Author Archives: therapysoup

Do You Hate To Exercise?

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I used to hate to exercise.  I didn’t grow up with a mother who was into it, but with time, I realized that I did like to exercise, I loved to ride my bike.  I should have been encouraged to exercise in an enjoyable way.  Some people like different things.  Some people prefer hiking, skiing, dancing, etc.  Those exercises should be encouraged and parents should encourage them with their children.  Playstation and watching people run in a video game is NOT encouraging your child to learn to love exercise.  Take your kids to the park and toss a ball, fly a kite, play on swings, ride bikes, go roller skating, etc.

We need to be role models for our children and we need to FIND time to take care of yourselves.  A study came out yesterday that exercising at least 15 minutes after EVERY meal cut the diabetes risk in half.  And the kicker–exercising cuts down on sugar cravings and it helps release chemicals in the brain to feel happier!  It is nature’s mood stabilizer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22853314

I personally now enjoy doing an hour on my elliptical at home and I read emails and such on my IPAD while on there.  I then feel like I am killing two birds with one big stone and the time goes faster!  You can also watch your favorite TV show.  I also love group pilates and yoga and go to both equaling 4-5 times a week.

What is the point of working your kids homework and schoolwork to the bone and then they can’t enjoy the fruition of their hard work because they are sickly early in adulthood with terrible diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and heart issues from obesity?  Exercise is an important part of every day’s plan!  OR it should be.

Ways to exercise for fun (find one you enjoy and you could also do with a friend, mate or children)

exercise

  • Exercise group classes (mine are yoga and pilates)
  • Aerobic classes or online at home
  • The WII Fit
  • Riding a bike, roller skating or blading
  • Hiking
  • Skiing (seasonal and costs money)
  • Walking or Running (with a dog too).  Instead of meeting a friend for coffee, meet for a walk or another exercise activity.
  • Swimming
  • Gym workouts, weight training
  • Boxing or kickboxing
  • Dancing
  • Zumba or other dance classes
  • Jump roping or trampoline (Sky Zone places too)
  • At home elliptical, walking or biking machine

The Big Con: The Big Food Companies Duped You To Have A Weight Issue!

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Today, I was writing to a chat room about being addicted to sugar and how it is like being addicted to crack and some people got really defensive.  But, seriously, it isn’t all our faults.  We have been manipulated by food companies.  Certain foods are engineered by their companies  to make us eat more of them.  They are designed to taste good and give us pleasure.  The combination of sugar, salt and fat is done to maximize the impact that the foods have on our taste receptors and pathways to the brain.

There are many ways to make foods taste good and give us pleasure.

One of the best ways is to use a combination of sugar, salt and fat to maximize the impact these foods have on our taste receptors and reward pathways in the brain.  And when you add artificial flavors and textures, the foods are hard to resist.

The food industry has learned through research what the public wants.  It is their job to sell products and make money.  They reward the pathways to our brain and they make us ADDICTED to these foods.

So, this is how you get repeat customers, but it destroys the health of those who eat these foods.  So, you get addicted, you have the ability to an abundance of these foods and therefore, there is a huge obesity and diabetes epidemic happening.  It is the reason people become addicted to these foods and literally can not stop eating even though they know the foods are causing them severe harm.

Here is a link to the story in NPR about it and the book that exposes the secrets.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/02/26/172969363/how-the-food-industry-manipulates-taste-buds-with-salt-sugar-fat

book

Do you like the fact that you were and are being manipulated for profit?  Think about reading this book and work on your food issues as an addiction.  It might make more sense this way for you when you change the way you eat.

 

Follow Up On The Low-Carb FlatOut Bread

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The Flatout bread was excellent. If you want to make it or learn more about the ingredients, look at my blog yesterday.

Here are the pictures I took. I make a mighty good pizza.

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Low-Carb Pizza Bases for Wraps and Pizzas! Whoo Hoo!

