Be healthier and less fat and save money too....

Today's Post: Friday, 1-21-2011

One of the health related emails I get is from the fat loss guru Jillian Michaels. Yesterday she did a10 foods to avoid list.

If you avoid all 10 of these drinks, foods, and food ingredients, you will be far less fat. (Most people who eat and drink these who have been doing it for many years will lose over 25 pounds of fat within 12 months of doing so.)

You will be dramatically healthier, feel better, and have far lower health care costs for decades after giving up these things.

And, since you will stop buying close to 70 % of the dollar cost most Americans spend at the grocery store, you will very likely net out some savings. Even after buying some real food to replace these things after her family gave them up, one woman local to me wound up saving two or three hundred dollars a month.

Even better, this post has Jillian Michaels’ 10 items-- and two more from me that didn’t make her list.

First her ten:

1. Trans fats were listed first.

(She included palm oil in this on her email. I find that odd. The saturated fat it does have may not be that bad for you as it’s from a plant source; and palm oil does not need the hydrogenating that causes trans fats since it already has saturated fat. In fact, it may be a better choice than butter when high heat is used and is far better than using a hydrogenated oil that does have transfats.)

But she is spectacularly correct in listing trans fats from hydrogenating vegetable oils as harmful. Studies found it directly causes heart disease by sharply increasing the small particle LDL that creates plaque -- eventually closing off your circulation -- by sticking itself into the walls of your blood vessels. In plain language trans fats and the artificially hydrogenated oils that contain them are heart attack starters.

Some people say to eat less or keep your consumption somewhat low. I think that’s ridiculous.

How much heart attack starter do you want to eat when you can avoid most of it voluntarily? None at all makes better sense to me!

Don’t patronize restaurants that cannot tell you what fry oil they use or which use hydrogenated oils. Always read labels. And, if the trans fat section has any number higher than zero or ANY hydrogenated oils at all show up as an ingredient, do NOT buy it or eat it or serve it to people you care about.

(The zero reading can be fudged since it can mean up to half a gram of trans fats per serving and this is often done when most people eat 3 to 6 servings. That can mean 1.5 to 3 grams of trans fat if you eat that food. How to avoid that trans fat? Simply follow the second half of the rule and avoid the food if it has any of the hydrogenated oil. If it has any amount of hydrogenated oil, it HAS trans fats!)

Packaged desserts, particularly cookies, quite often contain this stuff. Some microwave popcorn does too. Most margarine contains it. And, you will occasionally find it in what should be real foods such as bread and ice cream. I was shocked to find that the label revealed that what used to be my favorite canned chili had 3 grams of trans fats per serving as yet another example. (I no longer buy it!)

2. She listed shortening second. In a way that doesn’t quite fit as a separate item since shortening is close to 100 % trans fat!

But its use is enough different that I agree with her it should be listed separately.
It is used in different kinds of foods and those often do not have labels.

Commercially baked pies use it in their crusts instead of butter or palm or coconut oil. Most biscuits are made using it. And, I believe it very likely that all fast food pastry such as croissants are made using it.

(Now you know why, despite my love for pie and pie crusts, I no longer eat pie crusts even at Thanksgiving unless I know for certain that butter was used to make the crust.)

>>> Bonus for NOT eating foods from the first two things to avoid: The things that have trans fats usually also have refined grains and either sugar or high fructose corn syrup added. By taking a pass, you will wind up being much less fat in addition to having a much healthier heart and better circulation!

3. Refined grains such as white flour, most pasta, and white rice were in her third group. These foods deliver very little real nutrition and are quite low in fiber. They make you fat by the response your body has for the blood sugar spike you get when you eat them and because you add calories without turning off your hunger very well due to their low fiber content. In many people, if this goes on too often for too long, they get type 2 diabetes.

In addition, like excessive sugar and trans fats, they tend to sharply increase your triglycerides and heart attack risk.

(She did not include baked white potato or food made from white potatoes.

She also did not include whole wheat pasta, 100 % whole grain bread, or brown rice. She also did not include barley or quinoa. These foods do have fiber and much more nutrition. Some of them also spike your blood sugar less. But they do spike blood sugar too much.

So, you have some ways to deal with these. Eat them less often – once or twice a week instead of each day -- or maybe not at all if you are trying to lose fat.

And, if you do eat them, only do so with moderate or small servings; and add some health OK oils or protein to the dish to slow the blood sugar spike you would get otherwise.

4. High fructose corn syrup is on her list. The most common version used only has somewhat more fructose than sugar. But the average person now gets a huge amount of high fructose corn syrup. Jillian Michaels quoted a source that it is the single largest source of calories in the diet of the average person. So, consuming it reliably overdoses people with fructose causing obesity and heart disease from the boost it gives to your triglyceride levels.

Worse, high fructose corn syrup is used in regular soft drinks which add calories without making you less hungry and then make you MORE hungry when your blood sugar crashes after the blood sugar spike they cause is done. Such soft drinks are literally the perfect fattener!

One study estimated that for every daily serving of regular soft drinks you stop drinking, you’ll wind up carrying 15 pounds less fat!

In addition, one recent sampling found that 30% to a third of foods and drinks that contained high fructose corn syrup contained mercury also! (One way to make high fructose corn syrup leaves a mercury residue in it.) Many well consumed brand name foods including one I used to like and buy had mercury from the high fructose corn syrup they used.)

So, you will be far less fat if you never buy or ingest the stuff or foods or drinks containing it. You will also lower you risk for type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

(The manufacturers are trying to get permission to call high fructose corn syrup, corn sugar since that sounds more natural and will fool some people into thinking they aren’t getting high fructose corn syrup.)

5. Artificial sweeteners.

There is reason to believe many of these are harmful to some people, particularly when used for a long time. Sucralose or Splenda contains a chlorine atom. Nerve gasses and pesticides are carbon based molecules with chlorine atoms added. I’d prefer not to eat it, thanks. Others have seemed linked with causing a form of MS or some cancers. The manufacturers say they are safe and they are certainly far less harmful than some things. But I think the prudent thing to do is to take a pass.

Jillian Michaels didn’t even include that. It seems that ingesting artificial sweeteners makes sweet things taste less sweet and increasing your craving for sweets. This combo is so effective in most people that close to everyone who drinks diet soft drinks winds up as fat as if the were drinking regular soft drinks. And, their health markers show the same damage!

This one is a huge problem. One source I saw said that 60 of all Americans drink diet soft drinks. Between that and the people who drink regular soft drinks, it’s small wonder that half of Americans today are too fat. Eliminating both regular and diet soft drinks would cut that problem in half or more.

If you don’t want to be too fat, don’t drink ANY soft drinks!

At this point, I still have 5 of her items to go and my two and I’m out of time today.

Those will be in my next post.