Why Choose My Plate is terrible diet advice

Since 1980, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has published dietary recommendations every five years to guide Americans in how to make healthy food choices.

Unfortunately, the definition of “healthy” is subject to interpretation.  It is not always based on current valid research and science, and can be heavily influenced by BIG corporations—especially the grain, corn and soy industries.

Let’s put it this way—if the USDA recommendations are truly healthy, then why has our rate of obesity more than doubled since they were first published in 1980, with Type 2 diabetes also exploding during the same time period?

A big concern here is that not only do many people blindly accept what they’re being told, but also professionals such as doctors and dietitians rely on this information as sound advice to pass along.  Plus these guidelines are used as a basis for nutrition programs such as school lunches and public assistance meals—situations where people have little or no control over what they’re given to eat.

The summary of the latest installment of the USDA guides is called “Choose My Plate” (prior editions include the “Food Pyramid”) and trust me, making choices like they recommend can leave you anything but healthy.

Here’s why...

Choose My Plate is terrible diet advice

They recommend 30 percent of each meal to be comprised of grains
Although whole grains do provide more nutrients and fiber than refined grains, ALL grains turn to sugar upon digestion.  In addition to making you fat, sugar stirs up inflammation, taxes your pancreas thereby increasing your risk of Type 2 diabetes, feeds cancer, nourishes unhealthy bacteria and yeasts in your gut (which can weaken your immune system function), and is a leading cause of heart disease.

Note that they also suggest half of your grains be whole grains, but so what?  That means the other half is refined, and they ALL add to your sugar load.

They include legumes as a protein source
Although legumes like black beans and kidney beans do provide protein, most people don’t realize that their predominant macronutrient is still carbohydrates.

For example, a serving of black beans provides 15 grams of protein, but 40 grams of carbs.  Compare that to a chicken breast which provides 43 grams of protein and 0 grams of carbohydrate.

Beans are an excellent source of B vitamins, minerals like magnesium and fiber, but it’s important to know what you’re really getting—far more carbs than protein.

They vilify saturated fats
If I see one more “official source” telling people to minimize saturated fats, choose fat-free dairy and avoid butter, I’ll tear my hair out.  Your body needs all types of fats—saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated—each plays a very important role in your health.

About 1/3 of your daily calorie intake should be fats, with a fair representation of each type.
Saturated fats from Nature (such as red meat and real butter, preferably organic) are crucial to your brain and nervous system functioning plus they’re needed for your body to make hormones.
They have been wrongly demonized and implicated as being a primary cause of heart disease over the last several decades due to some outdated, slanted research from the 1950s, but that’s simply not true and our disease statistics prove it.

Although the death rate from cardiovascular disease has decreased from 1 million deaths in 1970 to about 800,000 in 2010, the actual number of people developing heart disease shot up from 3.4 million in 1970 to 5.8 million in 2010.  (Statistics courtesy of the American Heart Association.)

That boils down to a lot more people are getting heart disease, but medications and surgeries are keeping them from croaking.

Here’s an interesting tidbit--the fat that surrounds your heart and on which it relies during times of stress is saturated fat.  That should tell you something.

They don’t point out dangers of polyunsaturated fats
Polyunsaturated fats like vegetable oils are extremely sensitive to heat and form toxic lipid peroxides, carcinogens, and mutagens when heated, so they should NEVER be used for cooking.

The best choices for cooking are stable saturated fats like butter, lard or tallow.

Plus polyunsaturated oils that are packaged in clear glass or plastic containers should be avoided, as oxygen, heat and light can cause the oils to become rancid.

And margarine and spreads are created by heating polyunsaturated oils, so they’re already denatured even on the store shelves.  They are best avoided at all cost.

They have replaced the balanced diet with the balanced meal
A balanced diet is one that provides the nutrients necessary for the body to function as it should and to maintain proper health—incorporating a wide variety of macronutrients, micronutrients, and fiber.

Nowhere is it written that ALL of these foods must be present in EVERY SINGLE MEAL.

As a matter of fact, our typical meals comprised of every type of food under the sun is a major reason why three out of four Americans suffer from digestive issues.

Keeping meals simpler—pairing a protein OR starch (but not both) with lots of vegetables—makes your stomach’s job much easier and can help curb gas, bloating and heartburn.

In addition, fruit must ideally be eaten alone on an empty stomach—not piled in with a bunch of other foods.  Unlike other foods, fruit is digested exclusively in the small intestine, but when its passage to the intestine is blocked by other foods in the stomach, it can ferment and cause gas and bloating.

