Curbing Late-Night Cravings

Does this sound familiar?

You wake up in the morning motivated to stick to your diet and exercise. You make it to the gym and have a great workout. You prepare and enjoy low-calorie, high-fiber, tasty meals. After dinner, you relax in your living room.

An hour or two later, your mind wanders off to the kitchen. You're drawn to the goodies therein. You imagine how wonderful a snack would be right about now... and why not? You were good all day, and just a little won't hurt...

Before you know it, you've gone way overboard.

I think we've all done it. But over time, those extra indulgences can really add up. Not to mention, it can do a number on your dignity and self-respect, which is never good for your emotional well-being.

The best defense against behavior we later regret is to prevent that behavior in the first place. Here are some ways to curb those late-night cravings.

- Try to imagine how you will feel after giving in. If you can remember the sense of regret from former lapses clearly enough, it might be enough to motivate you to steer clear. If you do lapse, write down your feelings right afterward to serve as a detractor in the future.

- Try to imagine how you will feel in the morning, knowing that you didn't overeat the night before. When you do succeed, write down how it feels to have made the right decision, and keep your journal handy. This, along with the tip above, are powerful motivators.

- When you're teetering between "cheating" and "being good," try to visualize yourself being successful.

How do you define success?

- Ask yourself: Is the pleasure I will derive from going off my diet greater than the reward I would feel if I didn't? What are the benefits of sticking to your plan? What would the consequences be for not sticking to it?

- Set up a reward system. For example, for each evening that you stick to your intended eating plan, schedule yourself a massage or buy a new workout top.

- Distract yourself with an enjoyable and/or productive activity. Read a novel. Plan your meals and workouts for next week. Take up scrapbooking. Scour the sink. Go for a walk. Call a friend. Organize those photos. Clean out your email.

- Otherwise engage your tastebuds. Chew sugar-free gum. Brush your teeth. Drink a tall glass of water or cup of herbal tea. If you truly are hungry, eat a piece of fruit or something similar.

I portion my calories in such a way that I can afford to eat a treat every night if I like, which is 150 calories or less. This way I don't feel deprived and end up binging. No one needs to eat perfectly 100% of the time, after all. I don't eat the treat every night though, only if I have a craving. However, if I don't have a treat one night, I do not bank those calories for later. I just let them go.

Guidelines of a Heart Healthy Diet

The first step in a heart-healthier lifestyle is a heart-healthy diet.  Here are some guidelines to help you plan and personalize your diet:

1.  Calories count.

Being overweight is one of the primary  risk factors for heart disease, so be sure your calorie intake is appropriate to achieve and/or maintain a healthy weight.

2. Eat plenty of fiber.

A high fiber diet will help you control your weight (by controlling your appetite) and also can help you maintain healthy cholesterol levels. Twenty-five grams of fiber per day is the recommended minimum. Ideally, aim for 35-40 grams of fiber per day.

3. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables

Fruits and vegetables contain fiber (see #2) but also are rich in antioxidant nutrients that help protect your heart.  Eat at least five servings of colorful vegetables (such as carrots, berries, peppers, and broccoli) to get a minimum of 100% of the daily recommended amounts  of vitamin A, C, K.

4. Emphasize healthy fats.

A heart-healthy diet doesn't necessarily need to be a low-fat diet. A diet rich in monounsaturated fats can help lower cholesterol, blood pressure, and other risk factors. Monounsaturated fats are  olive oil, avocadoes, and nuts such as almonds.  Use these as your primary sources of fat.

5. Watch your sodium

A diet high in sodium can lead to high blood pressure. The USDA recommends limiting your sodium intake to 2300mg per day--but most Americans eat about twice that much. Those with high blood pressure are advised to reduce sodium to 1500mg a day. See also: Tips for reducing sodium.

6. Limit your intake of sweets and refined carbohydrates

Foods that are high in sugar and refined carbohydrates (which includes many low-fat foods!) can create sharp spikes in blood sugar and ultimately increase your risk of both heart disease and diabetes. Choose whole grain foods whenever possible and consume sweets occasionally or not at all.  For a naturally sweet treat, enjoy fresh fruit. (See #3.)

Tips for Lowering Triglycerides

Having high triglyceride levels increases your risk of strokes and heart attacks. Triglycerides are a type of fat that is present in your blood. Levels of more than 200 are considered elevated.

Unlike your cholesterol levels, which are largely controlled by your genetics, your triglyceride levels are largely controlled by the choices you make.  For the vast majority of people, positive lifestyle changes will likely be very effective in lowering elevated triglycerides.


