealthy food

Q: hi there, i just found your site and its so amazing. you’re way ahead of me. i just ate 4 cookies.

i just really would love love love to know something: how do you tell yourself no at the appropriate times and yes at the appopriate times? i can’t seem to generate a ‘NO’ loud enough for what i need in my body. help.

Boy… I hope those were great cookies. I mean, I genuinely hope they were so delicious that they were worth every bite.

Because if they were cheap cookies, they probably tasted like crap, didn’t fill you up at all, and might’ve even left you worse off than you began… because you were still hungry after the fact and then had to eat something else that actually could fill you up.

Listen… I don’t eat cookies. Like, it is wholly possible for me to walk down a cookie aisle and look – possibly even salivate – but not touch. Why? Because I know two things: 1) I can probably bake less expensive yet better tasting cookies at home and 2) those cookies are processed beyond recognizable ingredient recognition, and wouldn’t do me any nutritional good.

I mean, let’s not be mistaken here. We can deconstruct a cookie and I can show you how a cookie can be nutritional – I bake a flourless peanut butter cookie that is a protein powerhouse, allows me to avoid protein powders (if you take them, that’s great, but I don’t) and get in some enjoyment, too – and how it can be cheap and easy to make at home, too… but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about the ability to say “no,” and how to develop and facilitate that habit. I understand.

First and foremost, I don’t tempt fate. Even now, I know that if I’m surrounded by bad food, it is risky. I mean, if you go to a crappy franchise restaurant you’ll order “the least evil dish on the menu,” but it’s still “the least evil dish.” The key is avoiding the crappy restaurant.

It’s the same inside of your house. If you’re buying the crap-you-know-you-shouldn’t-eat, you will eat the crap-you-know-you-shouldn’t-eat simply for no other reason than “I bought it, I’m not wasting money.” It’s easy to manipulate ourselves into doing something we don’t want to do.

Even now, I don’t have any cookies, any cakes, pies, or other typical sweets in the house. I could go downstairs, grab the chocolate chips, the flour, butter, maple syrup, some baking powder, some ground cloves and a mixing bowl and bake some chocolate chip cookies… and it’d be totally worth the effort, but do I want to put forth the effort? Do I want to get covered in cookie batter? Do I want to deal with Mini-me trying to peek from behind me asking “Whatcha making, Mommom? Can I have some, Mommom? Can I lick the spoon, Mommom? Can I lick the bowl, Mommom? Are those my cookies Mommom? Can I help, Mommom?”

By the time I’d be done baking, I wouldn’t even want the darn cookies. And by virtue of never having cookies in the house.. I’d probably wind up pitching the rest or giving them to the little one.

The level of effort involved with acquiring your vice (your vice being the cookies) directly affects whether or not you’ll actually obtain that vice. It’s as easy as that. Keep your household clear of crap.

And let me be honest, too.. when I came to the conclusion that it was better for me to make my cookies instead of buy them? Oh, good grief.. I was baking cookies every week! I mean, every… single… week! And I suffered for it. Not in a way that caused me to gain, but in a way that prevented me from losing. How frustrating was that! My body let me know – straight up: you’re giving me just enough food to maintain this weight, so either you kick up the exercise or kick down the intake. My body spoke, and I listened. How awesome is that?

Now, I may bake once a month. Maybe two. It’s not often. I have no problem taking Mini-me to a bakery so that she can enjoy a nice quality bit of junk food… but again, it’s rare. The $3 to $5 that I’d be spending on cookies each week saves up to about $20 a month I’m saving just by not buying cookies.. I can buy my daughter a chocolate croissant for $3 and still have an extra $17 in my pocket for a pedicure or a book or a new yoga mat or something.

I can’t speak on people who live in houses with people who insist on bringing crap into the house when they know they shouldn’t… either for me or for themselves. Things wind up mysteriously in the trash around me. Mysteriously, I promise.

As for those times when you do find yourself in the throes of junk food passion and can’t get away? Like, say, a business meeting? Keep water handy… and take big, lonnnnng gulps. I mean, don’t be obnoxious with it and drool water everywhere, but a leisurely sip isn’t going to get it for you. At all. As someone who deals with/dealt with a pretty intense sugar addiction, I’m pretty familiar with the guzzling of water. If anyone asks or comments on how much I’m drinking, I just shrug and say “What? I feel dehydrated.” They’ll usually reply with something about how I need to do better… and I just shrug it off because I already know the deal. I’m avoiding the darn sweets.

So… how do I say no? I protect myself by avoiding ever having it in my house, and if I insist on indulging, I’ll make it myself… even though the effort required is usually enough to make me change my mind. If I’m already in the middle of a situation where it’s hard to avoid, I stick to the water and drink like my life depends on it. Before too long, it loses its hold on you, and saying “no” comes naturally.

What tips or tricks do you use to help you say no?

Q&A Wednesday: How Do I Say No? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: How Do You Co-Habitate With Clean Eating?
2. Q&A Wednesday: Do You EVER Indulge?
3. Q&A Wednesday: Snacking and Packing Lunch For Little Ones

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, Fast Food, processed foods, self-control, snacking

Erika’s Note: If you’re a subscriber, you’re going to want to visit the page to check out this video… trust me.

