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

What is Clean Eating?

Clean eating is eating as close to the source as possible. What is the source, you ask? The source is Mother Earth, of course. Sure, it sounds like hippie stuff, but think about it – look in your pantry or cabinets, then look in your refridgerator. If the vast majority of the foods you own reside outside of your refridgerator, and you consider yourself overweight? Chances are, that pantry or those cabinets are why.

Basically, living a life of clean eating is living a life of simplicity. You’re probably not going to overindulge on the breads – or eat much bread at all -while eating clean. No refined white rice. No deep fried goods. No processed foods. I mean, don’t get me wrong — I can acknowledge and appreciate the fact that our little friends in the box or plastic wrapper have allowed us to do a lot in a short amount of time (I can get scalloped potatoes with only a little milk and a microwave? I’m in there like swimwear!), but it is certainly not clean eating. If you’re going to embrace the challenge then the boxed goods, canned goods and plastic shrink wrapped packages… have got to go.

Clean eating, with all the “Mother Earth” talk, might sound like hippie speak (I am a self-proclaimed hippie and all), but it isn’t. It’s making sure that we use and respect the Earth for what it is supposed to give to us while, in turn, giving it what it needs. I don’t have to tell anyone that after we’ve enjoyed our boxed and plastic-wrapped goods, that that trash has to go somewhere…and it’s usually buried in a forest…er…landfill somewhere. Clean eating, because you’re using items that rarely come with wrappers, are less harmful to the environment.

Okay, no more hippie moments. For now.

What are the basic tenets of clean eating?

Avoid processed foods. Outside of my usual spiel about why you should avoid foods laden with chemicals we don’t understand, there is actually a multi-layer reason for why this is important.

For starters, processed foods usually come with an excessive amount of sugar. I mean, let’s face it – sugar tastes good. The companies who make our favorite foods know that sugar makes their food so irresistible, so they’re good for putting it in, well, everything. Avoiding unnecessary and unnatural sugars is a key part of clean eating, and you can’t do that in a lifestyle that includes processed foods.

Should you insist on indulging in foods that come wrapped in a package, check the ingredient label – if it contains an ingredient that you wouldn’t keep in your own kitchen (monosodium glutamate? what? – (changed for clarity)) then try to find something a little more chemical-free, or pass on the item altogether.

If you avoid processed foods, you’ll also be avoiding unnatural fats (like trans fats) and unnecessary carbs. All carbs aren’t bad, but the processed foods that tend to contain the highest amount of carbs and fats usually have the least nutritional value… and that gets in your way when it comes to achieving the next target of clean eating.

Get the most out of your food choices. Usually, this means going for the fruits and veggies over the chips and dip. And remember, we’re eating as close to the source as possible… so get the regular peach and skip the fruit cups.

When you choose to eat something, aside from “make sure it tastes great” and “make sure there’s no [insert food allergy] in it,” add “make sure that it’s chock full of vitamins and minerals” and “make sure this is the most nutrient-filled choice I can make” to your list. So no, the white bread isn’t going to give you as much as the whole grain bread might. And if you don’t know whether or not your favorite sub spot offers whole grain bread? Call ahead of time and ask.

Practice portion control. I’ve written on this before, but this is one part nutrition, one part eco-friendly. There’s no reason to take more than you need. Your body will only suffer through trying to churn through all this extra food, and it’s excess and unnecessary calories to burn. And you all know I love counting a calorie or two…hundred.

Drink at least 8 cups of water per day. That’s right.. I said 8. That should keep you sooo busy, that you can’t drink your pepsis or your coca colas or your hawaiian punches or your capri suns. Outside of the fact that water has the ability to help you feel full (more on that later this week) and flush your body of impurities, it has zero calories.

Say it with me. Zero. Calories.

Those are the basics, but we’ll be counting down to the start of the challenge by digging deeper into the principles of clean eating. This week will have one post each day about clean eating – everything from drinking (and enjoying) water to eco-friendly organic living to shopping lists to preparation for a healthy lifestyle (check out “Fitting Clean Eating Into A Busy Lifestyle“)… and topping it all off with a Q&A Wednesday centered all around the challenge (posted here).

You now have… 6 days. Tomorrow comes the sample shopping list (said sample shopping list is now posted here). Get your questions in this week, so you’re prepared for the next. Tell your Mama, tell your friends, tell everybody… build your support system and we all can connect and do this together!

Who’s with me?

Presenting: The 7 Day Clean Eating Challenge is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: Clean Eating Challenge Style
2. What’s In My Clean Eating Healthy Kitchen?
3. Q&A Wednesday: Is Clean Eating An Eating Disorder?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 44 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, ecofriendly, overeating, processed foods

Q: Hi Erika, I love your blog, I like how you tackle issues of weightloss and workouts. There is an area you have never touched on, how often one should go to the bathroom (long call). You may wonder why am raising this…before you posted your Q&A on belly fat and the importance of fibre I used to do it once every two days, I would drink 12 glasses of water but I was always constipated….when you mentioned fibre.. That was my aha moment…I weigh 160 lbs and am 5 feet 4” but guess what? My waist is 35 inches…that seems to be due to lack of fibre.. If you could tackle the issue I believe it will help someone else. Thanks once more!

The "cookie"... if you don't know what I mean by "the cookie," you certainly will soon!

In simple terms, fiber is the stuff that pushes food through your digestive system. The Earth is intelligent. We get our nutrients from fruits and vegetables, right? Those fruits and vegetables come complete with the nutrients we need, coupled with the appropriate amount of fiber to help push the stuff through our digestive system.

But what is fiber? Fiber is a carbohydrate that is so indigestible, it manages to pass through your system without being broken down into bits that your body can use. It, in its pieces (usually broken down by your teeth), works its way through your intestines, eventually using its girth to help clean your intestines out by pushing and scraping all the way down and out. “Out,” as in, private potty time.

Having said that, in theory if you are getting the proper amount of fruits and vegetables in your daily diet, then you should be pushing food out after every meal.

That’s right – since every meal is taking food in, food that should have a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables, every meal should be helping push food out. So while someone who’s going hard on the veggies might go after every meal, I think shooting for once a day makes sense.

Think about it – anyone who “goes number two” every four days, and it takes them 45 minutes to do it… think about what that means. They’ve got four days worth of potty in their system. If they’re eating the kind of diet I can assume they’re eating (by only going number two every four days), can you imagine what their abdominal area looks like by then? Distended, full,”beer belly”-esque. After four days, the stuff in your system has hardened. They’ve got to give birth, basically. I didn’t even want to give birth when I gave birth. I’m cool on all that.

If you’re a big processed food eater, know that your foods more than likely don’t have enough fiber to cover the amount of food you’re eating. (The fiber is removed because foods with fiber tend to spoil easier.) It’s also likely that – if your foods have fiber chemically (or “magically”) inserted in them – that their version of fiber simply isn’t sufficient or structured properly enough to do what naturally fibrous foods can do. Fiber, much like any other nutrient, is best obtained through natural means.

So, I suppose the next question is… how can I go potty more? How can I get a little more fiber in my diet?

Aside from the obvious – add more fruits and vegetables to your diet and skip the processed foods – there are a few unorthodox methods.

There are lots of teas out there that can help. You can find them as “laxative teas” or “slimming teas” (even though I cringe at how misleading this is, it does slim your frame down… after it cleanses your colon) and they can be found where most of the other teas are in your grocery. A good laxative tea will contain either “senna” or “cassia.” I’ve personally used both, but I don’t use them regularly. Those are kind of last-resort solutions.

I’m good for making a big batch of baked beans, using navy beans as my base. Navy beans can give you a good 15g of fiber in a serving. In fact, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), black beans and pinto beans are good for double digit fiber amounts.

Nuts and seeds are also a great way to get your fiber in. Not the roasted and salted kind (so you roasted cashew lovers, try going raw every now and again), but the pure and untouched kind. Try to find new ways to incorporate them into your dinners: use a little peanuts in your stir fry, chew on a few for a snack, or even add some seeds to your cookie and bread recipes. I actually have a recipe for an Apple Butter Flax Seed cookie that is guaranteed to get you going. I’ll post it later on You can find it here, but really – adding about a fourth of a cup of flax seed to any cookie batch will do the trick.

Having said all that, get more veggies and fruits in your diet, start trying to phase out the processed foods, and bake yourself a nice hearty batch of cookies every now and again. That’s the best way to stay regular.

Update: I don’t talk about artificial fiber sources and whatnot because, frankly, I don’t use them – but someone dropped this article off in my tweets, and I thought this excerpt might provide a perspective worth considering:

Like dietary fiber (the roughage found in whole foods), fiber additives pass undigested through the gastrointestinal tract, so the FDA accepts them as the real deal. Yet no scientific studies link these artificial fibers to the health benefits—including a lowered risk of heart disease and obesity—associated with naturally fiber-rich foods. “The additives are enjoying fiber’s halo without having proven themselves,” says Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Added fiber also doesn’t have the ability to turn junk food into a nutritional superstar, says Amy Jamieson-Petonic, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. She says it’s best to get your fiber from fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, since they deliver nutritional value that goes far beyond keeping you regular. One high-fiber carrot, for example, contains some 500 beneficial compounds, says Jamieson-Petonic. “You’re not going to get that from additives.”

Q&A Wednesday: Fiber, Because Everybody Poops is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: My Belly Won’t Shrink!
2. Q&A Wednesday: Should I Skip The Fruit?
3. Q&A Wednesday: My Thoughts On The Master Cleanse

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 46 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: diet, digestive system, fiber, fruits, intestines, potty time, processed foods, vegetables

Yeah, that’s kind of this processed food thing. And I know, in advance, that this is long. Frustratingly long, even. I’m breaking it up into bits, though, so don’t worry if you can’t take it all in at once.

What are processed foods? Allow me to shed some light.

A “processed food,” in general, is something that has had to endure a process to make it what it is before it is turned over to you. Almost everything that comes in a box… is processed. Almost everything that comes in a zip-sealed bag… is processed. Almost everything that comes from a big giant brand or huge corporation or massive factory plant somewhere… is processed. Almost everything that you purchase from a grocery store… is processed.

I mean, that includes a lot – that’s all the aisles in the grocery store! You’d have to scale the perimeter of the store to avoid that, right?

Let’s look at the history of food in this country over the past one hundred or so years.

Once upon a time, before food was big industry (meaning: before processed foods) and we were dealing with the fear of famine, people were much smaller. Being overweight was a rich person’s dilemma. Why? Because you have to ingest an AWFUL LOT of whole foods (as in, not processed) on a regular basis to develop and maintain an overweight physique in that day. So being overweight simply didn’t make financial sense. Things like bread, pies, cookies, cakes… they were rare – couldn’t always buy them at the store, so you had to make them at home. Highly unlikely that you could or would be able to bake sweets every single day for your pleasure.

Because they were concerned about famine, portions were rationed carefully. They didn’t want to be caught out there not being about to get food, and having little at the house. Sometimes, you’ll hear our elders talk about when whole grains were once rationed out to the masses because not only did they need to make sure they had it for the soldiers, they needed to make sure the supply could cover everyone in the event of emergency.

To sum it up, food wasn’t presumed to be plentiful, and it caused people to skimp, penny pinch, and exercise portion control.

Now, in comes the push toward larger food distributors – less focus on local, more focus on “getting big.” “Get big or get out,” I believe was the actual line. The US Gov’t honestly feared that they wouldn’t be able to feed everyone without food production going factory, and took every effort they could to try to get it there. With food production being taken to the factories, we were separated more from how our food was made. The further the process was taken from us, the less oversight we had in regards to what was in it. We used to have the milkman, right? You made arrangements with a local farm to have your milk delivered to your door, right? Now, if you drink milk, you’re buying a gallon that comes from a farm that you have no knowledge of. You’re buying from a brand.

I’m a small business owner, so while I could interject right here about what it does to our local communities to not be able to buy our food locally and keep our money in our communities… I won’t. Just know that I could.

As I said, the larger food manufacturing grew, the more we were distanced from it’s production, and the less oversight we were granted to it’s creation and ingredients. Because (in my opinion) the government wanted to simply do what it could to ensure that the US had a consistent food supply, lots of leeway was given to big food factories to help ease them along their way in supplying our supermarkets with food – glorious food! Want an example? The food industry was able to get the FDA to change the law – imitation foods that weren’t nutritionally deficient in comparison to their whole counterparts didn’t have to be clearly marked as “imitation.” (You can skip the below quote if you like because I’ve quoted it before, but it’s valuable enough to read twice.)

The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict rules requiring that the word “imitation” appear on any food product that was, well, an imitation … [And] the food industry [argued over the word], strenuously for decades, and in 1973 it finally succeeded in getting the imitation rule tossed out, a little-notice but momentous step that helped speed America down the path of nutritionism.

… The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to “modify” various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that “any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed.”

