Showing posts with label food nutrition facts label. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food nutrition facts label. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT?

First of all, there are a lot of terms that we need to know in order to understand the principles better and to adapt each principle to suit our individual body needs. Bear in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all method when it comes to weight loss since every one of us is unique. Also, the method that worked for you initially may not work all the way due to the dynamic nature of the interaction between our body and the loss of weight. Therefore, in order for you to achieve the ultimate results you desire, do take some time to click on the respective terms that will link you to the detailed explanations for your deeper understanding.

Weight Loss Principles:

To begin, keep the title of this blog in mind, Your Lifestyle Your weight, as the key to weight-loss, is really about changing your lifestyle.

1. INPUT less than OUTPUT

In order to lose weight, we have to ensure that we don't eat more than we need! Sounds quite obvious right? You may, most of the time, think that you did not eat a lot, but in actual fact, you have always been consuming more than you need for the day, thus resulting in the increase in weight. Do calculate how much calories you need and see for yourself how much extra you have been eating in a day!

2. EAT LOW FAT AND LOW CARBOHYDRATE FOOD

We all know that there are food that are more sinful than some others, but what are these kind of food? To keep it simple for your identification purposes, anything that’s sweet, is sinful, so are fat-laden stuff. But bear in mind that we can’t avoid them altogether since they are important to our daily functions like thinking and keeping warm. To give a comparison, between a Kickapo and Aloe Vera drink with pulp, Kickapo has 166kcal of calories whereas Aloe Vera drink with pulp has only 104kcal. Without referring to the nutrition facts label, the way to tell which one has less calories will be to decide which is sweeter. Of course, this test won’t work for those that uses artificial sweetener, but otherwise, it'll work alright :).


3. INCREASE YOUR METABOLISM

Metabolism is the the rate in which your body converts food into energy, for storage or for usage. Naturally, the faster your body converts food into energy, the lesser there is to be converted into stored fats! The detailed methods are written in another post. To summarise, the methods are tone up muscles, increase the number ofmitochondria, sleep more, eat less but more often, eat right, eat fish, allow your body’s natural cooling and heating system to work, and lastly, do interval training.

Other FUN methods:

Slimming down really doesn’t have to bring you agony, all you need is to know some tricks to achieving that figure you've always dreamt of.

1. Drink lots of water before going into that food court – so that you won’t feel like you want to eat everything in the stalls!

2. Eat fruits before meals – this is the latest research that, by eating fruits before meals, you actually prepare your stomach for the food that’s coming in, thus better absorbing the minerals. Also, the fiber and carbohydrate makes you fuller faster thus preventing you from eating too much.

3. Always say “less” – when ordering, make it a point to say “less rice”, “less gravy”, “less oil”, or even better, say “no oil”!

Remember, slimming down is not rocket-science and it doesn’t have to bring you “pain”, enjoy the process of making yourself nimble and fit again. Cheers!

Monday, July 20, 2009

How to read Nutrition Facts labels on your food packages?

So we've learnt that fats contain more energy then carbohydrate and proteins, so how exactly can we use the information to slim down?

Let's start with the common things in life that we see but ignore most of the time, the nutrition facts labels on our food packages.

You may have noticed that not all food packages have nutrition facts labels, well that's simply because they were produced in different countries and not all countries made it mnadatory to contain information as such.

One interesting point to note in the US's labeling is that, fat amounts less than 0.5g are rounded to 0g. For example, if a product contains 0.45g of trans fat per serving, the label would show 0g of trans fat! So if the package contains 18 servings, the product actually contains a total of 8.1 g of trans fat when consumed all at once! This is how misleading such nutrition facts can be. The good news is that, (for those who are really keen in calculating fats consumption to keep it to the lowest), you can actually spot such misleading information by simply calculations.


Let'd look at one Nutrition Facts label:

From this label, it was written that the total calories is 130 (about 1/5 of a meal), given that it's a cornflakes pack, this should make a pretty 'slimming' snack for tea break.

Recalling that per gram of carbohydrate and protein is about 4cal and fats is about 9cal, a basic calculation will reveal that:



Fat energy = 0.5 x 9 = 0.45cal (rounded off to 5cal in the label)
Carbohydrate energy = 30 x 4 = 120cal
Protein energy = 4 x 4 = 16cal
total engery = 0.45 + 120 + 16 = 136.45cal
Noticed the discrepancy? Imagine you eat 2 packets of this, one for breakfast and one for tea break, you will be eating 12.9cal extra and in a week, you will have consumed 90.3cal extra calories.... Not exactly what you want to happen when you are in a low-cal diet.
This happens due to the rounding off of figures here and there in the guidelines and laws of food nutrition facts labels, so we as consumers have to be clear of what we are consuming.
Sometimes, you may also find a short-fall from the calculated calories stated in the label, when that happens, it's most likely because they have (purposely or not, you can decide) used the rounded-off value of the trans fat and saturated fat, which is less than 0.5g to calculate the value. So do be careful when labels and advertisement says the product is "Trans fat free", it simply means it's lesser than 0.5g, not that it's not really there, and that the calories of such products is in fact higher than what is reflected.

Read more about calories here and what it means.

Read more about your day's calories intake here and how your weight is really determined by your lifestyle.

 
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