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My sister-in-law found another interesting item to try.  It is Flatbread that is low carb and can be used for wraps and to make an individual pizza.  So, I am now attempting to make a margarita pizza with one.  They are called, Flatout, but I bought the LIGHT Flatout, which has less carbs.  No sugar.

http://www.flatoutbread.com/products/flatout-wraps/flatout-light/light-italian-herb/

My whole crust has 9g of protein (really decent), high fiber at 9g  and the carbs is 16g.  But, net carbs is 16g carbs -9g fiber=7g of carbs!!  I put a little sauce on, which is probably about 5g of carbs and there are no carbs in my mozarella cheese and hardly any in my tomatoes.  Lets just say I am probably going to have a pizza that is tasty and is about 13g of net carbs at the most.  What an awesome dinner and treat!  I am trying to stay away from wheat, but if I do have it, it has to be once in awhile and I prefer it be either very low carb like this, or gluten-free.

You can get sugar-free pizza sauce at Netrition.com, if you need it.

So easy to make a pizza.  DIRECTIONS

Set the oven at 350.  Spray a cookie sheet, place the Flatout on the sheet, bake one side for one minute and then flip and bake the other side for one minute.

Put on your pizza sauce, cheese, tomatoes, basil or or whatever toppings you want on it.  Bake it for 4-7 minutes or 30 seconds longer for crisp.  Bam!  Done.

Dinner or lunch is served.  Easy and light!  Perfect for a diet or your new way of LOW-CARB life like mine.

 

Here is a picture of someone else’s wrap and pizza.  I will include my pictures later on.  I think mine looks better! 🙂

wrap

 

 

 

 

 

pizzaflat

Keep skinny!

 

What Would A Nutritionist NOT Eat?

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My information came from Shape Magazine.

http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/diet-tips/7-foods-nutritionist-would-never-eat?utm_source=Taboola&utm_medium=cpc

Nutritionists would not eat:

1. Rice Cakes

Why? They are bad for weight loss with a glycemic index of 91 out of 100, the carb count is too high (I stay away from rice, not to mention that they have high arsenic levels in them) and the sugar high and low is really terrible For your diet and your mood.

2. Fat-free Salad Dressing

Don’t fear fat. It is the sugar and carbs to look out for in your food choices. Fat-free has to add sugar or corn syrup for flavor, so you were better off with the fat. Just watch out for the carb count and serving size.

3. Shark

High mercury levels salmon has the lowest mercury and in the meantime has Omega 3. That is good.

4. Refined and Re-fortified Grains

“Unfortunately this rules out a majority of the carbohydrates found on supermarket shelves. Refined and re-fortified grains are grain-based foods like certain breakfast cereals, pastas, and rice products that have been refined such that the naturally occurring fiber, vitamins, and minerals have been removed. Companies then replace the fiber and synthetic versions of the vitamins and minerals that were initially removed. Sometimes (and this is really sneaky) they put everything back in naturally occurring ratios so that they can still claim the food contains ‘whole grains’. My suggestion: Just eat the real unfortified stuff in the first place.”

5. Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

They have empty calories and carbs, they fatten you and you don’t get a full feeling from them. Also, simple sugars lowers your good cholesterol and increases your triglyceride levels (two risk factors for heart disease). Drinking sugary beverages also promotes disturbances in your body’s inflammatory balance, making it harder to recover from exercise and increasing your risk of numerous chronic illnesses. Instead opt for water or a calorie-free infused drink.

6. Grits

Another hyper-refined carbohydrate, grits are the small leftover pieces from corn processing. they lack significant amounts of vitamins or minerals. They contain a minute amount of fiber and no essential fats. Their flavor is lacking and thus butter or heavy cream is used to make them palatable, bringing together the artery clogging and waistline expanding simple carbohydrates and saturated fat.

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What About Processed Foods?

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I have discussed carbs, but some of you (and I) are concerned about processed foods and their safety. Processed foods are not really good for us. In fact, I read today that they can really affect our auto immune systems.

What are processed foods?

Processed foods have been altered from their natural state, either for safety reasons or for convenience. The methods used include canning, freezing, refrigeration, dehydration and aseptic processing.

Some of these foods are not bad for your health at all. For example, milk would be considered a processed food because it’s pasteurized to kill bacteria and homogenized to keep fats from separating, so most of us are happy to consume the healthy processed milk we find in our grocery stores.

Freezing vegetables preserves most vitamins and minerals and makes them convenient to store, cook and eat all year around. Fruit and vegetable juice is also an example of a healthy processed food and fortified with supplements. Oatmeal, unbreaded frozen fish fillets, canned salmon, frozen berries and 100-percent whole grain bread are also examples of processed foods that are good for you, except now there is a concern that the wheat is modified and not good for us.

