Old-School Iron

Sorry it took this long to get this, the third and final part of the nutrition articles, written. Anyway, as promised, this part will deal with fat loss, basically.

Losing weight is easy; stop eating. Losing it the right way (aka from bodyfat stores) is a bit trickier, albeit not horrendously difficult. At least not in theory.

There are simple guidelines that anyone wishing to loose some extra flab may follow, and this without any calorie-counting. Also, you must bare in mind that these are according to the official guidelines. But first, there are some underlying principles that need a bit of clarification before we can fully understand those guidelines.

First off; the sensation of hunger.

I am one of those people that are constantly hungry. I kid you not, if I was to stuff my face with 2 chicken breasts and a bag of bacon (150g in Finland) right now, which should satisfy anyone for quite a while, I’ll be “hungry” thirty minutes later. I’ve come to realize that the feeling of “hunger” and an actual need to eat don’t necessarily coincide, at least not when it comes to me. If I ate every time I felt like it, I’d be fat. Seriously fat. So, I’ve learned to distinguish between “wanna eat” and “gotta eat”. You need to eat at about 2-3 hour intervals. Any more often than that, and you’re begging to be fat. Any less than that, and it’s the same deal.

Yes, really. That often. People wanting to lose fat should eat as often as anyone else; 2-3 hours apart. That translates to 5-7 meals a day. That’s: breakfast, morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, dinner/preworkout meal, supper/postworkout shake and an evening snack.

If you eat less than that, you’ll be hungry. Hunger creates feelings of “wanna eat”. Now, eating is okay, and eating less isn’t usually the best ticket to losing weight. More often, it’s what you eat that’s the deciding factor, as well as what you burn.

Now, the easiest method to losing weight, by far, is eating less than you consume. Contradicting myself? Not really, since I’m not suggesting you ease up on the eating, but instead add more consumption. Exercising is the easiest way to burn off the unwanted fat. However, most people also add more food to the mix, and this is where it falls apart.
Exercising does NOT give you the thumbs up to eating whatever you feel like. Proper exercise needs proper fuel. You wouldn’t pour canola oil into your car’s engine, now would you? Oils aren’t the same, and neither are foods.
Some people, though, hate to exercise and can’t be forced to do so, either. Lucky there’s a way around that, although I would strongly recommend getting off your ass and exercising anyway! Any exercise is better than nothing at all. Walk, swim, ride a bicycle, throw some hoops, play you nintendo Wii, whatever.

So, how to go about it, then? You should never go hungry, especially when you’re trying to loose weight. Why is that, you ask? Because going hungry will make it harder for you to resist the temptations of chocolate bars and such, and starving yourself is downright depressing, not to mention unhealthy. So, eat all you can instead, with these guidelines in mind (and in practice!).

- The stomach fills not by the caloric content, but by the volume (aka size) of the food.

That is to say that a serving of French fries (100g) and three boiled potatoes (100g) make you feel equally satiated. However, the fries have 330kcal whereas the potatoes only contain 110kcal! You see where I’m going with this..? Add volume to your food, and you won’t be as hungry even though calorie-wise you’re eating way less.
How? By adding air or water with a whisk to basically fluff up your food and make it airier. That way, it’ll be larger by volume but the same in caloric content, and thus you’ll be satiated for a longer time with a lesser amount of calories. And you can still eat as much as will fit. Cool, huh?

- Start your meals with a salad or a soup. Why?

Because the caloric density of soups and salads is usually quite low. You can get away with eating a whole lot, but still not get too much calories. Simple, yet effective. This way, you’ll also not eat so much of the main course, and thus, again, not get excess calories in your system. Do, however, try to pick the soup without the cream and butter. Clear broths are the best. In salads, loose the mayo. Instead, put on some balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. The sour dressing will further slow down the metabolism of the carbohydrates (sugars) in your meal, making for an even longer feeling of satiety and smoother blood-sugar levels. And it tastes great, too. Much fresher.

- Add vegetables to your food.

