Nutrition For Life

It’s been another one of those days: places to go, deadlines to meet, meals to cook. You find yourself daydreaming about crisp, salty potato chips. Pretty soon it’s an insistent, must-have-it-now craving, and before you know it, your hand is deep in the bag.

Rather than berate your lack of willpower, once in a while, indulge yourself. In a 2007 Tufts University study of healthy women, 91 percent reported having food cravings (which the researchers define as an intense desire to eat a specific food). In other words, cravings are common, and the key to successful weight management, experts say, is learning to address cravings rather than always deny them.

“You first have to accept that having cravings is normal, but you don’t have to give in to every one,” says Tufts study coauthor Susan Roberts, PhD. “The people in our research who manage their weight the best are not those who crave foods less often but those who give in some of the time.”

Trigger happy

Brian Wansink, PhD, director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab and author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, has made a career of studying people’s behavior relating to food. He says cravings fall into two basic categories: snacks (with potato chips, ice cream, cookies, and chocolate leading the list) and meal foods (pizza, pasta, burgers, casseroles, and the like). Which comfort food you choose can be affected by age and gender.

“Women tend to crave sweet stuff, men salty stuff,” Roberts says. “And premenstrual women’s cravings are more likely to be insistent.” What triggers a food longing? Hormonal fluctuations are thought to be the cause in premenstrual women, though no one knows for sure, says Roberts. Other theories include a physical need for calories and emotional cues.

“If you haven’t eaten for hours and you’re really hungry, that is a physical craving, and you should eat,” says Bonnie Taub-Dix, MA, RD, CDN, spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. Read more…

Why do we eat? We all know why we should be eating: to supply our bodies with plenty of energy to get through the day; to get nutrients like vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and phytochemicals which help us to stay healthy and free of disease; and to get useful carbohydrates, proteins, and fats—all of which contribute to running our bodies properly and maintaining good health.

But sometimes we can all be guilty of eating for other reasons. We love food! And that’s great! Eating should be pleasurable, not just nutritious. Food is everywhere: books are devoted to cooking and recipes, we find ourselves daydreaming and even talking about the newest restaurant or our favorite foods.

Many times we eat to celebrate—holidays, job promotions, graduations, weddings…we’ll find just about any achievement (”I raked the yard!”, “We sold our house!”, “My favorite team won!”) to be celebration-worthy, and we’ll eat to commemorate it.

Other times, we let our emotions take over. When we’re stressed out, sad, angry, or lonely, we oftentimes turn to food to comfort us. Even starting (and staying on) a new diet can be stressful, especially when emotions creep in.

In our food-obsessed culture with out-of-control portions always lurking within our grasps, how can we not overeat? It’s hard to break habits and go against the lessons we have always been taught, like cleaning our plates, not being wasteful, or getting the best deal—which usually means ordering up and getting a lot more food for the money. Read more…

I recently have had a lot of people ask me what are the benefits of the 100 calorie packs and do they help me lose weight? Do the food in the packs themselves help you lose weight…. NO

Convenience foods and snacking go hand in hand. Unfortunately, many of these convenient snacks also go straight to our waistlines. When “snack packs” appeared on the market just a few years ago, dieters rejoiced! Now, they could easily count calories and enjoy their favorite snacks at the same time. In fact, the 100-calorie snack packs proved to be so popular that sales have skyrocketed to almost $200 million in under three years. But how healthy are these snacks and should we even be eating them at all? Do good things really come in small packages? Let’s break down the snack pack facts.

Automatic Portion Control
Some dietitians and behavior experts believe these small 100-calorie packages are ideal for foods that we should only enjoy in limited amounts anyway, such as chips, cookies and chocolate bars. Numerous studies have shown that when a food container is larger, people will eat more. In fact, they’re more likely to eat until they reach the bottom of a box or bag, without even realizing how much they’ve eaten until all the food is gone. Therefore, smaller portions sizes will help you eat less, right? Well, new research published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that smaller “snack” packages encouraged participants to eat nearly twice as much, often without hesitation, than people who ate from larger packages. The built-in portion control of snack packages may help some people curb mindless overeating, but this theory works only when you limit yourself to one package. If you consume more than that, the benefits are lost. Read more…

 “Help, I am way over in protein!”

“I’m not meeting my fat goal. Is this a problem?”

“How many carbohydrates should I be eating?”

Just a few of the many questions people ask themselves while trying to eat healthy and or lose weight. Based on years of research that examined the relationship between nutrient intake and disease prevention, generally-accepted ranges have been established for carbohydrates, fat and protein intake. These healthy ranges also help to ensure that a person is getting a sufficient intake of other essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. The recommendations are:

 45% to 65% of calories eaten should come from carbohydrates.

20% to 35% of calories eaten should come from fat.

10% to 35% of calories eaten should come from protein*.

 But I have taken a middle-of-the-road approach with these ranges. Our specific breakdown is approximately 50% carbohydrates, 30% fat and 20% protein, all of which fall into the healthy ranges above. With striving to meet weight loss goals through calorie restriction, I also recommend a minimum level of protein—at least 60 grams daily for females and 75 grams daily for males. This requirement will help prevent muscle loss and promote feelings of fullness among dieters. The chart below reflects this recommendation.

 Your intake of carbohydrates, fat and protein may be somewhat higher or lower than the recommendations, due to your taste preferences, cooking style, culture, fitness routine, health conditions and day-to-day changes in diet. Does that mean that your intake is bad or dangerous? No! Read more…

No More Portion Distortion

Knowing portion sizes is just as important as knowing how many portions to eat. The list below includes the number of portions that are recommended daily for most adults and children, and matches standard SINGLE portion sizes with an easy way to visualize its real size. Read more…