Get Your “5 A Day” For Under 25 CarbsWritten by Lee Dobbins
You can’t eat fruits and vegetables on a low carb diet, right? Wrong! Fruits and vegetables are a vital part of any diet and supply vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other nutrients that are important to your health and well being. Even though most people know value of fruits and vegetables, it seems a lot of people get caught up in thinking that they must eat only meat on a low carb eating plan and often don’t get enough fruits and vegetables despite what their diet plans recommend. You should try to eat at least minimum USRDA of fruits and vegetables, especially raw, to provide you with fiber which is not found in meats and can be lacking on a low carb eating plan, as well as vitamins and minerals for added energy.How much do you need? The USDA recommends that you get 2-4 servings of fruits and 3-5 servings of vegetables a day. The actual amount of servings recommended for each individual is based on their recommended calorie intake. So, if you eat1600 calories a day you would want 2 servings of fruits and 3 servings of vegetables, if you eat 2200 calories a day you should have 3 servings fruit and 4 servings vegetables and if you eat 2800 calories a day you should eat 4 servings fruit and 5 servings vegetables. But one of great things about low carb eating is that you don’t have to count calories, so how do you figure out how many servings you need if you don’t know how many calories you are eating? Well, first off, You can’t eat “too many” fruits and vegetables so if you can fit in max servings (or more) and still stay within your carb budget than go for it! Otherwise, you might judge amount of servings you need by assessing your size and activity level. If you are small and/or have a sedentary lifestyle than you would probably fall into 1600 calorie category and, therefore should target 2 servings fruits and 3 of vegetables. If you are a bigger person and/or very active you should probably target higher range of servings. What is a serving? When measuring out servings of fruits and vegetables it is important that you stick to amount for 1 serving, otherwise you will be adding more carbs and could go over your limit. Below are serving sizes for raw and cooked foods:
| | Negative Calorie Foods & Weight LossWritten by P. Mehta
Negative Calorie Foods & Weight LossCopyright 2004 P. Mehta, u>www.fatfreekitchen.com You gain weight when your calorie intake is more than your calorie expenditure. But if this calorie equation is reversed, then it results in "negative calorie" balance in your body. In this negative calorie case, you expand more calories than you take in, resulting in a decrease in stored calories in form of body fat, and you experience a weight loss. About 10% of daily caloric intake is used to process foods in body. You can expand more by doing physical activities. There are certain foods that show negative calorie effect because body has to expand more energy to extract calories from these foods. The negative calorie foods need more calories to break down foods and digest than calories foods actually contain. The extra calories are taken up from stored fat in body. Thus negative calorie foods (may also be called as minus calorie foods or fat burning foods) are ideal for reducing body fat and for losing weight. Let us take an example. A piece of dessert consisting of 300 calories may require only 150 calories to be digested by our body, resulting in a net gain of 150 calories which is added to our body fat! So if you eat 100 calories of a food that requires 150 calories to digest, then you have burnt an additional 50 calories simply by eating that food. These 50 calories are used up from stored fat in your body!
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