Sure, there are a lot of processed foods that aren’t good for you. Many of these bad ones are made with trans-fats, saturated fats, and large amounts of sodium and sugar. These processed foods should be avoided, or at least eaten sparingly.

Processed foods that may be bad for your diet:

  • Canned foods (including soup) with large amounts of sodium or fat.
  • Pasta meals made with refined white flour instead of whole grains.
  • Packaged high-calorie snack foods such as chips and candies.
  • Frozen fish sticks and frozen dinners that are high in sodium.
  • Packaged cakes and cookies.
  • Boxed meal mixes that are high in fat and sodium.
  • Sugary breakfast cereals.
  • Processed meats. *

* Some studies suggest that eating processed meats may increase your risk of colorectal, kidney and stomach cancer. Processed meats include hot dogs, bologna, sausage, ham and other packaged lunch meats. These meats are frequently high in calories, saturated fats and sodium.

Breakfast cereal can be good for you if it’s made with 100-percent whole grain and fortified with additional nutrients, but many breakfast cereals are low in fiber and contain too much sugar, and again the wheat can lead to problems and weight issues.

Be sure to look for products that are made with more whole grains, less sodium and have fewer calories. They should also be low in saturated fat and free of trans-fats (be sure to read the label, sometimes foods that claim to be trans-fat free still contain partially hydrogenated oils). Make sure you pay attention to serving size, too, and balance out the processed foods with more fresh foods. If you choose a convenient meal in a skillet, add a garden salad, fresh vegetables, and some whole grain bread to make the meal healthier. You can also the nutritional value of ramen noodles by adding fresh vegetables.

Honey, You Might Be Killing the Kids!

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I know someone who came to my office this weekend with his son. This man wants to lose weight and he wants his children to lose weight too. He says he is watching what they eat, and they were late to my office that morning and came in with “breakfast drinks.” What were they drinking that was “good” for them, as he put it?

Nestle Strawberry flavored milk (30g of sugar) and Naked Juice (38g of carbs). There are approximately 4g of sugar per sugar cube. So, I pulled out my sugar cube box and I showed him 7.5 sugar cubes and asked him if he would give them to his son. Of course, he declined, but I told him he was with the chocolate milk–as that is how many sugar cubes are in his drink. And there were about 9 in Dad’s drink.

But, milk and juice is healthy!? Not so much. A balanced amount of milk as a protein, each day, is good for you. However, flavored milk AKA SUGAR milk is not good for you. And, the juice is overkill. FRUIT is good, the pulp and the fiber is needed and NOT in that juice. So, in his juice is 1/2 a banana, 1/3 of a mango and 21/2 apples. If you had to eat that many pieces of fruit in one sitting, you could not really do it. So, EAT fruit, don’t drink it. It is less fiber and too much sugar. Plus, both the milk and the juice were in huge containers and they were both trying to drink the whole thing. They should have just had a little bit of it.

So, what should dad have fed himself and his kid for breakfast? Sure, they were in a hurry that day and they wanted something easy and quick. So, what could Dad have done instead?

Parents need to educate themselves. No wonder there is a problem with a large amount of childhood obesity, and more adults are obese now than ever in the history of the United States. So, here are some ideas!

Quick Low-Sugar Breakfast Ideas:

1. Hard-boiled eggs (pre-made) or just scramble some eggs–quickly.
2. Microwaveable STEEL cut oatmeal (there is some at Trader Joes and at Costco) and put some blueberries in it.
3. A low-carb protein bar.
4. Low-fat string cheese or mini baby bells.
5. Worse case scenario–fast food place, just order scrambled eggs and bacon.
6. Turkey or chicken slices with low-fat cheese or microwaveable turkey bacon or sausage
7. A low-carb protein drink.
8. Put ONE piece of fruit in a blender with some ice and some veggies (there are recipes online) and make a small smoothie.
9. A glass of low-fat milk, low-carb Greek yogurt.
10. Low-carb pancake mix and syrup.

(yes, some of that is processed meat, and nothing is perfect, but it won’t add to your waistline like sugar drinks will.)

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What Is Causing Your Cravings?

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Today, I was in my Pilates class and I was listening to a woman explain that she follows Weight Watchers, but there are sweets in her house (two teenage boys) and she winds up following her plan for a few days and then succumbs to the sweets because of the cravings.

