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 | 48 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: diet, digestive system, fiber, fruits, intestines, potty time, processed foods, vegetables

This might be April of '09.. not sure.

I hate watching stories about health and obesity on the news. Why? Because to signify the “dreaded plague of obesity” in America, there’s always these video clips of people – never showing their faces, so we’re supposed to presume they have no identity… or, well, no head – and their bellies. You might get a little thigh in the shot, maybe if the cameraman can find a person walking around with a massive wedgie in their derriere you’ll get that too… but you always get the “Santa belly.” Never fails.

That, against the “my-tummy-is-so-flat-because-Photoshop-is-my-personal-trainer” images we see in the average magazine? It’s left us all hunting for an answer to how to avoid looking like the former, and get as close to the latter as possible.

Well… I can help. Sort of. I have three tips that have helped me shrink – and continue to shrink – my tummy down from what it was before to what you see now… and hopefully it will take me to the competition-level tummy that I seek.

Skip the processed foods.

Yes, yes, respect my scarf!

I know, I know.. I harp on this all day, but this time, I have very good reason. Two of ‘em, actually.

First, processed foods are notorious for being devoid of fiber. I mean, there is little to no fiber in processed foods at all. What is fiber? It’s a substance in our food that your system is unable to digest, but it serves a very important purpose. Because the digestive system is unable to do anything with it, it basically serves the purpose of cleaning out your digestive tract and pushing the food out of your intestines into your colon… eventually leaving your system.

Yes, that means it helps you poop.

Think about it – all the food you take in, how much actually comes out? How much of it is still sitting in your intestines? Yuck. Take a look at where your digestive system sits: right in that belly area! I’m tellin’ you. Skip the processed foods, get your fiber in, treat your insides properly.

Secondly, you’ll be avoiding the sugar by default. As I wrote before, because sugar’s original purpose in nature was to draw us to the foods with the vitamins and minerals we need (think fruits), we do love it and can become addicted to it. But because it always came packaged with other vitamins and minerals, we were also able to get full from it, too. In a processed food item, that isn’t the case. It’s basically empty calories, meant to help you feel “belly full.” So because the sugar isn’t serving it’s original purpose, we’re eating too much of it. Couple that with the fact that since there’s no fiber to push the stuff out of your system… it’s a lose-lose for the belly. And again, like I wrote before… when you take in an excess of something, the body stores it… as fat. Not to mention, since high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is in almost every processed food you buy, it’s hard to escape.

I don’t even want to go into that study that says HFCS contributes directly to belly fat. Not at all.

So we’ve covered dropping the sugar and upping the fiber… what else could there be?

Get moving! No, really. Get some activity in your life. Changing your diet will help you avoid putting on extra fat, but you’ve got to get rid of the stuff you’ve already got… and being active is the best way to do that. Run! If you’re not a runner, walk. Hit the elliptical! Jumping jacks! Something.

Try to get your crunches in. I’m far too proud of the lines forming in my tummy to ignore what a good set of crunches can do for the tummy. Yes, regular ol’ plain ol’ crunches. Some days I add a little weight to my chest to make it more difficult, other days I just go a little longer in my sets. But the ab exercises are a must!

Figure out how this works into your life, and get on it! I know I am!

Battling Belly Fat 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: Inches, Belly Fat and The Quitter’s Disease
3. Study: Cardio Beats Resistance Training In Belly Fat Battle

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 53 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: belly fat, crunches, fiber, high fructose corn syrup, processed foods

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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Post tags: processed foods

What do I mean? I mean that we see labels that say things like “made with whole grain!!!” or “heart healthy!!!” or “endorsed by the American Healthy Foods of America American Association!!!” or “Natural!!!!” or “Organic!!!!!!” and automatically assume that the product promotes health, wellness and weight loss.

The “halo effect” is where we assume that just because a product comes with a certain phrase on the label – or comes from a certain store – that it’s going to further our goals.

Trust me. It’s not. Consider this from the New York Times a few years back:

Our collaboration began in a nutritionally correct neighborhood, Brooklyn’s Park Slope, whose celebrated food co-op has a mission statement to sell “organic, minimally processed and healthful foods.” I hit the streets with two questionnaires designed by Dr. Chandon, a professor of marketing at the Insead business school in Fontainebleau, France, and Alexander Chernev, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University. Half of the 40 people surveyed were shown pictures of a meal consisting of an Applebee’s Oriental Chicken Salad and a 20-ounce cup of regular Pepsi. (You can see it for yourself at TierneyLab.) On average, they estimated that the meal contained 1,011 calories, which was a little high. The meal actually contained 934 calories — 714 from the salad and 220 from the drink.

