RWhen you eat dinner at a restaurant, it's easy to eat more than 1,500 or 2,000 calories at one sitting. Yikes! That's a full day's worth of calories.
Pre-dinner bread & butter: 200 calories
Pre-dinner cocktail: 150 calories
Appetizer: potentially a 500-1,500 calorie bomb
Steak: 300-500 calories
Potato: 150-300 calories
Vegetable: 100 calories
Beverage: 150 calories
Dessert: 300-750 calories
After-dinner drink: 150 calories
And that's only if you control yourself. If you go on a feeding frenzy, you could be looking at 2,500 or even 3,000 calories. Those numbers are scary.
Fortunately, there are ways to avoid this dietary nightmare while dining out. Here are five guidelines for cutting 1,000 calories from your restaurant meals...
1. Plan ahead and avoid restaurants that serve huge portions. (Cheesecake Factory and Outback Steakhouse, for example.)
2. Skip the bread. Eating it won't stop you from eating your full meal too, so just send it back.
3. Don't order booze or liquid calories of any type.
4. Avoid potatoes. Stick to your protein and your vegetables.
5. Reward yourself with only the tiniest bit of dessert, if any.
It's all about taking responsibility for your choices.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Eat a High-Protein Breakfast. Why?
By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS
If you're looking to lose weight, you should start by pumping up your breakfast. New research presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the Endocrine Society found that a high-protein breakfast is one key to weight loss. In this eight-month study, obese individuals who ate a 600-calorie breakfast containing about 40 grams of protein (and a small lunch and dinner) lost an average of 40 pounds.
This is huge when you compare it to the results of most diets - and it comes on the heels of a related study published in the British Journal of Nutrition.
These researchers added extra protein to the diets of overweight and obese men, and recorded what happened when they consumed it at breakfast, lunch, dinner, or throughout the day. Following the extra-protein meal, the subjects reported feeling fuller for the rest of the day, especially when the extra protein - such as eggs and lean Canadian bacon - was eaten at breakfast.
Home Seller Assist at http://www.fastbuyerloans.com
This is very much in keeping with other research indicating that protein for breakfast (indeed, eating breakfast period) is a great weight-loss strategy.
Simply adding a side of scrambled eggs to your pancakes and changing nothing else accomplishes nothing. But as part of an overall calorie-reduced diet and exercise program, the extra protein - especially at breakfast - may help you lose weight.
If you're looking to lose weight, you should start by pumping up your breakfast. New research presented at the 2008 annual meeting of the Endocrine Society found that a high-protein breakfast is one key to weight loss. In this eight-month study, obese individuals who ate a 600-calorie breakfast containing about 40 grams of protein (and a small lunch and dinner) lost an average of 40 pounds.
This is huge when you compare it to the results of most diets - and it comes on the heels of a related study published in the British Journal of Nutrition.
These researchers added extra protein to the diets of overweight and obese men, and recorded what happened when they consumed it at breakfast, lunch, dinner, or throughout the day. Following the extra-protein meal, the subjects reported feeling fuller for the rest of the day, especially when the extra protein - such as eggs and lean Canadian bacon - was eaten at breakfast.
Home Seller Assist at http://www.fastbuyerloans.com
This is very much in keeping with other research indicating that protein for breakfast (indeed, eating breakfast period) is a great weight-loss strategy.
Simply adding a side of scrambled eggs to your pancakes and changing nothing else accomplishes nothing. But as part of an overall calorie-reduced diet and exercise program, the extra protein - especially at breakfast - may help you lose weight.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Bad for Your Heart?
By James B. LaValle
If you're worried about the effects of fat and dietary cholesterol on your heart, stop. Trans-fats are the only ones conclusively proven to be detrimental. In the meantime, there's something just as serious to watch out for. Fructose.
The average American is getting more fructose than ever before. A study in the July 9 Medscape Journal of Medicine found that, on average, our intake of fructose increased from about 35 grams (a little over 1 ounce) per day in the late 1970s to about 55 grams (almost 2 ounces) per day now. That may not sound like much, but 2 ounces of fructose per day is almost 46 pounds a year!
That's serious news, because fructose has a rap sheet about a mile long:
1. It increases the risk of high LDL cholesterol - which increases the risk of heart attack threefold.
2. It increases triglycerides in the blood, a strong predictor of heart disease.
3. It increases uric acid in the blood, which causes gout and increases blood pressure.
4. It stimulates appetite by affecting leptin (a hunger-suppressing hormone) and ghrelin (a hunger-stimulating hormone.)
5. It decreases adiponectin, a hormone that improves insulin sensitivity in cells.
Where are we getting all that fructose? Well, it occurs naturally in fruits and other foods, like table sugar and honey. But the popular processed sweetener high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the main culprit.
So check the labels. And avoid foods with HFCS. These include soft drinks, fruit juice drinks, fruit rolls/fruit chew-type snacks, sweetened teas, fruit smoothies, and ketchup. And limit your intake of anything with high amounts of natural fructose - like fruit juices - as well.
If you're worried about the effects of fat and dietary cholesterol on your heart, stop. Trans-fats are the only ones conclusively proven to be detrimental. In the meantime, there's something just as serious to watch out for. Fructose.
The average American is getting more fructose than ever before. A study in the July 9 Medscape Journal of Medicine found that, on average, our intake of fructose increased from about 35 grams (a little over 1 ounce) per day in the late 1970s to about 55 grams (almost 2 ounces) per day now. That may not sound like much, but 2 ounces of fructose per day is almost 46 pounds a year!
That's serious news, because fructose has a rap sheet about a mile long:
1. It increases the risk of high LDL cholesterol - which increases the risk of heart attack threefold.
2. It increases triglycerides in the blood, a strong predictor of heart disease.
3. It increases uric acid in the blood, which causes gout and increases blood pressure.
4. It stimulates appetite by affecting leptin (a hunger-suppressing hormone) and ghrelin (a hunger-stimulating hormone.)
5. It decreases adiponectin, a hormone that improves insulin sensitivity in cells.
Where are we getting all that fructose? Well, it occurs naturally in fruits and other foods, like table sugar and honey. But the popular processed sweetener high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the main culprit.
So check the labels. And avoid foods with HFCS. These include soft drinks, fruit juice drinks, fruit rolls/fruit chew-type snacks, sweetened teas, fruit smoothies, and ketchup. And limit your intake of anything with high amounts of natural fructose - like fruit juices - as well.
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