June 1, 2007 by admin.

It seems that a lot of people are confused about fat and I’d like to set the story straight.  Fat has gotten a bad reputation, especially because people assume that when you eat fat, you get fat.  Okay, if you eat a lot of fat you will get fat.  But then you can eat a lot of protein and a lot of carbohydrates and get fat.

We need some fat in our diet, especially since fat contains nutrients our bodies can’t make.  Let’s not get technical about fatty acids and double bonds and all the chemistry involved.  Most people don’t think in terms of the “chemistry” they’re eating.  They just want to know what’s healthy and tastes good.

I’m sure you’ve probably heard of all the names associated with fat.  There’s saturated fat, unsaturated fat, trans fats, polyunsaturated fat, and monounsaturated fat.  There has been a lot of coverage of trans fat in the news so that most people are pretty aware of the fact that it’s not a good fat to eat.  That’s why food manufacturers are now getting the trans fat out of their products. 

Saturated fat has also gotten a lot of press.  Try to stay away from it, as well.  That means avoiding real fatty meats and tropical oils.  Saturated fat is easy to recognize because it’s solid at room temperature.  Now imagine putting some saturated fat down your sink drain.  Too much of it and it’s going to plug up the works.  Same with your body.

It seems that the unsaturated fats are the ones confusing consumers.  Polyunsaturated fat and monounsaturated fat are good fats and not to be eliminated from your daily intake.  So don’t shy away from canola oil, olive oil, corn oil, and safflower oil.  Just don’t guzzle them from the bottle since they are high in calories. 

A food label will tell you a lot about the fat in the food.  Some manufacturers not only include the amount of Saturated and Unsaturated Fats, but they’re also good about telling you about the amounts of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats.  Not that the specific grams will make much of a difference to you, but it does help in letting you know what types of fat are in a food.

Most people don’t appreciate the fact that almost all fats contain both saturated and unsaturated fat.  It’s just some, like meat fat, have a high amount of saturated fat, as compared to olive oil, which is high in unsaturated fat.

Keep these letters in mind as you choose your foods:
S - Subtract the Saturated Fat
T - Trounce the Trans fat
P - Push for more Polyunsaturated Fat
M - Maximize the Monounsaturated Fat

Posted in Foods and Nutrition | 1 Comment »

April 16, 2007 by admin.

Of the following foods, which are the ones you eat regularly?

Beans
Berries
Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, Brussel sprouts, cauliflower)
Dark leafy green vegetables
Flaxseed
Garlic
Grapes and grape juice
Green tea
Soy
Tomatoes
Whole grains

If you said “most of them”, good for you.  But if you said “not often” and that, instead, you look for protection in a bottle of supplements, I’d recommend you rethink that approach and turn to food for your health’s sake.  Even though there are particular phytochemicals (plant chemicals) in each of these foods that research has found to be healthful, having them isolated and put in a bottle may not be the answer.  There is so much chemistry going on in the foods we eat and it’s the interaction of those chemicals that give us the health protection.  Taking just one or two of these chemicals out of foods and putting them in a pill may mean you’re missing out on the best part of the foods they’re found in.

Whenever possible, eat your nutrients rather than popping a pill.  There are some instances, such as fish oil pills, that if you’re not a fish eater, might make sense.  That also goes for calcium.  Not that you couldn’t get, say, 1200 mg of calcium by drinking 3 glasses of milk a day, along with eating dark leafy greens.  Yet, most people don’t.  So, in that case, taking a calcium supplement might make sense.

Remember, we eat not to just fill the belly.  We’re fueling a very sophisticated piece of machinery.

Posted in Foods and Nutrition | No Comments »

April 2, 2007 by admin.

Your first response might be to say “yes” just because one would think that if you’ve been burning up calories through exercise, your body’s reaction is to demand food to replace what was burned off.  I challenge you to test the premise.  Try some intense exercise and see just how tempted you are to eat something right after you finish exercising.  If you’re not, then see when you actually start to experience hunger pangs.

Take me up on the challenge and let me know (email me at dtlinfo@advantagediets.com) just how hungry you truly are right after you’ve finished exercising.

You might want to try “Drawing the Line on Calories, Carbs, and Fat” (visit www.advantagediets.com) to keep track of how many calories you’re burning up with exercise.  Then see if, when you do eat, you eat as many calories as you burned.  Do keep in mind that your body is still burning calories long after your exercise session is over.  So if you burned 200 calories with exercise, over the next two hours, you might have burned another 50-100 calories while your body returns to its relaxed state.

Posted in Fitness | No Comments »

April 2, 2007 by admin.

If you don’t know about omega-3 fatty acids, you should.  We need them for the health of our hearts.  One of the richest sources of these fatty acids is fish and fish oil supplements, along with flaxseed, canola oil, soy and wheat germ. 

When you start shopping for supplements, you may feel a little overwhelmed.  That’s because there are various fatty acids in supplements you need to be aware of.  In fish and fish oil, you’ll find DHA (docohexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid).  These two fatty acids are important for cell membranes and your immune and nervous systems.  Get enough of them and you can lower your risk for heart disease.

