Diet Tactics to Help You Avoid "Sneaky" Calories
By: Grace Cook
Diet Basic. Stick with small servings.
For many of us, it's a struggle to stay on the fitness track. This is mostly because we often have a skewed perspective of our eating habits. There are things that we do that make it harder for us to shed off unwanted pounds.
Thus, I've compiled three common diet saboteurs that we always encounter:
1. Pass on the soda. According to researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, for every can of soda that you drink daily, your risk of gaining weight rises by as much as 37 percent. You also have to take it easy on diet sodas because they contain artificial sweeteners, which may mess up the body's ability to keep track of the calories you've consumed.
2. Dine out less. Rachel Brandeis, a registered dietitian, reveals: "Restaurant meals usually have about 50 percent more calories, fat, and sodium [than the dishes] prepared at home." This is because even seemingly healthy choices such as fish are likely to be cooked with the liberal use of oil or butter.
3. Go small. Researchers at the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab in Ithaca, New York discovered that when people have smaller dishes, they serve themselves smaller portions. This way you can easily keep track of the amount of food you consume.
It goes to show that if we're serious about getting fit, we have to spot the habits that would easily derail us from our goal of shedding the pounds that weigh us down. We have to make changes that would help us eat healthy.
Credits: Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
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Comments
I'd actually recommend that anyone thinking of drinking diet sodas reads the info online about the negative reactions many people have to these, especially aspartame and sucralose, so they can make an informed decision.
I know (to paraphrase Miranda in SATC!) you can type pretty much ANYTHING into a search engine, and just wait for the word "cancer" to pop up... but these chemicals are really drawing some seriously bad reactions, and personally I wouldn't go near them with a bargepole: not least because they just keep you dependent on sweetness, which isn't solving the problem at all.
My wife and I drank lots of diet soda and consumed other food products containing Aspertame. She started having dizzy spells and numbness, which research suggested can be caused by the sweetener. So we threw away everything with artificial sweeteners. Her dizzy spells stopped after about two weeks, and my insulin requirements (I'm type 1 diabetic) decreased markedly. So at least some of the sweetener stories are true.
By the way, February of last year is when I started consuming a lot more Aspertame, and that's the same time I started gaining weight (for the first time in my life). Maybe there's a connection.
Great article. I would also add the great tip of "write it down" to lose weight fast. When you record what you eat or drink (even that handful of M&Ms) you will become more accountable to yourself and less likely to mindlessly consume calories.
Jill Fleming, MS, RD
Author of "Thin People Don't Clean Their Plates"
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