bite my words

Dispelling nutrition myths, ranting, and occasionally, raving


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Soup diet

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Along with the proliferation of people wearing as little clothing as possible this time of year, there seems to be a lot of people going on soup diets.

I just want to say: these diets are ridiculous. Basically, you can consume as much soup as you like but nothing else. The soups are vegetarian and don’t contain any starchy vegetables. Essentially, you’re consuming very few calories, as it would be hard to consume many through these low-cal soups alone. Along with no starch, you’re also getting no fat and no protein. Not satisfying, not sustainable, not healthy.

I know that people are doing this with the notion of “kick-starting” themselves into losing weight and getting healthy. However, more often than not, people on these diets get frustrated with feeling hungry, and the lack of variety, after a couple of days and end-up quitting by gorging on something high-cal and all thoughts of healthy choices are thrown out the window. Much better to start making small, sustainable healthy changes to your diet than to try to subsist on soup alone.


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Why cheating makes me angry

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Reading the article How Nutrition Pros Cheat — And Get Away With It irked me. The author begins by making a great point. That many people trying to lose weight have an all or nothing mentality and don’t permit themselves to have certain foods when they’re dieting. The problem is, that’s not realistic. You can’t expect yourself to never have your less than healthy favourites ever again. If you’re forbidding yourself from having them then you’re not likely to maintain that diet and meet your goals. 

What irked me about the article was the continuous referral to unhealthy favourites as “cheat” foods. This just perpetuates the mentality that the author is suggesting getting away from. If you’re thinking of a food as a “cheat” then you’re still on a Diet. In order to develop healthier relationships with food we need to avoid demonizing foods and thinking of indulgences as cheating. Your healthy eating should be part of your overall healthy lifestyle. A permanent change. Not a temporary diet. This doesn’t mean never eating unhealthy food. It means learning where, when, and how much of these foods you can consume without guilt and without derailing your nutrition goals. Letting yourself have a small ice cream cone is not “cheating”. Never allowing yourself to enjoy ice cream again is cheating yourself out of the pleasure of enjoying one of your favourite foods. 


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Not so sweet sweat

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I was struggling for blogspiration this week. Fortunately a friend and fellow dietitian came through by sharing this post about Sweet Sweat with me.

This product purportedly encourages localized fat-loss during exercise. The post claims that if you touch an area of your body with little or no fat that it will be much warmer to the touch than an area of the body with “stubborn fat”. This difference (which I’m not buying – my tummy feels warmer than my arm) is attributed to the “fact” that there is less circulation to the area of your body with the greater amount of fat. Supposedly, applying Sweet Sweat to your troublesome areas before a workout will increased the circulation to the area and thus the fat will pretty much melt away.

What are the magical ingredients in Sweet Sweat? Their website doesn’t say. It doesn’t really matter anyway. Lotion or no lotion, you can’t target specific areas of your body to reduce fat. If you want to know the truth about exercise and health you should read The Cure for Everything by Tim Caulfield and  Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights by Alex Hutchinson. The short of it is that you can’t control which areas of your body to lose fat from when you’re working out. The harder you exercise, and the healthier a diet you consume, the more likely you are to achieve the results you want. Sweet Sweat is not going to help you reach your fitness goals.


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Beware of ads posing as articles

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I was recently told about this article praising green coffee bean extract for its weight loss properties. Apparently a woman in Toronto took it and, without making any additional lifestyle change, lost 29 pounds in four weeks!

As soon as I started reading the article I knew it was an advertisement. At a glance, it appears to be a legitimate news article. The header reads “Consumer Lifestyles”. However, the writing style is that of an ad, not of journalism. If you click on any of the links (i.e. beauty, health, nutrition, about, contact) at the top of the page, they all direct you to the home page for the weight loss supplement brand being advertised in the “article”.

There is no good science to date to support the use of green coffee bean extract for weight loss. Check out Science Based Pharmacy for the facts.

The fictional woman in the advertisement bemoans that weight loss clinics and diet programs were too expensive. You know what’s an even less expensive method of weight loss than a bottle of (more than likely) useless pills? A healthy diet and regular exercise.


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What’s the benefit of exercise?

I was listening to the radio the other day and they were interviewing a Dr who conducted some research on a physical activity intervention on elementary school children. The segment was introduced as being about obesity. I can’t recall exactly what the intervention was but, naturally, it had no effect on obesity levels in the children.

I know that obesity is the big thing right now (pun totally intended) but I think that we need to stop approaching every study about exercise and nutrition as a weight loss intervention. We already know that diet generally accounts for about 80% of the weight loss equation. Therefore, logically, physical activity interventions are unlikely to have a significant effect on weight.

This focus on obesity causes us to lose focus on other benefits to be had from physical activity. Just because children didn’t lose weight from the intervention doesn’t mean that such interventions aren’t worthwhile. Benefits of physical activity and exercise include: increased healthspan, decreased risk of many chronic diseases (e.g. depression, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, some forms of cancer, osteoporosis, dementia), stronger immune system, increased energy, better quality of sleep, etc. I always say that exercise is my drug of choice.

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