Not all Fats are BadWritten by Dianne Ronnow
Fats have been unfairly lumped together as being all bad for too long. Fat doesn’t necessarily cause disease, and can actually cause a role in its prevention. The truth is that some fats are very bad for us and some fats are actually very good for us. Time has shown us that diets that restrict all fats fail in terms of weight loss. Since end of World War II, Americans have been told that they need to restrict saturated fat in their diets. So we switched to margarine from butter, and did what we could to restrict fat. We have been constantly told that reason for our health problems is that we still eat too much fat, especially saturated fats. Since Americans have been told to eat a low fat diet to lose weight, results are that nearly two thirds of adult Americans are now classified as overweight and more children are overweight now than ever before. Obviously something is wrong. That is because we need special kinds of fats in our diets that we are not getting. If you are like me, you grew up being told that vegetable oils were good oils and saturated fats were bad ones. Now we are finding out that it is just opposite. Diets that are moderate to high in “good” saturated fats and oils such as coconut oil and olive oil are actually very good for us. They raise good cholesterol levels and lower bad cholesterol, blood glucose and blood pressure. As a matter of fact, people who started adding at least 4 tablespoons of coconut oil to their diets every day, have found that they can now lose weight when they could not before on a fat restricted diet. Sometimes addition of these oils even helps with their health problems. It turns out that bad guys are polyunsaturated oils, which carry toxic fatty acids (long chain fatty acids or LCT’s). These LCT’s tend to produce fat in body. Polyunsaturated oils are vegetable oils we commonly see in grocery store, such as soy, corn, cottonseed, rapeseed and safflower. We have been told that they lower cholesterol, but they way that they do is not healthy, as it ends up collecting in liver. These oils are easily oxidized and damaged by free radicals. When cooked they become rancid in a few hours, even in refrigerator. This causes damage to our body at a cellular level, end results showing up as problems like diabetes, cancer, hypothyroidism and heart disease. And if that is not enough, these oils help us to get fat, lower metabolic rate in our bodies, help suppress thyroid function and cause our skin to age quicker. Trans-fat is one of worst bad guys. Trans-fatty acids often appear on ingredient labels as hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. It is what they do to vegetable oils to make them into hard fats such as margarine and vegetable shortening. It is used in prepared food industry in baked goods like cookies, crackers, and most supermarket peanut butter to prolong shelf life. These bad fats are used almost exclusively in fast foods that are fried. When heated and eaten, they turn into something like poison in your system, because your body can not process this kind of chemically made fat. Trans-fats not only increase levels of bad cholesterol, but they will decrease levels of good cholesterol in blood stream and trans-fatty acids have been linked to heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Fats such as margarine and shortening should be totally avoided, as well as foods items that contain them.
| | Weight Loss: What you MUST Know Before You BeginWritten by Tim Trzcinski
STOP! Don’t even THINK about starting another weight loss program, diet, supplement, shake, energy bar, or other method until you’ve completed one key step to ensuring your success at it. This isn't about seeing your doctor or researching it on internet – you’ve probably already done these things many times before (and if not – you should). This is about preparing you – your mind – for weight loss journey you are about to embark on. And a journey it will be!How many times have you sat there on a Sunday afternoon stuffing yourself with an afternoon meal and proclaiming to your friends and family that “tomorrow I’m starting my diet,” only to have Monday roll around and you’re right back to your old habits? How many New Year’s resolutions and post-Holiday season promises have you made to start that next diet, but instead watched yourself quickly fade back to old routine within a week or less? You had right intentions, right products, right books, right research, right everything. Or so you thought. Maybe you even lost a pound or two, only to regain them a week later as your new weight loss program came to an abrupt halt. You asked yourself, “why do these things never work for me?” and, “why can’t I lose weight like those people in ads do?” The answer is simple: you did not mentally prepare yourself to be a “successful loser!” You said you had right intentions, but what did you do to turn those intentions into a winning plan of action? You said you had enough will power to see it through, but will power only goes so far when it comes to weight loss. Will power is like a brief burst of energy – it excites you, motivates you, and gives you a taste of victory – but then suddenly dies out as quickly as it was mustered. Thus, it takes more than will power: it takes a vision of what you wish to achieve. You must envision what your end goal is – your objective – clearly in your mind. You must determine what your “why” is – your reason for losing weight – before you will truly make a personal commitment to it. And then you must persist at it – with no exceptions – until you achieve your goal and arrive at place you envisioned.
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