Food For Thought: Saturated Fats

Many of you who personally know me and my cooking habits know I don't buy fake foods (ie fat free/sugar free/carb free created food) and that I typically cook and bake the majority of my family's meals.  I use real butter, full fat sour cream (it has like 2 natural ingredients), mayo and if I'm making a special treat, oh yeah, I'm buying 100% heavy cream and whipping it up.  No fake, man-made, chemical filled Cool Whip in this house!

For the last 3 or so weeks? (I've lost count--it needs to be a lifestyle, not a certain period of time, right?) I've been following a special PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) food plan to help reduce my symptoms naturally.  Modern medicine treats the symptoms with a myriad of drugs and a person with PCOS will typically have a medicine cabinet that resembles their grandparents. (This was my thoughts one day, when in my early 20's, I looked at mine) This eating plan basically has no man-made carbohydrates, dairy or grains.  At first, I wasn't quite sure how I would do it since I am naturally a carbo-loading, cheese eating, chocolate munching gal, but it got easier each day as I learned to be more creative with my meals.  So far I have lost just over 10 pounds and I honestly feel my hormones are adjusting as my symptoms are fluctuating.

In my reading today, I came across the following bit of information and it perfectly explains my reason for spending more time in my kitchen than the average American.  When I was studying for my BS in Holistic Nutrition I had countless texts express the same thing: eat natural foods. I honestly believe that most disease we have today in our country is because of our diet. Our bodies are miraculous, but they don't have super powers.  If a person continually puts garbage in, it's only a matter of time before their body can't keep up and disease/illness will be the result.

"Quite a number of native or primitive cultures in the 20th century or earlier consumed a diet high in saturated fat.  Yet they had very little heart disease, diabetes or obesity.

"Moreover, heart attacks in Americans were almost unheard of at the beginning of the 20th century, but by the 1960s, heart attack was common--in spite of the fact that total fat consumption remained virtually the same during this period.  How do we make sense of that? Has focusing on reducing fat and cholesterol in the American diet produced a healthier population? Clearly, it has not.  Ongoing nutrition research is revealing the complexity of our situation, in which we have a highly manipulated food supply with a great deal of synthetic additives and chemical alteration of foods.  These altered foods are not ideally suited to our internal chemistry.  Chronic health problems are the result.

"The American diet during the 20th century has undergone an astounding increase in the consumption of highly processed foods and beverages, many of which are laden with refined carbohydrates (sugars and starches) and refined vegetable oils.  The processing has stripped away fiber and essential nutrients.  It has degraded the proteins and fats naturally found in foods.  Modern food technology has created "fabricated" food molecules that don't even exist in nature.  Foods are contaminated with man-made chemicals and some chemicals are intentionally added for marking reasons." --Nancy Dunne, N.D.

And don't get me started about fast food...that's a blog post for another day.

Why I avoid fast food like the plague.

I've spent posts explaining the horrific nature of fast food and why it's not helpful in our weight loss efforts.  Yes, we live in a busy time and there are meals where we have to partake.  But it should be infrequently, very infrequently.  When I hear of families hopping from one FF joint to the other  because they are too busy to cook for dinner, I cringe.

My dear friend, Angela, brought this to my attention today.  I've heard of a Twinkie lasting for years unchanged, but I've never seen it.  There is something about a photograph of food that bacteria won't even touch that speaks volumes.  If it's not decomposing naturally by the umpteen gazillion bacteria that exist everywhere on the planet, what the heck is it doing to your body?  What does your body have to do to break it down? Poor, poor body.

Click HERE for the article.

Day 292 - Favorite Fast Food Fix

Sometimes life is busy.  Sometimes you are caught out in your busy-ness and it's lunchtime or even past lunchtime.  What to do?  Personally I would rather go somewhere with lots of healthy options, like Panera Bread.  If Panera Bread only had a drive-through... but they don't!

When in a pinch, we like In-N-Out Burger.  I have to admit, it's the one fast food place that doesn't make me gag.  It seems so clean of an establishment, the food is basic, not severely adulterated and I can even watch while waiting in my car to see if anything fell on the floor. Maybe their facade has me fooled, but maybe the place is as clean as it seems.

With such a basic menu, it's easy not to get distracted with other things on the menu. You need a strategy to make it through the dangers of all fast food experiences.  This is my strategy:

I order the same thing every time I go and I feel full, treated and I won't find it on the scale. I order a hamburger so I can save calories on the cheese.  (I don't think it's real cheese either) I order it "ANIMAL STYLE" so I can get tasty grilled onions and a bit of special sauce. It's such a juicy burger, I don't miss the cheese.  I also order some fries and ask for them "WELL" so that they will still be crispy by the time I get to our eating location (usually home).  I share this order with my kids because all I really want is a few fries, like 10.  As the kids have gotten bigger and eat more, I now order 2 orders.  I have a nice glass of water when I am finished and I am full. 