And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. … The revised imitation rule held that as long as an imitation product was not “nutritionally inferior” to the natural food it sought to impersonate—as long as it had the same quantities of recongized nutrients—the imitation could be marketed without using the dreaded “i” word. — In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

Families who survived the rationing and the famine were happy about this! No more struggling, breaking their backs to stretch food. They could eat like the rich folks! They could also gain weight like ‘em, too. Alas, the way men and women were employed in this era, they weren’t granted the same amount of time for leisurely activity like the rich. In other words, we were eating “like the rich,” but not burning the weight off like ‘em. This part of the story, can be evidenced by Katharine Flegel’s study of weight gain from the sixties to the present. This New Yorker article summarizes it briefly:

In the early nineteen-nineties, a researcher at the C.D.C. named Katherine Flegal was reviewing the results of the survey then under way when she came across figures that seemed incredible. According to the first National Health study, which was done in the early nineteen-sixties, 24.3 per cent of American adults were overweight—roughly defined as having a body-mass index greater than twenty-seven. (The metrics are slightly different for men and women; by the study’s definition, a woman who is five feet tall would count as overweight if she was more than a hundred and forty pounds, and a man who is six feet tall if he weighed more than two hundred and four pounds.) By the time of the second survey, conducted in the early nineteen-seventies, the proportion of overweight adults had increased by three-quarters of a per cent, to twenty-five per cent, and, by the third survey, in the late seventies, it had edged up to 25.4 per cent. The results that Flegal found so surprising came from the fourth survey. During the nineteen-eighties, the American gut, instead of expanding very gradually, had ballooned: 33.3 per cent of adults now qualified as overweight. Flegal began asking around at professional meetings. Had other researchers noticed a change in Americans’ waistlines? They had not. This left her feeling even more perplexed. She knew that errors could have sneaked into the data in a variety of ways, so she and her colleagues checked and rechecked the figures. There was no problem that they could identify. Finally, in 1994, they published their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In just ten years, they showed, Americans had collectively gained more than a billion pounds. “If this was about tuberculosis, it would be called an epidemic,” another researcher wrote in an editorial accompanying the report.

Food was becoming way more accessible to us. I do want to go back to the point about the FDA’s law about imitation substances, though. It does a lot more to the food industry than you think it does. Take a loaf of bread, for example. Bread has maybe five ingredients in it – flour, water, sugar, salt, and yeast – but if you look on the label for the bread in your house right now? You see what – hyphenated chemicals. The food industry now has the ability to put anything in your food, so long as it is not deficient in the nutrients that science recognizes are valuable… in comparison to the food it imitates.  Remember this part. No, really – remember this part.

So, if the foods aren’t nutritionally deficient, why is this a problem?

Well, how much credit do you give food science? The rule is simply that the foods cannot be deficient in nutrients that science recognizes as valuable. What about what science hasn’t spotted yet? What about all these hyphenated chemicals that science hasn’t identified (or is prevented from identifying) as harmful to our health?

And before you call me a conspiracy theorist, consider this: it took science decades to recognize that trans-fats – once a massive part of margarine and other major foods – were hazardous to our health. Believe it or not, the government still allows trans-fats in foods, and actually allows food manufacturers to lie about how much trans-fats are in their foods. (More on that later.)

What else, in these foods, is doing us in? Science doesn’t know yet. And really, since most of our food science studies are funded by the very industry they affect… do you genuinely expect science to find out? I’m not telling you that they’d intentionally fudge numbers to present favorable results – trying to remain unbiased, here – but I am telling you it’s easy to divert funds elsewhere… as in, another study. Maybe even… a study attempting to debunk something claiming their products are harmful.

That’s not the conspiracy theorist in me. That’s just smart business on their part… regardless of what it does to the consumer. Keep the consumer far enough away from the research, and they’ll never know the downfall of buying my product. It just happens that way.

So since this is all cyclical, let’s go back to that availability of food thing. Now, all this food (food, mind you, that seeks to NOT be nutritionally deficient although it admits that it is) is available to our families. We, knowing what it’s like to have to worry about food not being available, begin to indulge. Factories – and factory jobs – are springing up because industries are blossoming. Longer work hours, both adults in the household are now working, and all this super convenient food at hand. We’re eating what we can, when we can, and eating a lot of it… since we’re enjoying the ability to eat at our discretion, not at the discretion of a ration.

Keep in mind, also, at this time… a new generation of children are being born under this new understanding of food. Family tradition might lend to certain dishes being made a certain way, but lots of dishes are being replaced by the magic elixir in the box. Some of us have that Grandma who insists on cooking everything from scratch. We tend to write her off as crazy or paranoid because “Times have changed” and “No one has time for all that cooking,” or maybe because “This is the [insert decade]s, Nana, we don’t live in the kitchen the way you used to!” Things that are all true, but come with consequences.

I asked you, dear reader, to keep in mind the point I made earlier about hyphenated chemical ingredients in our food, right? I hope you did. The interesting loophole in the FDA’s policy about imitation foods is that there’s very little limit to what can now be put INTO food. That’s an important point.

You know how, if you leave food sitting out, it will attract flies? Why? Because flies and rodents are attracted to the same things that our bodies are attracted to in food – nutrients. Ever notice that with ALL the food in a supermarket, there’s rarely any ants or bugs in the aisles, but you have to swat them away from the tomatoes or kiwi in the produce area? That’s not because every area in the grocery store – except the produce – is sprayed down. I can only offer theory as to why that is. For starters, the processed foods have to be processed to maintain shelf life. They have to be able to handle being transported to the facility. They have to be able to withstand sitting on a shelf until purchased. They have to be able to withstand sitting in your cabinets until you cook them.

Can you do that with your home made cooking? I doubt it.

Here’s another question: What do you think they’re putting in these processed foods to ward off insects and rodents?

Last question: Do you think it’s a good idea to ingest the same chemicals that are put in food… food that flies don’t even want? The same chemicals that prevent flies from desiring our food, are the same chemicals we’re ingesting when we eat this stuff anyway. How healthy can that be? Nothing in the world can debunk what feels like logic to me.

Taking that one step further for those of us who DO indulge anyway, what about the fact that the average processed food contains more calories than it’s “real” counterpart? Remember my ranch dressing recipe that I shared? My recipe was 300 calories a cup. Kraft’s ranch dressing was easily 1400 calories. Let me tell you a secret I learned from working in restaurants. Foods that have to be reheated to be cooked are pumped with extra fat, because it helps maintain the flavor through the reheating process. Chemicals – like monosodium glutamate, found in processed foods with rich, thick, almost meaty tastes – help reheatables that have to be pumped with extra fat taste more pleasing to you. The convenience that the food offers may be a welcome benefit, but it comes at the cost of a massive excess in calories and unnecessary additives and preservatives.

So here we are, living in the new millennium. For breakfast, we’re eating cereal. For lunch, we give our kids lunchables. For dinner, we heat up a pot pie. (If you want a laugh, look at the ingredients list on the back of any of those.) For a drink, we have a capri sun or a coke. Instead of nutrient-filled calorie-light whole foods, we’re now indulging in calorie-heavy nutrient-light foods that’ve been mainly cooked FOR us. When we take in foods, our bodies are expecting a certain amount of nutrients and vitamins. If our body doesn’t get what it’s looking for fast enough, what happens? It compels you to eat more! Yes! Have you ever inhaled half a bag of wafers, only to be hungry again moments later? All that work your body put in to digest this vitamin-free food, only to find that there are no vitamins in it? Yes, it’s going to tell you to try again and eat something else.

The problem for many of us, is that because it’s so much easier and quicker to grab another processed food item instead of cooking.. we try to fix the problem with something that’d only make it worse. All the while scarfing down the calories, forgetting all the nutrients, and packing on the pounds while we’re at it. The convenience, the fact that very few of us know how some foods are cooked, let alone what the foods SHOULD consist of, has allowed us to eat much more with much less effort. Is that a bad thing? If you know how to moderate yourself, of course not. Many of us, apparently, don’t.

Having said all that (2600 words, and STILL not a record for me), I have to say this. I know we all lead busy lives. If you managed to read all of this in one sitting, I give you kudos – I couldn’t even write it all in one sitting. We have to scale back in a major way if we want to be healthy. In writing this, I’ve decided to break this up into a series, continuing it on with how I managed to wean my family off of processed foods and what it’s taught me about how my body interacts with food, and how it wants to interact with food. Big difference between the two.

So, keep your eyes peeled for the breakdown of this topic, and the continuation… that I’m opting to call Food 101. I look forward to your thoughts below!

Food 101: The Problem With Processed Foods is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part I: What Is Processed Food?
2. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part II: The Change In Food Manufacturing
3. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part IV: The Conclusion

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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: black girls guide to weight loss, calorie counting, mentality, overeating, processed foods, saving money

In my opinion, if you’re an emotional eater, then your emotional eating and sugar addiction go hand in hand. Sugar addiction exists because of the feeling that ingesting sugar gives you, and the amount that you ingest will increase each time you eat and don’t get the same kind of feeling you were hoping for. The chase of that high comes coupled with a slew of calories, which is why it can become a weight issue, as well. An emotional eater can also be an extremely active person and, therefore, not have any weight issues.

It wasn’t until I failed – several times – that I realized that I simply cannot eat processed foods. Call it – or me – whatever you will, I know my limitations… and they include products created by companies who have millions of dollars invested in creating formulas (because they aren’t recipes) that the public cannot resist. The best thing I could’ve done for myself, in this instance, was making myself aware of my limitations. This is one of them. They simply trigger a part of me that I have no desire to test to determine whether or not I’m truly beyond it.

That being said, when I saw that SparkPeople has an article about beating and defeating a sugar addiction, I was overjoyed. A lot of this outlines what I endured and how I overcame my own addiction, and I think I may even add to this later on in the future. It’s really a dope start.

From SparkPeople:

Week 1: Identify Sugar and Where It’s Hiding
The first step in conquering your sugar habit is to rid your pantry and refrigerator of added sugar. Some things (think ice cream, cookies and candy) are obvious, but most of us need to look closer at where the sugar in our diets is coming from. This will require a bit of label reading in the beginning, but after a while, it will become easier.

In order to cut back on hidden or added sugar, scan the ingredients list of a food label. If you see any of the following terms listed, then sugar has been added to the product in one form or another and it is best left on the shelf at the store—especially if that sugar shows up within the first five ingredients of any food product.

This first week is about awareness. Reading labels before you buy—or bite. How many of your favorite foods contain hidden sugars in the top of their ingredients lists?

Once you have identified the sources of sugar in your diet, clean out your kitchen. Throw out or donate all of the products that contain hidden or added sugars, including any juice, soda, candy, sweets and seemingly healthy snacks like granola bars, fruit and grain bars, instant oatmeal and sports drinks. This may sound drastic, but stay with me!

Remember, you don’t have to throw away everything that is sweet! Natural sugar, like the kind you find in whole fruit, contains vitamins, minerals and fiber, which are lost in the processing of juice. Milk contains naturally occurring sugars, but also provides calcium, vitamin D and protein. So unlike soda, fruit juices and other processed foods, whole fruit and dairy products provide us with essential vitamins and minerals that our bodies need. Be wary of certain fruit- or milk-based products that contain added sugars though: flavored milk, many yogurts, fruits canned or jellied in added sugar or syrups, and the like. Opt for unflavored skim or 1% milk, plain yogurt or Greek yogurt, and whole pieces of fruit. Remember, we are trying to cut out the 151 pounds a year of added sugar, not the naturally occurring sugar found in whole foods.

Week 2: Stock Your Sugar-Free Kitchen
In one week, you’ve probably found lots of sugar in your diet. Some of it may have been obvious, like those frozen waffles or lattes from the local coffee joint. But others might not have been so clear, as sugar tends to lurk in many “diet” foods and lower-fat foods, added by manufacturers to make their low-cal offerings taste better.

Now that you know what to look for (and avoid), it’s time to replace the products you tossed with sugar-free counterparts. For example, replace high-sugar cereals with a whole grain cereal that contains little to no added sugars. Sweeten it naturally with fresh berries or half of a diced banana. Instead of snacking on candy or cookies, reach for a handful of nuts or some raw veggies and hummus. Replace sweetened yogurt with Greek yogurt or plain yogurt. Look back at week one and the foods you used to eat that contained sugar. Can you find no-sugar oatmeal? A healthier snack than a sugar-sweetened smoothie (how about a whole piece of fruit)? A more filling afternoon treat than that sugary “protein bar” (such as peanut butter on whole-grain crackers)?

When choosing a refreshing beverage to quench your thirst, keep in mind that you want to eat your calories, not drink them. Choose ice cold water flavored with a squeeze of fresh lemon or an orange slice. Or flavor unsweetened iced tea with fresh mint, crushed raspberries, or a squeeze of citrus.

One tip to help you avoid added sugar at the supermarket is to shop the perimeter of the grocery store as much as possible. Think about the general layout of a grocery store: The outside is home to fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, dairy products, and whole grain breads and the inside aisles are stocked with cookies, chips, soda, fruit juice, cake mixes, and other processed foods. Spend most of your time on the outside and only go down the inner aisles for specific products, like whole-grain pasta.

Never shop on an empty stomach and always shop with a list. Shopping while hungry can lead you to adding all kinds of snacks and impulse buys to your cart. Meal planning can be a tricky task at first, but following a meal plan is an important part of breaking the sugar addiction. It will help to keep you on track and help prevent stopping for fast food when you don’t have a game plan for dinner. Spend a little time on Sunday afternoons jotting down some meal ideas for throughout the week. Make a list of the food items you will need to make the meals you wrote down and stick to it!

