The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl

The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl by Shauna Reid
I haven't read it, but it looks like something I can relate to these days.

Favorite Diet Snack

Favorite snack when I'm dieting:
1 Cascade Fresh Fat Free Green Apple Pie Yogurt, topped with 1/2 cup Honey Almond Flax Kashi Crunch! and handful of fresh blueberries.

Favorite snack when I'm not dieting:
Hot fudge sundae.

Another Healthful Diet

I never really make New Years' resolutions, but this year I did. I resolved to return to two things I formally participated in that I let fall by the wayside. One is recycling, and the other is healthy, nutritous eating.

To return to healthy eating I looked up some diets that I have formally used or researched. One is The Anti-Inflammation Diet. In the past, I read a book by Barry Sears called, The Anti-Inflammation Diet, but when I went to the library, it was checked out. The book I ended up with is, The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Anti-Inflammation Diet by Christopher P. Cannon, MD and Elizabeth Vierak, and it is quite good. I think I'll buy it to have as a resource.

Inflammation is the common thread that runs through many common diseases, such as: heart disease, cancer, stroke, Diabetes, Alzheimer's, arthritis, autoimmune diseases, hundreds of diseases that end in "itis", acne, allergies, asthma, psoriasis, etc. I have many of these diseases in my family.

Well, the good news is that these diseases can be preventable with a healthy diet. That is:
-eat a well-balanced variety of wholesome foods
-eat only unsaturated fats
-eat omega 3 fatty acid rich foods
-eat only whole grains
-eat healthy sources of protein
-eat plenty of fruits and vegetables
-eliminate refined or processed foods.

And, of course , and added benefit is weight loss. When you eat lots of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and not any butter, fried foods or very little red meat, you lose weight; easily and naturally.

Singing the Praises for Soup

Soup is a great diet food in the winter. Who doesn't love comfort food when it's cold out? Sadly, most comfort foods are low in fiber and high in fat. Not soup--as long as it's not a cream soup or packed with cheese or bacon, soup is usually pretty low in fat. You can eat a good amount of it too, and still stay on your diet. It's always best to cook your own, but if you can't there are lots of good canned or frozen soups on the market. My new favs are the Progresso Lites. Some of them are 0 pts on Weight Watchers, others are 1 pt--awesome. No corn syrup either, but some have MSG, so if you're sensitive to this, watch out.
Hurray for Soup!

Some other good food on the market:
From the regular food store:
Morning Star Farms products (in the freezer section). Most of them taste great and are very shockingly low in fat. The spicy black bean veggie burgers are great--but there are many other good ones, too. (The Grillers are not a good choice--10g fat, may as well eat a real burger.)

From the health food store or health food section:
Amy's frozen meals--the indian and thai selections are yummy, and around 7 or 8 g Fat for the whole meal-- made with whole grains and all natural ond organic ingedients.

Cascade Fresh fruit juice sweetened fat-free yogurt.

Artificially Sweetened Food and Drinks may work against you when trying to Diet

Aspartame & Weight Loss
From Betty Martini
Subject Dr. James Bowen on Aspartame and Weight Loss
7-28-00


"The fact that aspartame fattens people is generally well known. We have all seen the post cards and comics that depict an overweight person with a Diet Coke in one hand while reaching for a bowl of corn chips with the other hand. The reason aspartame so strikingly stimulates the appetite is it provides over half of its content in a form of a phenylalanine isolate.

The amino acid phenylalanine outcompetes all the other at enzyme sites in the body. This suppresses the formation of dopamine from tyrosine and the formation of serotonin from tryptophan. The serotonin is the neurotransmitter that reports carbohydrate metabolism. When your serotonin levels are not allowed to raise as they normally do when you eat carbohydrates you crave more and more food. The dopamine is the neurotransmitter that lets you feel satisfied, so when you use aspartame you have unsatisfiable cravings. The aspartame also poisons your metabolism so you cannot burn calories.

One of the major components of the aspartame molecule is methyl alcohol. Methyl alcohol has long been recognized in medicine for its ability to block metabolism. For this reason when doctors see somebody who has been poisoned by ingesting methyl alcohol or methyl esters they can accurately predict the patient will develop a severe acidosis because the food cannot be metabolized in the normal manner and the breakdown products of the methyl alcohol in addition to the acids developed from the blocked metabolism gravely endanger the patients life. NutraSweet, is a very aggravated form of methyl alcohol poisoning.

Moreover, the neuroexcitotoxins act in the brain to stimulate appetite. This is why manufacturers put it into foods. It does not actually change the taste of food at all, but the food taste better to you because your appetite has been stimulated.

Arsenic is routinely included in chicken food when the chickens are being raised for meat production because it poisons the metabolism and the chickens don't burn off the calories, they turn it into fat, and thus they produce rapid weight gain for the farmer.

When the FDA first looked at this molecule they held aspartame off the market for many years because it is a potent chelating agent which carries many heavy metals including arsenic into the body. The heavy metal poisoning from Nutrasweet also poisons your metabolism, blocks the burning of calories and on the long haul this virtually irreversible poisoning from heavy metals will continue to encourage weight gain."