I’m not a junk foodie anymore. I mean, mind you – I have my fair share of cookies and cupcakes… but I don’t find value in junk food anymore. I don’t judge those who do.. it just doesn’t have the same hold on me that it used to, and because of that.. I have very little desire to “test it.”

I’ll be following this up all day with the rest of the videos from the series, so be sure to keep checking back.

Can I relate to the experiences in the series? Absolutely. Check it out and let me know if you can relate, as well!

Check out:

• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3
• How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 4
  

How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 1 is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 4
2. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 2
3. How Junk Food Affects The Body, Part 3

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bad eating habits, documentary, Fast Food, how fast food affects the body, how junk food affects the body, junk food, unhealthy food

I’m not gonna lie – this is more for me than it is for you, dear reader, because I have a bad habit of running back to foods that are laden with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and usually don’t realize what I’m doing to myself until I’m halfway through the package. As if my mind says “Nooooo! Don’t look at the ingredients li– aww, damn.”

Conventional wisdom (and your brain) tells you, “if it feels good, do it.” Well, you know how sometimes, things feel a little too good? Like, so good, it’s downright sinful? Rest assured, you probably have no business doing it. My favorite piece of cheesecake? Sinful. My favorite Tira Mi Su? Sinful. The BBQ sauce I just tossed out the other day because I was clenching the bottle trying to understand why common sense wouldn’t let me put it down? Sinful! (By the way, all three of them contain HFCS.)

Having said all that, let me introduce you to HFCS. Actually, I’ll let the Corn Refiners Association do it:

Now… I laugh, only because I work in marketing. Ads like this serve one purpose: damage control. So when I see something like this, my first thought is “what happened to make the corn farmers toss money at the small screen?” They’re essentially mocking the very people they’re targeting — those who know it’s bad for them, but aren’t able to quickly express why — and still expecting to win them over. Or… is this a stealthy method of giving “comebacks” to HFCS fans to use when those hoity toity picky eaters get on their soapbox about Cheetos and Capri Suns? Who goes to those kinds of lengths when everything is ok? …when the accusations are baseless?

So… digging, I go.

First, let’s look at that ad up there. “My hair dresser says that sugar is healthier than high fructose corn syrup.” Follow that up with the witty retort of, “Wow! You get your hair done by a doctor?” [insert laughter]

You and I BOTH know that it doesn’t require an MD to be able to study and understand a pros and cons list. If I show you a list that says “fattening,” and another list that says “leaves you prone to diabetes, inflates your appetite, and apparently can be linked to high blood pressure,” you’re going to be able to easily identify which one is going to leave you worse off, right?

Do you need to explain to someone that High Fructose Corn Syrup fiddles with leptin, a hormone in the human body that aids in regulating the appetite, in a way that prevents you from being able to control your hunger? Do you need to be able to explain to someone that HFCS screws with your body’s ability to process insulin? (Just in case you’re wondering, that works like this: since HFCS is metabolized as fat quicker than regular sugar once it hits your liver, this process triggers something called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. This process leads to insulin resistance and type II diabetes.) It isn’t enough that you know something makes you uncomfortable and you don’t want to partake in it. You have to be a doctor now to speak ill of it?

Well, let me tell y’all somethin’ – I’m no doctor, and I’ll still be damned if someone tells me that my own bad feelings aren’t enough to justify not wanting a chemistry experiment nourishing my body I was given. Period. You might get the mental judo chop for that one.

Let’s also talk about this moderation thing, here. Of course, HFCS is safe in moderation. At the same time, so are Doritos. The difference between the two is, well… do you know how many foods you eat each day contain HFCS? Let me put it to you like this: Soda? High Fructose Corn Syrup. “Processed Cheese Food?” HFCS. Jam, jelly, ketchup, BBQ sauce , “fruit juices,” Wonder bread (most breads, actually), eggos, pop tarts, cough syrup, and mayo? High Fructose Corn Syrup.Yes. Apparently, you have a better chance of escaping Doritos than you do HFCS.

I think I’ve named at least ONE thing that we all eat throughout the day. If not, then think about this: I’m sure you’ve had a McDonalds menu meal, right? The same corn that makes your HFCS feeds the cows that turn into your burgers, becomes the oil that cooks the fries and the syrup that sweetens the shakes and the sodas, and makes up 13 of the 38 ingredients in the Chicken McNuggets.  Now, think about “moderation.” How can you effectively moderate something that is everywhere and in everything? You can’t… and they know it. Your ability to gauge what “moderate use” is becomes swayed by the fact that it’s been in everything you ate that day. For those of you who use these foods regular and often, “HFCS in moderation” is pretty much… a joke.

Why is that, though? Why is it that you can’t escape this substance? In as few words as possible, here’s why.

Once upon a time, our government approved a plan that pretty much pays farmers to overproduce corn in America. Considering the basic principle of supply and demand (the more rare, the more expensive; the more common, the more cheap), that drives the price of corn down. Since they have this item in such abundance and so cheap, they come up with multiple ways to use it… hence HFCS. You, a food exec, have an extremely cheap item in your hands that makes food taste (or, at least appear to taste) better. Why not use this to your advantage? Stick some extra fat in certain foods to stretch out our supply… and when the taste is altered? Stick a little HFCS in there. Want to create a cheap juice? Find a “strawberry” flavor, some high fructose corn syrup, and water. Pow. Cost $0.50 to make, but watch me sell a giant jug of it for $2.50. I’m in there like swimwear. It’s just smart, business-wise.

