Five (Very) Simple Healthy, Environment- and Cost-Saving Diet Tips

See Katherine’s interview on Fox TV

Here are five simple tips for making you and your family healthier, happier, and more energetic, saving on food costs, helping the planet, reducing your medical costs and the stresses and burdens on our nation’s health care system:

* Move toward a more plant-based, vegetarian lifestyle. Experiment with new bean and soybean recipes. Try just one new vegetarian dish per week – or per day – depending on your goals. Cutting back on meats keeps you healthier, reduces your carbon footprint and saves money.

* Eat more locally and seasonally. Produce and other foods produced locally are cheaper, tastier, more nutritious and help save the environment.

* Eat more meals from home. Make “batches” you can use for several meals. This saves money on labor costs in restaurants. But also, studies show people who eat more from home are more likely to maintain healthy weights and eat healthier. Having more family meals at home also keeps children healthier and at ideal weights.

Great recipes!

* Work toward eating five cups of fruits and/or vegetables per day. This reduces you and your family’s risk for cancer, heart disease, obesity and inflammatory diseases. It’s also cheap if you consider fruits and vegetables’ cost on a “per serving” basis.

* Increase physical activity: and keep it simple! Buy a pedometer… My favorite is the Omron HJ 112 or 113. Increase your steps by 2,000 per day until you get to 10,000 steps (minimum!). You’ll lose weight, get healthier, save money on medical costs and drugs. Studies show being overweight doubles medical costs, so being more physically active will save you and our country money on your medical problems.

For more on cost-saving…

For more on environment-saving…

Five “Healthy Eating” Foods for 2010

See Katherine’s CNN interview

Go Green

You thought green tea was healthy! (and it is – it reduces cancer and heart disease risks and boosts the immune system). But wait until you hear the latest news: it actually helps reduce BELLY FAT! Scientists have known for decades that habitual tea drinkers were leaner than non-tea-drinkers. But now, more clinical studies hove proven it may be true. Here’s the theory of how it works: Tea catechins (highest in green tea) prevent norepinephrine from breaking down. Norepinephrine plays important roles in metabolism and fat breakdown. The caffeine in green tea also plays a role in fat breakdown and metabolism and magnifies the affect of the catechins.

Why is belly fat more affected that other body fat? We know that belly fat has increased metabolic activity than other fat – which is why it plays such a negative role in health. When you have too much of it – when a man’s waist (measured at the belly button level) is larger than 40” and a woman’s waist is larger than 35” – it is a serious risk factor for the metabolic syndrome, that constellation of diseases: heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol and diabetes, which is so deadly. But, the metabolic activity of belly fat means it is more susceptible to the positive effects of tea catechins and caffeine… YAY!

This increases your metabolism to the tune of about 50 – 100 extra calories burned per day (that may seem small, but could amount to 5 – 10 pounds lost – or kept off per year). But you have to drink three to six servings per day to achieve these results, according to the studies. I don’t know about you, but this sounds like a no-brainer!

Think Red

The concept of wine as a health food has been intensively researched since the “French Paradox” was first described by French researcher Serge Renaud in the early 1990s. Renaud found that while the French ate the same fatty diet as Americans, they suffered only half the heart disease rates. He attributed that “paradox” to daily low dose wine drinking. His observation made sense since the Framingham study, a long term study established in 1948 which follows peoples’ diet and health, found a link between moderate alcoholic beverage intake and reduced death from coronary heart disease.

Since then, other large epidemiological studies have confirmed a link between moderate alcoholic beverage intake and reduction in heart disease, as compared to no alcohol or high alcohol intakes.

But wine has special properties over and above mere alcohol, mainly because of all of the healthy compounds in the grape. And red wine has ten times the benefits as white wine because 80% of the antioxidants in the grape are in the skin and seeds. Red wine is mashed with the skin and the seeds while white wine is made skin- and seed-less. Wine reduces blood clotting, raises HDL (good) cholesterol, reduces risk of heart disease, diabetes and many cancers. But be sure you consume moderately, consistently and with meals. Women – no more than five ounces per day and Men – no more than ten ounces per day. Read more about the health properties of wine!

Remember Rye

Americans don’t each much rye, especially WHOLE rye. But I’d like to change that! My scandinavian folks have known about all the healthy benefits of rye for centuries. Now studies have proven it reduces heart disease risk because it lowers LDL cholesterol – and maybe for other reasons, too.

In the world of nutrition there seems to be no shortage of complexity and confusion. But I’ve found that simple and straightforward solutions are often strikingly successful. In no area is this more true than the remarkable power of whole grains.

While it’s true that whole grains are valuable for their fiber content, their benefits are much more vast. Whole grains play a profound role in health. A growing body of research shows whole grains- wheat, oats, rice, rye and corn, for example may help keep body weight down and prevent diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.

A whole grain has three parts: bran, germ and endosperm. The bran and germ contain fiber, Vitamin E, B vitamins (thiamin, niacin, riboflavin and pantothenic acid) minerals (calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorous, sodium, selenium and iron), protein, essential oils, antioxidants and phytochemicals (plant substances that may protect health). The endosperm contains mostly starch with a little protein and very few nutrients. When a grain is refined, turning whole wheat flour into white flour or brown rice into white rice, only the nutrient-poor endosperm is left. The riches found in the bran and germ are lost.

Food manufacturers and producers attempt to make up for the loss in nutrients by enriching refined grains (those found in breads, pasta, rice and cereals, for instance) with some essential nutrients, such as B vitamins and iron. But overwhelming scientific evidence has found major health differences in people who eat more whole grains compared to people who eat refined grains, proving enrichment doesn’t make up for the difference:

* Whole-grain intake is strongly correlated with reduced cardiovascular disease. This is partly explained by the soluble fiber in certain grains (oats, RYE and barley have the highest levels), which is associated with cholesterol lowering. But other substances in grains, such as antioxidants like Vitamin E, also play a role.

* Many studies have shown a strong link between whole-grain intake and reduced incidence of type II diabetes. This may be partly because the fiber in whole grains slows down stomach emptying, causing a lower rise in blood glucose and insulin. Also, whole grains contain nutrients such as Vitamin E and magnesium, which may help improve insulin sensitivity. Whole rye bread, in particular, has a low glycemic index, which means it causes a lower rise in blood glucose after eating it than even whole wheat bread – and so is ideal for people with diabetes.

But looking for whole-grain rye in your supermarket can be challenging. Be sure the first ingredient on the nutrition label of your crackers or bread is “whole” rye.

Say: Salmon

Salmon is well known for its high omega-3-fatty-acid content, important for brain and heart functioning as well as reducing inflammation and its related diseases (learn more about omega-3-fatty acids).

But what you may not have know is that salmon is one of the few food sources of vitamin D. Vitamin D is the only nutrient we get from the sun – in fact we’re dependent on the sun to get enough. But since our lifestyles have changed and we’re indoors so much, or we use sunscreen, vitamin D deficiency has become rampant. This new lifestyle and its consequences has taught researchers that vitamin D is much more important than we ever imagined.

We’ve known for decades that vitamin D is necessary for calcium deposition in the bones and healthy bone mass. But, recently researchers have connected vitamin D deficiency with heart disease, hypertension, insulin-dependent diabetes, many cancers and even multiple sclerosis.

This is why for the past few years, I’ve asked all of my clients to get their vitamin D blood levels checked at their doctor’s office. It could save your life!

But in the meantime, eat your salmon! The American Heart Association recommends all adults eat a variety of fish, particularly oily fish, at least twice weekly.. that would include salmon, herring, sardines and anchovies.

Bon Appetit!

Savor Soy

Soy has been around for centuries. It was first domesticated as a Chinese crop during the Chou Dynasty (11th to 7th Century BC). Soy is a complex food filled with hundreds of beneficial nutrients. How it affects your body may depend on your genetics, your age, or your gender. It may also depend on your diet. For instance, if you replace a high animal fat/saturated fat/cholesterol diet with soy, the benefits could be huge simply because of the contrast, as soy contains very little saturated fat, mostly healthy polyunsaturated fat and no cholesterol. On it’s own, however, SOY:

* Is the only plant source of complete, high-quality protein containing all of the essential amino acids, comparable to animal protein.

* Is one of the best plant sources of iron – and it’s absorbed well by the body. A key to absorption is the presence of Vitamin C, high in fruits and vegetables.

* Contains healthy fats and no cholesterol. Replacing high fat meats and dairy products with soy is a way to keep your protein intake high, but reduce artery-clogging saturated fat and cholesterol.

* Reduces LDL (bad) cholesterol. For each 1% decrease in blood cholesterol, a 2% drop in heart disease risk is expected, according to the National Academy of Sciences Food and Nutrition Board.

Beyond those health benefits, medical studies are underway to determine if links exist between consuming SOY and:

* Reducing breast cancer risk. Breast cancer is low in Asian countries where soy is eaten in abundance. Epidemiological studies, the kind which follow populations over time measuring their diet and health, have found that women in China who have eaten soy over a longer period in their lives – since childhood as opposed to introduced in adulthood – have a reduced risk for breast cancer.

* Preventing prostate cancer. The incidence of prostate cancer in soy-heavy Asian countries is low. Results from epidemiological studies are mixed. A controlled study of men who included soy in a healthy diet found they significantly reversed their prostate cancer risk to the point where they were able to forego treatment, compared to men following a standard diet.

* Relieving menopausal symptoms. It has been theorized that the soy isoflavones – very weak estrogen-like compounds in soy – may reduce hot flashes and osteoporosis. A limited amount of human studies have been inconclusive, though some individuals report positive effects.

If soy is eaten since childhood, it may have a stronger effect because of how the soy isoflavones affect hormone levels. Scientists believe hormone levels may affect cancer risk. Whether it is proved to be a cure-all or not, whole soy foods, such as soy beans, edamame, tofu, tempeh, soy milk and soy protein – as opposed to isolated soy supplements such as the isoflavones such as genestein and daidzein (some animal studies have found negative affects of the pure isoflavones) – make a healthy addition to any diet.

