So you've tried every diet under the sun from sucking on grapefruits to keeping away from carbs, but what works and what doesn't? Nutritionist Joy Bauer has the answers.
If you eat late at night, the food turns straight into fat.
Not true. Research has confirmed that if your collective calories — calories eaten throughout the entire day — are appropriate for personal weight maintenance, you won’t gain weight from late night dinners and/or snacks.
Your best bet: Spread food intake out over the course of the day — eating every four to five hours to fuel your body, brain and regulate appetite. For late night dinners, watch portions and be sure to adjust according to what and how much you’ve already eaten that day. And for late night munchies, stick with portion-controlled snacks that are 250 calories or less (for example, some light popcorn, a handful of almonds, a frozen banana or a low-fat ice cream pop).
If you find yourself locked into a pattern of abstaining from food all day and gorging at night, speak with your physician. Night eating disorder, a form of binge eating, is becoming more common, but thankfully better understood by the medical community.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are more nutritious than frozen.
Not necessarily. You may actually get more nutrients from frozen fruits and vegetables. One reason for this it that the “fresh” produce you just bought at your corner grocer may be a lot older than you think. Unless you live on a farm or shop at a greenmarket, these items generally spend days being sorted, packaged and then shipped (often cross country) after being harvested. During that long process, fluctuations in light and temperature rob fruits and vegetables of important nutrients such as vitamin C and folate. Also consider how long they sit in your fridge!
Canned and frozen produce sometimes retain more nutrients because it’s been whisked off the fields to a processing plant in a fraction of the time it takes for the fresh stuff to make it to your dinner table. Furthermore, the nutritional value of some produce is actually enhanced by processing. Take tomatoes; canned ones are cooked first, which helps release lycopene, an antioxidant that has been shown to help prevent many types of cancer.
Of course, the negative side of processing primarily comes down to three things: taste, texture and additives. Frozen and canned foods rarely taste as good as fresh, and food manufacturers often have a nasty habit of messing with Mother Nature by adding salt, sugar and fat to their products. Canned vegetables are notoriously salty, and frozen fruits and vegetables often contain added sugar or fat. You can get around this by looking for “low sodium” or “no salt added” canned items, and bypassing frozen foods that contain added sugar, salt and fat.
Bottom line: Buy both, a variety of fresh and frozen. When it comes to fresh, eat asap! When it comes to frozen, remember to avoid varieties with added salt, sugar and fat.
Cravings are your body's way of telling you it needs something.
Probably not. To date, scientists have not been able to link cravings in humans to specific micronutrient deficiencies. In fact, an experimental psychologist conducted a study on people with constant chocolate cravings. In this experiment, one group was given a cocktail that mimicked the chemicals found in chocolate, and another group was given a fake chocolate bar which looked, smelled, and tasted like chocolate but contained no authentic chocolate-like compounds. Guess which bar satisfied the participants most? The fake chocolate! Even though it didn't chemically resemble chocolate, the look, smell and taste hit the spot and satisfied cravings.
That said, cravings are believed to be emotionally or psychologically driven. People also tend to crave foods they enjoy and associate with pleasurable times and places. For example, you may crave hamburgers because you downright love the taste and typically eat them in cozy pubs and at family barbecues — not because you’re deficient in the mineral iron. Hormonal changes can also be responsible for cravings. Ice cream and pickles anyone?
A juice fast is a great way to slim down quickly and clean out your body.
No. For one thing, your body doesn’t need help cleaning itself — the kidneys, liver and bladder do the job nicely. And rather than trim you down quickly, juice fasts may actually cause you to overeat. The beverages are high in refined sugar, which starts the digestive process and can create peaks and valleys in your blood sugar levels, leaving you hungry. Juice is also void of protein, a macronutrient that’s critical during weight loss (protein helps maintain lean muscle mass, revs your metabolism and stabilizes your blood sugar levels).
To slim down quickly, you’re much better off focusing meals on lean protein, such as chicken, fish or tofu, loads of vegetables and moderate amounts of fresh fruit and whole grains. And be sure to drink loads of water!
Certain foods, like grapefruit, celery or cabbage soup can burn fat and make you lose weight.
These are anecdotal stories that have no scientific back-up. It’s true these foods are low in calories (and loaded with nutrients), but they do not actually burn fat.
If you lose weight when you add grapefruit or celery to your eating plan, it’s probably because you’re substituting it for another food that has more calories.
You should only weight yourself one time each week.
Not true. Checking your weight loss progress on a scale can be quite encouraging, and two new studies — one published last year in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine and another published this past July in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity — found that people who were trying to lose weight or avoid gaining weight were more successful if they weighed themselves daily.
One caveat: If you have an obsessive personality and could potentially become too preoccupied with the scale, this is not for you. Use other effective ways to track your progress: take body measurements, test body fat, compare personal photos and access the fit of your clothing.
For more information on healthy eating, visit nutrition expert Joy Bauer at www.joybauernutrition.com.