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Greg Landry's Articles.. Using Fat
and Fiber for Easier Weight Loss Greg:
Tonight, we’re talking about using fat and fiber to control your
appetite and increase satiety.
This is something that I think is often overlooked, but it is
obviously an important topic because your appetite plays a major role in
how you eat or don’t eat. Fat and fiber are powerful ways to increase
satiety and thus control your appetite. So we’ll talk about some of
those details tonight. Let’s
start with fiber. Back in the 1970’s and 80’s was when a lot of the
research started coming out that said, “Fiber’s really important.
It’s important for health. It’s important for weight
management.” A lot of people really jumped on the fiber bandwagon
because we saw all the beneficial effects of it.
Let me just tell you a couple of those beneficial effects. As far as weight management goes, fiber is the bulk in your diet. It’s what gets you full. It’s what keeps you full for a longer period of time. It also acts as sort of a natural fat blocker. Many people don’t realize this, but fiber in your stomach actually absorbs some of the fat you consume and passes it out of your body before it’s even absorbed into your bloodstream. There are all these fat blocker products on the market that you certainly don’t want to be using, but fiber is a natural fat blocker. It
also increases to several times it’s size or bulk by absorbing water.
So it creates bulk and satiety. Obviously you also know that fiber
is good for the digestive system, helps to prevent certain cancers of the
digestive system, and to it also helps to prevent common digestive tract
problems. So all around, lots of good reasons both for health and for
weight management, to be consuming a lot of fiber.
Now we can break food down into two basic groups as far as fiber is concerned. Any food that comes from a plant—so we’re talking about fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts—any food that comes from a plant has some fiber in it. Obviously some of those have more fiber than others, but every plant food has some fiber. The other category is any food that comes from an animal. We are talking about any type of meat, whether it’s beef, chicken, fish, yogurt, milk, butter, anything that comes from an animal has no fiber at all - it is completely fiberless. That’s one of the reasons that I really encourage people to focus on plant based foods and to eat animal derived foods in moderation. There are several reasons for that, but one of them is fiber. So,
every plant food has some fiber, every animal food has no fiber.
That being said, some plant products have more fiber than others.
This will give you fiber content for quite a large number of foods
so that you can get a feel for where the fiber is.
Now, just to give you the big picture and to give you an idea of what you should be consuming—Most of the health organizations recommend at least 30 grams of fiber per day, but as far as weight management and optimal health goes, you really should up that to at least 50 grams of fiber per day. So just by looking at this site, you can kind of get a feel for where the fiber is and add up what you are eating and be sure that you are getting at least 50 grams of fiber a day. By
the way, research suggests that there is a very direct correlation between
how well someone does at weight loss and how much fiber they consume. So,
more fiber equals more success with weight loss, and obviously the health
benefits that come with that. Less fiber means less success with it. So
your goal should be to consume a lot of fiber. That’s what you want to
be looking for in a lot of the foods you eat. Just a couple of things about grains. I think this is one of the most misunderstood things. I think that everybody knows that you should try to eat whole grains, but I don’t think most people know how critical that is. The difference between eating a piece of truly whole wheat bread for example, versus white processed bread, is like night and day. I mean, literally, you should avoid the white processed product like the plague! It is that bad and void of everything good. Completely on the other hand, that whole grain slice of bread is what you are looking for, the vitamins, the minerals, the fiber content. So you want to be absolutely sure in any grain—we are talking primarily about bread, pasta, rice, anything that is made with a grain—that you absolutely getting 100% whole grain. I can’t emphasize this enough. There’s a HUGE difference between the two. So,
how do you determine that?
First of all, it’s easy to get fooled.
For example: Most of the bread that you see in your grocery store
is not whole grain bread. However, it’s made to look like whole grain
bread because the manufacturers know that’s kind of what people are
looking for, but they’re not going to look too hard. So, they’ll put
it in a brown wrapper. They’ll even color the bread brown. A lot of that
is essentially white bread that is colored brown. It’s in a dark wrapper
sometimes. Sometimes they’ll call it “wheat bread”. It sounds like
whole wheat, right?
That’s what it sounds like when you see that. Here
are a couple of things that you can to do to be sure that you are truly
getting a whole grain.