Immune-System Boosting Nutrition

Check out CNN’s article and video featuring Katherine’s immune-boosting tips:

What you eat profoundly affects your ability to fight disease. With all the nasty bugs going around this cold and flu season, it’s especially important to pay attention to boosting your immune system through nutrition. While every nutrient is important in your body’s ability to prevent and fight disease – from colds to cancer – certain nutrients play key roles:

Protein

Protein is one of the most important nutrients in the human body, second only to water. Bone health, muscle function, muscle strength, muscle mass and immune function — all are impaired with a low protein intake. In fact, the antibodies which are essential to protecting your body against pathogens, are made of protein, so without enough protein, your body has no chance. Certain vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, children, and those who already have compromised immune systems, should be particularly careful to eat enough protein – in fact, even more than the recommended dietary allowance – for maximized protection.

Protein can be found in a wide range of foods. Animal protein is in seafood, dairy, meat, poultry and eggs. Vegetarian protein can be found in legumes, soy, vegetables and grains. And while it’s true that high-protein foods often bring fat and calories along as uninvited guests, it doesn’t have to be that way. The lowest-calorie animal protein sources are the leanest. Go for eggs, seafood, poultry with no skin, skim milk, nonfat or lowfat yogurt, and lowfat cheeses are also great options. Soy products also provide great low-calorie options and are high quality proteins similar to animal protein.

Protein foods have other benefits. Fish, legumes, seeds, nuts contain immune-boosters zinc and iron (but in too high quantities, for instance in megadose vitamin pills, can backfire and suppress the immune system). Dairy products (keep them fat-free or low fat) are naturally loaded with magnesium, potassium and calcium – all important for immune function. Beans and soy beans are high in iron, zinc and magnesium.

Fats and Oils
The type of fat you eat can improve the effectiveness of your body’s immune response because fat ends up in all of your body’s cell walls. It acts as a cell lubricant, improves flexibility and communication between cells, and is important for cell metabolism and gene expression. If the fat you eat is saturated – solid at room temperature – as in butter or animal fat – this decreases cellular flexibility and functioning. So, to maximize your immune response, use oils in your cooking, such as olive and canola oil and stick with foods high in heart-healthy fats, such as nuts, avocados and fatty fish, which is high in omega-3-fatty acids. Minimize animal fats in dairy products, red meats, butter, cream and desserts.

Vitamins and Minerals
Studies show all nutrients are involved in your immune response but taking high doses of certain nutrients can cause imbalances, backfire, and actually suppress your immune response. So it’s ideal to get your vitamins and minerals from a nutrient-rich, balanced diet. Though you may benefit from taking a basic multi-vitamin and mineral supplement to cover your bases. And there may be some exceptions depending on your own nutritional status (best to get personalized advice from your dietitian and doctor)…

Vitamin D

New research has found Vitamin D augments the body’s ability to eliminate disease-infecting microbes, and most of us are deficient in Vitamin D, which we get from the sun and very few foods. Your doctor should check your vitamin D status at your next visit to make sure your blood values are adequate to fight infection, among other things. That said, most of us need a vitamin supplement with vitamin D, usually somewhere between 1,000 and 4,000 IU/day. But check your blood values first. They should be somewhere between 50 and 75 for most people. Click my “Vitamin D” article above…

For Those Over 50

Vitamin E
Studies from Tufts University found that vitamin E supplementation may help fight the common cold and other upper respiratory tract infections. The recommendation is about 400 IU/day

Zinc
Zinc helps fuel the production of infection-fighting white blood cells so a lack of zinc reduces immune response and illness recovery time is prolonged. The elderly are particularly vulnerable to deficiencies and may even need more than normal. So here’s another case where a supplement may be useful. When zinc supplements were given in a nursing home, residents reduced their risk of contracting pneumonia, according to researchers from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

Vitamin B 12
Vitamin B 12, another nutrient important for immune function, is poorly absorbed in many elderly patients (and is missing from the diet of vegans) which is why your vitamin B 12 status should be checked by your doctor and you may need a supplement – in the form of an injection. For most of us, though, B 12 is easily obtained and absorbed by eating any animal products.

Probiotics
Ground-breaking research in the past decade shows the good bacteria in the gut, which aids immune response, reduces insulin resistance – a precursor to diabetes, reduces body fat, maintains muscle, improves absorption of important nutrients, and lowers as we age, making us susceptible to many diseases from cold to cancer. There is evidence that eating more of the good bacteria, such as lactobacillus in yogurt and kefir, may help your immune response. Check out my article about probiotics for more info.

The following is a list of foods containing key immune-boosting nutrients.

Include them in your diet every day:

High Beta Carotene Foods
Orange and deep green veggies and fruits, particularly…Carrot juice, carrots, butternut squash, pumpkin (or any orange-colored winter squash), sweet potato, greens such as spinach, collards, kale, turnip greens, beet greens, orange melons such as cantaloupe, red peppers, apricots, broccoli, plums, mangos papayas, plantains, Brussels sprouts, watermelon, asparagus

High Vitamin C Foods
Citrus fruits such as orange, lemons and grapefruit, peaches, sweet and hot peppers, papayas, pineapple, strawberries, broccoli,kiwi fruit, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi,

High Zinc Foods
Oysters, lobster, crab, clams, fortified whole grain cereals, beans (legumes such as lentils, chick peas, black-eyed peas, soy beans, kidney beans, limas, pintos), turkey, whole grains such as buckwheat, whole wheat, cracked wheat (bulgur), oats, whole grain cornmeal, wild rice, yogurt, pine nuts, sunflower seeds, mixed nuts, peanuts

High Magnesium Foods
Whole grains such as buckwheat, wheat, oats, cornmeal, barley, brown rice, Also soybeans, pumpkin seeds, brazil nuts, cashews, greens such as spinach, beet greens, fish such as halibut, haddock and flounder and sole species, beans (legumes such as black beans, white beans, soy beans, navy beans, limas, black-eyed, great northern, kidney, chick peas,. lentils)

High Vitamin E Foods

Sunflower seeds, almonds, sunflower oil, safflower oil, canola oil, hazelnuts, pine nuts, spinach, turnip greens, beet greens, dandelion greens, canned pumpkin, carrot juice, broccoli, sweet potato, sweet red peppers, mangos, papayas

Cranberries

Have antibacterial qualities. Eat them dried for the highest levels of nutritious compounds

Mushrooms

Have a myriad of beneficial health effects. They’ve been shown to boost the immune system, especially in relation to cancer. Called a “drug-botanical interaction,” mushrooms appear to increase the effects of chemotherapy, and lengthen survival.

Mushrooms also reduce fatigue.They act on the muscular system, body antioxidant system, cardiovascular system, hormone system, and immune system, all of which improve liver function, blood circulation, and blood glucose regulation, among other benefits.

Immune-Boosting Eating Strategies

* Eat a lean protein source at every meal – including breakfast, lunch and dinner. 20 grams for women and 30 grams for men is the amount most bio-available per sitting.
* Eat 5 cups of fruits and veggies per day – especially colorful varieties, eat at every meal and snack

* Eat a vegetarian meal every day using beans or soy beans for protein,

* Eat fish high in omega-3-fatty acids, such as salmon, herring, anchovies and sardines, at least two to four times per week, and vegetarian sources such as walnuts, ground flax seeds and canola oil,

* Use canola oil in your cooking and a fresh, newly harvested olive oil for drizzling,

* Eat whole grains at breakfast (such as cereal with skim milk or soy milk) and with sandwiches or wraps at lunch,

* Snacks: Try fat-free yogurt and fruit, fat-free yogurt dip or hummus with veggies,

* Toss nuts/seeds/dried cranberries in your whole grain cereal, your salad or your afternoon yogurt snack

* Skim milk or Soy lattes or teas are great snacks, too…

* Take a multivitamin-mineral supplement daily.

* Take a Vitamin D Supplement so that you are getting 1,000 to 2,000 IU/day

* If you are over 50, but particularly 65, look into supplementing your diet with Vitamin E, Vitamin B12, Zinc and probiotics such as lactobacillus in yogurt.

Of course, don’t forget to keep your blood moving by being moderately physically active with plenty of walking, yoga, etc. Get plenty of rest, wash your hands frequently, drink fluids (especially warm fluids which will send light steam into your nasal passages) and spend time with friends and loved ones. Studies have shown these habits increase your ability to conquer diseases – from colds to cancer.

Deep Purple

photo by ADA

Original Content, The Washington Post, Wednesday, October 6, 2004; Page F01

Reader Question:

Lately Larry King [a paid spokesman for Welch’s] has been touting Welch’s Concord grape juice on TV, implying it has the same antioxidant value as red wine. Is this true? Can you address the issue of the value of alcohol as a health food, especially wine and most particularly red wine?

This is a question which has intrigued me for years. I’m a huge fan of Concord grapes, the dark purple- almost black- intensely flavored grape in season now. I’ve always wondered, as I enjoy these delicate treats, if they, or juice made from them, would give me or my non-wine-drinking clients the same health benefits as red wine.

Recent research is bolstering Welch’s claims that Concord grape juice is similar to red wine in many respects, but the issue is very complex and the answer far from definitive.

To get the bottom of this mystery, let’s start at the beginning: with the grape. Concord grapes have one of the highest antioxidant scores among fruit, surpassed only by blueberries, blackberries and cranberries, according to Ronald Prior, research chemist and nutritionist at the Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center in Little Rock. “Concord grapes contain at least fifty to sixty compounds which may play a variety of roles in the body,” says Prior.

Concord grapes are high in a class of phytochemicals (beneficial plant chemicals) called polyphenols, antioxidants which are concentrated in many fruits, some vegetables and in wine, tea and cocoa. They protect against heart disease by reducing blood clot formation. They also prevent cellular and organ damage caused by oxygen radicals, molecules which are believed to be a primary cause of many diseases including cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Certain polyphenols, such as anthocyanins, which give grapes and blueberries their purple pigment, have been found to reverse both physical and mental deficits in aging rats. Preliminary studies in humans are showing similar promising results.

Other polyphenols, called tannins, responsible for the astringent flavor in cocoa, tea, grapes, and other fruits, are powerful antioxidants.

