8 good health and fatloss guidelines....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 11-17-2009

Here are 8 Weight Watchers Good Health Guidelines AND my upgrades.

In each case I list the Weight Watchers guideline I read once exactly as I found it then.

Then, I post my comments and information I think is a substantial addition or upgrade for each guideline.

1. “Eat at least five servings of vegetables and fruits each day.”

Better. Schedule 5 servings of nonstarchy vegetables & two of fruit for each day.

For fatloss, being sure to eat the 5 servings of nonstarchy vegetables each day is critical.:

They have marvelous nutrition, particularly if you get organic vegetables, have a lot of water and fiber so you don’t get hungry, and very tiny amounts of calories.

This is so much the case, Weight Watchers itself rates them as having zero points contribution to your net food intake.

Adding such vegetables until they are 60 or 70 % of your food intake by volume is far easier than eating less food and far better for you. And, you have far fewer problems with hunger than eating less of everything; but at the same time, doing that can mean eating as little as half the calories you otherwise would have.

2. “Choose whole-grain foods, such as brown rice and oats, whenever possible.”

Better: Make it a personal mission to eat virtually no refined grains or foods made from them. Then limit your whole grain foods to the highest fiber or most health supporting ones & limit those to just once or at most very few times a day, such as two or three small servings on just some days.

Barley, wild rice, whole grain breads made from sprouted grains, “old fashioned” oatmeal are OK in moderation.

(For many people even brown rice is too high on the glycemic index to eat. A mix of half wild rice and half brown rice or half pecan meal and half brown rice may be OK if you really want to include brown rice.)

Also note that Bob’s Red Mill has a whole buckwheat product that is tested as having no gluten. Rice flour has no gluten but is virtually fiber free and is basically a refined grain.
As far as I know lentil flour has a relatively low glycemic index and does have fiber. Lentils aren’t a grain; but half lentil flour and half rice flour might be low glycemic enough to be an OK choice to make baked goods with no gluten.

3. “Include two servings of milk products – low fat (1%) or fat-free – each day.”

Not bad just as stated.

Three or four servings is OK if it fits your over-all plan. And, whey protein, nonfat yogurt and occasionally 2 % fat yogurt are other good choices besides 1% and skim milk. (Though it’s somewhat less critical in such lowfat dairy products, organic milk from naturally fed cows is likely far better for you than from cows treated with hormones and antibiotics and fed grain.)

4. “Have some healthy oil (olive oil, canola, sunflower, safflower or flaxseed) each day.”

Better: Use virtually only extra virgin olive oil. Some avocado oil, or sesame oil, or walnut or almond oil occasionally is likely OK. Some sources say that coconut oil is a health supporting oil also.

Interestingly, people who eat some health OK oils each day are as lean or leaner than people who try to eat a very low fat diet; but they are far healthier and their food often tastes better.

Canola and safflower oil are NOT health OK choices in my opinion. Many sunflower oils are not good either. Flaxseed oil is not that great to begin with. Now there is evidence most of it comes from genetically modified sources that may cause allergies and other health problems. Soy oil, corn oil, and safflower oil also are in this group.

All these oils are far too high in omega 6 oils which most people already get too much of and which produce inflammation if eaten in excess.

One category of food to never eat is:
anything containing any amount of trans fat, or transfat, other than zero;

AND never eat any food with partially or wholly hydrogenated vegetable oil even if it reads zero trans fats -- since such readings may conceal foods with 0.499 grams of trans fat and multiple servings can contain a lot.

This stuff is literally heart attack starter and increases the amount of the small particle LDL in your blood that is one of the main causes of heart disease.

5. “Ensure that you are getting enough protein by choosing at least a serving or two of meat, poultry, fish, eggs, or dried beans each day. Many dairy products are also good sources of protein.”

Better: Cooked beans and lentils, raw and dry roasted nuts, and wild caught fish not high in mercury are the best choices if you aren’t allergic. Low fat and very low fat dairy are decent choices.

Eggs are good choices if you don’t overdo the amount or cook them with bad oils or fats. (Eggs from chickens that are organically raised and pasture fed are ideal.)

Beef from animals fed only grass or similar bison can be OK, as is even grass fed lamb on occasion. Meat and poultry and fish from animals and fish fed only their natural diet are much leaner, have dramatically less omega 6 oils, and have less than a tenth or maybe even a hundredth of the pollutants that are in the fat of grain fed animals.