First of all, look at the very first ingredient on the list. For
example, with whole wheat bread, it should say, ”whole wheat flour”.
Now here’s the trick. They can leave off the word “whole”,
which they often do, and just put “wheat flour”, and that sounds like
whole wheat to most people.
It has to say “whole wheat”. The word “whole” has to be in
there. Again, it is the difference between night and day, just that word
“whole” being there or not. The
second thing you can do is to use an equation I like to use that’s
called the SQ equation. You can not only use this on bread or cereal or
any grains, but really any food, to give you a general read on the
"healthiness" of a food. To do this, you divide calories by
grams of fiber.
So for example, you pick up a loaf of bread or a box of cereal and
there are 100 calories per serving and 5 grams of fiber per serving.
One hundred divided by five is twenty, so your SQ rating for this
particular food would be 20, which is good. The lower the better. Anything
under 60 is good, but the lower the better. So, an SQ rating of 20 would
be better than an SQ rating of 30. It’s
calories divided by grams of fiber. If you are looking to get additional fiber into your diet, another way is to use something called flax seed. I am really high on flax seed for a couple of reasons. It’s a little brown seed that is primarily composed of two things. Number one, it’s fiber. It’s very fiber-rich. Number two, it’s composed of an oil called Omega-3 fat. If you’re familiar with this, the oil that we consume is broken down into two categories, essential and non-essential. Non-essential means we don’t have to consume it for health. Our body can produce it from other oils. Essential oil has to be consumed. We can’t produce it internally. Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats or oils are two of these essential oils, Omega-3 being the one that 95% of Americans are deficient in. It is very critical, first of all, for health. It forms a lot of your cell walls, a lot of your hormones. So the effects aren’t immediate, but over time they rear their heads in a variety of ways that we can’t often tie to that. But it is thought that a deficiency of Omega-3 fat in people’s diets creates a lot of problems long-term. So for health reasons, you want to be sure that you are consuming it, but also for weight management reasons. Researchers believe that when your body is not getting enough Omega-3 fat (oil) it tends to hold onto fat in general. In other words it says, “Hey, body! We’re not getting enough of this Omega-3 fat, so let’s not let our fat go.” In other words, it’s a protective mechanism. So it makes weight loss more difficult. Your body wants to hold onto that fat because it’s not getting enough essential Omega-3 fat. The other thing about Omega-3 fat is that it has a high satiety level. When you eat Omega-3 fat, it satisfies your hunger and keeps you satisfied for a longer period of time. So flax seed is an excellent seed, you eat it ground up, to add to your food. It’s a little brown seed. You can buy it some grocery stores, but just about every health food store will have it. You can buy it whole or ground. The fat, the oil in that, the Omega-3 fat is not a very stable one. That means that it spoils fairly easily. So it is much better to buy the whole seed. Once it’s ground, it spoils very easily and loses a lot of its nutrients. So buy it in a health food store or in a grocery store whole. Keep it in your refrigerator and then grind either what you need for that day or what you need for three or four days. You really shouldn’t keep it ground for more than three or four days. You can grind it in a very simple, inexpensive coffee grinder. If you don’t have one, WalMart has these little coffee grinders for $8 to $10 that work great. So you either grind up what you need for that day or enough for three or four days. It is a great source of fiber, a great source of Omega-3 fat. You really should have about two to four tablespoons of the ground flax seed per day. You can sprinkle it on anything. I sprinkle it on cereal, rice, vegetables. I put it in smoothies, in yogurt. It has a very slight nutty taste, not a very strong taste at all, so it’s very convenient to work into your eating. Now,
one more thing on fiber—I think that I mentioned this earlier, but this
is a critical part of this. Obviously we know that water consumption is
important for health. We know that it’s important for weight management,
for both metabolism so that your cells are well-hydrated and your
metabolism is working as it should, and for the way that it affects
satiety, just having that volume in your stomach. But fiber absorbs water.
That’s part of where it gets its volume and part of the reason it keeps
you full and helps digestion. So you want to be sure as you are eating
more fiber that you are also drinking water. You should be doing that
regardless, for health and weight management reasons. But it is even more
important when you are consuming the fiber that you are drinking enough
water.