Concord grapes also contain a tiny amount of a newly discovered polyphenol called resveratrol, primarily in the skin, which may help prevent cell proliferation and cancer. Other polyphenols found in the seed, proanthocyanidins, may also prevent cell proliferation and cardiovascular disease.

Another class of antioxidant polyphenols in grapes are called flavonols. Grapes contain the flavonols quercetin, also in apples, and kaempferol, also in broccoli, which are thought to reduce cellular proliferation and cancer.

“All of these compounds work in synergy to create health benefits,” says Beverly Clevidence, research leader of the Diet and Human Performance Laboratory at the United States Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research Center in Beltsville, MD. “They’re showing promise in our fight against cardiovascular disease, cancer, and even inflammatory diseases such as arthritis.”

But if you’re eating a standard American table grape, you may not be receiving many of these benefits. That’s because half of the antioxidants are in the seed and, to please the American consumer, table grapes (and raisins) have been bred to be seedless. Much of the rest of the antioxidants are in the skin. The darker the skin, the more beneficial compounds are present, which is why green and white grapes contain a small fraction of the antioxidants that red or purple grapes contain.

And that brings us to the juice of the grape. Since most of the antioxidants are found in the seed and skin of the grape – 80% unless the flesh is darker and has more antioxidants, a juice’s or wine’s antioxidant content will be higher if it includes the seeds and skin.

This is why red wine contains eight to ten times the polyphenol content as white wine. Red wine is made by mashing red or purple grapes with their skin and seeds and letting it sit to ferment, whereas white wine is made skin and seedless.

“Both wine’s and juice’s antioxidant content depends on the amount of exposure to the skin and seeds and how much extraction of the polyphenols occurs,” says Andrew Waterhouse, wine chemist at UC Davis. “With red wine, you get maximum extraction, with the darker reds usually containing more antioxidants.” Also, the more astringent the wine, the more tannins. Waterhouse says the presence of tannins is a good marker for all antioxidants: the more tannins, the more polyphenols, in general. Polyphenols are responsible for the flavor, the color and the preservation of wine.

Since then, other large epidemiological studies have confirmed a link between moderate alcoholic beverage intake and reduction in heart disease, as compared to no alcohol or high alcohol intakes. But uncovering the most health-giving types of alcoholic beverages – wine or spirits – and even if alcohol itself plays a beneficial role, have been the subject of heated debate ever since.

On the pro-alcohol side, researchers have found in clinical studies that pure ethanol, in any form, raises HDL, or good cholesterol, by five to ten percent. But that doesn’t explain the whole beneficial effect of alcoholic beverages seen in studies. Researchers have found that wine, for instance, reduces blood clotting, hypertension-related and cardiovascular disease-related deaths and increases polyphenols in the blood, which researchers have found prevents various cardiovascular disease risk factors. But studies comparing pure alcohol with wine show that alcohol alone does not have all of these benefits. Some researchers doubt that ethanol is the most important beneficial ingredient in alcoholic beverages, and especially in red wine. In fact, in clinical studies, consuming high amounts of alcohol has been found to promote oxidation and inflammation, both of which are risk factors in the development of heart disease and cancer. But alcohol is often consumed together with antioxidants contained in the alcoholic beverage that may outweigh its negative effects. In addition, researchers believe alcohol may help the body absorb the antioxidant polyphenols.

“Alcohol may enhance the bioavailability of the antioxidants so that when you drink wine or other beverages or food high in antioxidants, you get more antioxidants in your blood,”

says John Folts, professor of medicine and nutritional sciences at the University of Wisconsin Medical School. “Very few people drink straight alcohol; they mix it with juices like cranberry, orange or tomato juice, which contain antioxidants.”

Food digestion produces increased oxidative stress and oxygen radicals for several hours after the meal. Eating plenty of antioxidants with meals, including wine, fruits and vegetables, helps reduce oxidation caused by the less healthy components of the meal, for instance, saturated fat or carcinogens. This may be another reason why the French get more benefits from drinking wine: they drink it with meals.

So, does Concord grape juice contain all the benefical compounds as red wine? Some compounds overlap. It helps that Concord grape juice is made by pressing and pulverizing the whole grape, including the seeds and the skin, before it is strained and made into juice, according to Welch’s spokesperson Geoffrey Raymond.

In preliminary animal and human clinical studies performed by Folts and colleagues, Concord grape juice and red wine produce similar cardiovascular benefits. They both raise levels of antioxidant polyphenols in the blood, reduce oxidative stress and blood clotting. But because Concord grape juice has half the polyphenol content by volume, you have to consume twice as much grape juice to produce the same effect you get from red wine.

Red wine is more than grape juice with alcohol. Each ounce of wine contains about 1-1/2 ounces of grapes, so it is more concentrated than juice. And the alcohol helps extract polyphenols as the wine ages. This changes the character of some of the polyphenols and different compounds are created, in ways that aren’t completely understood. These differences may help explain the potent health benefits of red wine found in studies.

“Think of red wine as whole grape extract,” says Waterhouse. “You’re getting the antioxidants out of the juice, the skin and the seeds plus the magnifying effect of the alcohol.”

Red wine contains different levels of antioxidants depending on how it’s processed. Antioxidant content will also vary depending on the variety of the grape, and exposure to sunshine and stress, which increases polyphenol content.

Trying to understand all the compounds and benefits is a complex issue. Experts agree grapes, grape juice and small doses of wine are good for you, but scientists are still unraveling the reasons why. For now, the recommendations are, if you’re an alcoholic beverage drinker, women should not exceed one 5-ounce serving and men should not exceed two 5-ounce servings of wine a day. Experts stress that while moderate wine intake may be beneficial for some, going above the recommendation can be dangerous for your health.

“Given the major problem that alcohol abuse is in many countries, it would not be good nutritional advice to tell people to start drinking wine for their health” says Dr Folts

If you don’t drink alcoholic beverages, eight ounces of Concord grape juice may provide similar benefits. In fact, eating a diet high in antioxidants has been proven to reduce cancer and heart disease, regardless of alcoholic beverage intake.

“People who eat several servings of fruits and vegetables a day have a high polyphenol intake,” says Beverly Clevidence. ”So if you don’t drink wine, just eat more fruits and vegetables!”

Sweet Temptations

Original Content: Washington Post, Wednesday, October 20, 2004; Page F01

With the holidays looming, it’s important to determine your strategy for dealing with the temptation of sweets: what you eat, what you bring in your home, and what you serve others. My philosophy is that all foods can be enjoyed in moderation. But there are special challenges posed with some foods, particularly sweets, which have been confirmed by solid science – it’s not just in our heads!

Understanding the science behind sweet craving and overeating can help us eat in a more moderate and healthy way.

People have an inborn attraction to sweets. If you don’t believe it, simply watch an infant’s response to something sweet versus, say, a vegetable. There’s an automatic acceptance, even joy, after eating something sweet. On the other hand, vegetables are an acquired taste, which may take 10 – 20 tries before acceptance. This is partly explained by evolution. We’ve been eating naturally sweet foods such as breast milk and fruit for millions of years. They contain life-sustaining nutrients, and a love for those foods helped keep us alive. Also, during evolution, an attraction to scarce calorie-dense foods, such as sweets and fats, improved our chances for survival.

But there are other explanations. The research surrounding our attraction to sweets has stepped up in recent decades. Scientists are grappling with understanding the calorie imbalances causing the obesity epidemic, which is partly fueled by eating too many sweets.

Our brain chemistry holds an important clue. Research shows that sweets, like many antidepressants, increase the brain chemical, serotonin, which helps regulate mood and appetite.

“Without carbohydrates, your brain stops regulating serotonin,” says Judith Wurtman, the director of the women’s health research program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Clinical Research Center in Boston. “Eating carbohydrates profoundly improves mood; which is why a handful of candy corn will make you feel better.”

When we’re stressed, anxious or depressed, serotonin levels can drop, and one way people modify their moods is by eating carbohydrates. But, holiday sweet cravings may be uniquely influenced by seasonal changes, too. Studies show that as days get shorter and we are exposed to less sunshine, serotonin levels drop and this leads to increased carbohydrate cravings in susceptible people.

“It’s seasonal; if they sold holiday sweets in July, people wouldn’t be as interested,” says Wurtman.

Women are particularly vulnerable to sweet cravings because their brains have less serotonin than men, according to Wurtman.

There have been other explanations for women’s reported increased sweet craving and indulging. Some researchers attribute the difference to the female hormone, estrogen. It’s been reported that sweet cravings change according to where a woman is in her menstrual cycle, circumstantial evidence that estrogen may play a role. But the findings are inconsistent, as some report increased cravings during menstruation, while others report higher cravings as a premenstrual symptom, a time when serotonin levels may be low.

But the bottom line is clear: “Females overeat sweets compared to males,” says Lisa Eckel, assistant professor of psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee. Eckel completed a study on rats, which will be published in the November issue of the American Journal of Physiology, which found that female rats ate more rat chow when it was sweetened, compared with males.

“In animals, having high levels of estrogen is associated with eating more sweets,” says Eckel. This theory has yet to be proven in humans.

Cravings and overeating are difficult to study because they can be so subjective and multifactorial. Other researchers stipulate sweet cravings are mainly determined by culture or by psychological and behavioral factors, rather than physiology.

In some cultures, people don’t crave sweets because they haven’t been exposed to them as regularly as Americans. A study of chocolate, for instance, found that American women crave chocolate significantly more than Spanish women. And while a large percentage of American women reported increased chocolate cravings surrounding their menstrual period, Spanish women did not.

Other studies confirm that exposure during childhood is the major determinant of what we crave and are susceptible to overeating.

I copied my mother’s love for sweets and love of baking; it was a fun activity we did together. In college, to combat loneliness, and heck just for fun, I over-indulged my love for sweets (as the pounds went up and up). I would regularly bake my favorite chocolate chip bars and caramel popcorn, both of which I made in childhood. Study after study shows the importance of parental modeling on a child’s preferences.

Availability and proximity are two of the most important factors science has found influences what we crave and overeat and they probably trump all of the other reasons combined. When tasty foods, such as sweets, are around, we simply eat more of them.