Week 3: Stop the Cravings
Now you really start to put your plan into action. You’ve identified the sources of added sugar in your diet and replaced those foods with healthier and more wholesome alternatives. Your kitchen is now set up for success!

This week’s focus should be on making a conscious effort to avoid sugary foods. When a craving strikes, try going for a walk or simply drinking a glass of water. Take a hot bath or get lost in a good book. Typically any craving will pass if you wait it out long enough. But it’s important to begin understanding the difference between true hunger and food cravings. If you are truly hungry, a handful of nuts or some raw veggies dipped in hummus will sound appetizing, so go ahead and eat one of your healthy snacks. But if you’re craving something sweet or a specific sugary food, use a distraction technique.

The first week of saying no to sugar will be the hardest, but the more diligently you stick to your plan, the better you’ll fare in the end. Even a tiny taste of sugar during this time period can lead to setbacks.

After a couple sugar-free weeks, your sugar threshold will start to decrease and you will find that you no longer crave sugar or sweets as you once did. As with any lifestyle change, the first couple of weeks are the hardest. Eventually, it will become habit to reach for a mint tea or piece of fruit instead of juice and candy.

Week 4: Game Plan for Life
Now that you have yanked that sweet tooth, it’s time to devise a plan to prevent a sugar relapse. Although sugar isn’t necessary for health and it’s perfectly fine if you want to continue avoiding it, it probably isn’t realistic for most people to avoid all forms of sugar forever.

So if you want to allow a little sweetness back into your life, that’s OK. Moderation is key. Don’t let sugar and sweets become a daily habit. Instead, consider them to be special occasion treats only. With your lowered threshold for sweetness, that shouldn’t be too hard. But if you begin to indulge too often or overindulge over a short period of time (such as a weeklong vacation), you could find yourself back in trouble with sugar all over again.

If you slip up, don’t beat yourself up over it. Accept your action and decide to make a better decision next time and move on. Continue to experiment with your new, healthy foods and recipes. You’d be surprised at how many ways you can make treats healthier and use far less sugar than a recipe suggests.

And remember: It generally takes about 3-4 weeks for a new behavior to become habit, the most important thing is to stick with it.

While there are a few parts of this that I don’t agree with – “moderation” being one of them, ignoring what makes people turn to sugar in the first place being another – there are large chunks of this that I believe parallel what I’ve experienced in my own journey. And while I, also, don’t think it’s only a “four week” affair, I think that taking a long, hard look at the steps it takes to defeat a sugar addiction can give many people the leg-up they require to be successful.

Thoughts?

The Four-Week Plan For Curbing Your Sugar Addiction is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. What Is Sugar Addiction?
2. Q&A Wednesday: Sugar, Food Addiction and Backsliding
3. Take The Quiz: Do You Have An Unhealthy Food Addiction?

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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, cravings, emotional eating, meal planning, processed foods, sugar addiction, sugar cravings

How easy would it be for YOU to say no?

I’m always intrigued by people who presume that my weight loss is attributed solely to will power… or that the [at least] two thirds of Americans simply… lack will power, and that’s why they’re overweight. There’s this all-or-nothingness that hangs over the concept.

No, really – you just need to tell yourself “No,” and then you’ll be better able to handle your diet.

Think about that: the only reason why two thirds of Americans are overweight is the fact that they don’t have this uncanny ability to say “No” that the other third of Americans appear to have. How silly does that sound? If anything, with looking at those numbers, you’d think actually having will power is the anomaly… right? Or does it just make more sense to keep minimizing how difficult it is to lose weight and mock people for not being able to do it?

I think of my own personal experiences with food, and I’ve got to tell you…the first, at least, 100lbs that I lost had nothing to do with having will power. It wasn’t about some ability to “just say no.” It wasn’t even about portion control at first. It certainly wasn’t about some silly diet. It was 100% about what I was purchasing at the grocery. It was about what I allowed myself to have around me. Period.

And some might say, “Well, that’s about self-discipline, isn’t it?” I’d have to say yes, but then again it’s easy to realize what you need to purchase, and go to the grocery to act on that list and make the appropriate purchases. You go in with a plan and you come out a winner. It is another thing entirely when hunger attacks, and you have to fight the urge to get up and leave the house for fast food.

And again, you might say, “well surely that part is about self-discipline, yes?” Again, I’d have to say yes.  If you’re experiencing hunger pangs, you absolutely do have to fight against yourself to make the better, safer, healthier decision. You do have to fight and tell yourself “no, don’t get in that car!” You do have to tell yourself, once you’re already in the car, “Nooooooooo, don’t hit that drive thru!” and let’s face it: If you’re already in the drive-thru, you might’ve already lost the war.

But if so much about weight loss is will power… where is the myth?

The myth is that will power is the key. It’s not. If you’re not used to telling yourself no… where are you going to develop that herculean strength? If you’re not used to turning down treats and ignoring cravings, where and how do you start? How can we ensure success? You learn self-discipline… you don’t just all-of-a-sudden find this giant mass of it within you. It’s a growth process. That stupid “all or nothing” mentality doesn’t apply.

If I’m in a household full of processed foods – foods studied, tested and engineered for “maximum flavor intensity” and “you-can’t-eat-just-one-ability” and “oh-my-gosh-this-is-so-good-I-can’t-stop-eating-ity” – it’s supposed to make sense that I can easily say no? That’s why I believe the first step starts at the grocery store. That’s where I first developed my ability to say “No.” That’s where I first realized that I needed to be able to use the two feet I was born with, and walk away from certain aisles… and each time I was successful, I felt a little freer. Just a little… but a little was enough.

Before long, I was learning about food and improving my ability to say no, simply because I was realizing what was in everything. It certainly wasn’t food, and I wanted to develop a better relationship with food – not chemicals – so I spent a fair amount of time casting the chemicals out. I’m still developing my relationship with food – I don’t know that this is a process with a finite ending to it – but I can tell you one thing: I’m intuitive enough that I can dine outside of my home and, within two bites, turn down a dish that I think isn’t homemade or is simply poorly made. I’m not going to be hoodwinked into redeveloping bad habits because someone used chemicals in their food. I’ll pass.

If a company spends $30 million on studies for creating the “perfect spaghetti sauce,” and spends years on taste testing for the perfect balance… then guess what – they’re investing all of that money and doing all of that taste testing to find out which sauce will please the majority of the public. (Note: This will almost always be a sauce full of sugar and salt. The sugar makes it pleasing on the tongue and in the brain. The salt makes you want to use more of it.) It makes sense, then, that the majority of the public would be able to say no to the sauce? I’m confused.

The myth of will power is simply that we give it far too much credit. Self-discipline, in my mind, can only be achieved when the playing field is leveled – that means, no chemical interference – and if you never take those steps to make that happen, you are going to struggle. Does that mean that it’s smooth sailing after that? Of course not. There are lots of bumps in the road but for me, the real progress in developing my self-discipline began there.

What about you? What struggles do you face with developing self-discipline? How did you develop yours? Let’s hear it!

The Myth of Will Power is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Power of A Twenty Dollar Bill
2. Is The Idea of Motivation Merely A Myth?
3. The Myth of The Food Desert: Where The Root Went Wrong

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 17 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chemicals, clean eating, Healthy Eating, mentality, myths, overeating, processed foods, self-discipline, society, struggles, will power

Meet Robert Lustig, MD. He’s kind of a big deal.

Dr. Lustig is a childhood obesity expert… and recently, the NY Times posted a write-up about his presentation – a lecture given a few years back that has garnered almost a million views – to further detail what makes his argument so compelling.

Now, I’ve seen the video several times – believe it or not, I actually have it on DVD and watch it regularly to remind myself – so I’m very familiar with what he’s talking about, here. Of particular interest to me – and should be of extreme interest to those of us with type 2 diabetes – is where, at a little past an hour in, Dr. Lustig talks about the reversal of type 2 diabetes. Not living with diabetes, but reversing the condition.

Who, out there, has a doctor who explained that process to them?

Earlier this month, Gary Taubes – writer of “What If It’s All A Big Fat Lie?” as well as the book Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health – penned the aforementioned article, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Taubes is a relatively predictible source of anti-carbohydrate lifestyling and has, if I’m not mistaken, written a book titled Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It as well as proclaimed his alliance with Team Atkins. I’m simply not surprised to see his name in the byline.

That being said, the question that Taubes’ article asks in the title – is sugar toxic? – is one that I can easily respond to with a resounding YES. Before I get to that, there are a few parts of Taubes’ article that I’d like to highlight, for those of you who’ll see the fact that Taubes’ article is 9-some-odd pages long and decide to turn away from it… like I almost did.

At least I’m honest.

This development is recent and borders on humorous. In the early 1980s, high-fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in sodas and other products in part because refined sugar then had the reputation as a generally noxious nutrient. (“Villain in Disguise?” asked a headline in this paper in 1977, before answering in the affirmative.) High-fructose corn syrup was portrayed by the food industry as a healthful alternative, and that’s how the public perceived it. It was also cheaper than sugar, which didn’t hurt its commercial prospects. Now the tide is rolling the other way, and refined sugar is making a commercial comeback as the supposedly healthful alternative to this noxious corn-syrup stuff. “Industry after industry is replacing their product with sucrose and advertising it as such — ‘No High-Fructose Corn Syrup,’ ” Nestle notes.

Please keep this in mind the next time you watch TV and see a stupid soft drink or juice commercial saying “We use real sugar!” in it. It’s a brand-new day when table sugar is lauded as a “healthy alternative.” Seriously.

The conventional wisdom has long been that the worst that can be said about sugars of any kind is that they cause tooth decay and represent “empty calories” that we eat in excess because they taste so good.By this logic, sugar-sweetened beverages (or H.F.C.S.-sweetened beverages, as the Sugar Association prefers they are called) are bad for us not because there’s anything particularly toxic about the sugar they contain but just because people consume too many of them.

Those organizations that now advise us to cut down on our sugar consumption — the Department of Agriculture, for instance, in its recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans, or the American Heart Association in guidelines released in September 2009 (of which Lustig was a co-author) — do so for this reason. Refined sugar and H.F.C.S. don’t come with any protein, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants or fiber, and so they either displace other more nutritious elements of our diet or are eaten over and above what we need to sustain our weight, and this is why we get fatter.

[...]

Lustig’s argument, however, is not about the consumption of empty calories — and biochemists have made the same case previously, though not so publicly. It is that sugar has unique characteristics, specifically in the way the human body metabolizes the fructose in it, that may make it singularly harmful, at least if consumed in sufficient quantities.

The phrase Lustig uses when he describes this concept is “isocaloric but not isometabolic.” This means we can eat 100 calories of glucose (from a potato or bread or other starch) or 100 calories of sugar (half glucose and half fructose), and they will be metabolized differently and have a different effect on the body. The calories are the same, but the metabolic consequences are quite different.

This should sound familiar.

The fructose component of sugar and H.F.C.S. is metabolized primarily by the liver, while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every cell in the body. Consuming sugar (fructose and glucose) means more work for the liver than if you consumed the same number of calories of starch (glucose). And if you take that sugar in liquid form — soda or fruit juices — the fructose and glucose will hit the liver more quickly than if you consume them, say, in an apple (or several apples, to get what researchers would call the equivalent dose of sugar). The speed with which the liver has to do its work will also affect how it metabolizes the fructose and glucose.

In animals, or at least in laboratory rats and mice, it’s clear that if the fructose hits the liver in sufficient quantity and with sufficient speed, the liver will convert much of it to fat. This apparently induces a condition known as insulin resistance, which is now considered the fundamental problem in obesity, and the underlying defect in heart disease and in the type of diabetes, type 2, that is common to obese and overweight individuals. It might also be the underlying defect in many cancers.

If what happens in laboratory rodents also happens in humans, and if we are eating enough sugar to make it happen, then we are in trouble.

The highlighted part of this is another reason why it makes very little sense to ditch all fruit in an effort to ditch sugar. Aside from the fact that fruit is a source of nutrition, there’s also the fact that in a lot of fruits, the amount of sugar is nowhere near as much as what’s found in modern sources of sugar.

The last time an agency of the federal government looked into the question of sugar and health in any detail was in 2005, in a report by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies. The authors of the report acknowledged that plenty of evidence suggested that sugar could increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes — even raising LDL cholesterol, known as the “bad cholesterol”—– but did not consider the research to be definitive. There was enough ambiguity, they concluded, that they couldn’t even set an upper limit on how much sugar constitutes too much. Referring back to the 2005 report, an Institute of Medicine report released last fall reiterated, “There is a lack of scientific agreement about the amount of sugars that can be consumed in a healthy diet.”

This makes me think of the article I brought up last week, about egyptian mummies having clogged arteries. Perhaps… never mind.

What we have to keep in mind, says Walter Glinsmann, the F.D.A. administrator who was the primary author on the 1986 report and who now is an adviser to the Corn Refiners Association, is that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup might be toxic, as Lustig argues, but so might any substance if it’s consumed in ways or in quantities that are unnatural for humans. The question is always at what dose does a substance go from being harmless to harmful? How much do we have to consume before this happens?