Now,
let’s talk a little bit about fats. We tend in this country with
“dieting” to swing in extreme directions. Right now we’re swinging
into the low-carb high fat thing. A while back, it was low fat.
There is no doubt in my mind, based on all the evidence that we
have seen over decades, that our bodies were designed to eat a diet.
When I say “diet”, I don’t mean it in the sense that we
normally say it, but meaning just the way we eat - a diet that is very
rich in carbohydrates. Our bodies run on that. Our metabolism runs on
that. We think best on it, we function best on it with moderate fat and
protein.
Now, for a while we swung down to almost no fat and that was a
problem. Fat needs to be in moderation but it doesn’t need to be
practically nonexistant. There are two reasons for that. Number one, for health. Fats, especially the healthy fats, are very important to health, and I think we know that. But secondly, for weight management, fat is important in giving food taste and it is important in satiety. So you stay satisfied for longer, which means that you don’t need as much volume. So it is important for satiety and it is also important for taste in food. That is how fat should be used. So
it shouldn’t be way down to where you are practically not consuming any
fat, but again, obviously you don’t want to be consuming too much fat.
The fat that you are consuming you want to be the healthy fat.
Just like we talked about with grains, where there is a night and
day difference between whole grains and white processed grain, there is a
night and day difference between good fats and fats that aren’t good, or
“bad fats”, and the way that they affect your health. So you really
want to be sure that the majority of what you are consuming is good fats.
That is primarily unsaturated, monounsaturated, polyunsaturated fats.
Saturated fats are the bad guys.
Saturated
fats (the bad guys) are found mostly in animal products.
They occur naturally that way. We also produce saturated fats. If
you look on a label and you see “hydrogenated” or “partially
hydrogenated” fat, that’s an unhealthy fat - an unsaturated fat that
has been made into a bad fat or saturated fat.
So any time you see hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fat,
that is not a good thing and not something that you want to be consuming.
So your focus should be on the good fat.
As far as the fat that you use in every day life, I just want to
make a couple of recommendations on this and how to spread it out. First of all, while you’re losing weight, your goal should be roughly 30 to 40 grams give or take a little, per day. As much as possible, you want to spread that out through your day. If you remember a while back, we talked about caloric consumption and how your body handled up to about 500 calories in any one sitting pretty well. Obviously that is “give or take” and will vary from individual to individual. Once you get over 500 calories your body has trouble handling and using that all at one time. With
fat, that number is about 10 grams of fat at a sitting. Your body can
handle that pretty well. Once you get above 10 grams, maybe towards 15 of
20, that’s more fat than your body can use for energy in one given
sitting and it has to store that. You get into a lot of problems there.
So, if you can spread your fat consumption out and try to keep it to under
about 10 grams at any sitting, that is a good idea. So
in every day life, what should most of the fat in your diet be consumed
from? Well, very little of it should come from animal products. If you eat
animal products, you should be sure that they are lean animal products. So
if you eat chicken, be sure the skin is off and you aren’t getting much
fat there. If you eat beef, you want to be sure that it’s as lean as
possible. If you drink cow’s milk you want to be sure that it’s a very
low fat cow’s milk. Very little of your fat should come from animal
products. Most of it should come from vegetable products - vegetable oils. Now, the best all-around oil that you can use in food in any way and in cooking also, is olive oil. Olive oil is an extremely healthy fat. It is right up there with the best fats that you can consume. Another important thing about olive oil - All oils denature - That is, their chemical structure changes when they’re heated and that’s not a good thing, but they all do it to some degree. However, that happens to a lesser degree with olive oil than with any of the other oils. So it’s also a good oil to cook with. I like using olive oil as a salad dressing just either by itself or with ground pepper or some type of a seasoning in it. It’s very tasty and you don’t have all the junk that you have in commercial salad dressings. So it’s a good all-around healthy oil, both for salads, adding to vegetables, for cooking with, etc. The other type of oil that is very rich in Omega-3 fat, the very healthy fat that most of us are deficient in, is in flax seed. Obviously when you eat the flax seed itself you are getting some of that oil. But you can also consume the oil straight. They sell flax seed oil. Some people like to use this on salads. It has a bit of a stronger taste than olive oil. Some people like it and some people don’t, but it’s another very healthy oil. So that’s what you want to be using for cooking, that’s what you want to be adding to your food. Again, I like using olive oil in a salad as a dressing. I like mixing a little with vegetables or brown rice. It’s healthier than butter to put on toast or something like that. It’s an excellent all-around oil and it helps to keep your appetite satisfied for a longer period of time. Now
the other interesting thing about the research that has been done on
this—We know that fiber is very potent at affecting satiety and making
you feel full and keeps you full for a longer period of time.