James Bowen, M.D.


More information on aspartame www.dorway.com See last page of protest of National Soft Drink Assoc - on aspartame making you crave carbohydrates Also see Dr. Sandra Cabot's position paper titled Aspartame Makes You Fatter



MainPagehttp://www.rense.com
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Diet products are everywhere. Diet pop, diet gum, diet cookies, diet mints, diet shakes, diet candy, diet meal replacements...the list is goes on.
And in most diet products, aspartame is found.
Aspartame goes under the common names of Nutrasweet, Equal and Spoonful. It is also found as a tabletop sweetener for coffee or tea.

Aspartame is used in diet products because it has less calories than sugar and thus the thinking is that by cutting calories using these products, you will lose weight.
But hold on there. If that's the case then why are most North Americans getting heavier?
Obviously many factors contribute to the rising rates of obesity however there have been several doctors, medical researchers and aspartame victims that have started to speak out about the damaging effects of aspartame, including the effects on weight loss.
While it would take forever to cover the growing evidence on the negative effects of aspartame, I'm going to focus here on the effects that aspartame seems to have on weight loss.
With all of the research piling up, I believe that yes, for some people, aspartame indeed may be hindering their weight loss. Here are the top 3 reasons why.
#1) Aspartame can make you actually crave MORE sugary sweets.
According to the book "Dieting Secrets that the Government Doesn't Want You To Know" by Astrid Lasco, B.Sc. M.Sc.,
"Aspartame is by far the most dangerous substance on the market that is added to foods"
She then goes on to quote several resources including Richard Wurtman, an MIT neuroscientist, whose studies have shown that aspartame makes you crave even more carbohydrates!
According to some experts, this is because the taste of aspartame (which is 180 times sweeter than sugar) in your mouth actually fools your body into thinking that sugar or high glucose carbs are coming it's way.
Your body then readies itself to receive that high glucose foods...but nothing comes. This then causes your body to crave that sugar or high-calorie carbs that it was expecting to get in the first place.
While this theory has not been proven (to my knowledge), it does make sense.


#2) Aspartame is difficult for your body to break down, which stresses your digestive system and causes it to store more of your food as fat.
This is a theory that seems to be supported by what happens AFTER people give up all aspartame. According to Dr. H.J. Roberts, people getting off aspartame completely lose an average of 15 pounds.
I've read several aspartame forum posts where people have said that after giving up aspartame completely, they lost pounds without changing anything else.
#3) Aspartame fools you into thinking that you can eat more than your body really needs.
This is more of a psychological problem involving diet products in gerneral. Diet products still do have calories (even though there are technically less calories than similar non-diet products).
When people consume diet products (including those with aspartame), they tend to think they can keep eating since they are eating diet foods.
Thus it's easy to eat a little more than usual since they think that the diet products have saved them calories. This results in actually more calories consumed and thus weight gain instead of loss.
Those are several reasons why aspartame can actually hinder your weight loss. If you'd like to see for yourself if aspartame is slowing down your weight loss, just try cutting it out for 2-3 months and see if that makes a difference.
Keep in mind the everyone is different and I encourage you to do your own research on this topic and make your own conclusions.

About The Author:

K. O'Neill is a contributing writer for Diet and Weight Loss Reviews, a website offering free diet, exercise and weight loss tips.

For more weight loss articles and tips visit:

http://www.FreeToBeThin.com

Reprint Rights

From: Annette

I used to eat Lite Yogurt sweetened with Nutrasweet. It was great because it only had 60 cal for 6 oz, but it kinda tasted like medicine. Now I eat Cascade Fresh brand yogurt that is sweetened with fruit juice. It tastes so much better and is so much better for me (110 cal, though, but it's worth it to me).

Some Diet Tips

Some tips
How to get your metabolism to work for you.
When you wake up in the morning it is helpful to drink a cold glass of water to "jump start" your metabolism. You need to wake your body up. You've always heard that breakfast is the most important meal. I'm not sure that's true, but eating breakfast sure helps when you are trying to lose weight. Many people say, "I am not hungry in the morning," but in order to get your metabolism going, you need to fuel your body with nutritious food. Eating nothing, or just drinking coffee or tea will not do it. You may notice that if you just have coffee or tea in the morning, or if you've had nothing at all, eventually you’re starving. At this point, it is very easy to make wrong food choices. If you had eaten a small breakfast and a small snack, you blood sugar would be balanced and it would be easier to have a sensible lunch; therefore less effort required to make good choices. Also, your metabolism would be working in your favor.
Ways to increase metabolism:
Exercise increases your metabolism. Eating small. low-fat, high fiber meals throughout the day does, too. If you don't eat all morning, and then you eat a big meal, your body is going to store most the fat because it doesn't know when it is going to be fed again. If you eat small meals frequently, it begins to work in your favor. Your body will burn the calories and fat as fuel. Your metabolism speeds up. You can get your metabolism to work for you.
Try to eat 4 small meals a day, and two snacks. For example: protein bar or oatmeal for breakfast, salad with a protein for lunch, Yogurt with berries for mid-day afternoon meal, and any variety of sensible dinner. For snacks, have fruit, fat-free turkey, string cheese, fat-free pudding (any snack that is between 50-100 cal and under 5g fat). Mini-meals double fat loss and boost metabolism.
Try to avoid any processed foods and stick to whole foods. Grain based foods, especially processed ones, trigger fat-storage hormones. Prior to the Industrial revolution people didn't eat processed foods and thus were healthier. Diseases such as diverticulitis and diet- induced diabetes were unheard of. We certainly did not have the number of obese people that we currently have. You may have heard that bread makes you fat-- it's true. In addition, you really have to read labels because breads and pasta that claim to be “whole grain,” often are not. They may simply contain some whole grains, but have processed ones as well.
Also, you may have seen commercials by the corn growers of America dispelling the "myth" that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is bad for your health. Well, it may not be “bad” for you, but it is if you're trying to diet. Unfortunately, it is in almost every canned soup, salsa, pasta sauce, etc. from the regular grocery store. You need to read labels. HFCS is highly processed and it somehow (notice I have no idea of the science here) turns off something in your brain that tells you that you're full. As a result, you think that you're still hungry when your body actually needs no more food.