The other half of the Park Slopers were shown the same salad and drink plus two Fortt’s crackers prominently labeled “Trans Fat Free.” The crackers added 100 calories to the meal, bringing it to 1,034 calories, but their presence skewed people’s estimates in the opposite direction. The average estimate for the whole meal was only 835 calories — 199 calories less than the actual calorie count, and 176 calories less than the average estimate by the other group for the same meal without crackers.

Just as Dr. Chandon had predicted, the trans-fat-free label on the crackers seemed to imbue them with a health halo that magically subtracted calories from the rest of the meal. And we got an idea of the source of this halo after I tried the same experiment with tourists in Times Square.

These tourists, many of them foreigners (they kept apologizing for not knowing what Applebee’s was), correctly estimated that the meal with crackers had more calories than the meal without crackers. They didn’t see the crackers’ health halo, Dr. Chandon said, presumably because they hadn’t been exposed to the public debate that accompanied New York City’s decision last year to ban trans fat from restaurants.

“It makes sense that New Yorkers would be more biased because of all the fuss in the city about trans fat,” Dr. Chandon told me. “It hasn’t been a big issue in most other places. Here in Europe there’s been virtually no discussion of banning trans fats.”

[...]

The researchers found that customers at McDonald’s were more accurate at estimating the calories in their meal than were customers at Subway, apparently because of the health halo created by advertisements like one showing that a Subway sandwich had a third the fat of a Big Mac. The health halo from Subway also affected what else people chose to eat, Dr. Chandon and Dr. Wansink reported last year after giving people a chance to order either a Big Mac or a 12-inch Italian sandwich from Subway. Even though the Subway sandwich had more calories than the Big Mac, the people ordering it were more likely to add a large nondiet soda and cookies to the order. So while they may have felt virtuous, they ended up with meals averaging 56 percent more calories than the meals ordered from McDonald’s.

“People who eat at McDonald’s know their sins,” Dr. Chandon said, “but people at Subway think that a 1,000-calorie sandwich has only 500 calories.” His advice is not for people to avoid Subway or low-fat snacks, but to take health halos into account.

This also applies to groceries. You will find some kind of strange affirmative labeling on the front of any and every product-you-know-you-have-no-business-buying, because the goal is to get you to realize “See? Maybe I’m just being silly. This product DOES have redeeming qualities! Let me go ahead and get these benefits!” We just fail to realize that it really doesn’t work that way.

Below, I’ll explain five ways we allow “the halo effect” to swindle us, and how we can avoid the pitfalls as needed.

1. “Made With Whole Grain!” – Usually found on the top of your favorite cereal box, the “made with whole grain” label basically lets you know that the product was created with whole grain. That means… there’s whole grain in there. It doesn’t mean there’s ONLY whole grain in there. It certainly doesn’t mean there’s no chemicals in there. It just means you will get some whole grains.This is a swindle because it implies that you can’t get your whole grains elsewhere, and therefore NEED to get them from this product. “Are you trying to get in more whole grains! Buy ME!” Don’t. Whole grains can be acquired via couscous, quinoa, various forms of rice, oatmeal, spelt, millet, cornmeal… the possibilities are endless. Please don’t get suckered into buying a chemical-laden product out of fear that you’re “not getting enough whole grains.” Grab some oatmeal and get cookin’ if you’re that worried.
2. “Heart Healthy!” – The American Heart Association – who I’m sure has no ill intentions – and their big bright label is a great example of a “health halo.” A product may have minimal trans-fat (not none, just minimal), minimal salt and minimal fat (which is questionable, but more on that later)… but there’s still chemicals in it. There’s nothing to be said of sodium nitrate (food preservative and rocket fuel.. how versatile!) or monosodium glutamate (quoting the FDA: “we don’t know how it works, but we think it’s safe) or goodness knows what else. Do you see a pattern forming?
3. “Endorsed by [insert organization]!” – I see this a lot at restaurants: They’ll have a “[insert organization] approved menu” full of items that meet certain qualifications – things like, “Very low carb meal!” or “Meets our standards!” – but what about the rest? What about the sugar levels? What about the quality of the ingredients? Why are we still saying “low-fat is the way to go” when, after three decades of “low fat” being shoved down our throats, we’re even fatter than before? Maybe these organizations doing the endorsing need their own health halos removed.
4. “All natural!” – To quote my own words:
   