We know that fat does the same thing.
So you would think that if you combine the two that you would
double the power. Actually,
research suggests that you not only double it, but quadruple the
“satiety power” if you will, of these two. So,
when you put fiber and fat together it is VERY powerful at satisfying your
hunger and keeping you satisfied for a long period of time. For
example, I like to take true whole grain pasta and boil it, maybe
mix it with vegetables or some type of seasoning, and add a teaspoon or
two of olive oil. I find that it has a great taste. It makes it a lot more
filling. You’re mixing that fiber and that oil.
This takes some planning. It doesn’t just happen. Health takes effort. It would be alot easier to go to McDonalds. The fat that you don’t want is the 50 grams or whatever it is that you get from a double “whatever” burger at McDonald’s or Burger King. That’s the bad stuff that’s loaded with saturated fat. That will keep you full too, but it’s just not the healthy way to do it or the way that’s good for weight management. So, this takes some work and some planning. Go
to the site that I referenced earlier and look at those foods. See where
the fiber is. Work on getting 50 grams of fiber in your diet today. Work
on getting 30 to 40 grams of primarily healthy fat, whether that’s from
olive oil, flax seed oil or other plant sources. I promise you that
putting fat and fiber together and working that into your diet, spreading
it out throughout the day—I think you’ll be surprised at how much that
affects satiety and keeps you satisfied for a longer period of time
without getting hungry. Questions? Janice:
Hi, Greg. This is Janis. Greg: Hi Janis. Janice:
In terms of meat products, lean meat products, do you recommend
that they be 10%—if you can get them as lean as possible? Greg:
Yes. Janis:
I know that you talk about “lean”, but is there a percentage that you
think—I tend to look for 10% for “lean’, and sometimes it’s hard. Greg:
Are you talking about beef in particular? Janis:
I’m talking about chicken or beef. I have a concern about some of the
meats when they grind them. Because sometimes they’ll grind them up and
add the fat and it’s mixed in with it, as opposed to if you get your own
and skin it, take all the fat out and then grind it yourself. Greg: That’s a good point, Janis. Very seldom can you get ground meat, whether it’s beef or even turkey without added fat that's ground in. We tend to think, “Ground turkey, healthy, low fat…”, but that’s an easy way for them to add filler in the form of fat. So, I would always—If you want something ground I would always buy it whole yourself because you can just about guarantee anything you get that’s ground has some added fats, if not "parts and pieces" that they have ground in there. That’s a good point. Something
like chicken, especially white meat, is very lean, especially without the
skin. You
need to be careful with beef because a lot of that fat is interwoven in
there. But that is a good point. You never want it ground. You want to be
sure that you can control that and that you know what’s in there. The
same thing is true with turkey.
It’s good lean meat, but you want to be sure that you get the
turkey breast or the whole turkey or whatever so that you know that
there’s not fat in there, or very little.
That’s a good question.
Stephanie:
This is Stephanie, Greg. What’s your opinion of avocado? Greg: Avocado? Well, it’s one of those things—There are a few of those vegetables—And I guess that coconut would be considered a fruit—that are very high in fat and if I remember right, avocado even has some saturated fat, but a good healthy food loaded with nutrition. Unlike broccoli for example, there’s no fat. You can eat tons of it and never have to worry about it. Avocado
is one of those few plant foods where you wouldn’t want to sit down and
eat three at a sitting. But here’s the good thing. It’s loaded with
nutrition. It tastes good.
It creates a wonderful consistency in things that you mix like
guacamole and salads etc., and, it’s very good at affecting satiety. I
would certainly say use it, but be aware of the fat that’s in there and
use it in moderation. I talked earlier about fat having three purposes,
nutrition, satiety and taste. This is one of those cases where it can
really affect taste and satiety. So just use it in moderation. Other
questions? Let
me just run over one more thing and we’ll wrap things up.
