When people ask me when I was bitten by the fitness bug, I like to tell them the story of “How Fitness became my Mantra“. It’s always entertaining (even to me) to learn that a free audio book deal can make such a profound change in a person’s life (and make the lives of those around that person a living hell as he daily expounds the virtues of eating raw vegetables and banishing sugar!).

The Abs Diet

But in all seriousness, The Abs Diet was truly the inspiration for my embarking on my journey toward fitness. The food and exercise ideas contained within its pages are a treasure trove for anyone seeking to learn a hype-free way to successful weight-management. The name of the book is a little misleading (although I am sure it contributes to loads of sales!).

Now, no diet can promise to give you washboard abs but combine the foods mentioned in the book with the nicely illustrated exercises and you give yourself a great chance of having a defined mid-section - an almost guaranteed indicator of a person’s fitness level. The book also talks about things like “converting” fat to muscle which in reality can never happen because the two are made of different constituents. You really have to burn off fat with cardio exercises and pack on muscle with a combination of strength-training and protein-rich eating. But the book more than makes up for its few faults and its well worth the cost if only because of the detailed section on diet and the foods that it advises we all center our diets around. Meet …

The 12 Powerfoods

The book suggests that a large part of our diets should include foods from the set of 12 so-called power foods. Power 12 Foods: Never Go Hungry is the secret-spilling article on the Men’s Health website that details not only what these foods are, but also how you can include them in your daily meals. A basic understanding with the Abs Diet is that you will eat 6 times a day (3 major meals and 3 snacks - which is what I tend to do as well).

Though you can base entire meals and snacks around these foods, you don’t have to. But do follow these guidelines.

• Incorporate two or three of these foods into each of your three major meals and at least one of them into each of your three snacks.
• Diversify your food at every meal to get a combination of protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
• Make sure you sneak a little bit of protein into each snack.

An easy way to remember the 12 powerfoods is to remember the words ABS DIET POWER - the first letters of each of the powerfoods spell these words as you can see:

1. Almonds and Other Nuts
2. Beans and Other Legumes
3. Spinach and Other Green Vegetables
4. Dairy Products
5. Instant Oatmeal
6. Eggs
7. Turkey and Other Lean Meats
8. Peanut Butter
9. Olive Oil
10. Whole-Grain Breads and Cereals
11. Extra-Protein (Whey) Powder
12. Raspberries and Other Berries

While this is not a comprehensive list of all the good foods you can possibly consume, it is still pretty inclusive and I can unconditionally vouch for the veracity and potency of each and every one of these foods. In previous posts I have written about a majority of them including nuts (almonds and walnuts), green vegetables (broccoli), dairy (milk 1,2 and cottage cheese), oatmeal, peanut butter and whole grains (bread). It’s surprising how much my diet now revolves around all of these foods (well almost all - I am vegetarian so #7 is out, which is why I need a whole lot of #11 to make up the protein!)

What else can you ad to this list? Well, there’s flaxseed for one (along with other healthful seeds like sunflower seeds). And of course atleast 2-3 servings of fresh fruits (simply go with whatever is in season - this way you not only get a good variety year-round, you are also assured it is fresh and the cost is probably lower too). Any other super-foods you can think of that don’t fall into one of the 12 categories? Do comment about them.

Finally, incorporating these superfoods into your diet while always being conscious of your total calorie intake will certainly help you maintain an appropriate weight, but distributing that weight and ensuring you build lean muscle while losing fat requires - you guessed it - exercise! The Abs Diet Exercise Plan is a worthy complement to the superfood diet and an excellent place to start. It’s all part of the Abs Diet Plan.

I made a huge, life-altering change to my eating and exercise habits when I learned everything that you have read today. Are you now ready to make that big change?

Technorati Tags: health, nutrition, fitness, exercise, abs diet, powerfoods

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… that you heard for the first time today!