Chances are, a combination of factors is responsible for cravings and overeating sweets at Halloween.

“Holiday candy is novel, it only comes around once a year. It comes in small pieces so you fool yourself into thinking you’re not eating as much,” says Wurtman. “You put it in bowls around the house and eat it mindlessly!”

Wurtman says if you have a strong desire for sweets, it may be a sign that you’re depressed, anxious or stressed. But she insists you don’t have to indulge in sweets to raise your serotonin levels or to feel good. Exercising, stress management, spending time with loved ones are activities which will also help reduce depression, anxiety and stress. (My client discovered a psychological basis for her binges, which she is successfully averting these days).

Using candy to feel better is not a great solution for your waist line. It is so high calorie, it doesn’t take much to overeat and forget your weight loss plans. For the same calories in a candy bar, you could eat four apples, or maybe you couldn’t – and that’s the point!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not urging you to be a Holiday Scrooge. I believe it’s possible to have fun eating sweets during the holidays, but still avoid some of the excesses that many of us have fallen victim to in the past. Here are a few suggestions.

To reduce the possibility of seasonal cravings, make sure you’re getting 30 minutes to one hour of sunlight each day by taking a walk in the mornings or at lunch. You may be able to “catch up” on the weekend, if you didn’t get enough rays during the week,

If You Must

- Eat plenty of healthy carbohydrates, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes, to keep serotonin at optimum levels and reduce cravings of less healthy carbohydrates, such as refined sugar,
- If you feel driven to eat sweets, it may be a signal that you’re depressed, anxious or stressed. Reduce tension and anxiety by exercising, meditating or talking with loved ones. It’s important to understand the core of the problem and for that, you may need to seek help from a professional,
- If you want to lose weight, keep your candy – or other “extra” calories – to no more than 10% of your daily calories (that’s 200 calories for the average 2,000 calorie intake, or 150 for 1,500 calories). You may even get away with one big splurge. But if you splurge for two or more days, it will probably effect your waist line negatively,
- If you can’t resist eating too many sweets, wait to buy them at the last possible minute (or, don’t buy it). This way, the sweets won’t be sitting around as a constant temptation
- Buy only what you need for the the holiday meal. Give away the remaining sweets at the end of the evening so that there’s nothing left,
- Try fun and healthier alternatives to sweets to have around your home and serve to family and guests,
- Most importantly, if you do find you overeat, lighten up, don’t dwell on the negative and get over it! Analyze objectively what you can do differently next time,
- With awareness and good planning, you can have your sweets and eat them, too!

Restaurant Eating Without the Bulge

By Katherine Tallmadge, M.A., R.D.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Restaurant Eating Without The Bulge
Italian Dining Without Adding a Notch To Your Belt
Pasta Dishes
Pasta Menu Recommendations
Salads and Sides
Salad, Sides and Appetizer Recommendations
Main Courses
Main Course Recommendations
Pizzas and Subs
Desserts
Dessert Recommendations
Wine

Restaurant Eating Without The Bulge

I love going out to restaurants. The whole ambiance is delightful. I enjoy the solicitude of the staff, watching the people, and simply taking a quiet hour or two to relax and enjoy good food. There are times when I go out and choose healthfully, and there are other times I enjoy a good splurge and overindulge, either choice is perfectly normal.

For me, eating out is a special occasion. For millions of Americans, however, it’s a way of life. I know more than a few people who eat out all three meals 5, 6, even 7 days a week. That’s when restaurant food could present problems if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Let’s face it, one reason that the dishes we get in restaurants are so delicious is that they’re swimming in richness, and chefs choose their ingredients and cooking methods for their effects on the palate, not for their health properties or low-calorie contents. An occasional splurge won’t do any lasting damage. Indulging – or, to be frank, overindulging – on a regular basis will add some serious weight if you aren’t careful.

If you eat out frequently, I recommend some basics. Before you go, or even decide on a restaurant, look at the restaurant’s website and menu so that you know what to expect and make a note of some of the courses you think would be tasty yet healthy. This way, you’re not so tempted by the sights and smells of the fattening foods you’ll inevitably be surrounded by once you get there.

Second, if you have read about the restaurant and chef, then you may have some idea of how heavy-handed the chef is with butter or other fattening ingredients; or whether the restaurant serves a sole diner a portion that could feed four. But if the place is new to you then look around you for clues. Take a walk to the rest rooms and look at the food on other diners’ plates. How big are the servings? Are the meats, veggies, pastas swimming in sauce? What do you smell? Don’t be afraid to ask the wait staff for help. Finally, it is ok to ask for a take-home bag if the serving size is too much.

Set some priorities. Suppose, for example, you’ve booked four meals out this week. You certainly won’t lose weight, and you may even gain weight, if you eat with abandon each time. What you can do, however, is decide in advance that one of those nights is going to be your “splurge night.” Order anything you want. Enjoy every bite. Savor each and every one of those special calories. On the other three nights, order more carefully. You’ll still enjoy the experience of dining out, but you won’t take in more calories than your poor body can handle. In my book, Diet Simple, I call this strategy “The 25 Percent Blowout.”

Some diet plans and nutrition fanatics forbid, or at least discourage, eating at restaurants and enjoying yourself with abandon at all. I cannot agree. My Diet Simple approach is designed to help you enjoy your meals – enjoy life, for that matter – feel satisfied, but maintain your health and a healthy weight. Eating out with friends or family is a wonderful experience. No eating plan has a chance to last if it’s not enjoyable. What I do advise is eating (and ordering) smart. By all means, enjoy your meals away from home – but take a few simple steps to keep the calories under control.

In my new column for Washingtonian.com, starting soon, I’m taking the guess-work out of restaurant dining to help you choose healthier, lighter meals – and not just settle for fish and vegetables (though this is sometimes the most delicious choice when made by a great chef). Each month, we’ll choose three similarly – themed restaurants at differing price scales. I will give you specific menu suggestions which will allow you to enjoy your restaurant experience without adding a notch to your belt!

To give you some perspective, the average woman should eat about 1,800 to 2000 calories daily to maintain her weight. The average man, about 2,200 to 2400. My menu recommendations are based on this assumption. But a person’s calorie needs can vary widely depending on his height, weight, age and degree of fitness and activity level. To find your individualized calorie needs for weight maintenance, weight loss or even weight gain, find the personalized formula in “Stoking Your Metabolism.”

Once you determine your days’ calorie needs, I find people feel best and avoid blood sugar and appetite highs and lows, with their accompanying cravings, when they eat 1/3 of their days’ calories in the morning, 1/3 mid-day and no more than 1/3 of their days’ calories in the evenings. So, for the gals, that means your meals should be no more than about 600 calories, but if you prefer to have more food at dinner – my recommendation would be 800 at the most for a dinner out. For the guys, meals are no more than 750 calories – or 900 max for dinner out. These rules aren’t carved in stone, but they’ll give you some context when I give you recommendations or you go to a restaurant’s website to view the calorie content of some of their offerings.

Italian dining without adding a notch to your belt… at high end “Tosca,” mid-range “DaMarco” and inexpensive “Olive Garden”

The beauty of traditional Italian cooking is its simplicity: Italians have a no-fuss approach to cooking so their extraordinary ingredients shine. A little olive oil, salt and pepper, maybe an herb or two,– and voila… a light, healthy masterpiece! But for this magic to happen, the freshness of the basic ingredients is vital. Italians (in Italy) have access to the most delicious produce, nuts, grains, olive oil, pasta, cheese, seafood in the world – because they still get it from their own backyards, the neighborhood farm or the fisherman nearby. This freshness and high quality is why simplicity works – no complex cooking styles or sauces necessary, which in turn, keeps calories down and health up, especially because serving sizes are still traditionally small.

But this is where real Italian cooking and most American Italian restaurants part ways. Most Americans expect a lot of food on the plate for their money. We call it “value.” But when restaurants are expected to serve such huge amounts of food for low prices, the quality of the ingredients suffer, fattier methods of cooking, and gooier sauces are used to compensate. This is one reason why Americans who regularly eat in restaurants are fatter, according to research. In fact, one study found if a person ate in a restaurant 12 times or more per month, they were eating 20% more calories… and that can pack on the pounds very quickly!

This is not to say it’s impossible to eat healthfully in an American Italian restaurant. You just have to go in with your eyes wide open! Of course, as in any restaurant, the no-brainer healthy selection is a salad-like appetizer, a simple seafood preparation, such as grilled fish, and fruit for dessert.

But when in Rome, we want to do what the Romans do – and that’s eat pasta! Drink wine! Linger over several courses of beautiful food…! More on the Mediterranean Diet…

I’ll be giving you many examples of delicious and light menu choices so take heart. You don’t need to be disappointed – just alert and careful… Italians do interesting things with vegetables and seafood. Mussels and clams cooked in broths, or raw bar style. The beef or seafood carpaccios are excellent light and tasty choices. And always check the side-dishes and appetizers. Small servings of pastas that involve vegetables and light sauces are tasty examples. Of course, if we ate more Italian-sized portions and preparations, we’d be fine. Italians in Italy eat lightly – small pasta portions, salads, vegetables, and simple grilled fish.

Pasta Dishes

This is where Tosca (http://www.toscadc.com) shines. There, you’ll find house-made pastas in the traditional Italian amount of “six to eight ounces per pasta dish,” (about one-and-a-half to two cups of cooked pasta) said Executive Chef, Massimo Fabbri.

Da Marco Ristorante (http://www.damarcorestaurant.com), on the other hand, fills their plates to capacity. “Every pasta dish contains at least three to four cups of cooked pasta,” said Chef Giuliana Fortini, the wife of owner Marco Fortini, who makes the fettuccini and the raviolis from scratch.

For comparison’s sake, cooked pasta is 200 calories per cup (two ounces dry), quite low in calories, that is if the portion is the smaller, traditional Italian size. Of course, that’s before the olive oil, meats, cheese or sauces are added (that’s the fattening part).