If you haven’t accessed this yet, I put together three
reports,
one is entitled “Healthy Snacks”.
Essentially what I have there is some healthy cereals. It is
certainly not an exhaustive list but it gives you an idea of some of the
healthy cereals and what kind of fiber they have and SQ ratings there. Scroll
down—I think it’s the second report. One of them is on soy milk, one
is on salad dressings and one is on healthy snacks. The healthy snack list
has a bunch of cereals. Let me just give you some of these. Remember, if
the SQ rating is under 60 (but lower is even better), you can feel pretty
good about the fiber content you’re getting in that food. Again, it’s
calories divided by grams of fiber. Let me just run through a few of these. There are a lot of good cereals on the market and this is not an exhaustive list, but just something to give you an idea. There is a cereal that’s been around for years called “Uncle Sam’s cereal”. It is just loaded with fiber. A serving has 10 grams of fiber and 190 calories, so it has a SQ rating of 19, which is excellent. The Kashi cereals are good. For example “Kashi Good Friends” has 10 grams of fiber and 120 calories, an SQ rating of 11, which is phenomenal. Post “Shredded Wheat” has 6 ½ grams of fiber and an SQ rating of 25, still great. There
is a fairly new one on the market, at least one I haven’t seen that is
called “Grain Shop”, and I think Barbara’s makes it. I think the SQ
rating is down around 10, 12, 15 or somewhere in there, 10 or 11 grams of
fiber in a serving.
So those are just some of the examples.
Healthy cereal is a good source of fiber. I started to just say
“cereal”, but I think we know that there are some junk cereals out
there. To give you an example, I have a few of them listed here—“Fruit
Loops”. Now
remember, we’re shooting for a SQ under 60.
“Fruit Loops” has a SQ of 120, “Apple Jacks” is 130. Does
anybody know what the SQ is on “Rice Krispies”? Beth:
Probably three times that! Greg: Well, we can’t even calculate it, because there is no fiber in Rice Krispies at all, if you can believe that. So there are certainly some junk cereals out there, but there are some very healthy cereals too. I
am a big fan of cereals because I think it’s a quick, healthy, easy
food, whether it’s for breakfast with soy milk or cow’s milk or juice.
But it’s also good as a quick snack during the day.
A lot of times it’s even good as a meal. For lunch or dinner, if
I’m in a rush and don’t have time for dinner, a quick bowl of cereal
is a very filling and healthy meal that is just instantly available if you
have it at your house. So take some time and go through your cereal aisle
and pick out two, three or four cereals with a low SQ rating that you
enjoy and have them on hand. Having things prepared is half the battle!
Any other questions? Janice:
One more question, Greg.
Is there a way to read the labels for cereals to know if it’s a
whole grain or not, other than—I’m sure there’s a correlation with
the SQ rating. Greg:
Usually there are two, Janice.
It can be a little bit trickier especially when you get into other
grains, but most of the really good cereals—First of all, I like to see
a fairly short list. Most of the unhealthy ones have an ingredient list is
three or four inches long, that’s not a good sign.
A lot of the healthy cereals have a very short list and the first
grain is usually whole wheat or some type of a whole grain. Janice:
Okay. Greg:
And as a backup, if that SQ is at least under 60 you can be fairly
sure it’s pretty good. If it’s under 30 or so, you can just about be
positive that it’s a whole grain.
One of my favorites, and I think it’s Post—A couple of them
make shredded wheat, but I think it’s Post “Shredded Wheat”, the
only ingredient is shredded wheat.
Janice:
Okay. Greg:
I would look at that first and your SQ.
If it’s under 60 you can feel pretty good about it and if it’s
under 30 you can almost be sure that that’s a good one.
Janice:
Okay, thanks. Greg:
Any other questions?
Okay.
Thanks, everybody! Author and exercise physiologist, Greg Landry, offers a very supportive, effective weight loss program for women. It is the most successful weight loss program available for women. Get details and a free newsletter at his site: http://www.GregLandryFitness.com copyright 1995-2008 by Greg Landry, M.S. |
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