For more information on proper food pairing for better digestion and making truly healthy diet choices, check out the Great Taste No Pain system.

The bottom line: Eat real food
The more you stick to real foods like fresh fruits (on an empty stomach of course!), fresh vegetables, meats, poultry, fish, eggs, full-fat dairy, butter, legumes, nuts and seeds, the healthier you will be.  Period.

Now that’s an easy guideline to follow!

Study: Eating fast food is OK if you do this

I won’t be shocking you today by saying that a fast food diet combined with being a couch potato is a sure path to aging and disease.

But you may be surprised to learn that recent research has shown regular exercise may undo the effects of an unhealthy diet on the cellular level!

A study of mice conducted at the Mayo Clinic showed that exercise helped to prevent diabetes-like symptoms by decreasing the effects of an unhealthy diet.

In addition, exercise appeared to help prevent the accumulation of senescent cells in the mice, which are cells that can increase the risk of age-related disease and conditions.

Plus once the mice started exercising, they stopped accumulating belly fat--which is particularly dangerous and can increase the risk of heart disease, kidney disease, and dementia.

Whoa, Nelly!
If your four food groups are Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Dunkin’ Donuts you may be shaking with delight right now thinking all you need to do is take a stroll around the block and you’re golden.

Not so fast.

First of all, “exercise” typically means something more than a casual walk.

Generally speaking, you should do something for at least 30 minutes a day that raises your heart rate and makes you sweat.

And if you’d rather stick needles in your eyeballs than to exercise, here are my top five tips for success:

• Pick an activity you like or will tolerate.  You’ll be more likely to stick with exercise if you don’t loathe what you’re doing.
• Get an exercise buddy.  You’re far less likely to skip a workout if someone is counting on you to show up, plus you can have fun talking and the time will fly by faster.  (This is my friend Liana and I running across the finish line at the Empire State Marathon in 2012—we’ve been exercise buddies for years.)
• Make your goals reasonable.  For example, don't expect to run five miles when the farthest you’ve ever run is from the couch to the refrigerator and back during a commercial.  Even though I’ve run 26.2, I started with a mile or two way back when.
• Celebrate your little victories along the way.  It’s easier to stay motivated when you can look back and see how far you’ve come.
• Remember you’ll rarely ever regret working out, but you’ll almost always regret not working out. 

Just be sure to get your doctor’s OK.

A glaring omission from the study
In addition to not specifying exactly what “regular exercise” is, there was also a glaring omission in the study I quoted above.

The health price of eating nutrient-poor foods!

I don’t care what you do—you can run a marathon every week, but if you’re not nourishing your body with real foods, it’s not a matter of if but merely when will you suffer the consequences.

Here are some examples of what lacking nutrients can do to you:

Heart disease is directly connected to deficiencies in zinc, magnesium, vitamins B6, B12, D, C and E, and folic acid.

Depression can be triggered by low levels of vitamins B3, B6, and B12 as well as vitamin D.

Autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis, lupus, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis and Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism are linked to vitamin D deficiency.

Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia are associated with inadequate levels of vitamin B12, magnesium, and vitamin D.

Cancer can result from numerous possible deficiencies including vitamins A, D, E and K, folic acid, selenium, and zinc.

Type 2 diabetes is commonly seen with deficiencies in biotin, chromium, vanadium, magnesium and vitamin C.

Face the music
Now it’s time to face the music, all you fast food fanatics. You’d better start getting properly nourished or else you’ll be pushing up daisies long before your time.

I know this seem challenging, so I’ll share a personal confession about unhealthy choices:

I used to be a Diet Pepsi-a-holic in my early 20’s but one day the soda machine at work was out of Diet Pepsi so I just got a bottle of water. 

I felt SO GOOD and refreshed after that water it was astonishing…so needless to say that was the end of Diet Pepsi (and all soda) for me.

Even small steps in the right direction can make a big difference.

I tell my clients to start by making just one healthy change or substitution each day.  That could be things like:

• Swapping out a soda for water
• Cooking a meal at home instead of ordering pizza
• Opting for a side salad with your dinner in a restaurant instead of French fries
• Offering a crudité platter and/or shrimp with cocktail sauce instead of chips as appetizers
• Choosing scrambled eggs, yogurt or oatmeal instead of a donut for breakfast

As you’re making strides toward healthier choices, you can ensure your nutritional bases are covered with a high-quality multi-vitamin formula, and promote sound digestion and absorption of those precious nutrients with a good probiotic supplement.