Nutrition-wise, it’s doing nothing for you, the consumer. It’s empty calories. That means for all that you’re ingesting, there is no vitamin or nutritional value for any of it. At all. You should seek for all of your food to provide you a liiiiiiittle somethin’ in the end. Besides a gut, that is.

There’s one more point I want to bring up before I wrap this up… and that’s the point about rewards, gratification, and habit. HFCS tends to trigger a sort of… Pavlov’s dog syndrome, if you will.

To summarize briefly, a Russian scientist named Ivan Pavlov studied conditioned responses in dogs. In short, if you get in the habit of doing something and the SAME reward happens each time you do it, you begin to expect (or, in other words, you become conditioned) the reward before you’ve even done the action that brings the reward. In other words, if you know you love that BBQ sauce… if you see it, your body starts to experience the pleasure you get from it long before you taste it.. thus causing you to indulge. You want that good feeling again. It’s that simple.

Feels like I’m sticking you with a burden, right? That’s not my intention. I would love it if you could resolve a few things within yourself.

First, resolve that you’ll begin to phase out some of the unnecessary HFCS-filled foods in your life. If you overdo the mountain dew, consider packing it away… for good. If you love the ketchup or pancake syrups, look for something a little more natural. If you can’t afford the healthier option, shoot for a less expensive option. (In the case of the syrups, the healthier alternate that my grocery had cost an extra $4. So instead, I top my pancakes and french toast with a little confectioners sugar, $0.99, and fruit slices, $1.29. In the case of the ketchup, I simply stopped eating hot dogs… the one thing I couldn’t eat without ketchup.)

Then resolve that you’ve made the best decision for you, and no corny commercial or insulting advertisement will make you feel less comfortable with the decision you’ve made for yourself. Just like you don’t owe anyone any expanation for why you want to lose weight and eat healthier, you for damn sure don’t owe anyone any explanations for why you choose to phase High Fructose Corn Syrup out of your diet.

Lastly, like I’ve written before, resolve that this is a difficult lifestyle change — a lifetime lifestyle change and it will be bumpy at first. That’s perfectly okay. As long as you’re taking and following steps each day, you’ll be able to bet that you’re moving in the direction in which you need to go.

Be happy, be healthy!

High Fructose Corn Syrup: What’s The Big Deal? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Saturday Night Live Pokes Fun At High Fructose Corn Syrup
2. Another Reason To Ditch The High Fructose Corn Syrup
3. High Fructose Corn Syrup Wants New Name: Why You Shouldn’t Care

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 32 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fast Food, food labels, high fructose corn syrup, obesity, overeating, restaurants

I don’t feel so bad now, especially since it’s – apparently – raw burger and built with toothpicks and sad pickles.

I mean, of course we’ve all wondered why the crap we get in the drive-thru never looks as appetizing as it did in the commercial that compelled us to make the purchase… but really – did we ever think it was this orchestrated?

And as for a “favorite quote” from this clip?

“We don’t want the bun to get soggy, so we take a piece of cardboard and put it between the bun and the burger to soak up all the grease.”

Not good enough for the bun it sits on, but it’s ok for your insides? Err…. thanks, but no thanks. I almost feel like the cardboard, toothpicks and ketchup might be the better bet.

Why Your Burger Never Looks Like The One On TV is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Speak On It: Video Of Mary J Blige’s Crispy Chicken Crooning For Burger King
2. Weekend WTF: Have You Considered Trying The Poop Burger?
3. Weekend WTF: Man Arrested For Cooking His Own Burger & Fries At Denny’s

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: advertising, Fast Food, fast food swindle, marketing

Taken from Women’s Health magazine:

Here’s how this deviousness works: Human beings have what food-industry insiders call a “bliss point,” a nirvana of the taste buds triggered by particular amounts of salt, sugar, and fat. Menu scientists (yes, that’s a job!) at popular restaurant chains and packaged-food corporations use their knowledge of the bliss point to manipulate your appetite, adding salt, sugar, and fat to their products in combinations that are designed to create hedonism on a plate—a taste experience so intense that it kicks the brain’s pleasure system into overdrive. It’s like a drug. And like any drug, it leads you to obsess about that moment of pleasure so much that you’ll do almost anything to prolong or relive it. The result: a bigger bottom line for them—and a bigger waistline for you.

It’s just the way it is.

So, now you have one more piece of information telling you the chips – literally – are stacked against you. What do you do? Do you give in knowing that it will result in a bigger booty (and no, not in a good way) or do you start limiting and minimizing your fast food/restaurant food intake? These are things to think about!

Overeating: Why You Can’t Stop At One Nacho is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Overeating: Comparable To Drug Use, Cause of Mental Illness?
2. The Three Stages Of “Full”ness: How To Stop Stuffing Yourself
3. Portion Distortion: Stop Eating Out Of The Bag

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bliss point, Fast Food, overeating, restaurants

Let’s use that to discuss Taco Bell’s latest swindle, the “Drive Thru Diet.”

