Eating better - no this isn't a New Year's resolution

My 'sister-in-law' recently started asking her brother (aka Dad) about better foods. I realized that we have been buying better for us food for a little over a year now, but hadn't really shared that with anyone. So here is my attempt to share how you can eat better for sometimes alot less and also actually get a little exercise in the process.

3 Simple things to do
We have been losing weight and feeling better just by doing these three simple things. Well actually I have done two of them and not much of the 3rd.
1. Bread - eat whole grains - 3 grams minimum per slice.
2. Butter/Spread - use Smart Balance.
3. Pedometer - wear it and aim for 10,000 steps per day.

1. Bread - eat 'better' carbs
We replaced white bread (aka refined carbohydrates) with it's better and actually more tasty variety - whole grain edition.

Any bread we buy must have at least 3 grams of fiber per slice. Pepperidge Farms makes some excellent breads (7-grain, 9-grain, 12-grain, 15-grain) that are quite tasty. So does Arnold. We prefer Pepperidge Farm's Nutty Oat, but Walmart no longer carries that. That was the best tasting bread we have tried. However Sam's club now carries Arnold Whole Grain classics in a double loaf pack that costs slightly more than the same as a single loaf at Walmart around $2.88 if memory serves (I can't find the receipt).

I gained a ton of weight when the diet message 10 years ago was to eat Pasta (aka Low Fat era, lots of carbs). Boy did I. I gained 30 pounds which has never come off! The problem was that the pasta was white, not whole grain. In addition to having a high glycemic index - which means it burns quicker and if not used gets converted to fat quicker, white pasta also makes you hungrier. Yup that's right. You end up feeling unsatisfied and hungrier, so you eat more. Another reason to limit your intake of white carbs (bread, pasta, potatoes) and soda. The easiest way for me was to start by cutting out one serving of white carbs per week, then every couple of days and so on.

2. Butter/Spread - eat 'better' fats
Another thing we did was discover Smart Balance spread last year, as I have noticed many others have. Most medical professionals and dieticians are promoting that not all fat is bad. In fact you shouldn't avoid all fat, just the bad - saturated fat (sat fat) variety. You can't cut out sat fat entirely but you can make choices to replace it with the artery Clearing variety, poly unsaturated (poly fat) and mono unsaturated (mono fat). We try to keep sat fat grams down to no more than 6 per serving - and that's actually more than we usually allow.

Smart Balance has 9 grams of fat, but only 2.5 of that is sat fat. Poly fat makes up 2.5 grams and mono fat makes up 3.5 grams and 0 trans fat grams. According to their label a Brandeis University study showed their spread helped to improve cholesterol ratios of HDL (good) versus LDL (bad) cholesterol in study participants - the catch per CSPI is that you must exclusively eat it in place of all fat. Still it's better than using regular butter or margarine. I believe any little bit of good you can do still helps.

So if you've been doing Atkins, etc, at least cut the fat off your steak and try to get lean cuts of meat. You'll get your protein fix and not be clogging your arteries with heart killing sat fat.

Also did you know that your brain needs fat? Just don't forget, it needs mostly better mono fat far vice the not-so-good trans fat

3. Pedometer
Ok so this is not something you eat, but it can help you with your eating plan. I don't know how it does, it just seems that all that walking helps you prefer better foods (maybe because those foods have more nutrional value).

Last year Dad started to wear a pedometer. He finally settled on one he picked up at Sam's Club for $10, the Omron model. It has a 7-day memory and automatically 'clears the cache' to dump the 8th day's numbers. His goal last year was to do 10,000 steps each day. Sure enough a couple of weeks ago PBS had a Frontline special about Diet Wars where that was the consensus of several medical experts. In fact many sites and organizations are now promoting the 10,000 steps per day.

In Dad's experience working in an office, if you drink alot of coffee and "have a busy day" you'll average around 6,000 steps per workday. If you're like me and get stuck at your desk, you might make 3000 per workday. It also helps to have a baby who likes to be held and the holder must be moving at the same time (e.g. walking back and forth). Per Dad, "the earlier you wake up, the more steps you seem to build up before you leave the house" -- linlu note: it works for him since he's hyper to begin with. He also says that staying up late doesn't work because you tend to be winding down (aka sitting more).

Summary

So there you go, two eating tips and one activity tip, which I classify with eating better. We have others but those escape me right now. Until next time..

TAGS: dieting | New Year's resolutions | Eating better

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