This will reduce the caloric density of your food, while the fibers in the veggies will swell in your stomach, making you feel full anyway. Replace some of the meat in a minced meat sauce with chopped onions or leeks, paprika (bell peppers), mushrooms, tomatoes and celery. In addition to the health factor, this way you’ll get a whole lot more taste into your food as well! Remember to add fresh herbs for flavor!
Wok foods are excellent for weight loss. A bag (or two) of frozen wok veggie-mix and a package of sliced chicken breasts fried over some sesame oil and eaten with whole rice of high-fiber noodles… Yummy! And, you’ll definitely be fuller for longer.
Also, grilled food is excellent. It tends to have less fat than pan-fried foods, and thus I say; ladies and gentlemen; fire up your barbeques! Grill paprikas, leeks, mushrooms, tomatoes, aubergines and eggplant to go with your steak, chicken, tuna, salmon or turkey, instead of pasta or potatoes. Lots of taste and fiber, not so much calories. Enjoy!

- Eat berries.

Berries contain lots of water and fiber, and not a whole lot of energy (calories). In addition, they have an abundance of vitamins, minerals and other beneficial phytochemicals. But, they taste great and that’s really all you wanted to know, right? Add some fresh or melted berries (without added sugar!) on your unsweetened muesli, in your natural yogurt or in your oat meal. Can you say flavor..? Try this: add half a cup (1dl) of strawberries, half a cup of raspberries and half a cup of blueberries/bilberries to a blender with some natural yogurt and some ice. Blend, and enjoy your airy breakfast smoothie that has a lot of volume and fluff, with your oatmeal. Notice how I weave it all together..?

- Eat fruit for snacks.

Fruit are loaded with water, vitamins, minerals and fiber. A fresh fruit salad is a great choice as a dessert!

- Drink water.

Water, what an original idea. But the fact is, we are up to 70% (75-80% by some estimates) water. Basically, without our cell membranes, we’d have the consistency of pea soup. Hooray for membranes! Anyway, we need to drink water, since that’s what we are made of. 5-7 liters, about a US gallon (4,75 liters I think it is) and a half per day. Sip on your water bottle every now and again during your idle moments throughout the day.

This has two benefits:
1) you’ll have to get up out of your chair several times a day and run for the toilet (=exercise, which is good for your back and general health, as well as prevent many prostate troubles, I’d wager), and
2) it’ll smooth out those unexpected “hungry-wanna-eat”-pangs.

- Choose fiber-rich products.

Fibers are carbohydrates by definition, very long chained carbohydrates (polysaccharides, poly for ‘many’ and saccharide for ‘sugar’). However, they’re long enough as to make them wholly insoluble in our intestines (they’re basically cellulose, which is the same as wood, really), and thus they come out pretty much the same way they went in. Gross as a visual splattered across the widescreen-TFT your mind, I know, but the good part is that they fill your stomach and clean out your intestines, bringing out all the gunk that’s collected there over the years.
Besides, it’s not as if your body doesn’t still try to break the fibers down, it’s just that it can’t. This equals spent energy (=”burned calories”) on a wild goose chase, for which you get nothing. More calories burnt, less calories in. So a loose-win situation against yourself in your benefit, sort of. This is much like the familiar analogy on eating celery; it takes more calories to break the celery down than the celery contains, which makes it a negative-calorie food. Add some to your salads, why don’t you?

Get rid your white flour, your sugared cereals (Kellogg’s ought to be ashamed of themselves) and such! Instead, fill your larder with whole grain breads, dark rye bread (the REAL stuff, with more than 90% rye in it), vegetables, whole fruit (No juices! They’re about as bad as sodas, pure sugar and not much else), whole grain rice, whole grain pasta, fibery cereals or muesli, beans, lentils and peas.

- Use spices, for goodness sake!

Food should never be bland, I don’t care who you are. Why “dietfood” should be tasteless is completely beyond me. Spices DO NOT contain calories! Besides, even if they did, tasteless food gives no inspiration for anyone to eat, and dammit, you should be very inspired to eat every time your phone calendar reminds you it’s time to eat, again. Two hours goes by quite fast sometimes, and you get flabbergasted.
“Wtf, I gotta eat again?” Never miss a meal, neither. Doing so will make your blood-sugar drop and have you raiding the candy machine in no time. Eating at regular intervals will keep your blood-sugar relatively constant and you won’t get cravings. And, you’re happy getting to stuff yourself every two hours, while loosing weight. If you’re still stuffed when you should eat again, no sweat; just reduce the size of your portions the next day so that you’ll be going ‘yay’ instead of ‘damn’ when that reminder bleeps.