Next topic, "being full"

If you haven't dieted in a while, you may not actually know how much food your body needs to function effectively. You have to experiment and find out how much of your eating was for reasons other than hunger. The first few days of a diet, try to be very strict; diet hard; eat the bare minimum for at least one day. You will start to notice what it feels like to be physically hungry and physically full, not stuffed or bloated, but full, meaning you are satisfied and you feel a little pressure on the sides of your stomach were the food has filled it, but you still have energy to move around and do things. Eating shouldn't drain you of your energy, it should fuel your body for more activity.

Food as fuel.

The purpose of food is to fuel your body. It is helpful to shift your thinking to believing this when you're dieting. It doesn't mean that you don't enjoy your food, or that it is not pleasurable, it is just not going to be your only enjoyment. You eat till your full and then your move on and do something else that you enjoy. It's even better if what you move onto is physically active. You need to move your body to lose unwanted pounds.

Exercise.
Recommended: 30-60 minutes every day, if your schedule allows. Most schedules don’t, but shoot for as many days as you can, with a minimum of 3X a week.
Your workouts should include cardio and strength training, not just one or the other.
It’s helpful to pick a workout schedule and stick to it. If you say, “Oh, I’ll fit it in when I can,” you’re less likely to fit it in. You have to view its importance like anything else in your day: work, school, hair appt, doctor appt—don’t miss it unless your sick.
People who combine dieting and exercise have 9X better results than if they just did one or the other.

Diets-

Diets that work set very clear guidelines to follow, because the less choice you have, the less chance you’ll make a wrong choice. Another important component of a good diet is that it should teach you about food and eating. You need to learn about food, because unconscientious eating often leads to becoming overweight. Diets that do not include moderation and portion control only set you up for failure and lead to yo-yo dieting. Yo-yo dieting is when you diet, you lose a significant amount of weight, then you return to your previous way of eating and you gain all your weight back, and sometimes more. If you choose a plan that teaches you how to eat sensible portions, you get out of the habit of overeating. If you're on a plan the says you can have as much as you want of certain foods, like Atkins for example, you are not learning anything about healthy eating patterns, portion control, and moderation. (*except the weight watchers core plan)Some good diet plans (I'm sure there are more):weight watchersdr. ozthe zonedr ian smith -the fat smash diet or the extreme fat smash dietPoor choices (unless you're diabetic):Atkins

General Tips for food choices

Fresh fruits and vegetables are very, extremely low in calories. These are always your best bets when dieting. They are light, low in calorie, almost always fat-free, and very nutritious.

For proteins-
Lean meats or fishes are the way to go.
Fat-free turkey, boneless/ skinless chicken breasts, very lean red meats on the rare occasion, and fresh fish are all good options.
Dairy
Skim milk
Fat-free yogurt
2% cheeses
Also, mozzarella is a leaner cheese—one string cheese only has 5g of fat.

Beans!!!! All beans dried beans are protein and fiber rich.

Grains-
Stick to whole grain only. Brown rice, whole wheat pasta in small amounts (Hodgson Mills -good, Ronzoni—not good, mixed with processed flour), quinoa, oatmeal.Limit alcohol consumption. Figure it into your daily calories. One or two beers or glasses of wine should replace a snack’s worth of calories (and if you skipped a snack to have the drinks, you won’t need any more because you’ll feel the effects quickerJ) Also, drinking alcohol impairs your judgement, so you’re more likely to make wrong food choices if under the influence.


Good Diet Foods on the Market

Kashi Go Lean Crunchy! Protein and Fiber Bars –Chocolate Caramel Flavor 3g fat, 150 cal., 8g protein, and 6g fiber

Ball Park White Turkey Hot Dogs -1 link 45 cal, 0 fat (may have HFCS, not sure)

Taco Bell soft chicken Taco only 4g fat

Oasis Brand Zero fat hummus and black bean dip

Jello brand fat free or sugar free puddings (processed, but when you need a treat and berries won’t cut it…)