6. “Limit added sugar and alcohol.”

This really should be two points.

6a) Eliminate most sugar intake –
and on those occasions you do eat sugar, choose only foods you really, really like and eat them only a handful of times a week or a month.

The average person in the United States eats 22 teaspoons a day of sugar or its equivalent. The average person who is too fat may well eat, or drink, a total of 44 teaspoons a day. The amount that is safe, OK for your health, and dramatically less fattening is closer to 1 to 4 teaspoons a day with 1 or 2 being better. That means eating a food with sugar once or twice a week at most.

Artificial sweeteners have been found to also cause rebound hunger and to help make or keep people fat. And, in the opinion of myself -- and many other health writers -- they are far less safe than many believe to consume.

In addition, the most ingested form of sugar now is high fructose corn syrup and about 30 % of all high fructose corn syrup was found recently to be contaminated with mercury. That is almost certainly still true. So one way to improve your health and eat far less sugar is to never willingly ingest high fructose corn syrup.

Since every daily soft drink you drink tends to add 15 pounds of fat to your body according to a study I read, one great way to get rid of a huge amount of high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners AND be less fat with no increase in hunger at all is to simply never drink any soft drink with either kind of ingredient.

One way to use sugar when you do use it that may work for you is to usually use a flavored sugar where the sugar is only part of the enjoyment so you need less to have the food taste good. Real maple syrup, dark molasses, honey, and brown sugar all work for this.

Another solution is to use one part one of these flavored sugars and two parts agave nectar as it’s sweet but has a much lower glycemic index than regular sugar.

A third solution is to use a noncaloric NATURAL sweetener. Xylitol and erythritol are two that are sweet but have no added flavor you may dislike. But it may be much better for you to have half a flavored sugar or agave nectar and half a noncaloric NATURAL sweetener than having a noncaloric NATURAL sweetener only. Otherwise you may get the same extra rebound hunger people who use artificial sweeteners get. (For the record, some people like the strong taste of the noncaloric NATURAL sweetener, stevia. I don’t recommend it at all since to me it tastes like badly made artificial marshmallow flavoring; & it’s so strong a taste it overpowers the food and can’t be masked.)

6b) On most days drink zero, one or two drinks a day and less than 14 a week if you are a man. And, if you are a woman drink zero or one drink a day and less than 7 a week.

At that level of moderation, and at that level only, alcoholic drinks tend to be safe, increase your HDL cholesterol, reduce stress safely, and can be fun to drink and drink while you socialize.

But every drink you drink is like drinking a soft drink fat loss wise, it does not reduce your hunger or may even increase it slightly; and it does have calories and Weight Watchers assigns it points. The less you drink, the less resulting fat you’ll wear.

And, above that moderate amount, drinking tends to cause health problems of many kinds, has excessive costs to buy, and causes accidents many of which are fatal or incur dreadful legal liabilities.

7. “Drink at least 6 8-ounce glasses of water a day.”

Recent health writers have debunked this one. And some drinking water sources aren’t that pollutant free.

But, every time you drink unpolluted water -- or green tea or coffee with no added sugar or nondairy creamer and use only lowfat dairy if you use it -- instead of drinking soft drinks, you will improve your health and you will be far less fat!

8. “Take a multiple vitamin-mineral supplement each day.”

This IS a good idea.

Start there at least. This helps avoid the worst deficiencies and will enhance your health dramatically at very low cost. And, if you do any calorie reduced dieting, you may not get enough of some nutrients if you don’t take vitamin-mineral supplements.

Then find out what vitamins and minerals are not at desirable levels in your vitamin-mineral supplement and take some of those in addition. For example most vitamin-mineral supplements have the old RDA of vitamin D of 400 iu. We now know the really desirable level of vitamin D3 intake is 2,000 iu a day or more. Similarly, vitamin-mineral supplements tend to have suboptimal levels of magnesium, chromium, and zinc. Extra niacin can lower your LDL cholesterol and triglycerides and boost your HDL which protects your heart.

If you can afford it, then find those supplements that protect your health in addition to those supplements. For example, turmeric or the curcumin taken from turmeric lowers inflammation and many researchers have evidence it also helps prevent Alzheimer’s disease. And, omega 3 supplements lower heart damaging triglycerides and inflammation.

Just as people who take vitamin-mineral supplements are healthier than people who take nothing, multiple supplement takers who add these other supplements are healthier than people who just take vitamin-mineral supplements.