When Glinsmann and his F.D.A. co-authors decided no conclusive evidence demonstrated harm at the levels of sugar then being consumed, they estimated those levels at 40 pounds per person per year beyond what we might get naturally in fruits and vegetables — 40 pounds per person per year of “added sugars” as nutritionists now call them. This is 200 calories per day of sugar, which is less than the amount in a can and a half of Coca-Cola or two cups of apple juice. If that’s indeed all we consume, most nutritionists today would be delighted, including Lustig.

Let me see if I can put this in a different perspective. A teaspoon of sugar is 15 calories. That means you’d be somewhere around 13 teaspoons of sugar in a day in order to make sure you didn’t go over the 200 calories per day limit (15 calories x 13 tablespoons = 195 calories.) There are 210 calories of sugar in a simple 20oz of pepsi.

Couple that with the amount of sugar hidden – or not so hidden – in our processed foods, salad dressing, condiments and fruits (canned fruit, anyone?), you’re quite possibly overdoing it on the sugar.

In the early 20th century, many of the leading authorities on diabetes in North America and Europe (including Frederick Banting, who shared the 1923 Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin) suspected that sugar causes diabetes based on the observation that the disease was rare in populations that didn’t consume refined sugar and widespread in those that did. In 1924, Haven Emerson, director of the institute of public health at Columbia University, reported that diabetes deaths in New York City had increased as much as 15-fold since the Civil War years, and that deaths increased as much as fourfold in some U.S. cities between 1900 and 1920 alone. This coincided, he noted, with an equally significant increase in sugar consumption — almost doubling from 1890 to the early 1920s — with the birth and subsequent growth of the candy and soft-drink industries.

Moving on:

Until Lustig came along, the last time an academic forcefully put forward the sugar-as-toxin thesis was in the 1970s, when John Yudkin, a leading authority on nutrition in the United Kingdom, published a polemic on sugar called “Sweet and Dangerous.” Through the 1960s Yudkin did a series of experiments feeding sugar and starch to rodents, chickens, rabbits, pigs and college students. He found that the sugar invariably raised blood levels of triglycerides (a technical term for fat), which was then, as now, considered a risk factor for heart disease. Sugar also raised insulin levels in Yudkin’s experiments, which linked sugar directly to type 2 diabetes. Few in the medical community took Yudkin’s ideas seriously, largely because he was also arguing that dietary fat and saturated fat were harmless. This set Yudkin’s sugar hypothesis directly against the growing acceptance of the idea, prominent to this day, that dietary fat was the cause of heart disease, a notion championed by the University of Minnesota nutritionist Ancel Keys.

Onward, again:

Rather the context of the science changed: physicians and medical authorities came to accept the idea that a condition known as metabolic syndrome is a major, if not the major, risk factor for heart disease and diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimate that some 75 million Americans have metabolic syndrome. For those who have heart attacks, metabolic syndrome will very likely be the reason.The first symptom doctors are told to look for in diagnosing metabolic syndrome is an expanding waistline. This means that if you’re overweight, there’s a good chance you have metabolic syndrome, and this is why you’re more likely to have a heart attack or become diabetic (or both) than someone who’s not. Although lean individuals, too, can have metabolic syndrome, and they are at greater risk of heart disease and diabetes than lean individuals without it.

Just as an extremely superficial side note, this further highlights the fact that cutting the sugar causes your waistline to shrink.

By the early 2000s, researchers studying fructose metabolism had established certain findings unambiguously and had well-established biochemical explanations for what was happening. Feed animals enough pure fructose or enough sugar, and their livers convert the fructose into fat — the saturated fatty acid, palmitate, to be precise, that supposedly gives us heart disease when we eat it, by raising LDL cholesterol. The fat accumulates in the liver, and insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome follow.

Michael Pagliassotti, a Colorado State University biochemist who did many of the relevant animal studies in the late 1990s, says these changes can happen in as little as a week if the animals are fed sugar or fructose in huge amounts — 60 or 70 percent of the calories in their diets. They can take several months if the animals are fed something closer to what humans (in America) actually consume — around 20 percent of the calories in their diet. Stop feeding them the sugar, in either case, and the fatty liver promptly goes away, and with it the insulin resistance.

This goes back to Lustig’s point, about an hour and 10 minutes into the lecture, about reversal of type 2 diabetes.

Diabetics, have your doctors discussed this with you? No? Oh, okay.

Moving on, though.

One of the diseases that increases in incidence with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome is cancer. This is why I said earlier that insulin resistance may be a fundamental underlying defect in many cancers, as it is in type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is not controversial. What it means is that you are more likely to get cancer if you’re obese or diabetic than if you’re not, and you’re more likely to get cancer if you have metabolic syndrome than if you don’t.

My totally non-scientific opinion on this topic here? Look at the vessels through which a lot of sugars – the item that causes insulin resistance – are served… and that’s chemical-laden processed foods.

Thoughts?

The [Extremely Thorough and Rather Compelling] Case Against Sugar is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Case Against Soft Drinks
2. The Case Against Agave Nectar
3. Do YOU Drink 93 Packets Of Sugar A Day?

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, 2011. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ancel keys, bad cholesterol, cholesterol, dietary fat, fat, FDA, fiber, fructose, fruit, gary taubes, glucose, good calories bad calories, heart disease, hfcs, high fructose corn syrup, john yudkin, ketchup, liver, metabolic syndrome, nytimes, pepsi sucks, pop, processed foods, robert lustig, salad dressing, soda, sodapop, soft drinks, sucrose, sugar, sugar addiction, sugar the bitter truth, triglycerides, type 2 diabetes, usda, what if its all a big fat lie, why we get fat

A little backstory:

On September 14, the Corn Refiner’s Association said in a press release posted on its website that it has asked the Food and Drug Administration to allow manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, to use the name “corn sugar” instead of high fructose corn syrup.

The FDA considers HFCS as natural, even though critics point out that this sweetener consisting of both glucose and fructose is in reality, not found in corn.  This product is made by enzymatically converting some portion of glucose, which is derived from corn starch, into fructose.

The resulting high fructose corn syrup, which is commonly used in a variety of processed foods and beverages, consists of 55 percent fructose and 42 percent glucose, or 42 percent fructose and 53 percent glucose.

Use of high fructose corn syrup has been linked to an increased risk of overweight and obesity, among other things.  [source]

Read the emboldened paragraph one more time, then read the following:

High fructose corn syrup may be labeled natural when synthetic fixing agents do not come into contact with it during manufacturing, said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), fuelling further debate on the controversial sweetener.

The decision, written to the Corn Refiners Association and considered a backtrack for the FDA by organizations opposed to the ingredient, followed a meeting that was prompted by a FoodNavigator-USA.com article published in April this year.

At that time, Geraldine June, supervisor of the product evaluation and labeling team at FDA’s Office of Nutrition, Labeling and Dietary Supplements, responded to an inquiry made by FoodNavigator-USA.com saying “we would object to the use of the term ‘natural’ on a product containing HFCS”, because it is produced using synthetic fixing agents.

However, June has now said that when HFCS is made using the process presented by Archer Daniels Midland Company, it can be considered natural.

[...]

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is derived from corn, and used primarily to sweeten beverages. The trade group Corn Refiners Association and numerous industry members have long maintained that HFCS is a natural sweetener.

“This is very good news, and makes it clear once again that HFCS is at a parity with sugar,” said Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association.

“HFCS contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients or color additives and meets FDA’s requirements for the use of the term ‘natural.’ HFCS, like table sugar and honey, is natural. It is made from corn, a natural grain product.” [source]

So, apparently, high fructose corn syrup wants to go into witness protection, since everyone’s hunting for it. I get it. Okay.

Just to make sure that we, here at BGG2WL, don’t lose perspective of the issue at hand… I’m going to say the following: the Corn Refiners Association is correct.

[insert gasp]

They’re right! They’re right, they’re right, they’re right. HFCS and table sugar both cause the same problems, create the same dependencies, and [when consumed in excess] do the exact same damage. HFCS wants to attach itself to cane sugar because cane sugar doesn’t suffer the same demonization as high fructose corn syrup. Cane sugar has been “normalized,” so to speak. It’s that simple. They’re hoping to just be blended in as “a sugar” like the other guys.. but they’re not just like the other guys. The other guys aren’t everywhere like high fructose corn syrup.

HFCS is an extremely cheap way for manufacturers to ensure that you’ll like their products just a little more.. so they add as much of it in their food as you can stand. It’s that simple. From Appetite for Profit:

So now, the public has decided that HFCS is simply the wrong sweetener. As a result of this demonizing, we are now in the ridiculous situation where food companies are falling over each other to remove HFCS from their products, slap on a natural label, and get brownie points for helping Americans eat better. Exhibit A, Pepsi Natural:

Pepsi Natural is made with all-natural ingredients, including lightly sparkling water, natural sugar, natural caramel and kola nut extract.

Only Big Food would find a way to make a product full of refined white sugar (which at one time was also demonized) seem like a healthy alternative. It’s like I always say, the food industry is very good at taking criticism and turning it into a marketing opportunity.

It’s not that HFCS is the wrong sweetener… it’s the fact that America’s sweet tooth – period – is problematic. As I’ve written before:

That’s the problem with sugar. In most cases – the way it’s used often results in there being very little to blunt the impact of the sugar on your system, thus resulting in it having the same effect as an overabundance of high fructose corn syrup in your daily diet. I won’t even get on the affects that an abundance of high fructose corn syrup, an abundance of sugar and a lack of fiber can have on our appearance. The difference between sugar and high fructose corn syrup is simply that high fructose corn syrup is in almost every processed food item, and almost every processed food item is devoid of fiber. [source]

People who avoid high fructose corn syrup without taking into consideration the fact that they should be avoiding sugar altogether(and, in a way, processed foods) as best as they can are missing the mark. They’re also buying into that cycle that convinces consumers to continuously chase “health claims” on food labels. You know, the ones that say “no trans fat!!!!!!!” but still have “partially hydrogenated soybean oil” on the side? Yeah, those.

Click here to read more about the difference between high fructose corn syrup and table sugar.

The reality of the issue is… the FDA will most likely grant the request and life will go on with people eating much more sugar than they should… that is, until they start realizing that getting rid of the boxes and reheatables and other crap is the way to go.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Wants New Name: Why You Shouldn’t Care 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. Q&A Wednesday: High Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Table Sugar

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Healthy Eating, high fructose corn syrup, processed foods

A full plate of clean foods!

Q: How can you live a clean eating lifestyle, when those around you aren’t doing the same?

As I’ve written before, I encountered this, too. Running into the issue of either having people eat all your food before you get to eat it, not being allotted enough space in the fridge, or never being able to cook in the kitchen… ’cause someone else is always there. I’ve been there. It sucks.

You really have to be a super problem solver with this one, though. Work backwards from the solution, though:

“I want to eat healthier. That means I’ll have to buy lots of produce. This means I’ll have to keep it in the fridge. Can I ask for a little space in the produce part of the fridge? If I get a small little space, can I buy only enough produce/food for a week and just go grocery shopping every week? Hmmm…

…if that doesn’t work, can I purchase a little fridge of my own on ebay or craigslist just for produce, and put my meats in the freezer?”

There’s also this: I find that when the people around you see how easy you make it to eat better, they want to jump on the bandwagon… because having you cook the healthy, good tasting food is even less effort than them cooking the processed foods they probably feel guilty about.They tend to give you the leeway if you opt to take charge (provided it doesn’t taste like crap.) They may not do it in front of others, but corner the most important person in the house one on one first then everyone else tends to fall in line.

Give that a shot, and if you need more suggestions, come back.

Q: How do you choose a proper goal weight? Is there a magic number or a feeling? Is it the BMI range?

I remember when I was a size 26.. I said to myself “Man, just let me get down to a size 16 and flatten my stomach out..” and once I got to a size 16, I looked nothing like what I thought it’d look like. I didn’t realize this, but the number on the back of the dress doesn’t dictate the way my body would look underneath. Being a size 8 doesn’t mean I’d have nice hips, a flat tummy, or even a nice proper sitting booty. I realized I still had so far to go to get to where I want, that the numbers didn’t matter. And by numbers, I mean weight, BMI, dress size… none of ‘em mattered because none of them dictated what I’d look like naked.

And let’s be real. We all want to look good naked. If we just wanted to look fly under a hot dress, we’d be wearing some ridiculous magical contraption. I’m just sayin’.

My honest advice to you is to first take a good hard look at yourself naked. If it invokes tears, confusion, frustration… that’s ok. That’s realization setting in that maybe you have more work to do than you anticipated. (And I only suggest going this route because this is what I did.) But look at yourself. Be conscious of what you look like. Then be conscious of what you want to look like. Then hold that image in your head as you sweat your curls out.

Q: When and where do you restart after an injury?