Yet, there is another omega-3 fatty acid that hasn’t gotten as much attention.  That’s alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which comes from such plant sources as walnuts, flaxseed, canola oil, soy and wheat germ.  Because our bodies can’t make ALA, you need to get it from your diet or through a supplement, such as flaxseed oil capsules.  Just a little over one tablespoon of canola oil a day would give you an adequate amount of ALA.

There are many fortified foods with these omega-3 acids and expect to see more in the future.  Some eggs are fortified, along with other products such as pasta.  Daily recommendations for EPA and DHA combined range from about 500 to 1,800 mg per day.  For ALA, authorities suggest we aim for 1,300 to 3,000 mgs.  Don’t forget that omega-3 fortified foods contribute to your totals for the day.

Posted in Foods and Nutrition | 1 Comment »

March 23, 2007 by admin.

The makers of Splenda and Equal will be duking it out in court in about a month.  Equal has lost a lot of market share to Splenda.  The makers of Equal believe that Splenda should not be advertising that it “tastes like sugar because it’s made from sugar.”  Because of the way it is made, Splenda is an artificial sweetener.  It may start out as sugar but once the chemists have worked on it, it no longer is sugar.  It is no longer something you find in nature.

It may not only be Splenda’s advertising that has garnered it more of the market share.  It could be that while Equal is 200 times as sweet as table sugar, Splenda is 600 times sweeter than table sugar.  Is this a testament to the American sweet tooth?

I think artificial sweetners have their place in one’s effort to lose weight.  In order to achieve the level of sweetness that Splenda gives to a food, one would have to add many, many calories of sugar.  What bothers me more than Splenda’s advertising tagline are their television commercials.  Not only do we see adults sprinkling Splenda on fruits, drinks and other foods, but they show smiling children enjoying Splenda, as well.  We would be doing more of a service to our children by teaching them from an early age that fruits, even dried fruits, should be enough sweetness to satisfy a “sweet tooth”.  Once we start introducing sugar-laden foods, we’ve started them on a road to needing more and eventually having to resort to artificial sweeteners in order to lose the weight they’ll probably gain.

People who used to eat high-fat diets and eventually scaled-back on their intake of fat, now find that anything with a lot of fat in it isn’t pleasing to the taste.  If we can learn to eat less fat, why not less sugar?  I know that we naturally tend toward sugar; otherwise, we would not have been given taste buds dedicated to recognizing sweet flavors.  But a lot of what we eat is learned.  Cavemen probably loved eating fruits and berries, appreciating their sweet flavor and never asked for something sweeter.  Maybe we need to return back to our roots.

Posted in Foods and Nutrition | 1 Comment »

March 9, 2007 by admin.

I recently heard about another aspect to fitness.  While I suggest to my clients that they should pay attention to aerobic exercise to build stamina and heart strength, resistance exercises to build muscle, and flexibility exercises to, what else, build flexibility (and, in turn, decrease risk of falling), this new aspect is called functional fitness.  It’s mimicking activities of daily life to make particular movements stronger and more efficient.

Think of functional fitness in terms of improving balance and strengthening your core muscles (those in the abdomen).  One exercise would be to stand on a balance board and do bicep curls with dumbbells.  If you don’t feel steady, best to get someone to do it with you and act as spotter.  Instead of doing bicep curls, try standing on one foot and looking up at the ceiling.

Strengthening your core muscles is a good idea because you need those muscles to do everyday activities such as carrying groceries from the car to the house.  If your core is weak, you’ll be depending upon your back muscles, which isn’t a good idea.  Think about housework or picking up a child.  Almost everything you do should be using strong core muscles.  Even just sitting.  Right now you’re probably slouching in your chair as your read this and your core muscles are not being used.  So try straightening up, shoulders back and stomach pulled in.  See how much stronger they feel already!

Just remember that exercise is just part of the full health package.  Good nutrition and stress management are every bit as vital.  If you want more information about good nutrition, go to my website at www.advantagediets.com .  You might even want to check out my “connect-the-dots” approach to healthy eating using Drawing the Line on Calories, Carbs, and Fat (the food, exercise, and activity tracker - diary that lets you eat your favorite foods without guilt!).

Posted in Fitness | 1 Comment »

March 8, 2007 by admin.

WebMd:  www.webmd.com

Healthfinder:  www.healthfinder.gov

American Heart Association:  www.americanheart.org

American Diabetes Association:  www.diabetes.org

American Cancer Society:  www.cancer.org

National Cancer institute:  www.cancer.gov

Mayo Clinic:  www.mayoclinic.com

KidsHealth:  www.kidshealth.org

Posted in FAQs | 1 Comment »

March 7, 2007 by admin.