Keeping that in mind, a pasta dish at Da Marco with its three to four cups of pasta would start at 600 to 800 calories before any toppings are added. That means a whole pasta dish would be a meal for two people once it has its toppings, as owner Marco Fortini likes to be generous with his meats and cheeses and says he serves at least ¼ lb. with his dishes. One pasta dish at Da Marco would feed three people in Italy as a first course, and maybe four people, depending on the amount of meat, cheese, and sauce used in the dish. So, I recommend you share one pasta dish between three or four people if you would like additional courses, such as wine, salad, a main course or a dessert.

At Tosca, with the additional meats and sauces, I would consider a pasta dish an entire meal for one person, depending on the toppings, as it would be several hundred calories lighter than a Da Marco pasta dish, containing half the pasta. But, it would still be at least 400 calories, so if you’d like to have another course at Tosca, share your pasta dish with one or more people or, says Chef Fabbri, “ask for a half portion.”

At Olive Garden (http://www.olivegarden.com), based on the calorie and nutrient content of their dishes, which can be found on line, I believe the pasta dishes – calorie-wise, if not quality-wise – are comparable to the dishes at Da Marco, averaging 1,000 calories, based on the serving size information given me by Mr. and Mrs. (Chef) Fortini.

Pasta Menu Recommendations

I recommend sharing all of the pasta dishes or getting a half portion

Tosca

Pasta alla chitarra integrale con salsa di pomodoro e pomodorini ciliegia

Housemade whole wheat square spaghetti with tomato sauce and cherry tomatoes

Linguine ai frutti di mare e pomodoro leggermente piccante

Linguini with a seafood assortment in a lightly spicy tomato sauce

Raviolini ripieni di pomodoro biologico saltati all acqua di pomodoro

su salsina al pesto

Raviolini filled with organic tomato pulp, sauteed with tomato water

and served on a basil pesto sauce

Pappardelle alla carota biologica con ragu di coniglio locale e timo fresco

Carrot flavored pappardelle with a rabbit ragu in a white wine sauce and fresh thyme

Da Marco

Linguine or penne pasta
Pasta with homemade tomato sauce

Penne Caprese
Penne pasta with cubes of fresh mozzarella and tomatoes with a light touch of anchovy paste and balasamic vinegar

Gnocchi di patate
Housemade potato dumplings served in a pesto or tomato sauce

Linguine con le Vongole
Linguine pasta with clams in a tomato or white wine sauce

Linguine ai Gamberi
Linguine pasta with fresh shrimp in a white wine and garlic sauce (avoid the rose sauce which is made with butter and cream)

Fettuccine ai Funghi Porcini
Fresh housemade pasta with imported Porcini mushrooms, extra virgin olive oil and garlic

Olive Garden

Linguine alla Marinara

Children’s Menu Spaghetti & Tomato Sauce

Salads and Sides

In all of these restaurants, it’s tricky to have more than one course. Even the salads and appetizers can contain the calories of whole meals. For instance, the salads at Da Marco contain one quarter pound of cheese or meats, according to Fortini, which is the maximum recommended by health experts for an entire meal – and alone can contain 400 calories, or more. The cheese/nuts salads at Tosca, according to Chef Fabbri, provide two ounces of cheese and one ounce of nuts, also about 400 calories. With dressing, that will come to 500 + calories for a salad in both restaurants. So, if the salad contains cheese or meats, it is your main course. Add a glass of wine, and fruit for dessert and consider it dinner!

On the other hand, if you order the house salad, ¼ pasta portion in Da Marco or Olive Garden or ½ pasta portion in Tosca, you may be able to choose a light entrée and still have a glass of wine (woo hoo!).

Salads, Sides, and Appetizer Recommendations

Tosca

Insalata mista organica delle fattorie al condimento di aceto balsamico e olio novello

Organic mix greens salad with balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil dressing

Capesanta arrosto su purea di fave, pancetta la quercia e salsa al tartufo nero

Roasted scallops with pureed fava beans, braised domestic Pancetta

and black truffle sauce

Zuppetta fredda di sedano con mortadella in due modi, e pistacchi Italiani

Chilled celery soup with Mortadella two ways and Italian pistachios

Sautéed cauliflower

Sautéed mushrooms

Warm spinach salad with pine nuts

Grilled asparagus “grandmother style”

Da Marco

House Salad:
Mixed greens in balsamic & extra virgin olive oil w/cucumber, tomatoes, onion

Bruschetta
Fresh tomatoes, basil and garlic on toasted Italian bread

Crostino
Black and green olive spread on toasted bread with a side of artichokes

Olive Garden

Chicken & Gnocchi (One serving)

Garden-Fresh Salad

Minestrone

Mussels di Napoli

Pasta e Fagioli

Zuppa Toscana

Main Courses

In all three restaurants, many of the main courses contain at least one half pound of meat, chicken or seafood. This is too much for most people to eat in one meal. Usually, the health recommendation is three to four ounces of protein per meal. But I can look the other way with 6 ounces if the seafood or meat is extremely lean, such as shellfish or a white fish. But, you’d be better off sharing the protein in most main courses, then ordering extra vegetables to round out the meal. Da Marco owner, Marco Fortini says his chicken and veal main courses contain about eight ounces of meat.

Tosca’s Branzino is about seven ounces, the pork tenderloin about 10 – 12 ounces and the Halibut about eight ounces, according to Chef Fabbri. Fabbri also stresses that only one tablespoon of sauce is used with the meats and fish, keeping calories down “otherwise it’s a soup!” he says he “just brushes the top for color.”

Some appetizers or salads make excellent main courses and contain just the right amount of protein for a healthy meal. This way, you can afford a salad, pasta, some wine, and maybe even dessert (YAY)!

Main Course Recommendations

Tosca

Branzino del Mediterraneo con zabaglione all’aceto balsamico

e spinaci ai pinoli ed uvette (recommend sharing)

Roasted Mediterranean sea bass with a balsamic vinegar sabajon

and sautéed spinach with pine nuts and raisins

Filetto di maiale in crosta di funghi selvatici, fagiolata marinata all’aglio novello, zucchini biologici e salsa al Marsala (recommend sharing)

Wild mushroom crusted pork tenderloin, bean salad marinated with spring garlic,

organic zucchini and Marsala wine sauce

Halibut arrosto in crosta di nocciole Piemontesi, baby granturco, fagiolini

e salsa al burro e limone (recommend sharing)

Pan roasted Halibut in a Piedmont hazelnut crust served with baby corn, green beans

and butter-lemon sauce

Duo di carpaccio di pesce alla Tosca

Tosca interpretation of artic char and tuna carpaccio

Insalata di astice con pomodori heriloom, cetrioli “diva”, pisellin e Bellavista

Lobster salad with heirloom tomatoes, diva cucumbers, english peas and Bellavista

Capesanta arrosto su purea di fave, pancetta la quercia e salsa al tartufo nero

Roasted scallops with pureed fava beans, braised domestic Pancetta

and black truffle sauce

Da Marco

Vitello Pizzaiola (recommend sharing)
Tender slices of veal sautéed with red wine topped with homemade tomato sauce with a side of linguine tomato sauce

Filetto di Pesce (recommend sharing)
Lighly fried tilapia with a side of housemade fettuccine in a lemon or tomato sauce

House Salad
Mixed greens in balsamic & extra virgin olive oil w/cucumber, tomatoes, onion with grilled chicken or shrimp

Olive Garden

Herb-Grilled Salmon

Venetian Apricot Chicken

Children’s Menu Grilled Chicken with pasta & broccoli

Children’s Menu Cheese Pizza

Children’s Menu Chicken Fingers with Broccoli

Pizzas and Subs

For the more casual Italian meal, you may prefer a pizza or submarine sandwich. My recommendation: Be Ready to Share!

The sub sandwiches in Da Marco are probably at least 1,000 calories each. The bread, when weighed by Chef Fortini, is 1/3 pound – that’s about 5 ounces. And with most plain breads being 70 to 80 calories per ounce that means the bread alone is 350 to 400 calories. Then they “fill the sub so it’s as full as possible, so for example one-third pound of meat is typical (another 250 calories – it it’s lean, to 500 calories – for cured, fatty Italian meats). Then we add oil (another 100+), vinegar, cheese (another 100+) and vegetables,” said Chef Fortini. “People usually eat a whole one.” Oops!

I have the same recommendation for the “individual” pizzas. Olive Garden’s starts at 910 calories. With meat toppings, add another 260 calories. Veggies only add 40 calories at the most. Da Marco’s pizza with a 14” thin crust probably starts at about 1,500 calories, plain.

My recommendation would be to have a salad and a portion of the pizza – “individual” or not!

Desserts

We all love sweets, but they tend to be calorie bombs. So, to treat myself, I occasionally (not too often) will eat a dessert for dinner. When I was growing up, one of my favorite dinners cooked by my Swedish mother was crepes with lingonberries and whipped cream. Yummy! Who wants to waste calories on the dinner when all you really want is the Tiramisu, the cappuccino mousse cake, or the warm cherry cobbler with vanilla ice cream? They’re usually just as many calories as the whole meal. Or, if you simply can’t go that deeply into debauchery, I recommend a very light, healthy dinner of, say, lobster tail and salad, or tuna carpaccio with greens or a light seafood soup … followed by the fattening dessert of your choice. Either way, you can have your cake and eat it too! But the following recommendations are exceptions and shouldn’t add a notch to your belt.

The Protein Puzzle

The Washington Post
By Katherine Tallmadge

When I work with clients who are interested in losing weight I urge them to avoid falling into an easy, tempting but very unhealthy trap: making draconian cuts in their consumption of protein. Not all of us are on low-carb, high-protein diets. We love our soup and salad at lunch, and adding protein can mean adding calories.

Protein is essential for healthy living. It is one of the most important nutrients in the human body.

“Bone health, muscle function, muscle strength, muscle mass and immune function — all are impaired with a low protein intake,” says Carmen Castaneda, protein researcher and acting director of the Nutrition, Exercise Physiology and Sarcopenia Laboratory at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

But how much protein do we need, dieting or not?