One issue that is a whole other Oprah, I will discuss in another blog soon — that I think it is a mistake to have sweets around for teens with the excuse that they are teens.  There are so many delicious HEALTHY options for teens and kids that it is just a poor excuse because they are growing fast and need calories to burn, that you can give them EMPTY calories in the shape of cookies and cake.  But, that will be for another day.

Today’s issue is what is causing MOMMY (or Daddy’s) cravings? Two things!

1.  You are addicted to sugar and you have to get off and allow yourself to get through withdrawal (like crack addiction).

2.  You might have Leaky Gut Syndrome.  You might ask, “What the heck is that?”  It is a real medical condition that not all doctors know about or talk about, but good ones do.  Your doctor might scoff, but then you will need another doctor.  Dr. Andrew Weil knows about it and writes about it.

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA361058/what-is-leaky-gut.html

I had this condition and it caused me to be very ill and gain a lot of weight.  It also caused my sugar cravings.  In a nutshell…

Leaky Gut Low

” leaky gut syndrome (also called increased intestinal permeability), is the result of damage to the intestinal lining, making it less able to protect the internal environment as well as to filter needed nutrients and other biological substances. As a consequence, some bacteria and their toxins, incompletely digested proteins and fats, and waste not normally absorbed may “leak” out of the intestines into the blood stream. This triggers an autoimmune reaction, which can lead to gastrointestinal problems such as abdominal bloating, excessive gas and cramps, fatigue, food sensitivities, joint pain, skin rashes, and autoimmunity. The cause of this syndrome may be chronic inflammation, food sensitivity, damage from taking large amounts of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS), cytotoxic drugs and radiation or certain antibiotics, excessive alcohol consumption, or compromised immunity.”

(If you have migraines, gut issues, yeast infections, nail issues, bowel issues, skin issues–it could be caused by Leaky Gut Syndrome!)

leaky

How do you heal this condition?

1.  avoid alcoholm NSAIDS, any foods that you’re allergic to.

2.  Make sure you’re eating plenty of fiber.

3.  Take Culturelle or another probiotic supplement containing Lactobacillus GG.

4.   Eat an anti-inflammatory diet, including essential fatty acids like fish oil and GLA. In addition, you might try supplementing with glutamine, an amino acid that helps maintain intestinal metabolism and function and seems to benefit patients who have had intestinal injury from chemotherapy and radiation.

5.  Cut sugar out of your diet as much as possible and follow a MEVY diet (Meat, eggs, vegetables and yogurt) if you can’t follow the anti-inflammatory diet.  If you eat fruit, stick with fruit that has low sugar like berries or citrus.  A side benefit is that you will lose weight.  You will have sugar cravings for about a week, find something to keep your mouth happy like gum, lots of flavored water or coffee.  Try to avoid milk for awhile–lots of sugar.  Use non dairy creamer if you need light coffee.  Sweeteners can be an issue, and if you like the taste of Stevia at all, use that.  I couldn’t give up my Splenda–so getting the Leaky Gut Syndrome cleared up for me took many months.

 

 

Low-Carb Noodles or Pasta

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Sometimes I just want something different.  Sometimes I just miss pasta.  Sometimes I just want something that feels like comfort.

I have written about this before, but I want to remind people that you can have pasta noodles with a little bit of sauce, just make sure they are the tofu kind and not the wheat-based kind.  Only 3g of carbs per serving.  Not available at every store.  But, you can look online to locate them.  They are also on Amazon.com.

http://www.shiratakinoodles.net/

shirataki

They are good.  They smell funny until cooked and then they are awesome.

Try them.  Inexpensive too!

I think I am going to have some right now.

Low Sugar and Carb Toppings

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Walden Farms makes outrageously tasty toppings and syrups for those who are either on a low sugar, low-calorie or low carb diet or are just diabetic.  You should try one or more and there is a sale right now on Vitacost.com.  There are some stores that carry some of the products, but you should check it out.   Any order over $45 has free shipping.  Chocolate sauce, jams, pasta sauce, salad dressing, etc.

http://www.vitacost.com/productResults.aspx?NttSR=1&ss=1&x=0&y=0&ntk=products&Ntt=Walden%20farms%20fudge

 

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