Food Reward Friday

This week's lucky "winner"... Oreo cookies!!!

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How to prevent muscle cramps

The muscle spasms or cramps occur when a muscle contracts or involuntarily, which becomes rigid causing pain and discomfort. Often arise at night during sleep or during and after physical exercise. Its causes can be several, from muscle fatigue, lack of minerals and vitamins in the diet to bad postures. Besides knowing treat them properly, it is important to know some tips that can help prevent muscle cramps.

Leading a sedentary life and not doing any physical activity is one of the main causes for the occurrence of muscle cramps. In fact, people who do not exercise in your daily routine are prone to muscle spasms more frequently. That is why sport or follow a regular routine of exercise will help you prevent and also enjoy better health at all times.

Yet it is also true that muscle cramps occur regularly during or after physical exercise, which may be due to prolonged exercise or muscle overload. In this sense, there are certain practices that we can take to prevent muscle cramps in training sessions:

• Prepare the muscles of our body doing a good warming before starting the exercise, and perform stretching exercises at the end, will help prevent muscle cramps or spasms.
• Increase our exercise intensity progressively and gradually. It is also essential not to exercise the body to reach a state of maximum exhaustion. 
• Avoid physical activity when temperatures are extremely high or low.

Another of the most common causes of muscle cramps is the loss of fluids and minerals from the body. Therefore, it is essential to stay well hydrated throughout the day. Do not forget to consume the recommended daily amount of water (2 liters) and, especially, hydrated with plenty of water and sports drinks to make sport and exercise.

Watch your diet is also a key factor in preventing muscle cramps, as its recurrent appearance may be due to a lack of minerals such as potassium, magnesium or sodium in the diet. These minerals are essential to keep our muscles in good shape and regulate the distribution of water in the body.

Try to include in your daily diet foods rich in potassium such as bananas, legumes, green leafy vegetables and nuts, and rich in magnesium such as brown rice, soybeans, dry beans, wheat bran or oat, sunflower seeds, etc. It is also good to consume foods high in vitamins C, D and E.

At bedtime, try not to take bad posture. Remain long with poor posture may involve muscle contractions that lead to the occurrence of nocturnal muscle cramps. This condition also occurs in women who abuse the use of high heels in their day to day.

Finally, a good way to prevent muscle cramps or spasms is by performing massages muscle in those areas of the body in which we usually have. The result will be excellent if we go to a good therapist, but we can also try to make them ourselves if possible.

If we follow the above procedures we will be prevent muscle cramps or spasms problems from our daily life and enjoy a healthy life.

7 Ways To Curb Weight Gain Over Thanksgiving

Here’s an unpleasant reality check: The traditional American Thanksgiving meal packs an average of 3000 calories. Considering that the recommended dailycaloric intake for women ranges from 2000 (over age 25) to 1850 (over age 50) this puts one meal at approximately a third more than a full day’s requirement. And that’s just one meal; most of us at least eat breakfast on Thanksgiving, not to mention that time-honored late-night turkey sandwich.

Then there are those scary statistics about the average weight gain over the holidays, which is often put at between 7 and 10 pounds, though one study found that that’s largely a myth.

According to the Calorie Control Council, the true average weight gain is 1 to 3 pounds, which doesn’t sound like that much until you realize that we’re talking about a four-week period, which means many people are packing on almost a pound a week. Also, research shows people who are already overweight gain considerably more, on average 5 pounds. The other problem, the CCC says, is that most people fail to get those pounds off after the holidays.

1. Plan in Advance or Set the Stage

Spontaneity is not your friend when it comes to weight loss. When we get hungry, we reach for whatever’s available. And around the holidays, the choices put in front of you are even more tempting than usual. Maybe your contribution to a holiday dinner could be a veggie dish or salad – which you could then eat a goodly portion of. Or if wine is your weakness, perhaps bring an alternative beverage, such as flavored fizzy water, so you have something else you like to drink available as well.

2. Eat to Savor, Not Gorge

Changing the way you eat, in addition to what you eat, is one of the best ways to make sure you don’t become another holiday weight gain statistic. One of the best ways to do this, experts say, is with conscious or mindful eating, which research shows aids weight loss. Mindful eating gives you permission to eat the foods you love, eating them slowly while tasting and enjoying every bite. 

3. Put Yourself in the Driver’s Seat

One of the stories we tell ourselves during the holidays is that we’re not in charge, therefore we’re not responsible. “I can’t help it if my family cooks a rich meal and expects everyone to stuff themselves” is an example of this kind of thinking. Of course, this is simply not true. No one has any say in what you put in your mouth but you. And if family expectations are an issue, there are lots of tricky ways around that. (And no, you don’t have to feed your leftovers to the dog under the table like you did as a kid.) Some people take a small portion and eat it slowly, so it looks like they have a full plate throughout the meal. Some people say they’ve “developed a food allergy” to explain why they’re skipping the bread and pie. After all, going gluten-free is such a trend nowadays, it barely raises eyebrows.