 


Here are some steps you can take:

Eat only enough calories to maintain a healthy weight. Your body can only use so much energy. If you eat more calories (energy) than you need, the surplus will be converted to trigycerides, which are stored in fat cells but also build up in your blood.

Steer clear of refined carbohydrates and sweets.Highly-processed foods such as candy, sodas, ice cream, pastries, and breads all raise your blood sugar, which can lead to the formation of triglycerides.  Choose foods with a low glycemic load. These foods help to keep your blood sugar steady and triglycerides down.

Cut back on (or eliminate) alcohol.
Excessive alcohol consumption raises triglyceride levels. Men should limit alcohol consumption to 2 drinks a day; women to one.  A drink is defined as 1 12-ounce beer, 1 5-ounce glass of wine, or 1 1/2 ounces of hard liquor.

Eat more fish.Fish contains omega-3 fats (specifically DHA and EPA) that can help reduce elevated triglyceride levels.  The recommended amount to lower triglycerides is 2 - 4 grams of EPA + DHA per day. That's about 6 ounces of wild salmon, per day.  Other good source of  EPA and DHA include mackerel, herring, sardines, fish roe (caviar) and fish oil supplements.

Healthy Weight Gain

In order to gain weight, you need to take in more calories than you burn. A Daily Needs Calculator will give you an estimate of how many calories you require every day. For every 3,500 excess Calories (kcal) you consume, you will gain more or less one pound (about half a kg). 

Fat contains more than twice as many calories per gram as protein and carbohydrate; therefore, by adding high-fat foods to your diet this would be an efficient way to add calories. However, I assume that you are interested in healthy weight gain. In that case, you don't want just any calories; you want to add high-quality calories to your diet.

Fortunately, Nutrition Data has several tools that will help you do just that!  On every food and recipe analysis page, you'll see Nutrition Data's Nutritional Target Map. Foods that appear in the lower right quadrant of the map are ideal for healthy weight gain, because they have a high nutrient density (more nutrients per calorie) and a high energy density (more calories per gram).

Right below the Nutritional Target Map, you'll see the Better Choices tool.  Use the pull down menu to select "better choices for weight gain" and click "show me!" for a list of similar foods with a higher nutrient and calorie densities. Or, go to theFood Category Explorer, select any category, and use the pull down menu to select "Better Choices for Weight Gain."

Remember that muscle tissue weighs more than body fat. A weight training program, supported by a nutritious high-calorie diet, can help you gain weight as lean muscle mass instead of body fat. If exercise, particularly strength training, is part of your weight gain program, be sure to eat plenty of protein, which speeds recovery and enhances lean muscle gain.

The Nutrition Data community includes a lot of elite athletes and body-builders who track their nutrition very closely as part of their training regimens. Any Nutrition Datanauts with experience on healthy weight gain? I'd be interested in your input.

Sugar: The James Bond of Food

Sugar is the James Bond of food: It has code names, appears where you least expect it and leaves a trail of destruction in its wake. Oh, and we kind of have a thing for it. "It tastes good, and the more that's produced, the more we eat," says George Bray, M.D., chief of the clinical obesity and metabolism division at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

                                                                

Since 1970, the amount of sugar in processed foods has nearly doubled, largely because sugar is cheap and readily available. Today it's pumped into pretty much everything to make food products more enticing—even ones that are already sweet, such as fruit juice. As a result, the average American gobbles up 43,800 more calories from added sugar (meaning sweeteners, like high fructose corn syrup and honey, that are added to packaged foods) per year than we did in 1977. We have consumed an average of 150 to 300 more calories per day than we used to, 50 percent of which come from beverages. And our physical activity levels remain unchanged, so those extra calories don't get burned off.

Our body isn't equipped to handle this amount sugar. People who have unhealthy sugar intake levels also consume lower levels of vital nutrients, such as zinc, iron, calcium, and vitamin A. Research has also linked increased sugar consumption to higher rates of diabetes, heart disease and metabolic syndrome. One study has suggested that too much sugar could raise blood pressure levels, as well.