   The word “natural” means a lot of things. Unfortunately for us, none of them mean the same thing. Clever marketing allows us to think that “natural” means the same as “organic” – pictures of farms, gardens, farmers and cows serve as the backdrop to a bright little starburst in the corner saying “All natural!” It makes you think “organic,” but it’s not. This is to the marketer’s benefit, because they get all the benefits of looking “organic” without all the hoops they’d have to jump through to be “organic.” For crying out loud, high fructose corn syrup can be considered “natural.” [source]

   Basically, natural doesn’t mean much.

5. “Organic!” – Before I’m tarred and feathered, let me be clear: I’m not talking about organic fruits and veggies. I’m talking about processed foods that carry the “organic” labeling. All the labeling means is that it was, at the very least, made with at least 70% organic products. Organic junk food exists. Organic food with empty calories… exists. Organic is not a free pass for “healthy.” From the Wall Street Journal:
   

   The latest research, a study by University of Michigan researchers to be published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, is on organic foods. The study found that participants who looked at the nutrition facts label (which includes the calorie count) for Oreos “made with organic flour and sugar” were more likely to rate the cookies as lower-than-average in calories than were people looking at the label of conventional Oreos. “Presumably, participants inferred that, if organic cookies contain 160 calories, then the calorie content of conventional cookies — whatever the precise amount — is likely to be higher,” the authors write.

   And, the people looking at the organic cookie label were also more likely to say their cookies were appropriate to eat more often.

   In a separate, but related experiment, participants were more likely to say it was okay for a hypothetical 20-year-old trying to lose weight to skip her evening run if her dinner ended with an organic dessert rather than a conventional, but otherwise identical one.

   Wish y’all could see my face right now. For real?

6. Bonus: “This is okay, I got it from [insert ritzy-glitzy-healthy-conscious-store]!” – Don’t be mad, because I shop at these ritzy-glitzy-crunch-granola stores, too. However… I don’t allow myself to be glamored into thinking everything available there is healthy. Those stores have a market to sell to, and needs to fulfill, as well. I can find the same super-long-junk-food aisles in my crunchy-granola-healthy-food-only-store as I can at my regular run of the mill neighborhood grocery chain. No store is oblivious to the needs of the public, and since they know the public wants their sugar/fat/salt combo… that store is going to provide it. Period. They’ve got money to make.

The reality is that health halos – and their subsequent pretty labeling – serve as green lights for many of us who are apprehensive about certain dishes (usually with good purposes). They’re put there to give us an appropriate reason to bypass our apprehension and dive in. Those of us who might not eat at Applebee’s might be more convinced to dine there because “they’ve got a Weight Watcher’s menu!” Those of us who don’t do cereals might be more convinced to buy one because “I can get in my whole grains!”

If I don’t want it, if I believe I shouldn’t eat it… don’t. It’s that simple. Sound decision making comes from educating myself on my options, and choosing what I consider to be the best from my set of options…. and not letting pretty colors or labeling or nice phrasing get in my way.

5 Examples of How To Get Beyond The “Halo” Effect is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. Walmart, Michelle Obama and The Halo Effect
2. Friday 5: Five Examples Of Sabotage, From The BGG2WL Readers
3. The Effect Of Excess Sugar On Children’s Teeth

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: grocery shopping, halo effect, health endorsements, health halo, labeling, marketing, natural, nutrition labels, organic, packaging, 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, 2012. | 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

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, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: processed foods

And just then, the record (or CD …or MP3) skipped.

I get it. People who believe that the primary concern is calories… will drink a diet pop because the calorie count is low. (In fact, in some cases, it’s literally zero calories.) But clean eaters know better. Clean eaters know a few things about this mentality:

First, if you’re going to enjoy a zero calorie drink, it had better be water.

Secondly, a drink that has color and sweet sugary taste, but zero calories? That’s a highly processed product. No bueno.

Next, if it has no vitamins or minerals in it, it’s not worth my time ingesting it. Getting the most bang for our nutritional buck, here.

Lastly, if it has high fruc–

Uh, not so fast, Erika! Diet soft drinks don’t have high fructose corn syrup in them!