If your physician has given you the OK to get active again, you start slow. You don’t want your first day to consist of you going just as hard as you were before your injury, and re-injuring yourself, right? Baby steps. If you start out like a novice Thursday and find that you can handle it, then when Friday’s workout comes? Just add to your load. Keep going at that pace, and you’ll sooner or later figure out where it starts getting tough.. and that’s your true starting point. But your body definitely deserves the time it takes to figure out just how much you can handle in the beginning.

As far as when you start? You start yesterday!

Q: What foods can I eat, and which ones should I avoid for clean eating and breastfeeding?

The good thing about clean eating is that since you’re eating the foods that the Earth makes for you, you’re taking in a lot of wonderful nutrients and passing them on to your little one. I’d be much more concerned if you were living on a processed diet than I’d be on a clean one. I think your best bet with this, first and foremost, is to consult with your doctor. She can take into account your family history, potential allergens, and other issues that might arise from your new lifestyle.

But if the question is what would I avoid from the jump? Foods that are high in fiber – broccoli, spinach, the average leafy green, etc – may make the baby gassy, but that’s simply something to be aware of. Fish, overall, I’d skip.. I’m not a huge seafood lover at all but this is hard for some. I’d personally limit the amount of dairy I took in. I’d avoid bagged produce (like salad bags) and deli meats (like, your average bologna and salami.)

You ever notice how you eat some foods, and find that your body smells like those foods later? I remember when I used to eat McDonalds… if I’d sweat later, I’d smell like sweet & sour sauce. (No, really. Gross, right?) Your breast milk suffers the same fate. So… don’t overdo it on the onions, garlic, asparagus or anything else that smells horrible when used excessively. If you think the smell (after having passed through your system) is bad, the taste is even worse. Perhaps the Mommies can comment on and offer suggestions for this one?

Keep those questions coming, and I’ll have ‘em ready for next week! Have thoughts? Let me hear ‘em in the comments!

Q&A Wednesday Clean Eating Style is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: Clean Eating Challenge Style
2. Q&A Wednesday: Is Clean Eating An Eating Disorder?
3. Q&A Wednesday: What IS Clean Eating, Anyway?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bmi, breastfeeding, clean eating, exercise, foods, Healthy Eating, processed foods, working out

Hi Erika, wonderful blog and interesting read. However, I think this new HFCS paranoia is causing people to over look and not understand the real problem. Sadly, I gather the same misconception in this blog & please correct me if I’m wrong.

One major factor to insulin resistance & type II diabetes is large consumption of fructose. HFCS & all other simple sugars contain large quantities of it. (I tried to get exact ratios but its sounds like most are 1 part fructose: 1 part another compound.) And the same holds true for some versions of HFCS. So swapping any product for the sucrose or fructose version instead of HFCS will probably gain no benefit. (ie. soda with sugar ).

So why not write a rant about “Reasons to forgo food with added sugar!”?

BTW, I don’t want anyone to think this comment means to forgo eating fruit. Fruit is nutritionally dense unlike most processed food.

Well, why not, eh?

The post to which she refers is my post regarding the advertisements in favor of high fructose corn syrup.While the purpose of that post was to give an answer to the unasked question those advertisements posed (which, basically, was “how can you hate or avoid something you know so little about?), the commenter poses a very important point that, I think, deserves a lot more time than a simple comment.

To be honest, I don’t know whether there’s much purpose to a “reasons to forgo food with added sugar” rant, simply because it breaks down to an understanding of “natural sugar” against “processed sugar.”

Okay, here goes.

In nature, the primary place you find sugar is in fruit (there’s also honey, but we’ll save that for another day.) The sugar in fruit is… fructose.

Sidebar: This, I presume, is why people always ask if they should “stop eating fruit,” mixing the anti-high fructose corn syrup message up with the understanding that fructose is a “natural sugar found in fruit.” There’s a big difference between the two.

Whenever you find fruit in nature, it is paired with two things: nutrients and fiber. Emphasis on the fiber. The fiber within the fruit blunts the impact of the sugar on your system and helps cleanse your insides out at the same time.

I always laugh when I talk about sugar, because I think about how white table sugar is produced. When I first came to Miami to visit, I stayed with an old friend and her hubby. I remember sitting on a chair, and seeing her walk up toward me with a long stick in her hand. She sat down next to me, took out a knife, cut a chunk off the stick and bit into it. I’m like, “What on Earth is that?”

“Sugar cane. This is where sugar comes from.”

“And you’re just eating it like that? Your teeth are gonna be sitting next to you in a minute.”

She definitely laughed long and hard at me, and kept on munching away. Aside from the numerous violations I committed in tryin’ to tell her how to do her, I was wrong for a number of reasons.

Consider how table sugar is created:

“Once you get into sugar, you are in sugar for a lifetime,” Archbold said on a recent morning. “People think we just crush the cane and turn it into sugar, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.”

However, he stresses that the end result is a natural product that is made from nothing but the cane.

From a metal catwalk high above the mill’s floor, Archbold watches as sugar cane is brought in from the field by truck. It’s unloaded 25 tons at a time and fed into the highly industrialized computer-controlled mill. It’s mechanically shredded by huge metal cane knives. Next it’s milled, which means water is added as the cane is mashed.

The purpose of the mill is to extract the sucrose from the cane. A stalk of cane is 13 percent sucrose and 11 percent fiber. The rest is water.

The liquid sucrose is separated from the fiber. Then the raw cane juice is heated, filtered, purified and the water is evaporated. What’s left is a sweet, golden syrup. After more boiling, a rich mixture of crystals and molasses forms. The molasses is separated from the crystals, then the sugar crystals are dried and cooled before packaging. [source: From Cane Field To Your Table...]

The difference between table sugar and the cane from which the sugar comes? There’s no possible way I’m getting as much sugar from chewing through (and swallowing) all that fiber as if I were simply swallowing a tablespoon of sugar. Why? Because with everything else in the sugar cane, I’ll fill up much quicker. There’s no possible way a tablespoon of sugar carries the nutrients that a stalk of sugar cane. Why? Because everything was filtered OUT Of the sugar cane to make the table sugar.. including the nutrients. Lastly, the fiber outright ensures that I’m not going to wreck havoc on my system. A tablespoon of table sugar cannot do that… and it comes from sugar cane.

The sweet part is separated from the part of the food that’s supposed to protect you from the element that, by itself, is harmful to your system. So no – most teas, coffees and juices with sugar added to them have the same effect. Baked goods made with “refined” flours (which go through a similar process, resulting in a flour devoid of fiber) have the same effect. Because of that fiber, it protects not only my insides, but my teeth as well. Something that, again, you won’t find in your average sugary item.

That’s the problem with sugar. In most cases – the way it’s used often results in there being very little to blunt the impact of the sugar on your system, thus resulting in it having the same effect as an overabundance of high fructose corn syrup in your daily diet. I won’t even get on the affects that an abundance of high fructose corn syrup, an abundance of sugar and a lack of fiber can have on our appearance. The difference between sugar and high fructose corn syrup is simply that high fructose corn syrup is in almost every processed food item, and almost every processed food item is devoid of fiber.

Why is it devoid of fiber? Simple. Fiber expires quickly, and food manufacturers need their products to be able to sit on shelves for an extended period of time.

So, to address the comment fully (in over a thousand words, with my long-winded self), unnatural forms of sugar are, flat out, unnatural… and our bodies cannot handle them in mass quantities. Do yourself a favor and reevaluate how much of it you have to have… and your body will thank you for it!

Q&A Wednesday: High Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Table Sugar is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. High Fructose Corn Syrup Wants New Name: Why You Shouldn’t Care
2. High Fructose Corn Syrup: What’s The Big Deal?
3. Servings of High Fructose Corn Syrup Deemed More Harmful Than We Thought

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: carbohydrates, clean eating, high fructose corn syrup, nutrition, processed foods, sugar, table sugar

WASHINGTON — Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, will announce a five-year plan on Thursday to make thousands of its packaged foods lower in unhealthy salts, fats and sugars, and to drop prices on fruits and vegetables.

The initiative came out of discussions the company has been having with Michelle Obama, the first lady, who will attend the announcement in Washington and has made healthy eating and reducing childhood obesity the centerpiece of her agenda. Aides say it is the first time Mrs. Obama has thrown her support behind the work of a single company.

The plan, similar to efforts by other companies and to public health initiatives by New York City, sets specific targets for lowering sodium, trans fats and added sugars in a broad array of foods — including rice, soups, canned beans, salad dressings and snacks like potato chips — packaged under the company’s house brand, Great Value.

In interviews previewing the announcement, Wal-Mart and White House officials said the company was also pledging to press its major food suppliers, like Kraft, to follow its example. Wal-Mart does not disclose how much of its sales come from its house brand. But Kraft says about 16 percent of its global sales are through Wal-Mart.

In addition, Wal-Mart will work to eliminate any extra cost to customers for healthy foods made with whole grains, said Leslie Dach, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for corporate affairs. By lowering prices on fresh fruits and vegetables, Wal-Mart says it will cut into its own profits but hopes to make up for it in sales volume. “This is not about asking the farmers to accept less for their crops,” he said.

The changes will be introduced slowly, over a period of five years, to give the company time to overcome technical hurdles and to give consumers time to adjust to foods’ new taste, Mr. Dach said. “It doesn’t do you any good to have healthy food if people don’t eat it.”

[...]

But Wal-Mart is pushing only so far. The company’s proposed sugar reductions are “much less aggressive” than they could be, Mr. Jacobson said, noting that Wal-Mart is not proposing to tackle the problem of added sugars in soft drinks, which experts regard as a major contributor to childhood obesity. And he said it would be “nice if Wal-Mart’s timeline were speedier” than five years.

Wal-Mart has been planning the initiative for more than a year; the effort was in its early stages when Ms. Obama joined it. The first lady’s appearance with Mr. Dach and other Wal-Mart executives when they make the announcement at a community center in Washington’s Anacostia neighborhood on Thursday morning is out of the ordinary and a prominent effort by the administration to spur further moves toward healthier food.

“We’re not just aligning ourselves with one company; we’re aligning ourselves with people who are stepping up as leaders to take this country to a healthier place,” said Sam Kass, the White House chef who doubles as Mrs. Obama’s top adviser on matters of nutrition.

“There’s no qualms about that,” Mr. Kass said. “The only question that we have is do we think this is a significant step in that direction, and do we think there is a method in place to track progress, and do we think this will have the impact we are pushing for.”

Over the last year, Mr. Kass and other aides to the first lady have spent countless hours in meetings with company officials; both Mr. Kass and Mr. Dach said Mrs. Obama pushed the company to hold itself accountable by issuing public progress reports. The Partnership for a Healthier America, a nonprofit organization that works with the first lady on her Let’s Move initiative to reduce childhood obesity, will monitor the company’s progress.

The changes will not happen overnight. Wal-Mart is pledging to reduce sodium by 25 percent, eliminate industrially added trans fats and reduce added sugars by 10 percent by 2015. Its other plans are less specific. In addition to proposing to lower prices on healthy foods, Wal-Mart is planning to develop criteria, and ultimately a seal, that will go on truly healthier foods, as measured by their sodium, fat and sugar content.

The company says it will also address the problem of “food deserts” — a dearth of grocery stores selling fresh produce in rural and underserved urban areas like Anacostia — by building more stores. And it will increase charitable contributions for nutrition programs.

A range of studies has shown that low-income people, especially those who receive food stamps, face special dietary challenges because eating healthy costs more and healthier food is harder to get in their neighborhoods. James D. Weill, president of Food Research and Action Center, an organization that has discussed the problem with Wal-Mart, said the company  recognized “how much hunger and food insecurity there is in the country.”

Mr. Dach said the lower prices and food reformulations were motivated by the demands of Wal-Mart’s own customers. He said the company believed that, if it was successful, the price reductions would save Americans who shop at Wal-Mart approximately $1 billion a year on fresh fruits and vegetables alone.

“Our customers have always told us, ’We don’t understand why whole wheat macaroni and cheese costs more than regular macaroni and cheese,’ ” Mr. Dach said, adding, “We’ve always said that we don’t think the Wal-Mart shopper should have to choose between a product that is healthier for them and what they can afford.”

Mr. Jacobson, of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that reducing sodium was the trickiest of the food reformulation challenges. Sodium is in every food category, and it is more difficult to replace than the partly hydrogenated oil that composes trans fats, or than sugars, because there are easy substitutes for oils and sugars. But sodium, which contributes to hypertension and raises the risk of heart disease, must simply be reduced, which can greatly alter taste.

Mr. Dach said the company had yet to conquer its reformulation challenges, and described the goals as both aspirational and realistic. “We think it’s a realistic target, but it’s aspirational in the sense that we can’t tell you today how it’s all going to get done,” he said.

My thoughts on this are so long… that if I posted them today, I don’t think anyone would read them.

I would like to know your thoughts, though. How do you feel about Walmart’s new initiatives?

What Do You Think? Walmart Making Healthy Eating Cheaper? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Clean and Healthy Eating on Food Stamps
2. What’s In My Clean Eating Healthy Kitchen?
3. Walmart, Michelle Obama and The Halo Effect

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 27 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: butter, carrots, crushed red pepper, first lady, flotus, garlic, grocery shopping, Healthy Eating, initiatives, michelle obama, pinto beans, processed foods, spinach, squash, tomato, walmart

Why?