Now, after you’ve watched that, before I can even break this down to you, Taco Bell already gets it poppin’ in the fine print:

Drive-Thru-Diet® is not a weight-loss program. For a healthier lifestyle, pay attention to total calorie and fat intake and regular exercise. Taco Bell’s Fresco Menu can help with calorie reductions of 20 to 100 per item compared to corresponding products on our regular menu. Not a low calorie food. For complete nutritional information please visit TacoBell.com

Oh, my heart.

See, to explain this briefly, the Drive-Thru Diet isn’t quite a diet in the same sense that Americans understand the term “diet.” To many of us, diet implies words like “temporary, quick, short-lived.” It leans more toward the understanding of “The Cabbage diet.” “The Lemonade Diet.” “The Cookie Diet.” Not as in “My regular daily diet consists of..” because that’s not what we’re all used to hearing. So when we hear “The Drive-Thru Diet,” it sounds more like “Oh, you mean I can eat cookies for breakfast and lunch and a regular dinner and still lose weight?” except replacing “cookies” with “Taco Bell.”

If you notice, the commercial says “Her experience is based on a 1,250 calorie per day diet.” Let me tell you – you can do a 1,250 calorie diet without Taco Bell. Actually, you can do it without ANY fast food. Is anyone going to tell you that, though? Of course not. Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, Nutrisystem, Subway, and now Taco Bell… they’re all going to tell you, “Use this system, but I’m not going to tell you how to make this system work on your own without me.. because that would be money I couldn’t make off of you.” (Those of you who stick fast to those systems, this isn’t a knock at you. No need to defend them in the comments.)

So let’s look closer at the questions I asked in the beginning. Right now, we’re all making New Year’s Resolutions to be healthier. To eat better. To cut out the junk food. To spend less money at fast food restaurants. Wait — spend less money at fast food joints?! This will not do!

Enter Taco Bell’s marketing team… searhing for a way to improve upon Subway’s “Jared” phenom. You know, the fella that lost a ton of weight eating Subway sandwiches instead of actual home-cooked meals… only to gain it back in late ’09? Yeah, that one. They come up with Christine. Actually, Christine in a bikini with a gut, then Christine in a bikini hiding in some grass, then Christine in a slinky dress, and NOW we get Christine in the pants. Why is Taco Bell paying to put this particular image in my face?

Are they trying to calm my fears about Taco Bell getting in the way of me achieving my weight loss goals for my resolution? (Especially since the site asks me to “Make a Frescolution” and all.) Are they trying to convince me that I can still eat healthily even though I’m getting fast food?

What are they trying to get me to do? I’m a person who would love to eat better in the new year and cut out junk/fast food, but am not sure of how to go about it. Would this commercial convince me to stick with what I’ve been doing, so long as I order “something else?”

Why does my reaction benefit them? Here’s why: Studies show that if I can get you at least in the drive thru lane, I’ve already got your money. Guess what else – I can also convince you to ignore the “healthy menu” and get what you’ve always gotten. Why? Because of habit! If you’ve always crept in that drive-thru lane and bought the same big giant nacho order, how easy do you think it’s going to be to get you in the lane, anyway? That “healthy menu” isn’t what’s on your mind when you pull in, anyway. If I can give you a reason to come back? I can keep you from resolving to stay away entirely, and then I can eventually convince you to stick around. Take a look at that menu – the “healthy” options aren’t the largest photos on the drive-thru menu. That’s for a reason.

Is it truly in my best interests to react to this in this particular fashion? Let me rephrase that for you – is it in your best interest to believe that a healthy diet (as in, the foods you eat regularly) consists of regular ingestion of Taco Bell? Especially when it says on the page, “For a healthier lifestyle, pay attention to total calorie and fat intake and regular exercise. Fresco can help with calorie reductions of 20 to 100 per item compared to corresponding products on our regular menu. Not a low calorie food?” They tell you basically everything you need to know to lose the weight without them, but they tack information onto it about how you can execute this with Taco Bell!

To put it mildly, the message that the viewer receives is “I can lose weight with this ‘Drive-Thru’ Diet.” Never mind the fact that she, apparently, lost the 54lbs over 2yrs – approx 27lbs per year – since she “…didn’t want to give up her fast food.” Is that kind of mentality one worth maintaining? I don’t think so. Personally, I believe it’s in one’s best interests to eat as far away from franchises as possible, but that’s me.

In closing (since I can’t say “In short,” ’cause this is anything BUT short), this is beyond stupid. It plays upon the insecurities of the consumer and treats them like marks, ready for the swindle – “You want to lose weight and not give up your fast food? We still gotcha back! Check out these tacos with no cheese or sauce!” – all while avoiding any claims of misrepresentation… because they told you to calorie count. They also told you these are not low-calorie foods, so take them at their word. Do your best to avoid it, and your body will thank you with more than 54lbs lost… and you’ll lose it in less than two years.

What are your thoughts about this? Have you seen the commercials? What did you think?

