Is what you're drinking helping or hindering your weight loss efforts?

What you drink does impact your calorie intake. The average American currently derives 21% of their caloric intake from beverages, which adds up to a whopping 464 calories a day! The majority of those are empty-calories coming from sweetened beverages.[i]

For a little perspective, decades ago, the earliest soft drinks were sold in 6.5-oz bottles (78-calories) and were a very occasional treat. Today the average soft drink serving is 21-ounces (up from 13.6 oz. in 1977), and clocks in at a whopping 252-calories. Not only that, but over the same time frame servings per day increased from 1.96 to 2.39.

Click to read more ...

Which Protein Foods are Best at Keeping Hunger Away?

Knowing something about appetite regulation will support your efforts at eating fewer calories over the course of the day, which translates directly into better success with weight loss or maintenance.

As I discussed in my recent blog 5 Things you Need to Know about Protein for Healthy Weight Loss  protein "stays with you longer" than "carbs" or fat. This characteristic of protein supports your efforts at eating fewer calories over the course of the day. That however is not the end of the story.

We also need to also look at which types of protein are most and least satiating. The first example is liquid proteins, which are a complete exception to the rule. Liquid proteins are NOT more satiating than the other macronutrients (carbohydrates and fat).

Click to read more ...

5 Things You Need to Know about Protein for Healthy Weight Loss

How healthy is the diet you’re choosing? When you’re looking at fad diets odds are you’re not thinking much about the potential health consequences of the suggested regime. You might think, “Oh what’s the possible harm?” Or, “I’m only going to do this for a short time.” Dieting however isn’t risk free; here are a few things--just regarding protein--to think about.

Protein helps with important components of healthy successful weight loss.

Click to read more ...

The Dukan Diet: 5 things to know

The Dukan Diet--another twist on high-protein/low-carb--is one of the latest best sellers among fad-diet books. Fad diets are always sold as some magical breakthrough, or magical combination of eating the "right things, in the right way." The reality is that high-protein diets date back over 150 years (to 1860!), and if they actually worked--in the long term--we wouldn't have two-thirds of our population overweight or obese.

Here's five things to think about before choosing to take the plunge:

Click to read more ...

Glycemic Load: What you should know

In my last post I explained that the popularity of glycemic index among dieters is based on myths about the affect of insulin on hunger, fat storage and weight gain. Glycemic index does have value however, just not what the fad-diet books claimed.

The glycemic index (GI) value of a particular food tells you how rapidly exactly 50 grams of carbohydrate from that food will move into your blood. The weakness of the glycemic index is that you don't generally eat food portions that provide exactly 50-grams of carbohydrate.

Click to read more ...