Six Holiday Foods to be Cautious of this Year

It's estimated the average American Thanksgiving dinner is about 4500 calories! That's more than double most people's caloric intake for an entire day. While portion control is always a major consideration, the types of seasonal foods consumed can add up quickly, so exercise caution this year. It's good to enjoy holiday foods, but be conscious of serving sizes particularly with these foods:

1. Stuffing
(Serving size 1 cup) Calories 354, Carbs 43 g, Protein 6.4 g, Fat 17 g, Sodium 1048 mg. The surprise with stuffing is the serving size; one cup of stuffing is about 3-4 mouthfuls. It's very easy to double the serving size without knowing it, and what's worse is it contains over 1000 mg. of sodium!!!

2. Gravy
(Serving size 3/4 cup) Calories 375, (Macro nutrients can vary based on ingredients). If you want accurate numbers for gravy, use commercially prepared gravy. Unfortunately, most homemade gravy contains drippings from the meat (turkey, chicken, etc...). Using drippings only increases the fat content which increases calories...SUBSTANTIALLY!!! In addition, stuffing can absorb large amounts of gravy, which will increase the serving size.

3. Mashed Potatoes
(Serving size 1 cup) Calories 237-450, Carbs 35 g, Protein 4 g, Fat 9-22g. As with the gravy example, the numbers change based on the recipe. Most homemade recipes include vast amounts of butter and cream. Adding the 3/4 cup of gravy to the mashed potatoes will yield a 700+ calorie side dish.

4. Pumpkin Pie
Serving size 1/8 slice of 8" pie) Calories 316, Carbs 41 g, Protein 7 g, Fat 14.41 g. Pumpkin pie is a seasonal favorite, but be aware of the fat calories. Adding whip cream to this treat will tack on an additional 40-80 calories.

5. Pecan Pie
(Serving size 1/8 slice of 8" pie) Calories 503, Carbs 64 g. Protein 6 g, Fat 27 g. This is one of the highest calorie items on the holiday menu. Remember, nuts are high in fat so balance your macronutrients through the other meal throughout the day. A larger serving can easily add up to 800 calories!!!

6. Eggnog
(Serving size 1 1/2 cups) Calories 335, Carbs 31 g, Protein 17.34 Fat 16 g. This holiday treat is full of fat, most of which is saturated. This one is sure to pack on the pounds and clog your arteries.

This is the short list of holiday foods that wreck havoc on your scale and wardrobe, but there are many baked foods not listed above that can have the same results. Cookies should be at the top of that list, because many holiday favorites can be as much as 140 cal each!!!

Bon Appetite...and Happy Holidays (if I didn't just ruin it for you!).

Sugar, sugar, everywhere

More than just a few research scientists have made the statement in recent years that “Refined sugar is doing more damage to the general state of health in America than any other poison, drug or narcotic.” This is a statement I whole-heartedly agree with.

What, exactly, is it?

The white crystalline substance we know of as sugar is an unnatural substance produced by industrial processes (mostly from sugar cane or sugar beets) by chemically refining it down to pure sucrose, after stripping away all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, enzymes and other beneficial nutrients.

What is left is a concentrated unnatural substance which the human body is not able to handle, at least not in anywhere near the quantities that is now ingested in today's accepted lifestyle. Why is sugar so devastating to our health? One reason is it is pure chemical and (like heroin) through refining has been stripped of all the natural food nutrition that it originally had in the plant itself.

Heroin and sugar are arrived at by very similar processes of refinement. In producing heroin, the opium is first extracted from the poppy: The opium is then refined into morphine. Chemists then went to work on morphine and further refined it into heroin. (Proclaiming, at the time, they had "discovered" a wonderful new pain-killer that was non-addictive. So they said.)

Similarly, sugar is first pressed as a juice from the cane (or beet) and refined into molasses. Then it is refined into brown sugar, and finally into strange white crystals, C12H22O, that are an alien chemical to the human system.

Americans consume 152 pounds of sweeteners per year, a figure that has been increasing, (along with our collective waistline), since the early 1800s. "During the last decade, Americans have reduced their fat intake at least two percent but we have also become 30% more overweight in almost the same time," writes Ann Louise Gittleman, MS, CNS, in her book Get the Sugar Out.

Oddly enough, though we have, for about 15 years, been removing the fat from our diets, we’re becoming fatter! The culprits – serving sizes and sugar.

Why is it so damaging?

The biggest reasons sugar does more damage than any other poison, drug or narcotic are:

a) It is considered a "food" and therefore ingested in such massive quantities. Americans in particular are told how we are the best fed and best nourished people on the face of the earth. If we are talking about processed junk food - this is true.