No, you’re absolutely right. It doesn’t have HFCS in it. It has aspartame in it. Ooooh, that’s so much better.

I’m not even going to go in on this. Someone already did:

“When aspartame was put before the FDA for approval, it was denied eight times. G.D. Searle, founder of aspartame, tried to get FDA approval in 1973. Clearly, he wasn’t bothered by reports from neuroscientist Dr. John Olney and researcher Ann Reynolds (hired by Searle himself) that aspartame was dangerous. Dr. Martha Freeman, a scientist from the FDA division of Metabolic and Endocrine Drug Products, declared, “The information submitted for review is inadequate to permit a scientific evaluation of clinical safety.” Freeman recommended that until the safety of aspartame was proven, marketing the product should not be permitted. Alas, her recommendations were ignored. Somehow, in 1974, Searle got approval to use aspartame in dry foods. However, it wasn’t smooth sailing from there. In 1975, the FDA put together a task force to review Searle’s testing methods. Task force team leader Phillip Brodsky said he “had never seen anything as bad as Searle’s testing” and called the test’s results “manipulated.” Before aspartame actually made it into dry foods, Olney and attorney and consumer advocate Jim Turner filed objections against the approval.

“In 1977, the FDA asked the U.S. attorney’s office to start grand jury proceedings against Searle for “knowingly misrepresenting findings and concealing material facts and making false statements in aspartame safety tests.” Shortly after, the U.S. attorney leading the investigation against Searle was offered a job by the law firm that was representing Searle. Later that same year, he resigned as U.S. attorney and withdrew from the case, delaying the grand jury’s investigation. This caused the statute of limitations on the charges to run out, and the investigation was dropped. And he accepted the job with Searle’s law firm. Stunning.

“In 1980, a review by the Public Board of Inquiry set up by the FDA determined that aspartame should not be approved. The board said it had not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive.” In 1981, new FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes was appointed. Despite the fact that three out of six scientists advised against approval, Hayes decided to overrule the scientific review panel and allow aspartame into limited dry goods. In 1983, he got it approved for beverages, even though the National Soft Drink Association urged the FDA to delay approval until further testing could be done. That same year, Hayes left the FDA amid charges of impropriety. The Internal Department of Health and Human services was investigating Hayes for accepting gratuities from FDA-regulated companies. He went to work as a consultant for Searle’s public relations firm. Interesting. The FDA finally urged Congress to prosecute Searle for giving the government false or incomplete test results on aspartame. However, the two government attorneys assigned to the case decided not to prosecute. Later, they went to work for the law firm that represented Searle. Fascinating. Despite recognizing ninety-two different symptoms that result from ingesting aspartame, the FDA approved it for use, without restriction in 1996. Brilliant.

[...]

“Nutrasweet and Equal contain aspartame. When ingested, one of aspartame’s ingredients, methyl alcohol, converts into formaldehyde, a deadly neurotoxin. In addition to aspartame, Equal contains the amino acid phenylalanine. Phenylalanine occurs naturally in the brain. But high levels can increase the chance of seizures and lead to depression and schizophrenia. There is no lesser of the two evils. NutraSweet and Equal are both evil. Sweet and Low is no saint, either. It is an artificial sweetener that contains saccharin, a coal-tar compound.” [source]

I’m going to focus on three major issues, here.

For starters, this should lay to rest that philosophy of “If it were so bad for you, then the FDA wouldn’t have approved it.” The amount of trust we give our government officials would make sense if those positions weren’t held by people with their own humanity to contend with. Look at the instances of people who were bought off, paid off, pushed aside, ignored all to get this product approved.

Secondly, I’m a huge advocate of knowing what you’re eating – both the positive and negative information – before you eat it. If you didn’t know all of this about aspartame before you decided to make it a staple in your diet, is it time to reassess whether or not it belongs in your diet?

Thirdly, this is the issue with processed foods. They make use of chemicals used for other purposes in nature in order to create flavors and tastes in a fashion that would be much more costly if the actual foods themselves were used to make the product! You are introducing chemicals into your system… period.

