Weight Watchers Approved Meals at McDonalds
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This is just crazy… From MSNBC
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WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Meals approved by Weight Watchers are going on sale at McDonald’s in New Zealand, the companies said Wednesday, in a deal trumpeted as an enjoyable way to lose weight but that nutritionists criticize as a marketing ploy that doesn’t promote healthy eating.
As part of the deal — which the company says is the first of its kind in the world — McDonald’s will use the Weight Watchers logo on its menu boards and Weight Watchers will promote McDonald’s to dieters.
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Some of the items that are approved are Chicken McNuggets and the Filet-O-Fish. Both are high fat and fried. I suppose if you are just trying to get people to eat by a point system like Weight Watchers does, you can allow them to eat stuff like this but it is not a good way to get people to adopt a healthy lifestyle. In fact, it is probably damaging since there are now people who will eat deep fried food from McDonalds that never would have before. I would like to see how much money Weight Watchers is going to make off of this…
Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Children/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Quick Tips, Seniors/fit, Spiritual/Emotional, Sports, Youth/fit | Add Comment
Coke
Most people have no idea how many calories they eat and drink every day. They just eat an drink whatever they want with no concept of what is healthy and normal. Soda, sweet tea, and specialty coffee drinks from Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts can easily add over 1000 calories per day to your diet. That is huge since most people only need 2000-2500 calories/day to maintain a healthy weight. Unfortunately, the excerpt below describes a pretty typical American lifestyle… one that will kill you. I suspect that this lady was also at very high risk for diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. From MSNBC-
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The newest member of the Joy Fit Club, who once weighed 308 pounds, recalls being heavy all her life. Although she considered herself happy and successful, with a loving family and an engaging career, she knew she needed a healthier lifestyle. Her daily intake, primarily fast food, hovered around 5,000 empty calories a day. “I just ate with no rhyme or reason … all day, every day, nonstop.” Billie’s biggest vice was soda; she would drink six 20-oz. bottles of regular Coca-Cola.
More important, Billie realized the impact she was having on her kids. Not only did she set a poor example; she also often felt she couldn’t fully participate in their lives: She couldn’t run, play or do anything but sit with them.
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My advice to all of my friends and family is to wean yourself off of any kind of sugary drinks. There is no nutritional value in these types of drinks and huge risks for most people. Water is the best thing to drink but coffee, tea and other kinds of unsweetened drinks are fine if you like them. It’s OK to put a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee if you need to, but if you need to make it super sweet just to drink it, you should probably find something you like better. Cutting you sugar intake will have a huge beneficial effect on your weight and how you feel. So just do it! Get someone at home or work to take the challenge with you and hold each other accountable. It is a lot easier to make these kinds of changes if you have a partner. Oh and keep your kids from getting addicted to high sugar drinks by not keeping them in the house. Simple and effective.
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Ohno training
I don’t think I will get much work done for the next couple of weeks with the Olympics on all day and night. At any rate, I love watching the speed skating, downhill, luge and bobsledding- really anything where they are racing at high speed. Figure skating I can take or leave, but I usually end up watching it just for the amazing skill involved. There are tons of good videos on NBC’s Olympic site like this one about Apolo Ohno’s training routine. Check it out…
FDA may update serving size on labels
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Ice Cream
One of the things I constantly remind people about in their quest to lose weight is “serving size”. If you look at the label on any packaged food, the serving size will be listed, such as “2 cookies” or “about 14 crackers”. The problem is that virtually no one in America eats 1 serving of anything. Even bread lists 1 serving as 1 slice. But no one makes a sandwich with 1 slice of bread and most people would naturally assume that 1 serving is 2 slices. If I were to make an educated guess from watching people eat, I would estimate that most people eat at least 2 servings of everything- maybe 3. That would be great if it were vegetables and fruit, but it is usually junk food or high carb, high fat stuff like ice cream. So, this really is a good idea. Knowledge is a good thing and helping people to understand just how much they really eat is important.
But here is the application- if you want to surprise yourself, measure out you food for a few days and calculate the actual calories. Just carry a small notebook with you and write down everything you eat right down to the ketchup you put on your fries (which you should skip). Pretty much every restaurant chain lists nutrition info on their website. You will probably be surprised to find out that you eat about twice as many calories as you think. That is why you can’t lose weight! From MSNBC-
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“If people don’t understand the serving, whatever number they get for fat or calories is misleading,” said William K. Hubbard, a former F.D.A. official who consulted with the agency last year.
Consider the humble chip: most potato or corn chip bags today show a one-ounce serving size, containing a tolerable 150 calories, or thereabouts. But only the most disciplined snacker will stop at an ounce. For some brands, like Tostitos Hint of Lime, that can be just six chips.
In the real world, many people might eat two or three times that, or more. Munch half a bag of Tostitos while watching the Super Bowl and you could take in about half the 2,000 calories an average person needs in a day.
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Ok, this is not really an endorsement even though I really do like cheddar cheese. By the way, sharp cheeses are a great way to add flavor without adding a lot of calories.
Correlation between depression and junk food found
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Skip this for better health!
Whenever you start looking for cause/effect relationships, you invariably run the risk of getting it wrong and possibly backwards. But in this study there is a pretty good case to be made for eliminating as much junk food from your diet as possible since the correlation is so strong. It is possible that depressed people just eat more junk food. But with what we know about how diet affects every area of our lives, it is very likely that whole, natural, healthy foods benefit our brain function. So with that in mind, check out this article over at MSNBC Health and pass it along to your friends and family who might be struggling with depression. My experience is that changing your diet and adding exercise to your daily regimen has a powerful effect on mood as well as physical well-being. For a good 6 meal per day diet, check out this page…
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British and French epidemiologists analyzed food and mood data from 3,486 men and women (average age 55) in the Whitehall II study on London-based office staff. Each participant answered a food frequency questionnaire in which they were asked how often they had eaten a designated portion size of a food during the previous year (set responses ranged from “never” to “six or more times per day”).