Taco Bell Thinks You’re Stupid: Try The Drive-Thru Diet! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Weekend WTF: No Meat In Your Taco Bell Taco
2. Weekend WTF: Taco Bell + Doritos = Doritos-Flavored Tacos?
3. Photo Proof: The Stupid Scale Doesn’t Matter

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Fad Diets, Fast Food, mentality

I bought myself an iTouch. Just… because. I figured if I was going to throw myself into disappointment again, I’d at least do it with a new toy. Sure enough, I got hooked. Music? AND videos? AND apps? Wait… what are apps? After a little snooping around, I find out that I can keep up with news, play games, and do actual important stuff with these things. Neato.

So, I go lookin’, and lookin’, and lookin’… and I find an app called Lose It! that basically operates as a food journal. I once purchased a little black notebook where I’d write down everything I ate, but it quickly lost steam for me. LoseIt!, for some reason, was easier for me.

Using LoseIt!, I was able to input what I weighed at the start, what my goal weight was, and when I wanted to reach it. I added the foods I ate during the day – as honest as I could – and I added the amount of water and other drinks I drank.

When I tell you this was the most powerful thing I could’ve done for myself… believe it!

Now, mind you. I’m not necessarily advocating you go out and get the LoseIt! app (although, as of this writing, it is free and anyone who has an iTouch or iPhone really should look into it) because not everyone has or uses the iPhone/iTouch. The downside to the app, for me, is that it doesn’t allow you to input the time at which you ate. The LoseIt! app also, supposedly, mines data from our inputs as well, and some people might not be thrilled with that. (Yes, I AM usually the conspiracy theorist here, but the benefit outweighed the data collecting, to me.)

What I AM advocating, is the use of a food diary. My food diary showed me exactly where my problems were. I was eating too much of… well, everything. I had no portion control. I was partaking in a giant amount of fat and sugar. My carb meters were off the charts. I simply wasn’t doing what I knew in my heart I needed to do. Taking in over 2100 calories a day wasn’t going to help me lose weight. In fact, the only reason I didn’t gain astronomical amounts of weight was because of the 7-10 hours a week I was spending in the gym. After 6 months and only losing 20 lbs, something needed to really change.

The first two weeks of using my food diary were painful. I was able to track my carb, fat, sodium, fiber, protein, cholesterol and caloric intake. I spent lots of time researching what I was putting in my body in terms of fast food and restaurants, and the nutritional values for those meals. Seeing the numbers in front of me was painful. Painful! I used to LOVE tearing into a Checkers/Rally’s Fried Chicken Sandwich with large fries and a banana shake… until I started looking for their nutritional information.

That’s when it started hitting me like a ton of bricks:

An order of large fries from Checkers? 590 Calories, 38g of fat (20g of saturated fat, 2g of trans fat), 40mg of cholesterol, 1410mg of sodium, 7g of protein, 57g of carbohydrates.

The chicken sandwich? 740 calories, 41g of fat (13g saturated), 70mg of cholesterol, 2190mg sodium, 60g of carbohydrates (13g sugars), and 34g of protein.

And lastly, but certainly not least? The banana shake: 650 calories, 18g of fat (14g saturated), 75mg of cholesterol, 300mg sodium, 105g of carbohydrates (81g sugars), and 16g of protein.

What was I doing to myself? Don’t you know, I had to break out a calculator to tabulate how much I was putting into my body in ONE MEAL? 1,980 calories – almost the value of what’s recommended to take in over the course of one day. 3900mg of sodium. 222g of carbohydrates, about 40% of it being sugar. Seriously… what was I doing to myself? And why did it take me actually writing it down and committing myself to researching it for me to truly see it? Why didn’t I KNOW what I was doing to myself? (That’s another post entirely, but we won’t talk about that today.)

Slowly, I began to wean myself off of things that were doing me in. I no longer ate fast food. Sure enough, I lost almost 8 lbs immediately. Strange, huh?

A food diary highlights the weaknesses in your diet. It shows you patterns in your eating habits that you might not’ve noticed. Do you eat a lot of fried foods? How about a lot of bread? Do you have one heck-uv-a-sweet tooth? Maybe you eat a lot of foods that require TONS of seasoning? Variety, literally, is the spice of life.. and a food diary is the best way to show you where you could inject a little bit of just that – variety.

Make it a healthy day!

Considered Keeping a Food Diary? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Weekend WTF: Have You Considered Trying The Poop Burger?
2. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Eating Disorders When Dieting Wasn’t Enuf
3. Food Diaries: A New Approach To Food Journaling

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black girls guide to weight loss, Fast Food, overeating, restaurants

Regardless of which one you choose, they’re all wrong to me. Hey, I’m just keepin’ it real.

It’s hard enough to eat clean – buying mainly produce and deli – without breaking the bank. If you grocery shop for clean eating every other night, what are you leaving to rot and waste at home? (And for crying out loud, how much gas are you wasting?) If you’re buying cooked dinners from the deli in the grocery, how much money are you spending per plate per night? (And for goodness sake, how much trash are you accumulating?)

And if you’re going grocery shopping every two weeks, I’m almost certain that you’re buying an influx of processed foods. What else is going to keep that well for two weeks without eventually beginning to wilt? (And as I previously outlined, just how much money are you wasting buying pre-prepared foods, instead of ingredients to create your own good stuff?)

I’m sayin’. There has to be a sensible solution, right? Right?