“[Aspartame is a low-calorie sweetener made by joining two amino acids with an alcohol. It is approximately 180 times sweeter than sugar.] Some researchers claim to have linked aspartame to brain tumors and lymphoma, but the FDA insists that the sweetener is safe for humans. A list of complaints submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services includes headaches, dizziness, diarrhea, memory loss and mood changes. The Center for Science in the Public Interest states that children should avoid drinks sweetened with aspartame.” [source]

Think about it – a chemical was created to cause the brain to react to it in the same way as sugar. Many people – many people - claim they experience withdrawals when they take a break from products containing aspartame. The only other instance I can think of where a person is willfully introducing a mind-altering chemical into their system… definitely causes withdrawal symptoms when people break from it. I’m sure you’re familiar with heroin… cocaine… meth… I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point.

And since I’m ticking everyone off? Let’s talk about Splenda.

Knowing what we know about the 40-some-odd years of aspartame’s existence, splenda (made of sucralose), has an equally young past. One more quote:

Because we’re having so much fun, lets bash the shit out of Splenda, one of the newer sweeteners. Splenda is made by chlorinated sugar, changing its molecular structure. The finished product is called sucralose. The makers of this poison tout its lack of calories and claim it’s safe for diabetics. The FDA calls sucralose 98 percent pure. The other 2 percent contains small amounts of heavy metals, methanol, and arsenic. Well gee, at least it doesn’t have any calories. So what if it has a little arsenic? Sucralose has been found to cause diarrhea; organ, genetic, immune system, and reproductive damage; swelling of the liver and kidneys: and a decrease in fetal body weight. What a splendid product! [source]

Really, I’m over it. All those little diet dishes that are “sweet” thanks to this stuff? I’m over those, too. I have a family history of cancer… what do I look like putting known cancer-causing agents (also known as carcinogens) in my body? No thanks.

These sweeteners are not food. They are chemicals meant to trick your body into thinking they are something they aren’t. I don’t know how many different times, in how many different ways I can say this, but it goes as follows:

I don’t care how many miles you run each day, how many pounds of weight you lift or how chiseled your muscles are. You cannot live a fully healthy life if you ingest chemicals to survive. You are cheating your insides – screw what you look like on the outside – if you don’t care for them as much as you care for your abs, your booty, your legs or whatever else you adore. Period.

Believe it or not, I don’t share this stuff with the intention of telling anyone to give it up. We all (hopefully) have reasons for making the decisions we make. My point in sharing this information is so that we can, again, make educated decisions about the food choices we make. Clean eating is simple. Easy. The foods are of the Earth, I’m of the Earth, this is a win. When we introduce outside substances to our diet, our bodies deserve the twenty minutes it might take to hit up your favorite wellness-promoting website and do a search. It’s seriously not that hard.

I will say this, though: I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that says “those who know better, constantly strive to do better.” Just a thought.

The Case Against Diet Soda (And Aspartame… And Splenda.. And….) is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Case Against Agave Nectar
2. No Food Stamps For Soft Drinks? Cracking Down On Soda Pop
3. The Case Against… Juice?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 48 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: aspartame, clean eating, dieting, equal, Fad Diets, FDA, government, Healthy Eating, high fructose corn syrup, nutrition, processed foods, soft drinks, splenda, sucralose, sugar, sweeteners, sweetnlow

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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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, earth day, ecofriendly, grocery shopping, high fructose corn syrup, portion control, processed foods, saving money, vegetables, water

If I buy it, I WILL eat it... so the trick is to... not buy it?

Here’s something that might come as a “duh,” but I don’t think I’ve ever thought of it within this context before:

The easier it is to acquire something, the more likely I am to eat it… and eat a lot of it.

When my house was full of quick heat-n-eats, it was beyond easy for me to eat whenever I thought about food. All it took was a passing thought about something in the fridge, and before I knew it – it was in the microwave. It was in the oven. I was eating… until I felt stuffed.

It was quick. It was easy. It was overwhelming. And it all happened in under 20 minutes.

That’s why it’s so advantageous for companies to make food even quicker and even easier to cook… you get little time during the process to second-guess your decision to eat. Very little time to ask yourself, “Am I really hungry? Do I really want this? Should I wait?” And if it’s in your house already… you’re pretty much setting yourself up to lose.

For someone like me, who spends a large amount of time in an area with a kitchen and a refridgerator… I had to realize that the easier I made it to eat, the more likely it is that I would, in fact, eat. And because those “easier-to-eat foods” aren’t – by any stretch of the imagination – healthy for us, the more that I ate… the more that I was harming myself. The more of these foods that I ate, the more likely it was that I wasn’t actually filling myself at all… compelling myself to eat more:

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. [source]

We are creatures of habit. We also are hard-wired to want to make things easier for ourselves. (I imagine this is also why so many of us dread the idea of working out – who wants to struggle and work hard and sweat all day every day?) There’s nothing wrong with innovating to make things easier for ourselves. The problem comes when that “easy way out” actually creates more problems than it solves. The problem comes when “easy” morphs into “damaging.”