I first became interested in this issue when I came across a study that found that people who ate the recommended dietary allowance of protein experienced alarming bone losses as compared with those who ate higher protein levels. This grabbed my attention. The recommended dietary allowance (RDA) is a guideline for healthful eating that is set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science. The amount of protein it recommends depends on several factors, such as sex and age. But if the study found that people who were eating the recommended amount of protein were still losing bone mass, what could it mean for those of us who weren’t eating even the minimum requirement? Or for those of us who were trying to lose weight by cutting back on protein?

New research has found that a higher protein diet is essential to effective weight loss: it’s more likely to minimize muscle loss and maximize fat loss. Keeping muscle stores high is critical for several reasons.

“Losing muscle decreases resting metabolic rate, making it harder to maintain a healthy weight and lose body fat,” says William Evans, director of the Nutrition, Metabolism, and Exercise Laboratory at the Donald W. Reynolds Center on Aging at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Protein is also essential for bone health. Should we risk bone loss tomorrow to lose pounds today?

Your bones, composed of protein, calcium and other minerals, are constantly in a state of flux and in need of replenishment to keep them strong and dense. Until age 30, you are building bone mass. After your early thirties, you’re losing it. It’s critical to maximize your bone mass, so that your bones are strong and dense enough to prevent osteoporosis. Osteoporosis leads to humped backs, broken bones and pain for its 10 million sufferers in the United States.

For many years, scientists have observed that protein undernutrition was associated with osteoporosis, frailty and bone fractures. But the relationship had never been fully understood until researchers decided to test the theory for the first time in a group of 855 participants from the Framingham Study (originally established in 1948). Researchers analyzed food intake and bone mass every other year for four years. Their findings, published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research in 2000, were dramatic.

The subjects eating the lowest protein diets lost the most bone mass — 4 percent in four years. People who ate the highest protein diets experienced the smallest losses — less than 1.5 percent in four years. Think about it: If you’re losing as much as 4 percent of your bone mass in four years, that means that one-fifth of your bone mass will be lost in 20 years. That is not a positive development.

And while these studies were conducted on older men and women (68-plus years old), Katherine Tucker, Associate Professor of Nutritional Epidemiology at Tufts University, says the data may be important to people of all ages.

“At younger ages, you need the protein to build the bone, and after age 30 you need the protein to protect the bone from being lost,” said Tucker. “Keeping bones is a life-long effort,” she said.

This study and others have shown that eating about 20 percent of your calories as protein protected bone mass most efficiently — but that’s more than the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) for protein, which is about 15 percent of calories.

Should the requirement be changed?

It’s been reported for years that high-protein diets result in high levels of calcium in the urine, and it’s been assumed that this would affect bone mass negatively and might produce kidney stones. But it appears, instead, to be a function of just how much protein is consumed and how balanced the diet is. The National Academy of Sciences, in a recent report, recommended Americans never exceed 35 percent of their calories as protein, as that may be when adverse symptoms begin to appear. Other researchers surmise that if protein is extremely high while carbohydrates are very low, this may be responsible for the negative consequences.

It may take years before this new research is confirmed by additional studies and in turn can result in changes in the offcial recommended protein levels.

In the meantime, it would not be harmful to increase protein intakes to 20 percent of calories, says NAS food and nutrition board protein panelist Peter Garlick.

“Even though the National Academy of Science’s Food and Nutrition board did not change the RDA for protein because we’re still waiting for more evidence to show that it’s necessary, these are safe and reasonable levels,” said Garlick.

In Pursuit of Protein

Although for most Americans the recommended dietary allowance of protein may be adequate, if you’re losing weight or are worried about bone loss, consider increasing your protein.

The lowest-calorie animal protein sources are the leanest. Go for seafood, poultry with no skin, lean veal cuts, pork tenderloin, lean beef cuts such as the round or tenderloin or 95 percent lean hams (less than 3 grams of fat per ounce). Soy products also provide great low-calorie options.

Toss four ounces of lean beef, chicken or seafood or 12 ounces of spiced tofu into your salad and gain 28 grams of high-quality protein and no more than 150 to 200 calories.

HOW MUCH PROTEIN DO I NEED?

At present, the recommended dietary allowance for protein is computed using the following formula:

0.37 grams of protein per pound of body (this usually means people are eating about 15 percent of their calories as protein).

But some evidence suggests that to protect bones and muscle we can consume more, though the amount of protein should never be more than 35 percent of daily calories.

So, if you weigh 150 pounds, this means the minimum amount is:

150 pounds X 0.37 grams protein per pound = 55.5 grams of protein

But you could safely increase your protein intake:

150 pounds X 0.45 grams protein per pound = 67.5 grams of protein

150 pounds X 0.55 grams protein per pound = 82.5 grams of protein

So, the sample 150-pound active woman should get between 67.5 and 82.5 grams of protein per day

WHERE DO I GET PROTEIN?

8 ounces milk/yogurt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 grams protein

1/2 cup cooked beans/tofu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 grams protein

1 ounce meat/fish/chicken/cheese (the leaner the meat,

the more protein and the fewer calories). . . . . . . . . . . 7 grams protein

1 large egg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 grams protein

1/2 cup cooked or one ounce dry

(1 slice bread) grain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 grams protein

1/2 cup cooked or one cup raw vegetables . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 grams protein

— Katherine Tallmadge

Katherine discusses a healthy vegetarian diet with Chef Emeril Lagasse on Discovery Channel’s “Emeril Green.”

Vegetarianism is a lifestyle which many studies find promotes good health. However, it must be practiced with knowledge in how to get appropriate protein and nutrients.

There are mainly two types of vegetarians: vegans, those who eat only plants and lacto/ova vegetarians, those who will also consume animal by-products such as dairy and eggs. In order to get levels of the nine essential amino acids equal to the highest quality protein, vegans (those who eat only plant foods) must eat soy protein, the only vegetable protein as complete as animal protein, or mix beans and grains and receive Vitamin B-12 supplementation (only found in animal products). If not done carefully, vegans also risk low levels of calcium, vitamin D, and iron.

On the other hand, lacto-ova vegetarianscan receive complete proteins in the animal by-products (dairy and eggs) they consume, as well as by eating soy protein and mixing beans with grains each day.

You should eat a high quality protein at each meal. To determine your protein needs, read:

The Protein Puzzle

The American Dietetic Association has developed this “Daily Food Guide for Vegetarians”

Milk and Milk Alternatives Group: 6 to 8 servings daily

1/2 cup milk, yogurt, fortified soymilk
3/4 oz. natural cheese
1/2 to 1 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup calcium-set tofu
1 cup cooked dry beans (soy, white, navy, great northern, kidney)
1/4 cup almonds
3 Tbsp Sesame Tahini or Almond Butter
1 cup cooked or 2 cups raw bok choy, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, collards, kale, okra
1 Tbsp blackstrap molasses
5 Fig

Dry Beans, Nuts, Seeds, Eggs, and Meat Substitutes Group: 2 – 3 servings daily

1 cup cooked dry beans, lentils, or peas
2 cups soy milk
1/2 cup tofu or tempeh
2 ox. vegetarian “meats” or soy cheese
2 eggs or 4 egg whites
1/4 cup nuts or seeds
3 Tbsp nut or seed butters

Fruit Group: 2 – 4 servings daily

3/4 cup juice
1/4 cup dried fruit
1/2 cup chopped, raw fruit
1/2 cup canned fruit
1 medium size piece of fruit such as banana, apple or orangeVegetable Group: 3 – 5 servings daily
1/2 cup cooked or chopped raw vegetables
1 cup raw, leafy vegetables
3/4 cup vegetable juice

Bread, Cereal, Rice, and Pasta Group: 6 – 11 servings daily

1 slice (1 ounce) bread
1/2 small bagel, bun or English Muffin (or 1 ounce)
1 ounce ready to eat cereal
2 Tbsp Wheat Germ
1/2 cup cooked (1 ounce dry) grains, cereal, rice or pastaSaturated Fats, sweets: use sparinglyOther essentials for those who consume little or no animal products:
Vitamin B-12 fortified foods or a supplement
Vitamin D-fortified foods or a supplement
Omega-3 Fats: 1 to 2 daily servings; 1 tsp flaxseed oil, 3 Tbsp walnuts, 4 tsp canola oil

Congress Flunks on Healthy Living

By: Katherine Tallmadge

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard someone in Congress quote the Hippocratic oath during this year’s debate on health care reform — “First, do no harm” — I could retire early. What I have not heard quoted by anyone is an admonition almost as well-known and much more appropriate to the current debate: “Physician, heal thyself.”

As a nutrition and diet consultant in Washington who has worked with members of Congress and congressional staff over the past two decades, I have more than a passing knowledge of the people now making decisions that will affect the health of millions of Americans. And I can tell you they are about the last people in the world who can speak about what it takes to be in good health.

Congress’s lifestyle precludes balanced eating or regular physical activity. Lawmakers — and their staffs — work long, 10-to-14-hour days. They rarely see daylight. Walking to work a few blocks or eating a balanced breakfast is thought to be a waste of time. There are parking spaces to fill and a breakfast meeting with cheese Danishes and who needs exercise when you can have all the coffee you need to stay alert? Lunch breaks are frowned upon, and needing a good night’s sleep is a sign of weakness. Healthful eating and exercise smack of elitism (you didn’t mention arugula, did you?), and relaxation and time for family are for sissies. “It’s a very intense life. Long hours are expected, and your job is everything. You’ll make the sacrifices, including health, exercise, family,” says one of my clients, who worked as a staffer in the offices of one of the most prominent health care proponents (and yo-yo dieters) in Congress before finally deciding she had to quit. She described working on Capitol Hill as “a toxic combination of stress, long hours and unhealthy food.”

Another client broke up with her senator boyfriend because she couldn’t take the unhealthful lifestyle she was inevitably being dragged into. It was beginning to affect her health and weight and at the same time was negatively affecting their relationship.

“It was too painful to be a part of such an unhealthy life,” she explained. “His work was everything. He wasn’t finished at the office until late every night. By then he was ravenous, as he never fed himself proper meals during the day and would inhale huge steak dinners. He was becoming more and more overweight and was being warned by his doctor to shape up. I tried to get him to exercise with me, go walking, or just come home to have healthy meals. But nothing worked. He seemed to be stuck in this unhealthy lifestyle and couldn’t give it up.”