Right! My answer is to pick one day – usually a nice, lazy, comfy Sunday – and go grocery shopping. Wake up that morning, spend a good 15 minutes thinking about what you’ll eat this week, what you’ll need, sketch out a list, scratch out the [processed foods and] stuff you’ve already got plenty of in your fridge already and get moving!

Why weekly?

For starters, it allows you to avoid your produce rotting. If you dedicate one day to grocery shopping and food prep, you can spend the rest of the week cooking from your fridge, your cabinets and your pantry. It allows you to “shop” from your own reserves. This way, you prevent wasting your money on stuff you “can’t eat” because it doesn’t look quite as fresh as it did when you got it.

Secondly, you have to make a list. How is it that we go grocery shopping, spend an arm/a leg/a first born and still… wind up staring at the fridge for five minutes repeating to ourselves, “I have nothing to cook.” Oh, no. Not only do you have plenty of ingredients and not pre-prepared foods that you may or may not have a taste for – for example, instead of buying garlic cheese bread in a box, why not pick up a baguette from the grocery bakery, some garlic powder, cheese and use your butter/oil? – but you have options. A pre-packaged box doesn’t give you options. At all. Ever. That same garlic powder, cheese and oil could be used on bread, macaroni, leafy greens and rice. Options.

Shopping this way forces you to think about exactly what you’re going to realistically eat in a week. For example – I know I’ll need a big container of oatmeal and various types of fruit for breakfast. I know I’ll need bread, peanut butter, apples, strawberries and bananas for lunch. I also know I’ll need lots of rice, veggies/veggie blends, leafy greens, herbs, spices and the like for dinner. In my head, when I do this planning, I’m sketching out my week. I’ll even have a few magazines or good recipe websites on hand to look at what I can accomplish with my potential ingredient list.

Lastly, it re-emphasizes portion control. If you know you’re only going through that whole ordeal one time and you’re adamant about not breaking your rule (and your rule is imposed by someone worth respecting – yourself), then you’ll exercise portion control to ensure that you don’t break your promise to yourself.

For those of you who only go grocery shopping 2x a month, why not split up what you usually purchase and put the other half “under the mattress?” If you’re afraid of that money “turning into shoe money,” then I can’t help ya. Exercise a little restraint. That’s grocery money… not “free money.”

Get into the habit of eating what’s in your house, and stop letting commercials and cravings run you. I’ll never forget the day my Sorority sister and I went grocery shopping together. With all those groceries in the car, I said to her, “You wanna go to Checkers/Rally’s? I’m starving.” She surely did look at me like I had a booger on my face and said, “Didn’t we just go to the grocery store? Any particular reason why you aren’t hungry for what you just bought?”

That’s not exactly what she said. I think I cleaned it up a little bit.

Not like it wasn’t bad enough that just the sight and smell of the fast food joint made me wanna levitate out of the car and into the Checkers’ drive-thru to inhale some fries, but I would’ve easily spent $6 there. $6 is a week and a half worth of frozen veggies! Y’all playin’!

My daughter and I get up early Sunday morning, have breakfast, then hit the grocery stores together. Aside from the occasional hand-swatting (“No, you better not reach for the Booberry… and unless you have a job, you can’t get it.“) and begging for samples, we make it fun. We get home, I do my prep work of chopping and sorting the veggies, and that’s it for the week. It’s literally like making my own “pre-prepared foods.” Give it a shot and see how it works for you!

Other posts in the series:

• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Season
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Weekly
• Save Money On Groceries: Buy The Private Label (Go Generic!)
• Save Money On Groceries: Go Frozen!
• Q&A Wednesday: The $50 Challenge
• Save Money on Groceries: Go… Smaller?
• Save Money On Groceries: The Readers Share Their Tips!

Saving Money On Groceries: Go Weekly! is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Saving Money On Groceries: Buy It In Season
2. Save Money On Groceries: Buy It In Bulk
3. Save Money On Groceries: Go… Smaller?

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, Fast Food, grocery shopping, processed foods, produce, saving money, shopping list

The recent class-action lawsuit brought against Taco Bell raised questions about the quality of food many Americans eat each day.

Chief among those concerns is the use of cellulose (read: wood pulp), an extender whose use in a roster of food products, from crackers and ice creams to puddings and baked goods, is now being exposed. What you’re actually paying for — and consuming — may be surprising.

Cellulose is virgin wood pulp that has been processed and manufactured to different lengths for functionality, though use of it and its variant forms (cellulose gum, powdered cellulose, microcrystalline cellulose, etc.) is deemed safe for human consumption, according to the FDA, which regulates most food industry products. The government agency sets no limit on the amount of cellulose that can be used in food products meant for human consumption. The USDA, which regulates meats, has set a limit of 3.5% on the use of cellulose, since fiber in meat products cannot be recognized nutritionally.

“As commodity prices continue to rally and the cost of imported materials impacts earnings, we expect to see increasing use of surrogate products within food items. Cellulose is certainly in higher demand and we expect this to continue,” Michael A. Yoshikami, chief investment strategist at YCMNet Advisors, told TheStreet.