- Avoid sugar.

Avoiding sugar falls into the same category as why you should eat fibers. Technically, they’re all carbohydrates, but sugars are mostly known as simple sugars (monosaccharides, mono for ‘one’) as well as starches. Starches are also polysaccharides (just as fibers are), but are so much shorter in their chains that our digestive systems do in fact succeed in breaking them down.
Sugars are added to almost anything. Sometimes the food industry tries to hide these behind the term; maltodextrine (corn starch, most often). The easiest way to avoid these is to buy unflavored and unmarinated foods, and marinate or flavor them yourself.
Try this on for steak, chicken or turkey: one part soy sauce, one part olive oil and one part of either your favorite whiskey, or full-bodied red wine. Add a dash of garlic powder and white pepper and mix. One wicked marinade! And yes, a red wine marinade is great with chicken! Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.
Or, mix your own breakfast muesli: whole grain oats, sunflower seeds, dried fruit flakes, cashew nuts and almond flakes. Voila! Add some fresh berries and milk in your bowl and you’re set!

- Avoid alcohol.

It’s not a question of having one drink. It’s the fact that most alcoholic beverages have a high caloric content, a wreak havoc on your weight loss goals. Besides, while you have alcohol in your system, your body can’t use any fat as energy, because it’s too busy trying to burn away the alcohol. A drink every now again on weekends is okay, but don’t have beer every night, unless you plan on jogging until morning. If you simply must have some ‘cause your buddies are coming over to barbeque, at least have the light version, without as much sugar in it.

- Avoid fats.

A diet heavy with fat is no diet for anyone wishing to loose any weight. Everyone knows this. This is because the caloric density of fats are over double those from protein and carbohydrates, and are thus easily eaten excessively.
If you don’t believe me, try this on for size: eat two whole chicken breasts and nothing else and wait until you’re hungry again.
Now have three tablespoons of olive oil and nothing else and see how long it takes for you to get hungry once more. The caloric content is the same, you see. Nuff said, I believe.

However, the food industry is tricky. “Low fat” does not mean “low calorie”. More often than not, low fat means sugar added in one form or another, so you need to pay attention to the nutrition facts on the box as well as the ingredients lists. Sugar alcohols are sugar-like in caloric content (maltitol, mannitol, sorbitol and other polyols, all ending with “-ol”) even though they don’t act as it in the bloodstream. In my mind, anything artificial (aka not occurring in nature) can’t really be all that good for you. Aspartame, for instance, has been known to estherize into formaldehyde in the body, when taken in large enough doses. Formaldehyde…now there’s a healthy-sounding beverage, wouldn’t you say..?

That said, it is more prudent to choose foods based on caloric density than fat-content, however. Yes, the fat does make it more dense energy-wise, but it does also slow down the absorption of sugars, and a certain amount of fat is after all essential to the proper functioning of the human body.

How to determine the caloric density of different foodstuffs:

1) Fiber content:

the more fiber a product contains, the less kcal you get. Fiber is mostly insoluble.
Examples:
Cereal with high fiber content: 65kcal / 25g serving vs. cornflakes 95kcal / 25g.
Rye bread 200kcal / 100g vs. French toast 250kcal / 100g.

2) Water content:

the more water a product contains, the less kcal you get. Water has no energy, and takes up a lot of volume. Dry foodstuffs tend to be calorically denser.
Examples:
Watermelon 25kcal / 100g vs. banana 85kcal / 100g.
Apple 30kcal / 100g vs. Dried apples 240kcal / 100g.

3) Fat content:

the more fat a product contains, the higher the kcal amount (9kcal/g vs. 4kcal/g of protein and carbs).
Examples:
Hamburger between two buns without mayo 300kcal/each vs. the same with mayo 530kcal.
Fat free milk 35kcal / 1dl (half a cup) vs. full fat milk 65kcal / 1dl.

4) Air content:

adding air to your food has a fluffing effect, and two portions of equal size (that have therefore the same satiety effect) can have dramatically different caloric values.
Example:
Whisked chocolate mousse 100kcal / 1dl (45g) vs. unwhísked chocolate mousse 230kcal / 1dl (100g!)

There we are. If you’ve read the whole three-part series, feel free to drop me some feedback!
You can either drop a comment or email me at: mans@mansrinne.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 at 8:48 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.