Good Friday 03 21 2008
I’m busy and preoccupied with Easter preparations (way more fun than tax preparations) so all you’re getting out of me today is some informative links on nutrition and fitness, including a few on Good Friday. Enjoy! Happy Easter!
And remember, don’t drink on Spring Break. Your fat loss will grind to a halt and you’ll turn into an obese under muscled toad overnight! (Must be a full moon).
All About Good Friday
Good Friday Wiki
Cheaters Always Prosper
The OFFICIAL Scivation Guide to Dietary “Cheating”
By: Chuck Rudolph, MEd,RD With Marc Lobliner and Derek Charlebois
Since publishing Game Over—The Final Showtime Cut Diet You’ll Ever Need, we have been bombarded with emails and comments. The one most frequently asked question is how and when it is okay to deviate from the plan. The answer for this is simple…Never! If following the Cut Diet, you should not cheat and if you do cheat, it better not be often. If you do happen to cheat, don’t cry to us that your results aren’t optimal.
The bottom line is that the Cut Diet relies on getting the body primed and in the zone. Cheats throw this off. But what if following more of a lifestyle type Cut Diet where you taper carbs throughout the day or even bulking? These are situations where cheating is acceptable and downright yummy. If you like eating pie and being lean at the same time read on and find out how you can cheat and win!
How much can I cheat?
Let’s set forth some guidelines. While it is okay to have the occasional Thanksgiving-like feast where you eat until your pants don’t fit and your feet are swollen, we do not recommend doing this on a weekly basis. Thus, when following the aforementioned diets, we recommend two to three cheat meals per week with calories at around 150% of your normal meal. Meaning that if a normal meal for you yields 500 calories, you will want the cheat to be around 750 calories. But how do you count cheat calories? You don’t. It is all about moderation and approximating the total. In essence, eat until you are full yet not stuffed.
What can I eat for my cheat meal?
We recommend making healthy choices, but the beauty of a cheat meal is that you can cave in to those cravings! If you feel like a piece of pie, get a nice slice of Pecan Pie. If you feel like cheese, buy some Gouda! Just try to control yourself and not eat the whole pie or an entire cheese wheel. The beauty is that you can kiss those protein to carb to fat ratios goodbye for this meal. Enjoy the freedom! Read more.
Sodium, Your Secret Weapon
by Scot Abel
In ancient times, salt was precious. It was traded as the most valued of all commodities, and having a good supply of salt was as close to life insurance as you could get. Age-old aphorisms like "salt of the earth" and "worth your salt" remind us how important salt has always been.
The answer may surprise you. The anti-sodium campaign actually began as a commercial movement to sell different foods and snacks, under the guise of being healthier. Much like the low-fat movement, manufacturers care more about selling products than they do about scientific accuracy. Read more.
Busting the Great Myths of Fat Burning
Your body burns either fat or carbs depending on the intensity of your activity. But when it comes to losing weight, calories are calories. You burn fat even when you're in couch-potato mode. Yet, a lot of misunderstanding prevails.
Get ready to break down some of the myths people have about burning fat:
Read more.
Fat Roundtable
What's new in fat science?
Refereed by John M. Berardi
During our last roundtable, Cy Willson, Lonnie Lowery, and myself got together to talk protein. There were no holds barred as we threw out our own personal protein theories and suggestions with extreme prejudice. With the theories bouncing around like lotto balls in a billion dollar drawing, we went crazy. Lonnie was screaming about being a real man while whipping out his long, cylindrical? pointer to illustrate his points on the graphs and tables he brought along.
In the meantime, Cy and myself were flipping each other off at each disagreement. All in all we had a real blast while giving you guys some practical suggestions for how to use protein to get bigger.
We had so much fun I couldn't wait to do another roundtable. Only this time we'll talk about fat. Within the last few years there's been a lot of discussion regarding the optimal macronutrient composition of the diet. A wide range of individuals (some of them being very wide themselves) have asked me for advice about what fats to eat and how much.
You see, after the anti-fat surge of the 80s and early 90s, people began to realize that the elimination of dietary fat from our culture was not only nearly impossible, but was downright stupid. Read more.
Marion Nestle’s Sorting out low-fat vs. low-carbohydrate
Several people, among them Kerry Trueman of Eating Liberally, asked my opinion of John Tierney’s column about Gary Taubes’ new book, Good Calories Bad Calories, in today’s New York Times. Taubes’ book arrived while I was in India and I can’t really comment on it until I have had a chance to read it. I gather from Tierney’s piece and Gina Kolata’s review of it on Sunday that it comes down hard on carbohydrates.
I continue to be impressed by how difficult it is to separate the health effects of fat, carbohydrate, and protein from the calories they provide, the foods that contain them, the diets as a whole, or the rest of the lifestyle that goes along with the diet. Finding out what people eat is hard to do. Determining the health effects of dietary factors or patterns is even harder since humans make such awful experimental animals. Plenty of things about human nutrition are reasonably well established–the basic nutrients that are required and the amounts that prevent deficiency diseases, for example. But it is much trickier to figure out the effects of nutrients on chronic diseases that are also affected by activity levels, cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and social factors such as poverty, stress, and lack of control. So I can’t help but be skeptical of journalists who think they have answers to questions that scientists have been grappling with for years. Read more.