Junk food is pervasive on Capitol Hill. It’s found in abundance — from the candies, cookies and snacks given by lobbyists on everyone’s desks, to the vending machines in office hallways, to the well-stocked candy desk that has been on the Senate floor for 40 years. Who needs balanced meals? Members and staffers regularly grab free food at the continual receptions down the hall or across the street. They live on canapés, cheese and crackers, prime rib, chocolate mousse. Their waistlines expand, but they just buy new clothes, and besides, nobody notices or mentions the result. We’re doing important work here!

The few members inclined to be healthy have access to a House or Senate gym with showers and cut-up fresh fruit. If they need to stay late at work, a cafeteria with a whole crew must, by law, stay to feed them (subsidized by taxpayers). If they travel beyond this tiny and exclusive universe, they are driven, flown and “handled.” And if, heaven forbid, members fall ill, they have access to the best medical care and health insurance in the country. There are even medical offices in the Capitol where members and staffers have access to doctors or nurses as needed at no cost to them. Of course, they work hard and deserve this kind of care. But who doesn’t?

With the limos and the staff and the constant schedule of business breakfasts, lunches and dinners, members of Congress don’t really live like other people. Except in a sense, they do. Their bad habits are an exaggerated version of the things their constituents do, making them overweight and out of shape and ultimately a huge burden to all of us who have to spend money on health care.

Let’s hope that lawmakers can somehow get past their own disregard of good health and make the right choices for the rest of us. We need a system that keeps people healthy, one that actually prevents the most serious and costly chronic diseases, most of which are caused by poor eating choices, a sedentary lifestyle and/or excess body fat. As Congress works hard to reform health care, there is a temptation to simply upgrade the current very expensive system instead of developing an actual health promotion system.

Sound too simple? Well, it isn’t! In my personalized nutrition practice, by teaching people healthful habits of eating and physical activity, I see “miracles” every day. My clients — and others who are lucky enough to work with health care professionals such as me — get taken off diabetes drugs, blood pressure drugs, cholesterol drugs, arthritis pain medications and antidepressants. Studies show that people who improve their eating and activity habits and achieve their ideal body weight report an improved quality of life, level of energy, mobility, general mood and self-confidence. They experience improvements in their physical health and interactions with others.

We either ignore or simply pay lip service to the importance of prevention, perhaps because our “health care system” has no incentives for disease prevention. Who profits when people are healthier? Certainly, Big Pharma, insurance companies, hospitals and junk food manufacturers would lose their obesity cash flow bonanza of the past decades.

Some proposals that will start making a difference are no-brainers and won’t cost taxpayers: labeling calorie content on restaurant menus, getting vending machines with sodas and junk foods out of schools and getting rid of junk food ads and violent video games and television for underage children. We should teach respect for personal health in schools — nutrition, physical activity, cooking and stress management — for students and their parents. After-school physical activity and healthful snack programs should be available for children who live in poor homes or unsafe neighborhoods. Nutrition and weight loss counseling by qualified dietetics professionals should be reimbursed by Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies.

So why aren’t we doing any of this? One reason may be that the people who make the laws don’t understand the need to take care of oneself and adopt prevention. And they don’t understand it, because very few of them actually practice it.

There are exceptions, of course. Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) starts every morning running or cross-training in the House gym. And his personal experience has shaped the kind of remedies he sees as necessary. Kind proposes giving tax credits for going to gyms and supports legislation that would require schools to inform parents of their children’s participation in physical education programs. “It’s very easy to lose touch with what most people have to do — even if you’re conscientious,” says Kind.

My plan for health care reform, then, is to start at the beginning, with the people debating, writing and ultimately enacting health care legislation. President Obama is a pretty good role model — assuming he cuts back on those hamburgers he seems to like so much and finally quits smoking. Now it’s time for Congress to follow his lead. Members of Congress and political leaders need to understand what leads to good health — and practice it. Then they’ll be in a position to tell the rest of the country what to do.

Katherine Tallmadge, president of Personalized Nutrition, is a counselor, author (“Diet Simple,” 2004) and speaker and has designed nutrition, wellness and weight loss programs for individuals, government and corporations for more than 20 years.

Stoking Your Metabolism, Eat More to Lose Weight

photo by ADA

by Katherine E. Tallmadge, M.A., R.D.

Naomi, like many American women, is a wounded veteran of the diet wars

She had tried everything, especially if it promised quick results. The cleansing fast with nine days of lemon juice. The cabbage soup diet. The no-carbohydrate diet. Eating only fruits and vegetables. The diets would all “work” — she’d lose weight quickly, but the pounds had a way of coming back.

She would lose nine pounds in nine days, but gain back 15 in four days.

After a dozen years of yo-yo dieting, she wasn’t just getting nowhere, she was losing ground.

When she hit 200 pound she finally sought help from an expert and discovered the reason for her troubles. Because of her long-term serial dieting, her metabolism — the rate at which her body burns calories — had dropped by about 20 percent. This meant that, just to stay the same weight, she had to slash her caloric intake by 20 percent. To lose weight, she’d have to cut her consumption even more –and thereby risk slowing down her metabolism again.

She had been a severe calorie restrictor on and off for many years, and that stripped her body of muscle mass. Restrictive dieting and muscle mass loss are the main reasons why most people have low metabolisms.

This was Naomi’’s harsh introduction to the complex, sometimes baffling world of the human metabolism, which embeds one of the cruelest ironies in all of dietdom. Restricting calories — which is necessary to lose weight — can slow down the body’s metabolism, stunting one’s ability to burn calories, making weight loss virtually impossible.

Subjecting the body to repeated ‘famines’ causes a chronic dieter’s body to slow down into survival mod..

The less you eat, the more your body slows down, requiring you to eat even less. And when, out of frustration or exhaustion, you resume “normal” eating, your body grabs onto those extra calories and sends them into deep storage with a vengeance.

A growing body of scientific evidence confirms that the human body is an extraordinarily adaptive and delicate instrument whose instinctive drive for survival complicates the plans of even the most dedicated dieter. Henderson’s woes and those of others show clearly that losing weight and keeping it off require a careful understanding of the body and, specifically, its metabolic needs.

Each body’s calorie needs are largely determined by two factors: one’s level of physical activity and one’s resting metabolic rate (RMR).

About one third of the calories you burn are the result of physical activity, which includes anything other than resting–brushing your teeth, folding clothes, working at your computer, walking around the block, or exercising in your health club.

he other two-thirds are burned as a result of regular metabolic function. This includes the calories needed to sustain basic function: maintain body temperature, heart beat, breathing, organ repair and basic chemical reactions. Because RMR accounts for a large majority of calories burned, keeping your RMR high is essential to losing weight and keeping it off. In fact, it is more important to your weight-loss plan than is physical activity.

All of which raises the questions: How do you find out what your RMR is? And how can you raise it?

Your RMR is influenced by a variety of factors including genetics, body size, muscle mass, age, gender, body weight, pregnancy, hormonal status and, yes, physical condition. (More on this below, but the main point is that a fit and muscular body burns more calories while at rest than an unfit, less muscular one.) To make things more difficult, RMR naturally declines through adulthood at about 2 percent per decade, usually because of muscle loss. Chronic dieters exacerbate muscle loss through repeated quick weight reductions.

You can determine your RMR using Diet Simple’s Formula for Calculating Your Resting Metabolic Rate and Calorie Needs — free of charge and in the comfort of your own home and use that figure and a controlled diet to determine whether your RMR is lower than normal. First, determine what your RMR should be. Then continue the calculation to account for your level of physical activity and see how many calories you need to consume just to maintain your weight. Next, subtract 250 to 500 calories to determine a safe daily weight loss calorie level, which should produce a 1/2- to one-pound per-week weight loss.

Using the Diet Simple Formula, for a 150 pound, 5’4″ 40-year old lightly exercising woman, that would mean consuming about 1,978 calories per day to maintain weight and about 1,428 – 1,728 calories daily to lose weight. For a 200 pound, 6’1″ 50-year-old regularly exercising man, that would mean about 3,060 calories per day to maintain weight and about 2,560 to 2,810 calories daily to lose. (see examples)

Once you’ve done the math, spend at least one week –or up to a month — eating the calorie level you calculated should lead to a 1/2- to one-pound per-week weight loss. If you do not lose weight, and you’re sure you’ve calculated your calorie needs and your food intake correctly (cheating here will do you no good, folks), then that’s the sign your metabolism is probably low. This is an indication that you may benefit from visiting a clinic and getting tested to verify your metabolic status.

Using this equation is just a formalized way of discovering what many dieters do by trial and error. The dieter is eating what he or she believes is a weight-shedding calorie level, and documents it rigorously, yet the weight is not coming off.

If your metabolism is normal, in a way you’re lucky. Losing weight probably will require nothing more — to be fair, that probably should be “nothing less” — than consuming slightly fewer calories than you burn each day. Yes, it requires will power, and yes, it requires some exercise, but it can work, particularly if you run a modest daily caloric deficit (250 to 500 calories per day) and take the weight off slowly.

If, on the other hand, your metabolism is low, you might decide to meet with a doctor to find out why, and to learn what to do next. Your metabolism would be considered low enough to act on if it is six percent or lower than the equation predicts.

In addition to the repeated calorie restriction of yo-yo dieting, other factors that can contribute to lower metabolism include genetics and thyroid abnormalities. Thyroid levels can be tested in a physician’s office. It’s important to request a full thyroid work-up, including active thyroid (T-3), which isn’t usually tested, according to experts. If abnormal, it should be treated with medication. Once treated, a normal diet and exercise regimen should be able to take the weight off.

But a past of severe calorie restriction is the most common — and easily controllable — cause of a low RMR. And that requires a different plan of attack.

It doesn’t take a long history of dieting failures to affect metabolism. In fact, large increases or decreases in calorie intake for as little as several days can raise or lower RMR. Though for chronic dieters, because their bodies have been primed to go into survival mode — their metabolisms can lower in just 24 to 48 hours, according to experts.