I was reading an article in the February 24th, 2007 issue of The Economist where the author was discussing the possibility that a pregnant woman’s exposure to chemicals in plastics may predispose her fetus to becoming fat during his or her lifetime.  The thought is these chemicals somehow alter the activity of genes and hormones in the fetus.  Of course, right now the studies have only been done on laboratory mice.  But it does raise the question whether endocrine (hormone) disrupters do play a part in the increase of obesity that we’re seeing in the United Sates, as well as world-wide.  Dr. Blumberg of the University of California at Irvine coined the term “obesogens” for those disrupters in our environment that may be making us fat.

However, until we really know for sure whether chemical compounds are interfering with the body’s normal fat-formation process by putting it into overdrive, the best thing you can do is curb calories.  Healthcare professionals still believe that it’s a matter of how many calories you take in versus how many you burn up.  So eating healthy and exercising is still the best bet.  Don’t forget about all the studies done on mice that showed that a low calorie intake promotes longer life!

If you think that this could be a problem for you, visit my website at www.advantagediets.com for the “connect-the-dots” system of eating and losing weight.

Posted in Weight Loss | 1 Comment »

March 1, 2007 by admin.

There are thousands of members of the National Weight Registry, a group that was created to track who had successfully lost weight and kept it off and what method they used to be successful.  There were two major things these people did that they say helped them lose weight.  One was exercise.  They found it wasn’t enough to just decrease their calorie intake.  They needed to do some sort of exercise to burn off some calories, as well.  The second thing they did was keep a food diary.

Let’s face it.  When you have to write down everything you eat, you become much more aware of what you’re eating.  Keeping track of your food intake acts like your conscience.  If you’re really being honest with yourself and diligently tracking your food intake, you learn so much more about your eating patterns.

That’s why I created Drawing the Line on Calories, Carbs, and Fat.  As I say to users of it, “if you can connect the dots, you can draw the line.”  Visit my website at www.advantagediets.com to see what I’m talking about.  Most food diaries require you to write down the name of the food and then add and subtract calories and grams to know what you have left to spend for the day after eating.  Drawing the Line doesn’t require any of that.  With just a stroke of the pen, drawing a line between dots, you can keep track of what you’re eating and how much you have to spend for the remainder of the day.  The system does all the math for you.

 But what it really comes down to is whether you have the personality type that will enjoy keeping a food diary.  If you’re the organized, structured type, you’ll buy into the idea easily.  Have you ever taken the MBTI questionnaire to determine your type?  If not, you might want to find out more about personality typing at my website, www.advantagediets.com.  On the right hand side of the page is a link called “About personality typing.”  I’d love to hear what you think your type might be and whether you think you could keep a diary.  But I always say that to keep doing something, it better be fun and from many users of Drawing the Line, it is fun.

Posted in Personality Typing based on MBTI, FAQs, Health Tips | 1 Comment »

March 1, 2007 by admin.

Visit My Website at:  www.advantagediets.com

See how Drawing the Line on Calories, Carbs, and Fat AND Is Your Personality Type Making You Fat? can help you lose weight, control for heart disease and diabetes, and just eat healthier:  www.advantagediets.com/index.html

My name is Roberta Schwartz Wennik, M.S., R.D.  I’m a registered dietitian, writer, speaker, and personal coach.  I would say that I bring something unique to the dietetic profession — I have a U.S. patent for the innovative food, exercise and activity tracker diary called “Drawing The Line On Calories, Carbs, and Fat.”  Go to www.advantagediets.com to see more about it.

Not only that, I’m a practitioner of the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator).  Only a handful of registered dietitians are qualified practitioners of this personality approach to counseling.  I draw on this expertise often when serving as a personal coach to my clients.  I’ve written the book, Is Your Personality Type Making You Fat? to introduce you to type, let you discover what your type is, and then how you can live a healthier life by living it according to your type.  Eliminate using willpower by employing your type the way it wants to be used.

I received my Master in Nutrition from the University of Washington, followed by certification and R.D. credentials from the American Dietetic Association.  My first career, interestingly enough, was as an interior designer, having received a B.A. degree in Interior Design from the University of California at Berkeley.  I actually have quite a keepsake from my first degree.  My diploma is signed by President Ronald Reagan, who was governor of California at the time. 

While raising my family, I started reading diet books to get back into shape.  I was appalled at how many diet books were just pure quackery.  It was then that I knew what I wanted to do for my next career move.  I wanted to write and so returned to school for my masters in Nutrition.  What I have found is that having the design background combined with the nutrition degree allows me to present information in more graphic and visual ways, the approach, by the way, that is favored by most people.

Since receiving my degree, I have had many opportunities to write, having written for many popular magazines, as well as having had many books published including: Boomer’s Guide to Getting the Weight Off…For Good (2004, Alpha), Your Personality Prescription (1999, Kensington), and Beyond Food Labels (1996, Perigee).

Another fun thing I’ve done is being a segment host on a radio talk show and having appeared on television.  I’m also a spokesperson for Coca-Cola/Glaceau, the maker of smartwater, vitaminwater, vitaminenergy, and fruitwater.

Everything I do involves educating the consumer in one way or another.  At the root of all I do is the intense desire to help people and teach them.  I’m hoping that you will visit my blog often where I will share the latest news about nutrition and health.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »