I gave a lunch & learn presentation at the Westin Bayshore hotel on Friday. The topic of the presentation was nutrition and below is a point form summary of what I talked about.
Why 5 to 6 smaller meals per day is better than “3 square meals” per day.
- Eating smaller meals more frequently increases your metabolism.
- Digesting food requires energy (known as the thermic effect of food), so eating more often causes you to burn more calories through food digestion.
- Eating smaller meals more frequently will help you avoid the feeling of being hungry. People often make the worst food choices when they are extremely hungry.
Why does sugar promote fat storage?
- Your body must maintain a stable blood sugar level. Whenever you eat or drink something high in sugar, your blood sugar levels spikes, and your body’s natural defense mechanism is to release insulin into your bloodstream. Insulin’s job is to lower your blood sugar level as quickly as possible, and one of the ways this is done is to immediately convert and store the sugar as fat.
Why does alcohol put the brakes on fat burning?
- Binge drinking creates high levels of acetate in your body.
- Definition of binge drinking: 3 or more drinks for a women; 5 or more drinks for a man.
- With high levels of acetate in your body, you burn ZERO fat until the levels return to normal.
- Often takes 24 to 48 hours for acetate levels to return to normal.
- Alcohol often increases your appetite while completely halting your body’s ability to burn fat.
3 nutritional supplements to consider taking.
- Multivitamin
- Omega 3 (Fish Oil)
- Greens (Vital Greens, Greens+)
Best and worst quality protein sources.
- Best sources includes eggs, chicken (skinless), and fish
- Egg whites are the highest quality protein source (yolks are high in fat, and high in cholesterol)
- Worse source is red meat, which is high in fat.
- Regular ground beef is a particularly bad source of protein.
Best and worst quality carbohydrate sources.
- Best sources include whole vegetables and whole grains
- Worse sources include almost anything prepackaged, anything fried, white bread, white rice, white potatoes, most breakfast cereals, soda
Good vs. bad fats.
- Good fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.
- Bad fats: saturated and transfats.
- Monounsaturated fat sources include nuts (peanuts, almonds, walnuts, cashews, pistachios), canola oil, avocados, olive oil.
- Polyunsaturated fat sources include fish oil (omega 3), and sunflower oil.
- Saturated fat sources include meat, dairy, and eggs.
- Transfat sources include fried foods, most prepackaged foods, margarine.
Why are fiber rich foods good for you?
- Fiber helps control your blood sugur levels and helps make you feel fuller, longer.
Why eating healthy is easier than eating unhealthy, provided that you plan ahead.
- Cook food in bulk and freeze it.
- Do this every Sunday evening so that you have all of the coming week’s food prepared in advance.
- Having healthy food available means you will eat less bad foods.
- You often make bad food choices when you are really hungry and have no healthy foods conveniently available.
- When you always have healthy foods pre-made and ready to eat, it’s easier than always needing to come up with something to eat at each meal.
The 80/20 rule; eat healthy 80% of the time, and treat yourself the other 20%.
- Don’t eliminate bad foods from your diet, just eat them in moderation.
- Reward yourself for healthy eating.
- If you completely quit eating all of the unhealthy foods you enjoy, you will eventually “fall off the wagon” and binge on those foods and end up further behind than when you started.
Book recommendation (5-Factor Diet).
- Based on healthy eating of whole foods, not fad dieting.
- 5 components to each meal: low fat protein, complex carbs, good fat, fiber, sugar free beverage.
- 5 ingredients per recipe.
- 5 minutes of prep time per recipe (doesn’t include cooking time).
- 100+ easy recipes.