You might ask, "If you are going through the drive through just to take it home, why don't you just go home and eat something there?"  Yes, that is the best solution!!  There are just times where it's 1- 1:30 and we haven't had lunch.  By the time I get home (we live out in the country), make lunch and eat it, it's after 2 and we are famished.  As most know, when you get overly hungry, you will eat more.  This is my solution to prevent overeating on late days and late lunches on the run.

Day 271 - Still Going Strong Even During Vacation

Last week my husband got the news that one of his uncles passed away unexpectedly. He decided he needed to go visit. Last minute we decided to go as a family. 5 days and nearly 2000 miles later, I am so excited to say that my efforts to make my goal are still on!!

Luckily most the hotels we stayed in had gyms with elliptical trainers so it was easy to hop on in the evenings after a full day. There was one challenge though. One night, the hotel we stayed in didn't have a gym! It's so easy to keep a habit when there is some sort of gym equipment nearby. So what did I do? I took a brisk walk along a jogging trail with my sister-in-law. Unfortunately it got late which meant it started to get dark and we were unable to walk as far as we would like to have gone, but we did enough to get all warm, limber and a mildly sweaty. Next time I find myself on vacation without a gym, I simply need to plan my time better.

I am excited to say too, that while gone from home and out of my habitat, I maintained even though we ate fast food at every meal. I am SICK of fast food!! The worst part about travelling is not having a kitchen. The whole week after we got home I was craving veggies like an herbivore! It's crazy to think that you don't have to gain weight by eating fast food all the time, you really don't. Just eat smaller portions. I ordered 1 small thing from the menu and if I wanted fries, I ate a couple from someone else in the family. One thing for certain, if your diet is largely made up of fast food, you might be able to stay thin with the proper food choices, but you are SEVERELY depriving your body of necessary nourishment!! You get the macronutrients with fast food (Fat, Carbs, Protein) but you are missing out on the micronutrients (Vitamins and minerals). You need both to be healthy so your body will function properly.

For the last couple of months I have maintained my weight, and I am happy about that. If I am forever a size 10, I won't complain. But I have to say, I would really like to loose 10-15 more pounds. I want to be far away from the "Obese" category I was in the beginning of the year at a BMI of 30.5. Right now I am in the "Normal" category with 24.2. But that is on the upper end and I don't want to dance with that line! Here is the site if you would like to figure your BMI (There is also a place where you can figure your child's BMI if you are curious)

I have recently been getting ready to ramp up my efforts to see if I can drop a few more pounds. Our baby has been transitioning his naps and without proper sleep, it's hard to keep focus on personal goals! So I have been maintaining, which is a good thing. But I know I can do better. Logging onto this site today and noticing the number of visits, that is a really big motivator too!  THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE SUPPORT!!

Day 181 - The Fast Food Choice

An interesting thought came to me last week. (We just finished two weeks of swim lessons that were at noon) The girl's did wonderful with learning to swim, but the timing was horrible!! (I wasn't thinking when I made the appointment a few months prior) Besides being incredibly hard on Ethan's routine, the timing killed lunch. We couldn't have lunch prior to lessons because you just don't go to swim lessons with full tummies, and we all know why! So many times this past week we grabbed something fast because we could eat it as soon as we got home at 1:30. The days we made lunch we were eating around 2, and that time just messes with dinner.

So, here I am consuming in a week as much fast food as I typically get in 2 months, seriously. The observation I made was that in small amounts, fast food will not put on weight. But there still is a consequence in eating such a poor choice in food groups, nutrition. Eating fast food will get rid of the hunger pains, and that is all. Fast food provides the macro nutrients; fats, carbohydrates and protein, and this will keep you from physically starving, but it's the micronutrients, the vitamins and minerals, that bring health and vitality. You only get these with healthy, living choices of food, unless you count the fortified bun as a good source of vitamins.

There are unavoidable times were the drive through is a must, it's just is when you have kids and busy schedules. But more often then not, it's a choice. What I am trying to remember is that when I have the choice, I would rather spend a little extra time preparing a meal that brings nutrition and vitality-a PB&J (one with just ground nuts and "just fruit" jelly on whole wheat bread) would even count - is better than to have a meal that does nothing more than fill the tummy. When respecting fast food as such, it's easier to make that choice.