I’ve written about how I make clean eating easier in my day to day life. I would pre-cook things. I’d pre-prep things. I spend a half hour each week chopping, grating, organizing, rinsing, freezing and soaking. In a sense, I’ve already bypassed most of the cooking process at this point – I’ve made my own processed foods, so to speak. I’ve made it easier for me to make healthier choices, if I’m going to be overtaken by the quick “Hmmm, I want some food because I’m bored” feeling. Now, I’m eating a cucumber dill sandwich (maybe 220 calries) instead of a handful of taquitos and sour cream (approximately 627 calories).

Luckily, for me, because I eat so often… I don’t really think about food because I know it’s coming. It’s to the point for me that now, I’m not overtaken by that eating-out-of-boredom or eating-because-I’m-starving thing. I eat when it’s time… because it’s time. For me, because I’ve learned how to make quick and easy full-bodied veggie snacks – even spent a while eating giant heads (and stalks) of broccoli to snack on – I don’t even bother pre-cooking or pre-prepping things anymore. I enjoy the process and, because it is now a priority to me, I don’t mind making time for it each day. I know dishes that take ten minutes to throw together, and I know dishes that take an hour to put together. I just make sure that I pick appropriately.

There’s a psychological aspect to this, too – from the moment we put an item in our cart, we’ve triggered a chain of events. If the food has adequate amounts of sugar, fat and salt… it has triggered that chain in our system that becomes excited (because the brain knows what’s coming), followed by sitting at home and staring at it all in your face every time you enter the kitchen/open the fridge/peek in the freezer, followed by the repeated effort you have to put forth to say “Nooooooooooooo you will not win this time!!” and lastly followed up by you diving in head first… and the longer the process takes to complete itself, the more you are likely to eat. That kind of pre-meditation (the process of thinking about the food, then saying no to it) creates an expectation… and you’ll eat and eat and eat the food until it has lived up to the expectation you had of it. (This seems to be especially true of ice cream… at least, in my experience. Just sayin’.)

This is why, for me, it is especially important for me to be careful of what I keep within my reach and what I allow myself to access. Like, sure… I may pick up something I know I have noooooo business having, and I’ll stare at it for a minute and try to justify buying it… but the end of the process isn’t me buying it and agonizing over it at home. The end of the process is me – literally – putting it back on its shelf, doing a little dance, and walking away. (This, again, seems to be especially true of ice cream. Needless to say, I don’t go in the ice cream aisle anymore.)

All of this is to say… convenience makes it easier for us to do things we know we shouldn’t, so even when we’re buying with the best of intentions in mind, sometimes we’re still setting ourselves up. There’s nothing wrong with saying “I can’t do it.. so I won’t.” and putting it back where it belongs. To me, there’s nothing wrong with stopping this cycle dead in its tracks and throwing away something we know we shouldn’t have purchased in the first place. I seek to be aware of my limitations and respect them, or use them to my advantage. Except for the ice cream… y’all better hope I never figure out how to make mint chocolate chip ice cream from scratch. Good grief.

The Trouble With Convenience is a post from: A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss. Thanks for reading!

Related posts:

1. The Trouble With Genetically Engineered Foods, Revisited

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: mentality, processed foods

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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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chocolate, Healthy Eating, indulge, mentality, overeating, 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!

Related posts:

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, 2012. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: additives, chemicals, eating, high fructose corn syrup, leptin, preservatives, 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?

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: FDA, high fructose corn syrup, ingredients, processed foods

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. Saturday Night Live Pokes Fun At High Fructose Corn Syrup
3. Another Reason To Ditch The High Fructose Corn Syrup

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: carbohydrates, clean eating, high fructose corn syrup, nutrition, processed foods, sugar, table sugar

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

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© Erika for A Black Girl's Guide To Weight Loss, 2012. | Permalink | 47 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clean eating, ecofriendly, overeating, processed foods

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 | 16 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 | 21 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 | 18 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?

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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

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 | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Healthy Eating, high fructose corn syrup, processed foods