Manufacturers use cellulose in food as an extender, providing structure and reducing breakage, said Dan Inman, director of research and development at J. Rettenmaier USA, a company that supplies “organic” cellulose fibers for use in a variety of processed foods and meats meant for human and pet consumption, as well as for plastics, cleaning detergents, welding electrodes, pet litter, automotive brake pads, glue and reinforcing compounds, construction materials, roof coating, asphalt and even emulsion paints, among many other products.

Cellulose adds fiber to the food, which is good for people who do not get the recommended daily intake of fiber in their diets, Inman said. It also extends the shelf life of processed foods. Plus, cellulose’s water-absorbing properties can mimic fat, he said, allowing consumers to reduce their fat intake.

Perhaps most important to food processors is that cellulose is cheaper, he added, because “the fiber and water combination is less expensive than most other ingredients in the [food] product.”

Indeed, food producers save as much as 30% in ingredient costs by opting for cellulose as a filler or binder in processed foods, according to a source close to the processed food industry who spoke with TheStreet on the condition of anonymity.

Inman said that in his 30 years in the food science business, he’s seen “an amazing leap in terms of the applications of cellulose fiber and what you can do with it.” He said powdered cellulose has a bad reputation but that more of his customers are converting from things like oat or sugar cane fibers to cellulose because it is “snow white in color, bland and easy to work with.”

Most surprising, said Inman, is that he’s been able to remove as much as 50% of the fat from some cookies, biscuits, cakes and brownies by replacing it with powdered cellulose — but still end up with a very similar product in terms of taste and appearance.

“We’re only limited by our own imagination,” Inman told TheStreet. “I would never have dreamed I could successfully put 18% fiber in a loaf of bread two years ago.”

He said cellulose is common in processed foods, often labeled as reduced-fat or high-fiber — products like breads, pancakes, crackers, pizza crusts, muffins, scrambled eggs, mashed potato mixes, and even cheesecake. Inman himself keeps a box of Wheat Thins Fiber Selects crackers, manufactured by Kraft Foods(KFT_)’ Nabisco brand, at his desk, and snacks on them daily, clearly unmoved by the use of wood pulp in its ingredients.

“Most consumers would be shocked to find these types of filler products are used as substitutes for items that they believe are more pure,” Yoshikami said. “We would expect increased disclosure to follow increased use of cellulose and other filler products as the practice increases in frequency.”

Wondering what’s on the list? Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered.