It is widely accepted that, in response to starving, the body reduces levels of various hormones and chemicals that help determine metabolic rate: insulin, active thyroid hormone, norepinephrine (similar to adrenaline). This is a powerful survival mechanism, as it permits the body to slow the nervous, cardiovascular, and gastrointestinal systems to help it conserve resources of energy and calories during a period of assumed scarcity of food.

The groups most likely to have provoked their bodies into below normal metabolism are long term, yo-yo dieters; dieters who restrict their calories too severely; and people with eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia nervosa, who either starve or alternate starving with binging.

The change in metabolic rate as a result of food restriction may vary from person to person. Studies show if a 200 pound woman is limited to 800 calories a day, after three weeks her metabolism may decline by 15 percent — possibly prompting further, unrealistic calorie reductions which cannot be sustained. Remarkably, exercise may actually exacerbate the problem. If a person isn’t consuming enough calories and is exercising,the body — which automatically does the math and reacts to an even more severe calorie deficit — will reduce its metabolism further.

Most people are told to eat less and exercise more, and it may not work for every person.

A low RMR has other consequences. The decline in metabolism makes it almost impossible to maintain weight loss. For example, if the metabolism for a 150-pound woman is just 6 percent below normal, that means she must eat 100 fewer calories per day to avoid weight gain. If it drops to 25 percent below normal, she must reduce daily consumption by 400 calories to stay even. This is a huge food deficit that few can maintain over a life time and contributes to the long term failure rates of diets, according to the experts.

So the dilemma is this: If restricting calories lowers the metabolism, endangering health and making weight loss and weight maintenance nearly impossible, how can weight loss be accomplished without wrecking the RMR? The answer, at the risk of appearing flip: Very carefully.

Experts agree that if the calorie restriction is minimal, the weight loss slow, and a cardiovascular exercise and muscle building program initiated, weight loss can be achieved safely and effectively, and a low metabolism can be reversed.

THREE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS

Three factors are crucial for losing weight, maintaining it and keeping metabolism high.

First, since metabolism is dependent on lean body mass, muscle-building is an important type of exercise, regardless of whether your metabolism is high or low. The more lean muscle you have, the more calories your body burns. And since muscle mass naturally declines as you age, building muscle as you age is essential to keeping lean. In fact, as you become stronger and use heavier weights in your workout — an indication that you’ve gained muscle — you can eat more food because your need for calories naturally increases with muscle gain.

An average woman will lose five to seven pounds of muscle between age 35 to age 50 due to disuse. Add restrictive dieting to the equation, and even more muscle can be lost. For every pound of muscle lost, you lose the capacity to burn 35 to 50 calories per day. That means if you’ve lost seven pounds of muscle at 50 calories per muscle, that’s 350 calories you can’t eat just to prevent weight gain, let alone lose weight.

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends strength training all of your major muscle groups twice a week.

Second, cardiovascular activity burns body fat and calories (and, of course, improves your heart and general health). As you improve cardiovascularly, your body becomes more efficient and burns more fat with each exercise bout. A fit body also continues to burn more calories even after the workout has ended. The recommendation by most health groups is to accumulate at least 30 minutes per day of cardiovascular activity for health and weight maintenance. You may need to exercise more to lose weight, according to metabolic experts. I recommend all my clients wear pedometers to determine their overall activity level daily. I have found, likeit or not, 10,000 steps per day maintains health and weight. But if you want to lose weight, 12,000 steps or more is necessary.

The final element is diet. If you want to lose weight without affecting your metabolism negatively, the key is keeping calories as high as possible — but still slightly lower than what is needed to maintain weight. The metabolic experts recommend a daily caloric deficit of no more than 250 to 500 calories below the calorie level necessary to maintain your weight. Using the formula that 3,500 calories equals one pound, a daily deficit of 250 to 500 calories would produce losses of 1/2 – to one- pound every week. To prevent lowering metabolism, it’s important not to cut calories more than 500 per day under what would be needed for maintenance.

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed exercising women who lost 20 pounds in about 4 months — a slow rate compared with most diets — experienced no decrease in metabolism.

Studies confirm that weight losses on very low calorie diets produce reductions in RMR. And the thinking among weight loss researchers for years has been that this lowering of RMR during weight losses could not be prevented. They asserted that once a person lost weight, he would have to live with a metabolism which is lower than his same weight counterparts who never had to lose weight.

But metabolic experts today disagree with these long-held beliefs. They say these studies, conducted at some of the nation’s most prestigious institutions, were all done with very low calorie diets or modified fasts (such as the Optifast program), and this is the reason metabolisms dropped. The drop in RMR is not inevitable, they argue, if the weight is lost slowly, and calories are not restricted drastically.

So, don’t starve! If you eat the amount of calories necessary to sustain your metabolism, RMR does not decrease during weight loss. The key is avoiding starvation diets, and building and maintaining lean body mass through cardiovascular and resistance exercise.

If you’re starting with a low RMR, chances are you are eating too little. Once you raise your daily calorie intake using the recommended method, your metabolism will begin to rise. Your body will begin to reverse the negative physiological consequences of semi-starvation. In response to more food, the blood insulin level increases, hormone levels improve, the nervous, cardiovascular and gastrointestinal systems begin functioning up to speed.

But this process takes time, and you may maintain or even gain a few pounds at first. Normalizing metabolism, which is necessary before permanent weight loss can take place, may take several months for a chronic dieter. For an anorexic, it may take years. It depends on the severity of the problem. And, at first, you may experience an increase in weight, due mostly to increased water gain, but also because it takes time for the metabolism to reverse. An increase in water weight may occur once normal eating is resumed after starving. That’s one reason weight seems to rush back on as soon as normal eating is resumed after a restrictive diet. One way to reduce this discouraging, but expected, water gain is to keep carbohydrate intake lower than normal during the calorie-increasing process, as carbohydrates attract water and may increase water weight if you’ve been starving. (One reason a low carbohydrate diet seems to work so well is it causes water loss!)

Simply increase calories incrementally to reduce sudden weight gain. This gives the metabolism time to adjust to the new calorie levels and minimizes water gain. For instance, add an extra 100 calories every week or every two weeks,

Naomi’s RMR was low due to chronic dieting coupled with a lack of exercise. It was markedly improved in about four months via exercise – and calorie restriction only slightly below what her body required. It took two years to lose the unwanted 20 pounds and bring the metabolism completely back to normal. And because Naomi built so much muscle, her size changed more that the pounds on the scale reflected. She proudly proclaims she went from a size 18 to a size 12.

She first had to build up the muscle and then use the muscle to burn the excess fat on her body. The secret to a high metabolism and weight control is to combine aerobic activity and weight training.

But Naomi’s diet needed a makeover too. When she was gaining weight, she was eating a high starch and fat diet, with most of the calories eaten in the evenings.

She rearranged her diet, reflecting the U.S. Dietary Guidelines (15 to 20 percent protein; 20 to 30 percent fat, 50 to 55 percent carbohydrates). She added more protein, fruits and vegetables and reduced fat and starches. Her nutrition program started with about 1600 calories But as she gained muscle and normalized her metabolism, she was able to add 100 more and continue to lose weight — a veritable feast compared to the depressingly restrictive diets she was used to.

She began spreading her calories more evenly through the day (a key principle in Diet Simple). Other metabolic experts agree this is an important step for a variety of reasons. Evidence suggests a pattern of eating three large meals per day, including planned mid-morning and afternoon snacks, if desired, increases metabolism slightly. After eating, food stimulates an increase in the metabolism. So increasing the number of meals eaten starting in the morning takes the best advantage of this phenomenon, called the “thermic effect of food.” (Protein and carbohydrate have a higher thermic effect than fat.)

People who skip breakfast or lunch may have lower metabolisms. But, most importantly, eating a breakfast, lunch, and dinner of equal size decreases food cravings and overeating in the evenings — a cardinal sin, according to metabolism experts. Other evidence suggests people who eat heavily in the evenings are heavier than those who eat the same calories spread throughout the day.

Understanding the importance of spreading out her meals and spending time taking care of herself with regular physical activity were important breakthroughs. When coupled with an understanding of her metabolism, this has allowed her to live a more vigorous and slender life.

Most importantly, with a calorie level that is satisfying and a well-trained body, your results are more likely to endure over a life time.

Diet Simple’s Formula for Calculating Your Resting Metabolic Rate and Calorie Needs*

(for people over 17 years old)

WOMEN

1. Begin with a base of 655 calories 655_______

2. Multiply your weight in pounds X 4.3 __________

3. Multiply your height in inches X 4.7 __________

4. Add together the totals from #1, #2, and #3 ___________

5. Multiply your age X 4.7 ___________

6. Subtract result of #5 from total of #4 ___________ (your normal RMR)

7. Multiply #6 by your activity factor**___________ (your daily maintenance calories)

8. Subtract 250 calories ________ (your daily weight loss calories)

**For most of my client, I use 1.3 as their activity factor and it seems to be correct.

MEN:

1. Begin with a base of 66 calories 66______

2. Multiply your weight in pounds X 6.3 ________

3. Multiply your height in inches X 12.7 ________

4. Add together the totals from #1, #2, and #3 ________

5. Multiply your age X 6.8 ________

6. Subtract result of #5 from total of #4 ________ (your normal RMR)

7. Multiply #6 by your activity factor** _______ (your daily maintenance calories)

8. Subtract 250 – 500 calories ________ (your weight loss level)

**For most of my client, I use 1.3 as their activity factor and it seems to work for most of us desk jockeys…

For activity, multiply:

RMR times 1.2 for extremely low levels of activity (sedentary)

RMR times 1.3 for light physical activity (2 – 4 hours/week)

RMR times 1.4 for moderate physical activity (4 – 7 hours/week), and

RMR times 1.6 for high levels of activity (regular exercise or manual labor)

Some athletes may double or even triple their RMR to determine their daily calorie needs

*Based on the Harris Benedict Equation

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Stoking Your Metabolism, Eat More to Lose Weight

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Personalized Nutrition & Lifestyle Counseling

Contact

Subscribe to my Blog

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Book Katherine

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Copyright © Dandelion by Pexeto