That data was then converted to a daily intake and two dietary patterns were identified: the “whole food pattern” (defined by a high daily intake of vegetables, fruits, and fish) and the “processed food pattern” (characterized by high consumption of sweetened desserts, chocolates, fried food, processed meat, pies, refined grains, high-fat dairy products, and condiments). Five years later, all the participants answered a short questionnaire designed to measure symptoms of depression in the general population.
The Benefits of Exercise for the Mind and Spirit
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walking in the woods
We often think that when it comes to diet, exercise and health that the latest is the greatest. We also tend to think that no one before us could possibly have the insight and clarity that our current generation has. But that is of course a fallacy and falls under the category of “chronological snobbery” as CS Lewis calls it. So here is a quote from the famous 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon-
He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood-pigeons in the forest, the song of birds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, and the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy. A day’s breathing of fresh air upon the hills, or a few hours, ramble in the beech woods’ umbrageous calm, would sweep the cobwebs out of the brain of scores of our toiling ministers who are now but half alive. A mouthful of sea air, or a stiff walk in the wind’s face, would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is next best.
So head out and get oxygen! It will be good for you body, mind and spirit.
A Guide for Healthy Food and Eating
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Grilled Fish
WebMD has an article about an address Michael Pollan gave to a gathering of scientists and doctors at the CDC back in March. In the talk he gives 7 words and 7 rules for food and eating. He also notes that there are some ironies about American eating habits that we should pay attention to. Although he makes little mention of the importance of exercise, I feel the need to remind you that exercise has huge benefits that diet alone cannot make up for. But, all in all, he has some really good advice. When guys in the gym asks me about supplements and protein powder, I always tell them to simply save their money and buy good real food.
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As part of an effort to bring new ideas to the national debate on food issues, the CDC invited Pollan — a harsh critic of U.S. food policies — to address CDC researchers and to meet with leaders of the federal agency.
“The French paradox is that they have better heart health than we do despite being a cheese-eating, wine-swilling, fois-gras-gobbling people,” Pollan said. “The American paradox is we are a people who worry unreasonably about dietary health yet have the worst diet in the world.”
In various parts of the world, Pollan noted, necessity has forced human beings to adapt to all kinds of diets.
“The Masai subsist on cattle blood and meat and milk and little else. Native Americans subsist on beans and maize. And the Inuit in Greenland subsist on whale blubber and a little bit of lichen,” he said. “The irony is, the one diet we have invented for ourselves — the Western diet — is the one that makes us sick.”
Snowballing rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease in the U.S. can be traced to our unhealthy diet. So how do we change? Read on here!
FRS energy drinks and Quercetin
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You might have noticed the FRS energy drinks that Lance Armstrong is pimping on pretty much every website from weather.com to MSNBC. While I am pretty skeptical about the latest and greatest new, all natural, fix everything supplement that hits the market, the active ingredient in FRS is an anti-oxidant called Quercetin. It is found in the skins of many dark fruits like red grapes, blueberries, apples and citrus fruits. So I did a little research and found a good article about it on the University of Maryland Medical Center website. While there are not a lot of studies done using it in pill form as a supplement, there is good evidence that it does in fact have tangible benefits for many common ailments including allergies, prostatitis, certain types of heart disease and possibly cancer. One of the main benefits seems to be its natural anti-inflammatory properties. But, what about the FRS claims of increased energy? Well, the UMMC article does not mention that at all but FRS’s website claims this:
Scientists believe that taking Quercetin supplements increases the amount of mitochondria in cells, and since mitochondria create energy, if you have more mitochondria you’re able to produce more energy. So the energy you feel is more of your natural energy rather than artificial feeling stimulant energy. Quercetin is chemically similar to Resveritrol and is naturally occurring in grapes, apples, and blueberries.
So, since it is available in tablet form pretty inexpensively, I think I will give it a 1 month trial and report back weekly on if I notice any difference in either energy levels or less pain in my back and joints from the anti-inflammatory properties. Stay tuned and we will see what happens.
Calorie Counts on Menus Can Help
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blueberry muffins
When NYC required restaurants to post the calorie count beside each item on their menu, many, many people were astonished to find out just how bad a blueberry muffin can be- At Dunkin Donuts, they are an amazing 510 calories. That is about what an entire meal should be for an average person. For some people, knowing the calories of an item won’t make any difference. They are going to eat whatever they want, consequences be damned. But for many people, knowing the calorie, fat and sugar information can help them make better choices. With upwards of 70% of adult Americans now overweight or obese, information like this can make a difference.
So far, only a few cities and 1 state (CA) have made calories information on the menu mandatory, but others will follow suit if there is enough support. What can you do in the mean time? First, email the corporate headquarters of the places you eat at and let them know that you want this information. You can also let them know that if they choose not to provide it, you will take your business elsewhere. But for now, most people will have to do a little more work… as in, check their menus on the internet. All of the big chain restaurants post nutritional info on their website. So take a minute and look it over before you go out to eat. Pretty soon, you will know what to avoid at certain places you eat. Plus, you can help your family and friends make better choices too. Also get in the habit of teaching your children to look at nutritional information as well since their generation is also suffering from soaring obesity rates due to poor diet and fast food consumption.