 The average American consumes around 22.2 teaspoons of added sugar every day. According to the new guidelines, we should really be eating a fraction of that amount. The recommended sugar intake for adult women is 5 teaspoons (20 grams) of sugar per day, for adult men, it’s 9 teaspoons (36 grams) daily, and for children, it's 3 teaspoons (12 grams) a day.  Knowing how much sugar you should be eating is completely different from calculating what you're actually eating. Daily intakes of added sugar aren't easy to estimate as the Food and Drug Administration doesn't require that nutrition labels list the amount of naturally occurring sugars separate from the amounts of added sugars. The American Society of Nutrition's new Smart Choices Program can help you to a certain extent. Products that qualify must get fewer than 25 percent of their calories from added sugar, but some products that qualify have as many as 17 grams per serving (nearly a full day's worth for women), and the nutrition labels still don't note whether those are naturally occurring or added.

The best way to cut added sugars out of your diet is to limit processed foods as much as possible, and satisfy your sweet tooth with fruit. Indulge wisely, by curbing cravings and eliminating hidden sources. Make a practice of this, and you won't need to spend so much time staring at food labels and counting sugar grams.

Causes of Morbid Obesity

The reasons for obesity are multiple and complex. Despite conventional wisdom, it is not simply a result of overeating. Research has shown that in many cases a significant, underlying cause of morbid obesity is genetic. Studies have demonstrated that once the problem is established, efforts such as dieting and exercise programs have a limited ability to provide effective long-term relief. Science continues to search for answers. But until the disease is better understood, the control of excess weight is something patients must work at for their entire lives. That is why it is very important to understand that all current medical interventions, including weight loss surgery, should not be considered medical cures. Rather they are attempts to reduce the effects of excessive weight and alleviate the serious physical, emotional and social consequences of the disease. Contributing Factors The underlying causes of severe obesity are not known. There are many factors that contribute to the development of obesity including genetic, environmental, metabolic and eating disorders. There are also certain medical conditions that may result in obesity, such as intake of steroids and hypothyroidism. What's more, our society has become increasingly inactive while our healthy food consumption decreases. High-calorie food and lack of exercise all contribute to the American population's becoming more and more overweight. Genetic Factors Numerous scientific studies have established that your genes play an important role in your tendency to gain excess weight. The body weight of adopted children shows no correlation with the body weight of their adoptive parents, who feed them and teach them how to eat. Their weight does have an 80 percent correlation with their genetic parents, whom they have never met. Identical twins, with the same genes, show a much higher similarity of body weights than do fraternal twins, who have different genes. Certain groups of people, such as the Pima Indian tribe in Arizona, have a very high incidence of severe obesity. They also have significantly higher rates of diabetes and heart disease than other ethnic groups. We probably have a number of genes directly related to weight. Just as some genes determine eye color or height, others affect our appetite, our ability to feel full or satisfied, our metabolism, our fat-storing ability and even our natural activity levels. The Pima Paradox The Pima Indians are known in scientific circles as one of the heaviest groups of people in the world. In fact, National Institutes of Health researchers have been studying them for more than 35 years. Some adults weigh more than 500 pounds, and many obese teenagers are suffering from diabetes, the disease most frequently associated with obesity. But, interestingly, a group of Pima Indians living in Sierra Madre, Mexico, does not have a problem with obesity and its related diseases. Why not? The leading theory states that after many generations of living in the desert, often confronting famine, the most successful Pima were those with genes that helped them store as much fat as possible during times when food was available. Now those fat-storing genes work against them. Though both populations consume a similar number of calories each day, the Mexican Pima still live much like their ancestors did. They put in 23 hours of physical labor each week and eat a traditional diet very low in fat. The Arizona Pima live like most other modern Americans, eating a diet consisting of around 40 percent fat and engaging in physical activity for only two hours a week. The Pima apparently have a genetic predisposition to gain weight. And the environment in which they live, the environment in which most of us live, makes it nearly impossible for the Arizona Pima to maintain a normal, healthy body weight. Environmental Factors Environmental and genetic factors are obviously closely intertwined. If you have a genetic predisposition toward obesity, then the modern American lifestyle and environment may make controlling weight more difficult. Fast food, long days sitting at a desk, and suburban neighborhoods that require cars all magnify hereditary factors such as metabolism and efficient fat storage. For those suffering from morbid obesity, anything less than a total change in environment usually results in failure to reach and maintain a healthy body weight. Metabolism We used to think of weight gain or loss as only a function of calories ingested and then burned. Take in more calories than you burn, gain weight; burn more calories than you ingest, lose weight. But now we know the equation isn't that simple. Obesity researchers now talk about a theory called the "set point," a sort of thermostat in the brain that makes people resistant to weight loss. If you try to override the set point by drastically cutting your calorie intake, your brain responds by lowering metabolism and slowing activity. You then gain back any weight you lost.