Overlooked Weight Loss Factors Pt 1: Eating with Others

(My Original Blog Post: http://nakednutritionnetwork.com/overlooked-weight-loss-factors-pt-1-eating-with-others/)
[caption id="attachment_2758" align="alignright" width="127" caption="One of the best books you'll read this year"][/caption]

There is always a lot of talk about diet and exercise when it comes to weight loss. Certain ratios of protein and carbohydrates seem to be important. Whether or not you need to be doing 4, 10, or 20 minute metabolic workouts is currently a much talked about topic. Last night I started re-reading Tom Venuto's "The Body Fat Solution" and the introduction got me thinking about the factors that are over looked in most weight loss programs. These overlooked areas (many of which Tom does an excellent job of covering in his book) are really the key to success.

As I have said before, losing weight is self isn't that hard. Keeping the weight you lost is difficult. What are the overlooked factors in both the areas of weight loss and weight maintenance that if you were to just pay a little bit of attention to could make all the difference? Over the next couple posts I'd like to explore some of theses with you to better your chances of permanent success and living a strong, fit, and healthy life.

Environment

I"m not talking about the feng shui of your dinner plate but factors that drive your eating environment. Researchers have identified 4 key factors in your eating environmental:

• Eating Atmospherics (Lighting, Noise & Music, etc)


• Eating Effort


• Eating with others


• Eating distractions.

For the most part I recommend that you do your best to control what you eat through proper planning and preparation which can take eating atmospheric influences such as "people will eat more in colder rooms and drink more in warmer rooms" (I didn't make that up) out of the equation as you just eat what you had planed regardless of the humidity level in the room.

But even with all the best planning in the world you can't (and wouldn't want to) eat alone; thus it is important to recognize the under the radar factors that come into play when eating with others. Combine this with the fact that a lot of eating in larger groups occurs at restaurants or parties where the food selection can be less than ideal and it is pretty easy to fall off the wagon.

Now, I don't have to work very hard to convince you that the presence of other people will influence both what and how much is eaten.  I'm sure you've had the experience where you were going to order one particular dish but the person you were with orders a different dish and you end up saying something like "oh, I'll have that to."

What I find really interesting is that research from Georgia State University shows that people can eat up to 33% more when eating with someone else compared to eating alone and that percentage increases as the size of the group increases. Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating, has also pointed out that the variance associated with how much is eaten in these group situations becomes smaller as the group get bigger; which basically means that people are more consistent about eating more food as the size of the group they are in gets bigger.

Here are some other stats from Dr. de Castro at Georgie State University. We eat more people close to use compared to just having random people around:

• Spouse - 22% more


• Family - 23% more


• Friend - 14% more

But we eat less around coworkers (16% less).

[caption id="attachment_2764" align="aligncenter" width="298" caption="Do you eat more with certain people?"][/caption]

While some may argue the exact percentages and statistics, go ahead as those don't matter as much to me. Look at the big picture. Are you unknowingly eating more around certain people? Are you unknowingly making different food choices when you eat with certain people. Just take a couple minutes today to think about this and apply it to your life. Recognizing these situations in your life and making sure that you don't succumb to under the radar influences will help you live a strong, fit, and healthy life while maintaining the body weight you want.

Ketogenic Diets - Effective, But Are They Healthy?

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/95TC3)
There has been a lot more QnA going on at the Naked Nutrition Facebook Page (If you haven't already, make sure to head over, click image below, and 'Like It') and so I'll start answering some of the questions in more depth here on the blog.

Today's question comes from Shawn and it is about the ketogenic diets and if they are healthy?

"I know that keto diets are effective for losing fat, but is it a healthy way of eating otherwise? After staying true to the WSFL diet for a while, I may have lost some weight, but I just don't feel like I'm giving my body what it needs to be healthy (specifically, enough vegetables; for one, I don't feel like I get enough dietary fiber on this diet, not to mention all the other good stuff veggies bring to the table). I'm completely off the starchy and grainy carbs, but do fibrous carbs actually prevent ketosis as well?"

Let me answer the second part of your question, then the first. The normal timeline of a ketogenic diet is a 2 week 'induction' followed by several phases (of in determinant length) with increased levels of carbohydrates. During the induction phase you would only take in <20g/d of carbohydrates. This is really the only time you would need to worry about monitoring whether or not you are in ketosis. You can monitor your ketotic status (I don't think ketotic is an actual word but you know what I mean) with Ketostix. During this time period you really do need to be careful about your carbohydrate intake and the ketostix are useful at monitoring your ketone production.

[caption id="attachment_2749" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Ketostix Bayer Reagent Strips for Urinalysis"][/caption]

After the two week period you can increase your carbs up to 50g/d. These carbs should come mainly in the form of vegetables so you shouldn't feel like you are restricting you vegetable intake too much because 50 grams of carbs give you...

• 12.5 cups of broccoli florets or


• 7 cups of cooked spinach or


• 1 head of cabbage or


• 7 medium size red bell peppers or


• 8 cups of cherry tomatoes

So the answer to the second part of your questions is...No, you don't need to restrict your intake of fibrous carb because as you can see from the list above it would require a lot of fibrous carbs to top 50 grams/day. You don't need to worrying about monitoring urinary ketosis beyond the induction peroid anyway, just monitor your fat loss.

Now to transition to the first part of your question regarding getting ample antioxidant and 'goodies' from vegetables.  1 serving of broccoli is acutally only 1/2 a cup so if you ate only broccoli you would be getting 25 servings of vegetables per day (not that I'm recommending eating only broccoli - the math is just easy with that as an example). The current recommendations for vegetable intake is only 5 servings (2.5 cups) per day!

My clients and other people that use Naked Nutrition always eat way more fruits and vegetables than are currently recommended even when on lower carbohydrate diets. Also Dr. Jeff Volek anecdotally told me once that the people whom participate in the low carb diet studies he runs at the University of Connecticut always find themselves eating more vegetables on the low carb diets compared to their normal eating habits.

As you transition away from weight loss to a diet maintenance phase you will increase your carbohydrate intake even more. I recommend that you do this by adding more fruits and vegetables as well as fiber rich grains (for breakfast and following workouts per the 6th Pillar of Nutrition). For more specifics on this transition check out my chapter in the Warp Speed Fat Loss Nutrition Manual called "Life After Warp Speed Fat Loss."