• PepsiCo
  • Aunt Jemima Frozen Blueberry Pancakes
  • Aunt Jemima Original Syrup
  • Aunt Jemima Original Syrup
• Kellogg
  • MorningStar Farms Chik’n Nuggets
  • MorningStar Farms Chik Patties Original
  • MorningStar Farms Buffalo Wings Veggie Wings
  • Eggo Nutri-Grain Blueberry waffles
  • Eggo Strawberry Waffles
  • Eggo Blueberry Waffles
  • Cinnabon Pancakes Original
  • Cinnabon Pancakes Caramel
  • Cinnabon Snack Bars Original
  • Cinnabon Snack Bars Baked Cinnamon Apple
• General Mills
  • Fiber One Ready-To-Eat Muffins (Wild Blueberry & Oats; Mixed Fruit, Nuts & Honey; Apple Cinnamon Bun, Banana Chocolate Chip)
  • Fiber One Original cereal
  • Fiber One Chewy Bars (90 Calorie Chocolate, 90 Calorie Chocolate Peanut Butter)
  • Fiber One baking products (Apple Cinnamon Muffin Mix, Banana Nut Muffin Mix, Blueberry Muffin Mix)
  • Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic Yellow Cake Mix
  • Pillsbury Mozzarella and Pepperoni Pastry Puffs
  • Pillsbury Cheese and Spinach Crescent Pastry Puffs
  • Pillsbury Artichoke and Spinach Bread Bowl Bites
  • Pillsbury Buffalo Chicken Crescent Pastry Puffs
  • Pillsbury Cream Cheese and Jalapeno Bread Bowl Bites
  • Betty Crocker whipped frostings (Strawberry Mist, Chocolate, Cream Cheese)
  • Betty Crocker Vanilla Amazing Glazes
  • Duncan Hines Cake Mixes (Devil’s Food Cake Mix, Dark Chocolate Fudge, Strawberry Supreme, Fudge Marble, Classic Yellow, French Vanilla)
• Weight Watchers
  • Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwich
  • English Toffee Crunch Ice Cream Bar
  • Giant Cookies & Cream Ice Cream Bar
• McDonalds
  • Fish Filet Patty
  • McRib
  • Premium Caesar Salad
  • Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap
  • Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken
  • Southern Style Chicken Biscuit
  • Strawberry Sundae
  • Natural Swiss Cheese (used in McRib, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Angus Mushroom & Swiss, Premium Grilled Chicken Club Sandwich, Premium Crispy Chicken Club Sandwich, Angus Mushroom & Swiss Snack Wrap)
  • Shredded Cheddar/Jack Cheese (used in Ranch Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Honey Mustard Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Chipotle BBQ Snack Wrap (Crispy and Grilled), Premium Southwest Salad with Grilled Chicken, Premium Southwest Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken, Premium Bacon Ranch Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken, McSkillet Burrito with Sausage)
  • Barbeque Sauce
  • Sweet ‘N Sour Sauce
  • Shredded Parmesan Cheese (used in Premium Caesar Salad with/without Crispy/Grilled Chicken)
  • Biscuit (Large and Regular) (used to make Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit, Sausage Biscuit with Egg, Sausage Biscuit, Southern Style Chicken Biscuit, Big Breakfast with/without Hotcakes)
  • Vanilla Reduced Fat Ice Cream (used in Strawberry Sundae, Hot Caramel Sundae, Hot Fudge Sundae, McFlurry with M&M’S Candies, McFlurry with OREO Cookies, Chocolate Triple Thick Shake, Strawberry Triple Thick Shake, Vanilla Triple Thick Shake)
  • Sugar Free Vanilla Syrup (used in Premium Roast Coffee, Espresso)
• Sara Lee
  • Jimmy Dean Frozen Breakfast Bowl (Sausage & Gravy)
  • Jimmy Dean D-lights Turkey Sausage Breakfast Bowl
  • Jimmy Dean D-lights Turkey Sausage Croissant
  • Jimmy Dean Breakfast Entrée (Scrambled Eggs with Bacon/Sausage and Cheese Diced Apples & Seasoned Hash)
• Taco Bell
  • Southwest Chicken
  • Caramel Apple Empanada
  • Corn Tortilla
  • Enchilada Rice
  • Nacho Chips
  • Red Strips
  • Strawberry Topping
  • Zesty Dressing
• Jack In The Box
  • Cheese, Cheddar, Shredded (used in Grilled Chicken Salad, Chicken Club Salad with Crispy Chicken, Meaty Breakfast Burrito, Hearty Breakfast Bowl)
  • Cheese, Pepper Jack, Shredded (used in Chicken Fajita Pita, Southwest Chicken Salad with Grilled Chicken, Meaty Breakfast Burrito)
  • Honey Mustard Dipping Sauce
  • Ice Cream Shake Mix
  • Log Cabin Syrup
  • Mini Funnel Cake
  • Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (also part of Sampler Trio)
  • Smoothie Base (Mango, Strawberry, Strawberry Banana)
  • Tortilla, Flour (used for Chorizo Sausage Burrito, Steak & Egg Burrito, Meaty Breakfast Burrito)
  • White Cheese Sauce (used in Breakfast Bowl (Hearty and Denver))
• Wendy’s Arby’s
  • Asiago Cheese (used in Spicy Chicken Caesar Salad, Asiago Ranch Chicken Club, Caesar Side Salad)
  • Fat Free French Dressing (for Apple Pecan Chicken Salad, Baja Salad, Spicy Chicken Caesar Salad, BLT Cobb Salad)
  • Blue Cheese Crumbles (used in Apple Pecan Chicken Salad, BLT Cobb Salad)
  • Cheddar Pepper Jack Cheese Blend, Shredded
  • Chocolate Sauce
  • Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty (Chocolate, Vanilla)
  • Frosty (Chocolate and Vanilla)
  • Frosty Shake (Frosty-cino, Chocolate Fudge, Strawberry, Vanilla Bean)
  • Milk, 1% Low Fat Chocolate Milk
• KFC
  • KFC Cornbread Muffin
  • Apple Turnover
  • Honey Mustard BBQ Sauce
  • Lil’ Bucket Strawberry Short Cake Parfait
  • Lil’ Bucket Lemon Crème Parfait
  • Lil’ Bucket Chocolate Crème Parfait
  • Oreo Cookies and Crème Pie Slice
  • Reese’s Peanut Butter Pie Slice
  • Popcorn Chicken
  • Strawberry Cream Cheese Pie Slice

The Street’s full list can be found here. It isn’t all-encompassing, but as far as popular brands go, it’s kinda bananas. The reality of cellulose is, in fact, that it is found in nature (obviously), but how is it extracted? If it’s removed from its natural context to be put into a processed product, how do we know that it’s being paired properly with everything it was naturally found with? It’d simply be easier to just use actual plants, but because the food industry is notorious for breaking items into pieces and finding uses for each of those individual pieces, we won’t get that. Cellulose serves as “fiber” because it is, in fact, roughage – because the stomach can’t digest it (as with any other fiber), it is simply pushed through the digestive system and out through the bowels, scraping any other – ahem – collectibles along and out the door, so to speak. But, when you pay for your food, are you paying for food or are you paying for “stuff that uses wood pulp as filler so that companies can give you less food?”

Oh, and y’all can thank Alice for the fact that we now know that such a thing as “organic edible wood pulp” exists.

Got a Weekend WTF?! to share with the class? Send ‘em on over to wtf@blackgirlsguidetoweightloss.com!

Weekend WTF: 15 Companies That Serve You “Wood” is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Bonus Weekend WTF: The… Candwich?
2. Weekend WTF: McDonalds Strikes Again
3. Weekend WTF: Jamie Oliver Knows What’s In Your Ice Cream

The FULL list of meal plans is currently available. Check it out and get your copy today!

Get BGG2WL delivered wirelessly to your Kindle! Click here for more info!

© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: arby's, cellulose, Fast Food, general mills, jack in the box, kellogg, kfc, mcdonalds, organic, pepsico, processed food, sara lee, taco bell, weight watchers, wendy's