If you examine the "foods" in any supermarket more closely and start reading labels, you will find just about everything contains sugar. Most of the foods are loaded with it - from cereals, to soups, to ketchup, to hotdogs. Even flue-cured tobacco can contain as much as 20% sugar by weight. Some cereals are as much as 50% sugar.

b) The damaging effects begin early, from the day a baby is born and is fed sugar in its formula. (Even mothers milk is contaminated with it if the mother eats sugar.) And the consumption of this “food” continues with food products continually marketed to us at every stage of life. From Cap’n Crunch to Ensure – it’s every where, every day and in just about every thing.

c) Like heroin, sugar is highly addictive. Some estimates are that as many as 95% of Americans are addicted to sugar. Most, if not all, without the slightest idea this addiction is in place. Ever wonder why sweet foods are so much more appealing than bland? Ever wonder why, despite knowing that you should pass on that piece of cake and despite your best efforts to say, “no’, you eat it anyway? Being delectable and seductive to the taste, sugar is highly habit forming. Humans not only develop a strong taste for sugar but an insatiable craving for it.

Slow but insidious

Perhaps the biggest reason that refined sugar is so dangerous is that the damage sugar does is slow and insidious. It takes years before it ruins your pancreas, your adrenal glands, throws your whole endocrine system out of kilter and produces a huge list of damage. Consuming that donut today, candy bar tomorrow, does little damage at the moment of consumption. But 40 years later, it is going to extract its price.

List of Damages

When we talk about sugar, we are including bad nutrition as a whole, since anyone who indulges in sugar has bad dietary habits per se.

1. Sugar is by far the leading cause of dental deterioration - cavities in teeth, bleeding gums, failure of bone structure, and loss of teeth.

2. Sugar is the main cause of diabetes, hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia.

3. It is either a significant or contributory cause of heart disease, arteriosclerosis, mental illness, depression, senility, hypertension, cancer.

4. It has an extremely harmful effect in unbalancing the endocrine system and injuring its component glands such as the adrenal glands, pancreas and liver, causing the blood sugar level to fluctuate widely. It has a number of other extremely damaging effects on the human body.

Among the many illnesses linked to too much sugar consumption are

* Increases overgrowth of Candida yeast organism
* Increases chronic fatigue
* Can trigger binge eating in those with bulimia
* Increases PMS symptoms
* Increases hyperactivity in about 50% of children
* Increases tooth decay
* Increases anxiety and irritability
* Can increase or intensify symptoms of anxiety and panic in susceptible women
* Can make it difficult to lose weight because of constantly high insulin levels,
which causes the body to store excess carbs as fat.

Want more information?

Information and knowledge are the starting point to victory in The Battle Over Your Body. Contained in my library, I have an excellent article titled “124 Ways That Sugar Ruins Your Health”. Yes, you read correctly – 124!

If you would like to receive a complimentary copy of this article, just email derrick@achievefitnessusa.com and I’d be happy to send it you personally. It’s an eye-opener, and something you’ll want to have nearby the next time a Baby Ruth jones hits you!

The REAL KEY to weight loss!!

Want to know the real way to lose weight, AND KEEP IT OFF? Yes, we need to eat more of the right things and less of the wrong. And yes, we need to exercise regularly. But do you know the correct kind of exercise to be doing?

When they want to begin exercising and losing weight, *most* people start doing cardio. Walking, jogging, riding a stationary bike, etc. And while the cardio work certainly is important – we need to have well conditioned hearts – the real key to losing weight and keeping it off, is resistance training. aka: weight lifting. Resistance bearing exercise is the most important link in the weight loss chain.

The reason why is very simple; its muscle that burns calories. Thus, the more muscle mass you have the more efficient your body is at burning energy. Remember this:

YOUR MUSCLE IS YOUR METABOLISM

Here’s a simple biology class on how this works. At rest, a pound of muscle burns approximately 50 calories per day. Got it? Ok. Once we reach the 'middle-aged' years the body begins losing muscle mass. Through atrophy, dehydration, etc. You literally have less muscle now than you did when you were 23. (Tell me about it, right?)

Beginning around age 35 we can lose 1 lb. of muscle mass per year. It just goes away. So let’s do some math. Say you’re around 50 now and it’s been 10 years since you lifted weights on a regular basis. Since we lose a pound a year, and it’s been 10 years – that's 10 lbs. of lost muscle. If a pound of muscle burns 50 calories a day, and you’ve lost 10 lbs. of muscle – you have lost the ability to burn 500 calories PER DAY. Simply because you no longer have the muscle mass with which to burn it. Following this?

Here’s the problem. We now are no longer able to burn 500 calories each day, however, our consumption habits do not take this fact into account! That is, we eat just as much as we always have. And that’s the reason why – as we get older, it gets harder & harder to drop 15 lbs. BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T MAINTAIN YOUR MUSCLE MASS.

So the key – for everyone, including you ladies, is to get on a consistent resistance training program asap!