There are a few reasons. But first, I think it might be important to explain the process that the grain must go through (because rice starts out as a much larger grain) in order to become the white rices and pastas that we enjoy so much.

This diagram, from The Today Show, diagrams the grain when it’s first harvested. It goes through a rice husker to have the outermost shell removed, and you’re left wit brown rice. Ta-da! The bran part of the grain is where all the rich and chewy fiber is located. The germ is where the nutrient-rich portion of the grain is found. The endosperm is, well… we’ll get to that.

Take it a step further. To get white rice, the outer husk and bran (the fiber-packed part?) are stripped from the grain, as is the nutrient-filled germ. This, obviously, leaves only the starchy endosperm. From here, the endosperm is polished in sugars and/or powders to not only aid in taste, but reshape the grain. Sounds like all of the good stuff is stripped from the grain, right?

Well, that’s because it is.

This is where that “enriched” part comes in. Processing plants will “add” vitamin D and whatever else into the endosperm so that total nutritional value isn’t lost, but it pales in comparison to what originally was in the rice in the first place. As in, what it grew from the ground carrying. Riboflavin and thiamin (which helps your body in metabolizing fats), potassium (which helps your body balance out high sodium intake), vitamin e (a skin care essential that aids in anti-aging)? All are lost when rice makes the transition from brown to white.

I won’t go on my typical trademark rant, but I will say this: rice in it’s least processed form is three times as filling as enriched white rice.

Since you can see that white rice is brown rice with all the valuable stuff stripped of it with some other stuff injected in to “enrich” the endosperm, you can see why it’s so easy to cook white rice… or why it’s so difficult to cook brown rice. What would I suggest? Honestly, ditch the minute/microwaveable rices, and opt for something else.

What else is there?

I’m a big basmati and jasmine rice eater, as well as brown rice. Basmati rice might be a bit pricier – there’s no $0.99 bag of it available anywhere – but for those who love to eat enriched white rice, both are viable options. I eat brown rice, but because I was always so used to white rice, it was a hard switch for me. What do I do instead? After I cook my brown rice (for about 45 minutes – yes, that extra nutrition-y goodness means it takes much longer to cook), I use it in stir fry type dishes or I create a sauce with the leftover juices from cooking the other parts of my dish. A little lemon juice, orange peel, or even an oregano/sage/cranberry blend can go a long way.

In short, there is a benefit to taking the leap away from enriched white rice. Are you taking the leap? Have you already lept? Let me hear about it!

What’s Wrong With White Rice? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. Are Brown Eggs Really Better Than White?
2. Pleasure and The Puritans: Why “If It Tastes Good, It MUST Be Bad” Is Wrong
3. The Myth of The Food Desert: Where The Root Went Wrong

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 23 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: processed foods

Some people may see “chewing your food a ton of times” as simply a corny etiquette issue, but outside of the little girly bites and “nibbling” you might think of, there’s a reality to eating this way that’s important to acknowledge. It’s also important to understand why you simply could not eat that way on a processed food-laden diet.

To “process” a food means that it… undergoes a “process” to become what it is when you receive it. There’s usually a chemical involved. Something to help preserve it… something to sweeten it… something to give it flavor entirely… something to “create” favor… there’s always something. There’s always “something” because that “something” usually helps the company manufacturing the product keep that product affordable for you.

Consider high fructose corn syrup (otherwise known as HFCS – my personal whipping boy.) When HFCS is taken into the body, it cannot be handled like regular sugar and is then sent directly to the liver to be dealt with. In the meantime, while other sweeteners trigger the hormone that tells you to stop eating, HFCS doesn’t. Instead, it hangs out in the liver, waiting to be processed as fat. Just so you know.. anything you eat that the rest of the body fails to find a use for (like these additives and random chemicals) is sent to the liver to be processed as fat… and overworking your liver in this fashion can, well… I’m just sayin’.

Let’s take it a step further. What’s in the picture below?

Credit: Fooducate

If you watched the clip above, you already know. Our processed foods are broken down to their most basic parts, mixed in with preservatives (which help, you know, preserve the final product), flavor additives, water, flour, various forms of salt, then manipulated to be whatever they want to sell us. The same ground up chicken carcass (which is what is in that photo) can be chicken patties, chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, “diced chicken,” the chicken in your chicken pot pie, the chicken in your soup… whatever. Just look for “mechanically separated [animal] parts.” You won’t have to look too hard.

Once it’s broken down to create this… goo… chemicals are used to hold it in place to form whatever shape it’s going to take. Once it meets your saliva and enters your body, it breaks right back down to the goo… with no fiber inside to help push it out. It essentially deflates inside of your system, making it easier to consume more calories because you’re “not full yet.” Couple all of this with the fact that it takes approximately 20 minutes for your brain to get the signal from your digestive system that you’re “full,” and you start to see why a food that breaks down this quickly is a recipe for disaster – a breaded chicken breast on wheat bread breaks down much more slowly than a chicken patty sandwich on white bread, takes longer to chew (buying you time until that 20 minute mark… see what that 30 bites was important?), takes longer to digest (thus leaving you feeling fulfilled longer), and keeps you from overindulging. You’re getting that “full” feeling for less calories. You’re not scarfing it down because it’s breaking down faster than it can fill you up… only to find that “all-of-a-sudden-I-feel-like-I-ate-too-much” feeling arrive.

No nutritional value, harmful and fattening chemical additives, unidentifiable sources… sorry, give me a head of broccoli and I’ll make my own, anyday.

The Chemical “Processing” In Your Processed Foods is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

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1. The Problem With Processed Foods, Part I: What Is Processed Food?
2. How To Spot – And Start To Give Up – Processed Foods
3. Food 101: The Problem With Processed Foods

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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: additives, chemicals, eating, high fructose corn syrup, leptin, preservatives, processed foods

From Civil Eats:

A new study published last week in the journal Obesity, found that popular sodas and other beverages sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contain on average 18 percent more fructose than was previously thought.

Researchers from the University of Southern California tested beverages like Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite to determine the amount of fructose in each beverage. All of these beverages use HFCS as a sweetener, which is sweeter and cheaper than table sugar, or sucrose.

Sucrose is a disaccharide composed of half fructose and half glucose, while HFCS, which is manufactured, is composed of two monosaccharides, or separated fructose and glucose.

[...]

[A]ccording to these new findings, it turns out the differences are significant due to the higher percentage of fructose found in HFCS. The previous assumption was that HFCS was made up of 55 percent fructose—not substantially different than the 50 percent found in sucrose. However, the study found that Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite contained 65 percent fructose, and Dr. Pepper, Gatorade, and Arizona Ice Tea contained close to 60 percent fructose.

I know this looks like a lot of mumbo-jumbo, but what it means is that there’s more of the “problem” in each serving of high fructose corn syrup than we originally anticipated. The problem being the amount of fructose which, while it is the same kind of sugar in fruit, is problematic for our insides when it is ingested differently from how its found in nature (in fruit.)

Okay. Let’s talk. Three reasons why this is so important:

One: I’ve written about the problems with high fructose corn syrup before, so I’m just going to quote that particular post:

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.

So… grossly misunderestimating the levels to which a chemical can affect our bodies (by underestimating the amount of the chemical we’re putting in our bodies with each serving) changes the story a little bit…. especially if all of the studies were being done with the originally estimated amounts of fructose in mind. It means that even with all those studies that said HFCS is a problem, those studies might’ve come up with much worse results had they used the accurate amounts.

Two: A while back, I received this comment:

Hi Erika,
My google alert for HFCS picked up your post. I commend you on your
comprehensive approach. I would ask that, before you dismiss HFCS
as being just another sugar, you visit [Archer Daniels Midland]’s website.
They claim to make three grades of HFCS:
Cornsweet 42
Cornsweet 55 used for soda
Cornsweet 90 intensely sweet used for low-cal diet foods and beverages.
The #’s [reflect] the % fructose in the sweetener.
42% —->90% that’s quite a range.
Calculating the fructose:glucose ratio in each
Cornsweet 42 =42/58 =0.72
Cornsweet 55 =55/45 =1.22(22% more fru than glu in every Coke)
Cornsweet 90 = 90/10 = 9
Sugar, of course, always rings in at 50% fructose, 1:1.
I see the problem as this: There is a wide range of %fructose and
fructose:glucose across the span of sweeteners. I sure you have done
your research on the metabolic dangers of excess fructose.
Since HFCS is only a blend of fructose and glucose, the CRA can monkey
with the ratio anyway they want, since it will always yield a product
that has 4 cal/g. Personally, I think that the name HFCS should remain and the FDA should require that the %fru listed, e.g HFCS-90.
Great Website.
Take care,
Trying to get the HFCS-out,
Cynthia Papierniak, M.S.

For clarity’s sake, I replied:

Cynthia,

Yes, I dismiss HFCS as another sugar because ALL sugar needs to be limited. Of course I acknowledge HFCS as harmful – simply on the strength that it is a chemical and NOT natural in origin – but it doesn’t matter if you call it fruity angel lullaby juice. It ALL needs to be as limited as possible, and for the readers of this site, this post served the purpose of reinforcing that.

I don’t do chemical talk simply because I don’t do chemicals.

Thanks a ton for sharing, though!

I received that comment on September 24th, 2010. Weeks before this study.

Three: Having said that… let’s look at that Princeton study. Y’know, the one that said that rats who were fed HFCS gain significantly more weight than rats who were fed table sugar? Yeah, that one:

Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.

“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction.

“When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.” – [source]

So, if the chemical is more harmful than we originally anticipated, and the chemical – at the level we thought it was being ingested – causes THESE problems… I’m just sayin’ this explains a lot, if it’s 100% for sure.

As I responded to the commenter above, I don’t do chemical talk because I don’t do chemicals. Beyond a basic understanding of chemistry, I don’t profess to know the intricate details of each chemical off the top of my head. I also don’t think I should have to know that just to eat. It shouldn’t be a guessing game of whether or not a specific food will shave years off my lifespan because of unnecessary chemicals. It shouldn’t be so complicated to understand the food I’m eating. I shouldn’t need to worry about whether or not I’m getting sensible amounts of nutrients in my system. It shouldn’t take a scientist to help us understand what we’re putting into our bodies, and it shouldn’t require professional intervention to help me understand how to eat.

All of that… consequences of processed foods. I just.. I can’t deal with that. So no, I don’t do chemical talk because I resent having to know about glucose, sucrose and fructose ratios. I resent having to swallow this “good chemicals vs bad chemicals” argument being shoved down America’s throat. I resent that even in the face of all of this information, the respective industries are going to still tell us “Heyyyyy… it’s okay. Just keep eating it. You’ve been fine thus far, right? You’ll still be fine! Just keep exercising. That’s the real reason why you’re all overweight.”

And I resent that so many of us will still accept that.

Servings of High Fructose Corn Syrup Deemed More Harmful Than We Thought 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. High Fructose Corn Syrup Wants New Name: Why You Shouldn’t Care
3. Another Reason To Ditch The High Fructose Corn Syrup

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Post tags: high fructose corn syrup, junk food, mentality, princeton study, processed foods, science, study

It’s that deep.

So for me, the supermarket checkout lanes were more fun than the actual grocery store. Why? Because the game was “avoid swiping the entire chocolate rack into your cart with one hand.” I’m ashamed to tell you that, some days, I lost. [insert big frown here]

During the down time when I started to let go of processed foods, I had a period where I was looking up everything, much to my detriment. The more I learned, the angrier I became and the more I wound up giving up.

Unfortunately… one day, I just so happened to turn over a chocolate bar… and much to my disappointment, I saw the same science lab I’d been seeing on the rest of my food.

Imagine the look of shock and horror across my face. I don’t even think I remember what was more frustrating – the fact that my chocolate wasn’t, in fact, chocolate… or the fact that I couldn’t just allow myself to remain in blissful ignorance. I just had to turn over that darn wrapper and see what the hell I was eating. It wasn’t pretty.

It was also enough for me to give up chocolate completely. It was like nothing was safe! If I couldn’t understand the label, I couldn’t do it. It had to go.

So… fast forward. I happen across a young woman at the farmer’s market, who appears to be a chocolatier. She’s nice, she’s sweet, she’s… selling organic dark chocolate?! Say what? Not only does she have organic dark chocolate truffles, but she has vegan organic dark chocolate truffles? Oh, help me.

At this point, it’s been almost a year since I’ve last had chocolate. (I wasn’t playing when I said I’d given up.) I bit into her truffle, and it was like the clouds opened up… a choir appeared behind me singing the Hallelujah chorus… and a ray of sunlight began to beam on me alone. I could’ve floated! Immediately, I asked her what comes in one package.

The inside of my tiny box of vegan organic dark chocolate truffles... dusted with Dutch cocoa powder. Yummy.

“In each individually wrapped package, you get two truffles.”

“Okay,” as a grab my wallet, reaching for a couple singles. “How much?”

“Five dollars.”

In my mind, the record skipped. Y’all know I’m cheap, right? TWO truffles for five dollars? I tried to not have a visible reaction on my face to her price, but I don’t think I was successful, because she laughed pretty loudly at me. It’s ok.. I laughed back.