Power the power of nutrition and regular exercise to work in creating the healthiest you that you can be!

To your health,

Sherry Brescia

Why calorie cutting doesn’t work for weight loss

I had a client who lost 40 pounds on a 1,200 calorie diet, but then she hit a brick wall and her scale froze.

She was surprised when I told her the reason her weight loss came to a screeching halt was her 1,200 calorie diet.

Here’s why—let’s start by taking a look at…

How we’ve gotten fat
Over the past 50 years or so, we have been very efficient at creating overweight and obesity.
Our belief that high-carb, low-fat diets are “healthy” and saturated fat is the devil has created a population of people whose bodies are brimming with glucose, suffering from insulin resistance, storing massive amounts of fat and living their days in cycles of sugar spikes and crashes.

In addition, since sugar is an abrasive, inflammation-stirring substance, inflammatory conditions such as heart disease, cancer, arthritis and autoimmune diseases also continue to be our companions and are affecting us at younger and younger ages.

The chemicals in processed, refined foods play a role too.  Chemicals increase food cravings, lead to water retention and actually cause weight gain.

At the same time, our bodies have lacked the fats that they so desperately need, which impairs our brain and nervous system function, compromises the integrity of our cell walls, creates hormonal imbalances and leads to nutritional deficiencies, especially in the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.

And of course during all of this, the drug industry has been more than happy to make an array of products available to mask your pain, reduce your blood pressure or blood sugar, lull you to sleep, perk you up, stop your heartburn, make you happy and shut down your immune system.

So we have become a society of sick, over-drugged, overweight, undernourished people.

Why cutting calories doesn’t work
When you drastically reduce calories, at first you will most assuredly lose weight.  It’s a matter of simple math—taking fewer calories in means your body will resort to its own stores for energy.
But then the game changes.

Your body eventually goes into starvation mode, thinking that food has become scarce.  It tries to conserve energy for you so you don’t keel over.  In its efforts to save calories, it increases your hunger and S-L-O-W-S your metabolism.

And that eventually results in many a “frozen scale.”

Now when this happens, what do many people do?

Cut calories even MORE, that’s what!

But that merely perpetuates the starvation cycle and makes the situation even worse.

Don’t cut calories—nourish your body instead!
What matters far more than cutting calories is nourishing your body with wholesome real foods.  This will help reduce your insulin levels, even out your blood sugar and keep you satisfied longer.

Go organic as much as possible to avoid the chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, hormones and antibiotics used in traditionally raised foods, as well as to steer clear of genetically modified foods.
Avoid all highly processed carbohydrates (including soda!) as much as possible—let beans, fresh vegetables and fruits be your primary carb sources instead.

Get healthy sources of proteins--organic meats and poultry and wild-caught fish are your best bets.

And most importantly, DO NOT shun fats.  About 30 percent of your daily calorie intake should be fats, with a fair representation of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.

Here are some wise fat choices to make sure your body is getting what it needs:

• Good for cooking:  Real butter (both salted and unsalted), lard, tallow, coconut oil, peanut oil, palm oil and olive oil.  These are stable fats that won’t oxidize when heated.
• Good for salads, cold dishes: Olive oil, organic nut oils. 
• Food sources of fats: Red meat, eggs, butter, avocado, nuts, olives and wild-caught fish.
• Consider supplementing: Omega-3 essential fatty acids (fish oil)—because our food supply does not contain the levels of these natural anti-inflammatories like it used to.
• Avoid at all cost:  Trans-fats (commonly referred to as hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils), highly processed vegetable oils, margarine.

Another key to weight loss—sound digestion
Another key to successful weight loss is to have efficient digestion, because if your body is not digesting your foods properly, you are not deriving the full nutritional benefit from them and not eliminating wastes like you should.

Keep your meals simple and make your stomach’s job easier.  Avoid eating animal proteins and starches together, because combinations like that are very taxing on your system.  Strive to make most of your meals proteins, vegetables and fats.

If you’re prone to constipation, probiotics can help by repopulating your supply of beneficial intestinal bacteria.  These helpful good guys help you digest carbs and fiber and keep your BMs running along more like they should.

Digestive enzyme supplements can also help, especially if you’re an acid reducer disciple, are elderly or have had gastric surgery.

See what a difference it can in reaching your weight loss goals when you nourish your body and support better digestion!

To your health,

Sherry Brescia