At the outset let me begin by saying that if you ever hear someone tell you “Eat This To Lose Weight”, then you should ask that person to wait for a minute while you replace your regular ears with a pair of “skeptic” ones! Note that the operative word in “Eat This To Lose Weight” is “To” which implies that eating that particular food by itself can cause you to lose weight.

Here’s something that is so painfully obvious that it hurts me to even write it: If you put something in your mouth other than air or water and swallow it, it will (repeat: will) add to your weight. Obviously at the end of the day if you have eaten a total number of calories that is less than what you have expended (by exercising, walking around, doing your chores and even just plain breathing) then you would have lost weight compared to what you weighed yesterday; but the first statement still stands: food itself will (always) add to your weight.

OK, now that I have that out of my system, let’s get onto the topic at hand! Last week saw the announcement from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which also oversees product advertising, that ads suggesting eating dairy will make a person lose weight are finally coming to an end. The FTC said that although it did not actually enforce this, the dairy industry behind the ads finally gave in to a group of doctors called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (disclaimer: this purportedly vegan group promotes the absolute abolishment of animal based foods) who claimed that such a cause-and-effect relationship simply did not exist.

The two marketing campaigns at issue involve the “Milk your diet. Lose Weight!” ads on television, Internet and in magazines, and the “3-A-Day. Burn More Fat, Lose Weight” ads, which are now mostly Web-based.

- Lose the ads, not the weight, say doctors

Now when Yoplait features a plump girl lose weight by simply gobbling down loads of yogurt with the song “It Was An Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” playing in the background, you just have to know there’s something wrong with this message. Heck, they even built a website around this fallacy!

Granted, the site has the mandatory “As Part Of A Regimen Of Exercise And A Low Calorie Diet” (or some similar phrase) tagged on to the bottom, but who reads disclaimers anyway? All viewers see is someone losing weight as they eat something sweet. And they think: Sweet!

And so I am sure we have hordes of people at home wasting away on their couches, gulping down yogurt and wondering when they need to weigh themselves again so they can see the pounds drop off. Well, here’s some news folks, it ain’t happening. You eating, you gaining. You use more energy than you take in, you losing. Simple.

This site itself has twice before commented on the benefits of milk, but in both cases I have always been particularly wary of calling milk a “weight-loss food” (there’s no such thing). Got Milk is my first post on the topic of dairy and although I have mentioned studies that show calcium plays a part in preventing the body from easily storing food as fat, nowhere will you see outlandish claims that milk will actually help you lose weight. Infact, I said (and i quote):

Believe you me: It is; but don’t get me wrong: If you really drink milk all day (especially the “whole” kind), you will not only not lose weight but add some artery-clogging saturated fat in the process.

In the very next paragraph I mention the milk study that only shows that adding calcium to an already planned-out calorie-restricted diet helped in reducing fat stored - but there’s obviously no way the calcium (or the dairy products themselves) can cause weight loss.

Even when I gave you “5 Reasons You Should Drink A Glass Of Milk Before Bedtime” not one of the reasons was anywhere close to “Milk will help you lose weight!”.

What can we learn from all of this?

• If it sounds too good to be true it probably is (the only itsy bitsy bikinis I see these days are on lifeless store mannequins - and I know they don’t eat a lot of yogurt)
• Just because you discovered people were attributing outlandish magical powers to good foods does not mean you should stop eating those foods in protest. Remember, dairy products (especially the low-fat and fat-free varieties) are still excellent sources of whey protein and function as good snack fillers (in lieu of other fatty snacks).
• Keeping the attributes “moderation” and “common sense” uppermost in our minds will enable us to see through the hype on either side of this issue (No, Yoplait - we are not going to believe that eating your yogurt alone will help women get into itsy-bitsy bikinis - not until your ad shows that woman burning some calories as well! And No to you too Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine - granted milk may not have weight-loss powers, but that does not mean you ask people to become vegan!)

Let’s hope we are all granted the wisdom to understand the motives behind the actions and comments of others and, more importantly, figure out for ourselves what is best for our bodies and ourselves.

Technorati Tags: health, fitness, nutrition, dairy, milk, yogurt, yoplait

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