“Don’t worry, you’re not the first to have that reaction!” she told me. I felt trapped – I wanted the chocolate, but dang – I couldn’t justify paying that much for it, when I know that my former favorites are in the checkout lane for three for a dollar right now!

“I like to think of my chocolates as an indulgence — something you definitely don’t do every day, but when you do do them, they’re definitely worth the wait.”

At this time, my daughter started asking for a piece of chocolate to taste, too, and the lady – charming as she was – went ahead and gave her a tiny piece. Since I’m a sucker for people who engage my little one, I went ahead and decided to purchase from her. But as I reached for my five, I told her, “I could see that… because I spent way more on chocolate before. If I just bought a really nice piece of chocolate every now and again instead of crap every other day, I’d still be happy… and not be broke!” and we both laughed as she handed me my purchase.

And trust me, my chcolates were undoubtedly worth it.

But that experience taught me a valuable lesson – a few valuable lessons, to be honest. First, an indulgence is an opportunity to enjoy something… not hide from the world in it. I had to realize that in my effort to abstain from the chemicals and the foods engineered to “make me enjoy, love, and want to buy more of them,” I was forcing myself to stop eating my emotions. I was forcing myself to cope with my realities outside of food… because food was no longer sooooooooo satisfying to me anymore. So, even though I was afraid of what chemicals might’ve been in those dark chocolate truffles (she has four ingredients in her truffles and even shared the recipe with me!), it didn’t matter because it had been so long since I’d tried to use food as an emtional shield.. the attempt didn’t even make sense to my body anymore. Besides… the chemicals weren’t there anymore. It wouldn’t have worked, anyway.

Secondly, I was spending a lot of money on chocolate. A lot. Chocolate cookies, chocolate pies, chocolate bars… but the reality is, the amount of actual chocolate in them is negligible. Most of the “chocolate” that I was eating might contain just enough chocolate for the manufacturer to put “chocolate” or “cocoa powder” on the label.. but the majority of it was some strange flour/oil/”natural flavors”/corn syrup combination. So my “indulgence” was, really, just me binging on fake chocolate flavored flour paste. My indulgence wasn’t even worth the time it took to eat it.

If I spent $3 each day on chocolate – a giant chocolate bar or a big bag of little chocolate bars that couldn’t even remotely compare to the two bites of chocolate I paid $5 for? Then guess what. Not only did my delicious chocolate ensure that I’d never go back to the crap chocolate, but it saved me money. Spending $5 every couple of weeks as opposed to $15 each week? C’mon. I might experience a little sticker shock, but I’m still saving lots of dough.

Lastly, it’s okay to indulge. The idea is not to put myself in nutritional prison. The idea is to learn how to curb my habits and guarantee my health. So yes, that means that I have to occasionally tell myself “No, you don’t need any chocolate today” or even “No, you don’t need chocolate this week.” If I truly think about why I “need” an indulgence, the answer (if my conscience isn’t cluttered by hunger) is usually that I don’t need to indulge. I don’t need to indulge. I need to make sure that when I want to indulge, it’s not for the wrong reasons. I need to make sure that both my indulgence and how often I indulge are both in check – make sure they won’t prevent me from reaching or maintaining my goals.

I always knew chocolate would do me some good… I just never thought it’d be this much.

What are your indulgences? What tips do you have to share?

Forget all that… any good recommendations on how to enjoy chocolate? I’m kidding! (Sort of.)

How To Indulge Like A Grown Up: What Chocolate Taught Me is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: Do You EVER Indulge?

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Post tags: chocolate, Healthy Eating, indulge, mentality, overeating, processed foods

You hit the frozen foods section at the grocery store, and you pass the waffles. You’re thinking “Man, I could eat these for a quick breakfast in the morning.” You skim the freezer, and it catches your eye.

“Blueberry Waffles — Made With REAL BLUEBERRIES!”

I don’t know about you, but the first thing that comes to my mind is, “Well, what kinda corny claim is that? It’s food, ain’t it? If it’s not blueberries, then what is it?” The second thing that comes to my mind is, “What kind of state is food in if you have to claim your food is made with real food to sell it?”

Interesting – and yet, confusing – issue.

Take this article from Alternet about some of the scariest processed foods out there right now. (Be advised – I’ve got several posts coming up about this single article.) You don’t have to feel compelled to read it, because the good stuff is quoted below:

Frozen waffles are fairly non-nutritious. Indeed, the only real way to get any sort of vitamins in your waffles each morning is to buy blueberry waffles that contain….

But, hang on! It turns out those aren’t blueberries at all! They’re more like…well, just what are they? An apt description would be “purple globs of sugary goo,” but they’re actually called “artificially flavored blueberry bits.” Their ingredients include sugar, dextrose, soybean oil, soy protein, salt, citric acid, cellulose gum, artificial flavor, malic acid, Red 40 Lake, Blue 2 Lake and…that’s it. Notice anything missing? Oh yeah: blueberries!

For a long time, companies such as Aunt Jemima parent Pinnacle Foods were able to get away with implying that these little unfruity lumps were actual blueberries, as the box for Aunt Jemima’s blueberry waffles had pictures of actual blueberries strewn across it. But the threat of a lawsuit from Center for Science in the Public Interest made Pinnacle decide to tell people that their waffles didn’t contain any actual blueberries.

What makes the development of fake blueberries so exciting is the number of possibilities it opens up for other fake fruits. Picture artificial strawberry strips, made mostly of bacon and high-fructose corn syrup. Or perhaps artificial melon mounds made of solidified vegetable oil and dextrose monohydrate. Or the coup de grace, artificial artificial blueberry bits, made with NutraSweet and artificial soy protein. Not one natural ingredient, baby!

The interesting thing about this is that I was asking myself, “What kind of state is food in if you have to claim your food is made with real food to sell it?” as if to question why the only claim a food would have to make is that it contains real food.

Alas, that is the issue. When we talk about the food industry, we talk about an industry that got the green light to “create” food instead of “cook” food back in 1973. What happened?

The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act imposed strict rules requiring that the word “imitation” appear on any food product that was, well, an imitation … [And] the food industry [argued over the word], strenuously for decades, and in 1973 it finally succeeded in getting the imitation rule tossed out, a little-notice but momentous step that helped speed America down the path of nutritionism.

… The American Heart Association, eager to get Americans off saturated fats and onto vegetable oils (including hydrogenated vegetable oils), was actively encouraging the food industry to “modify” various foods to get the saturated fats and cholesterol out of them, and in the early seventies the association urged that “any existing and regulatory barriers to the marketing of such foods be removed.”

And so they were when, in 1973, the FDA (not, note, the Congress that wrote the law) simply repealed the 1938 rule concerning imitation foods. It buried the change in a set of new, seemingly consumer-friendly rules about nutrient labeling so that news of the imitation rule’s appeal did not appear until the twenty-seventh paragraph of The New York Times’ account, published under the headline F.D.A. PROPOSES SWEEPING CHANGE IN FOOD LABELING: NEW RULES DESIGNED TO GIVE CONSUMERS A BETTER IDEA OF NUTRITIONAL VALUE. … The revised imitation rule held that as long as an imitation product was not “nutritionally inferior” to the natural food it sought to impersonate—as long as it had the same quantities of recongized nutrients—the imitation could be marketed without using the dreaded “i” word.

For those who skipped over that, here’s the brief understanding. Once upon a time, the food industry was forced to label any foods that weren’t foods as we know them as “imitation.” The food industry knew that labeling a food as “imitation” was pretty much a kiss of death on the shelves, when it had to sit next to some proud, prim, and proper food with real, home grown foods. So… they fought tooth-and-nail to change this policy. Once this law was repealed, this gave the food industry the green light to put whatever it wanted in food as long as it had the same amounts of identifiable nutrients as the food it was imitating.

So what happens as a result of this change in law? We get fake blueberries in waffles with boxes of real blueberries on the front, and words like “imitation blueberries” or “naturally flavored” in tiny print on the front of the box. Not real blueberries, not the nutritional value of the blueberries. Just, as Alternet put it, “purple globs of sugary goo.” Putting it mildly, a grocery store item that makes the claim of being made with “real food” does so because, looking at the other items on the shelf, the rest simply do not.

Taking a look back at my stroll in the frozen foods section… if I still probably shopped there, I think I might still ask “What kind of state is food in if you have to claim your food is made with real food to sell it?”

Just… y’know.. for different reasons.

Where have you seen that “it-should-be-obvious” kind of claim made on a box? I swear I saw a wrapper for cheese that said “Made with real cheese” on it… if you can top that, I wanna hear it!

Lies In Your Food: Made With REAL Blueberries? But I Thought… is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry Is Feeding You
2. Infographic: How To Find Real Food At The Supermarket
3. Neither Soul Food, Nor “Slave Food,” Made You Fat

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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: processed foods

NASA Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day

I know this is a pretty idealistic concept, and we all might like to give lip service to living eco-friendly lives… but who has time for all that? It’s hard enough for most-if-not-all of us to get this healthy eating thing down pat. Now, we’ve got to protect the Earth, too?

It doesn’t take much effort. In fact, being eco-friendly and clean eating go hand in hand and both can be managed by the busy lifestyler. Here are a few ways to live a little cleaner, a little greener, without costing you a ton of time each day.

"Processed cheese product"... in a jar. How.. innovative?

Ditching the Processed Products

Obviously, this is the largest factor in clean eating. Pardon me for getting a little preachy, but I see it like this – our connection to the Earth is symbiotic. We cultivate the Earth with our activity, and in return it promotes the growth of humanity. So… we have to be mindful of what we put out there. Ditching the boxed and canned foods, essentially, means less trash… going to less landfills… less air and land pollution.

But if I give up foods, how do I replace them?

Buy fresh veggies. Only buy what you believe you will cook that week. This way, you not only spend much less, but you don’t leave anything sitting and risk your food rotting. You can learn to cook the same veggie three different ways, and get more creative with your cooking style. You also don’t run into the problem of additional preservatives or salts used to preserve the shelf life of your food.

I buy things like onions and peppers knowing that I don’t want red peppers or onions every day… so I’ll take them, chop them up in the ways that I know I usually eat them, and freeze them that way. So I’ll have a bag of onions chopped in rings, a bag diced in squares and a bag cut in strips. I’ll have a bag of red peppers chopped in strips and another bag diced in chunks. I do the same with mushrooms, cucumbers, celery, carrots, spinach (the spinach I use to cook, not the ones I use for salad) and bean sprouts. I cannot tell you how much time this saves me, and it takes me a half hour. Tops.

My carrots, squash, broccoli and corn/okra/pepper blend, preparing for the freezer.

Buy frozen. Generic store-brand frozen veggies are a dollar a bag (rarely more than $2.50) and can last forever. Carrots, broccoli, string beans, onions, peppers, different veggie blends (I bought a 5lb bag of carrot/broccoli/cauliflower for $3… lasted forever) all at your fingertips, and only requiring a little steaming, baking, boiling or sauteeing.

I keep a combination of both in my fridge. I keep fresh broccoli in the fridge for salads, and frozen in the freezer for cooking.. and I never intermingle the two. I don’t cook with my fresh, and I don’t thaw my frozen for salads.

Try to find a local butcher. No plastic-wrapped chicken, no pre-packaged beef patties. You get an awesome guy (or girl) with a vast knowledge of meat, who can offer you suggestions and steps on how to prepare and preserve your meats. A wonderful butcher will never be reluctant to offer you suggestions. He wants your business.

Make your own junk food. That’s right – no matter how many green velvet cupcakes you make, I promise you the calorie count wouldn’t scrape the surface of what it is when you buy boxed cupcake mix. Seriously.

Practicing what I preach... there's my wild rice, right there!

Make your freezer your best friend. Things like wild rice, brown rice… stuff that takes forever to cook? I cook it all in one giant pot, divvy it up into individual servings, put them in ziploc bags (which I reuse), and freeze them. That way, I have my own microwaveable rice bags without all the extra salt and preservatives… and I’m saving money.

Get Your Sugar From The Earth

Meaning.. if you need sugar, go for a fruit - something that came directly from the Earth. Skip the soft drinks, fruit juices and candies. I write enough about this for folks to know how I feel about these, since all three contain high fructose corn syrup. Aside from the fact that the stuff expands your waistline like nobody’s business, it’s a direct factor in causing and inflaming type 2 diabetes. If you drink a soda, there is nothing in that but sugar, salt and carbonation. Fruits have vitamins, minerals – the stuff of life – and, well, sugar. You can’t eat fruits, in their sugary splendor, in abundance because those nutrients in them will fill you up faster than a coke can. You’re not taking in empty calories. Even though you should be moderate in your fruit consumption, you’d do better to have an orange than a coke.

It’s cheaper, too.

Drink water.

And no, I don’t mean Fiji, Aquafina, or whatever. Get yourself a nice, attractive reusable container to carry with you throughout the day, and keep refilling it. Skip the water bottles that go… in a landfill, buried where trees – or people – could live, instead. If you’re having a hard time with the taste of water, squeeze a lemon/lime/orange/strawberry or whatever in it. Freeze some grapes, use ‘em as ice cubes at home. Buy some frozen blueberries, use those. Slice up a cucumber, drop it in there. I mean, outside of being super cute and attractive looking at a table, the stuff actually adds a nice little refreshing taste to water.

Purchase a 2.5gal jug – if you must – from your local grocery. Way less plastic than the 24pk of bottles, much less trash than the regular gallon jugs, and can fit in your fridge and last a while. I drink a little over a gallon of water a day (which means yes, I don’t drink much else besides water and my evening tea) because it keeps my skin looking a lovely healthy shade of chocolatey brown.

Reduce Your Portion Sizes

Measuring cups may not be so necessary after all!

Slow down. This means that you can’t eat standing up anymore. No, you can’t eat out of the pan anymore. No, you can’t eat in front of the TV. No, you can’t sit all the food on the table and you just pass around the pans. Relax. Take the time to enjoy your dinner companions, be they friends, family, whomever. Don’t put food in between you. Leave the food in the kitchen. Eat slower. Talk to one another. You’ll find that you not only eat less and still feel full, but you will have actually enjoyed your time together at the table. That is what it means to enjoy food. Not the feeling you get from the food, but from the company you’ve kept while you ate.

Pack your lunch. Not only do you save money… not only do you create less waste… but you save calories as well. Buy yourself an attractive (I keep wanting to say cute, but I know several fellas who are taking the challenge, too) lunch pail and stock it with your favorite snacks. Your body will thank you for it.

These things all help you save time as well as money, and benefit the Earth. The goal is to reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible, and each of these tips gets us one step closer. It takes planning and preparation, but that’s why we’re discussing the challenge the week before we begin! Spend a little time today – Earth Day – and take at least one of these suggestions to heart. Every single step and every little effort counts. I promise!

Have any additional ideas? Let’s hear ‘em!

Fitting Clean Eating Into A Busy Life is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Q&A Wednesday: Is Clean Eating An Eating Disorder?
2. Q&A Wednesday Clean Eating Style
3. Now That I’m Clean Eating, What Can I Cook?

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Post tags: clean eating, earth day, ecofriendly, grocery shopping, high fructose corn syrup, portion control, processed foods, saving money, vegetables, water

We eat the foods, but how often do we take a look at the stuff on the side? Yes, all those numbers, lines, and percentages… they’re supposed to mean something, but… must.. hurry.. purchase… yummies…

Well, with any luck, we have a better understanding of the nutrients that make up our foods. From here, the next step is applying that to our shopping skills to make the best decisions possible for not only weight loss, but better health altogether.

A lot of us may have pretty solid understandings of the nutrition facts label, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I was pretty lost myself at times… and in my frustration, I’d let my hunger overtake my good sense, utter a curse word and throw it in the cart. Hey… no shame in my game.

Well, maybe a little.

Let’s get down to business, shall we?

To the left, you will find the nutrition label found on the side of a box of hamburger helper. I’m personally tickled by the fact that it offers the calorie count for the product “as packaged,” as well as “as prepared.” I mean, I’m sure people use parts of uncooked hamburger helper in other recipes.. I guess.

You’ll also notice that the top of the label lists that there are ten servings per container. This means that the entire contents of this box should be divided by ten to provide you with one serving size. Lucky for you, you’ll have to do any portion dividing on your own. (Or, perhaps you’re like many of the other people I know who eat several servings at a time.. and may need to multiply everything by that number.)

Next, you should see the calorie count, and the calories from fat listed underneath. Remember how I told you that for every gram of fat, you get 9 calories and every gram of carbs as well as protein gives you 4 calories… thus making up our calorie counts? Well, here is that in action:

.5g of fat multiplied by 9 calories = 4.5 calories. You’ll notice that the calories from Fat says 5 calories. So far, so good.

25g of carbs, 4 calories for each gram? 25×4=100 calories.

3g of protein, 4 calories for each gram? 3×4=12 calories.

4.5 + 100 + 12 = 117.5calories. If you’ll notice, the calorie count is listed as 120. How considerate. They rounded up. (Or, there is some rounding down going on in those 25.4g counts…)

Moving on.. you may also notice the “% Daily Value**” (or PDV) directly beneath the “Calories from Fat” line. You’ll also see two rows or numbers directly beneath that. The “% Daily Value” simply tells you “Of the amount recommended to you by the federal government, this serving will give you this percent.” So, yes, this one serving of hamburger – 1/10th of what you’ve cooked – will give you a little more than 1/3rd of your recommended daily serving of salt.

If you follow the double asterisks (**) to the near-bottom of the package, you’ll read the following: “Percent Daily Values are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.” 2,000 may be higher than your caloric goals for the day, so you’ll need to keep that in mind when you look at the percentages.

On each package of hamburger helper, they offer instructions on how to prepare it. The number on the left offers information on what the bare bones package offers you. To the right, you’re looking at the information for the meal, if prepared by their instructions to a tee. The items listed – sodium, fat, carbs, cholesterol, etc – are pretty much the bare minimum of what has to be listed on the label. This one lists potassium on its label because anyone conscious about sodium will know that you can balance its effects with a good dosage of potassium. Leave off and round down where you can, but shine as much light on yourself as possible when it helps.

The next section lists the PDV of the essential nutrients you’ll get from one serving of this stuff. It may also tell you – as it does here – “not a reliable source of protein/vitamin c/vitamin z.”

The next two sections are particularly interesting – well, to me, at least… but I like these kinds of things. They’re basically giving you basic calorie/nutrient requirements for a person living on either a 2,000 calorie (presumably for women) or a 2,500 calorie (presumably for men) daily diet. You’ll have to determine for yourself if that’s too high, too low, or a good base for yourself.

Lastly… the ingredients list. This one, to me, deserves it’s own post on its own.. but I’ll be nice today. Just know a few things: 1) If you skim back up to the “Total Fat” and see “0.0g trans fat,” then skim back down to the ingredients list and see “partially hydrogenated something oil,” there’s trans fat in it. That “0.0g” merely means there’s “less than .5g of trans fat in this serving.” You didn’t know that “rounding down” is considered acceptable by our government? As I’ve written before, what makes this especially challenging is the fact that people will easily – easily – eat more than one serving of this stuff in one sitting.. so 3 servings in one sitting means three servings of 0.49g of trans fats, which EASILY turns into 1.47g of trans fat. I find that appalling, but whatever. If trans fat is in the item, it has to be listed in the ingredients list.. so you can spot it. I’ll definitely have to do a more in depth post about the ingredients list but that’s the most important thing, at least to me, about that list.

My philosophy on it is this – if it has to have a nutrition label to tell me what’s going on inside of it, chances are I shouldn’t be eating it anyhow. But for those times that we have to bite the bullet and dive in, hopefully this will serve as a quick (is it ever really “quick?”) little handy guide to understanding the labels.

But really… stop buying stuff with labels and packages.

Comprehending Calories: How To Properly Read A Nutrition Label is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Comprehending Calories: The Basics
2. Comprehending Calories: The Role of Carbs In Your Diet
3. Can We Really Trust Nutrition Labels?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: calorie counting, clean eating, government, grocery shopping, nutrition, nutrition label, processed foods

Pictured below, you will find two different versions of the same generic brand of cream cheese. One version is the “regular” kind, with the other serving as the “low-fat” version. Take a look at the photo and see if you can find anything that’s noticeably different.

Now, before I get into explaining what those differences are…. I suppose I should tell you which is which, eh? Welp:

That’s right. The top box is the “fat free” version, the bottom is the original. Never mind the processed goodness of Oreo pudding and Lenders bagels… what, with all its high fructose corn syrupy sweetness and “melt in your mouth” refined flours that, well, melt away at the touch of saliva. Never mind all that. Focus on the cream cheese, here.

I’m going to paste the nutrition labels of those two one more time, so that it’ll serve as an easier reference point.

There are quite a few things worth noting, here. For starters, the fat-free version of the cream cheese is true to its label – it has reduced the fat content of the cheese down to nothing. There’s also 70 calories less in the fat-free version than there is in there regular. Well, I’ll be. [insert applause]

But look at the number of ingredients in the fat free cheese in comparison to the regular version. Better yet, how many of those ingredients are actual real food items and not the result of a chemistry experiment?

Cheese is made from milk, and let’s face it. Milk is supposed to be fattening. Let me repeat that. Milk is supposed to be fattening. The reason mammals produce milk (cows, goats and YES, humans) is to nourish their young and help them grow. It fattens them up. So needless to say, a cheese made from the milk of a mammal is going to have some fat in it. In order to create a cheese with the same consistency as regular cheese but remove the fat? A manufacturer has to add all those chemicals to it. Just to prevent the cheese from doing what it, technically, is supposed to do.

Look at how much sugar is in the regular version in comparison to the fat-free version. The natural “mmmm” that comes from the fat in cream cheese is now gone, so the manufacturer has to add it back by adding excess sugar. Interesting.

Check out how much sodium is in each version. Again, adding a little more salt to help the cheese get back that “mmmm” feeling it once had. I mean, I’m just sayin’. It’s something to think about.

I’d also like to compare the contents of the ingredients lists. In the regular version of cream cheese, it’s straight-forward: “Milk, cream, cheese culture, salt, carob bean, guar gum (a thickener, similar to cornstarch).” In the fat-free version? There’s… tragedy. And shame. And two “kinds” of salt (salt and sodium tripolyphosphate, a preservative derived from triphosphoric acid.) And twelve more ingredients than you can find in the regular version.

It takes a manufacturer 18 ingredients (many of whom not found in nature) to present you a cream cheese with the same taste and as close to that “mmm” feeling as possible. Sure, it has twice as much sugar and almost 60% more salt, but hey – at least you get fewer calories.

Why does this matter? It matters because in the quest for hunting for “fat free,” we’ve neglected the primary purpose of food – nourishing our bodies. If you change the structure of the milk used – from regular to skim – then you change the nutrients available. You change what the dish can do for you. You change its ability to nourish you and fill you up. You’re sticking more chemicals in your body.

As strange as it sounds, in the interest of clean eating? I’d actually stick with the regular version, leaving the fat free version of the cream cheese behind. The fat-free version has to be thoroughly processed to make a fat-filled item fat-free. I do find myself balking at the fact that this means I’m taking on 70 more calories per serving by eating the regular… but that’s all the more reason for me to exercise some major portion control, and protect my plate from foolishness.

If you spend some time in the grocery this weekend, compare your “regular” versions with your “fat-free” versions – we may even have those fat-free items in the fridge right now! – and see how unclean they are. Might be a little surprised!

Supermarket Swindle: Fat, Low Fat, Fat Free? is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Supermarket Swindle: Two Things To Avoid On Your Food Labels
2. Supermarket Swindle: Is Your Honey Really Honey?
3. The GMO-Free Eater

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2011. | Permalink | 30 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, fat, fat free, food labels, low fat, no fat, nutrition label, processed foods

I’m a believer in a simplified life. It’s like, I appreciate the fact that processed foods allow us the ability to eat more complex dishes at less of a cost to our time… but you can’t get “something” for “nothing.” It *has* to cost us in other ways, right?

Well, apparently, in the factories that help create these items (opens a PDF file), the cost is that they use outdated techniques that create two key chemicals used to make high fructose corn syrup.  These outdated techniques use mercury. And remember, they said the stuff was safe, right?

Mercury is one of the more toxic elements found in nature – it is toxic. Period. The interesting thing about this is… even if one manufacturer said “There’s not enough mercury in our product to cause that kind of damage,” (he’d probably be right) the thing is – high fructose corn syrup is everywhere. Ketchup, yogurt, salad dressings, syrups, almost any processed item with an iota of sweetness in it. It has it. So while one item might not have enough to harm you, if you ingest enough of it every day, you can feel the effects.

Why would they use mercury in high fructose corn syrup? Why else? The stuff helps extend shelf life. Surprise, surprise.

And since you know the Corn Refiners Association had a response:

This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance. Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years…

In 1983, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration formally listed high fructose corn syrup as safe for use in food and reaffirmed that decision in 1996.

This tells me two things: 1) for the study to be “based on outdated information” means that it has to have been accurate at one point in time or another; and 2) since the FDA “formally listed high fructose corn syrup as safe” over 14 years ago, there couldn’t possibly be a reason to test it now… so they won’t be doing so.

Everything from Hunt’s Ketchup (the ketchup I used to looooooove) to Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup is on this list. I’m not going to act like I’m not tardy for the party on this information because much of the news is dated early 2009, but to me it only serves as another polite reminder of why I do my best to avoid processed foods.

In short, do a little digging. Check out that PDF with the list of items that were tested to prove they contained mercury. Question why the FDA isn’t hardcore focused on this. Then do your best to limit the amount of high fructose corn syrup you have in your life.

Any surprises on that list for you? Anything you think you’re going to have a hard time giving up? Do share – maybe I can help.

Another Reason To Ditch The High Fructose Corn Syrup 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. High Fructose Corn Syrup Wants New Name: Why You Shouldn’t Care
3. High Fructose Corn Syrup: What’s The Big Deal?

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, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: FDA, high fructose corn syrup, ingredients, processed foods