4. Eat Like a Kid

Ever looked up from your morning paper (or your ipad) and discovered your entire bowl of cereal is gone and you don’t remember eating it? For contrast, watch a child eat, and you’ll notice the difference. Maybe he plays with each type of food on the plate, mounding up peas, making faces in his mashed potatoes. Or maybe he’s just playful while he eats, sailing each spoonful through the air. Either way, he enjoys the experience minute by minute, and chances are when he’s done there’s still amount on his plate. So from now through Thanksgiving weekend, try these tricks. Do something visual or playful with your food while you eat. Take bites in a spiral, eating from the outside to the inside. Alternate one bite from each food on your plate so the portions decrease equally. Use these tricks to focus your attention on the process of eating. It’s pretty much certain you’ll eat slower, eat less, and notice that you’re full before all your food is gone. Voila – automatic portion control!

5. Earn Your Food

Upping your physical activity level during the holidays is the most straightforward and effective weight control strategy, according to the Calorie Control Council. After all, it’s truly a matter of calories in, calories out. A few suggestions: Before or after you sit down to a big meal, push yourself a little, then make the meal your reward. It doesn’t have to be exercise, per se, although a good vigorous hill walk is often the simplest option. If you’re really too busy hosting family to get to the gym or down to the track, then get physical while getting ready.  clearing the dead leaves from the garden, vaccuming the living room, and cleaning out the garage are all physically demanding and will keep you on your feet and moving. (And you’ll have a cleaner house and tidier garden for the holidays too.)

6. Don’t Punish Yourself

If you do overindulge, let it go. Recent brain research shows that beating yourself up for a “slip” in healthy habit sets the stage for a full tumble off the wagon. Instead, focus on what you did right, and compliment yourself. (Creating a positive feedback loop is one of the best ways to insure a healthy habit sticks.) Saying “wow, you said no to that third glass of wine, good for you!” goes a lot further than “Geez I shouldn’t have eaten that second piece of pie.” Now, turn your focus to the healthy ways you’re going to take care of yourself tomorrow. Maybe an evening walk is in order?

7. Go to Bed on Time

There’s a natural tendency to let our sleep routines go haywire over the holidays. We talk into the night with old friends and family, or we hit the bar or sleep in just because we can. But recent research ties weight loss to keeping a regular sleep schedule, showing that those who go to sleep and wake up at regular hours have lower body fat than those who don’t.

Do you have a strategy to stay on a healthy track in the face of holiday temptation? Please share in the comments below so others can benefit. To calculate the recommended number of calories for your height, weight, and age, use the Calorie Control Council’s handy calculator.

Beans, Lentils, and the Paleo Diet

As we continue to explore the foods our ancestors relied on during our evolutionary history, and what foods work best for us today, we come to legumes such as beans and lentils.  These are controversial foods within the Paleolithic diet community, while the broader nutrition community tends to view legumes as healthy.

Beans and lentils have a lot going for them.  They're one of the few foods that are simultaneously rich in protein and fiber, making them highly satiating and potentially good for the critters in our colon.  They're also relatively nutritious, delivering a hefty dose of vitamins and minerals.  The minerals are partially bound by the anti-nutrient phytic acid, but simply soaking and cooking beans and lentils typically degrades 30-70 percent of it, making the minerals more available for absorption (Food Phytates. Reddy and Sathe. 2002).  Omitting the soaking step greatly reduces the degradation of phytic acid (Food Phytates. Reddy and Sathe. 2002).

The only tangible downside to beans I can think of, from a nutritional standpoint, is that some people have a hard time with the large quantity of fermentable fiber they provide, particularly people who are sensitive to FODMAPs.  Thorough soaking prior to cooking can increase the digestibility of the "musical fruit" by activating the sprouting program and leaching out tannins and indigestible saccharides.  I soak all beans and lentils for 12-24 hours.

The canonical Paleolithic diet approach excludes legumes because they were supposedly not part of our ancestral dietary pattern.  I'm going to argue here that there is good evidence of widespread legume consumption by hunter-gatherers and archaic humans, and that beans and lentils are therefore an "ancestral" food that falls within the Paleo diet rubric.  Many species of edible legumes are common around the globe, including in Africa, and the high calorie and protein content of legume seeds would have made them prime targets for exploitation by ancestral humans after the development of cooking.  Below, I've compiled a few examples of legume consumption by hunter-gatherers and extinct archaic humans.  I didn't have to look very hard to find these, and there are probably many other examples available.  If you know of any, please share them in the comments.

To be clear, I would eat beans and lentils even if they weren't part of ancestral hunter-gatherer diets, because they're inexpensive, nutritious, I like the taste, and they were safely consumed by many traditional agricultural populations probably including my own ancestors.

Extensive "bean" consumption by the !Kung San of the Kalahari desert

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Recent and Upcoming Appearances

Smarter Science of Slim

Jonathan Bailor recently released an interview we did a few months ago on the neurobiology of body fat regulation, and the implications for fat loss.  It's a good overview of the regulation of food intake and body fatness by the brain.  You can listen to it here.

Super Human Radio

Carl Lanore interviewed me about my lab's work on hypothalamic inflammation and obesity.  I'm currently wrapping up a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Michael Schwartz at the University of Washington, and the interview touches on our recent review paper "Hypothalamic Inflammation: Marker or Mechanism of Obesity Pathogenesis?"  Dan Pardi and I are frequent guests on Carl's show and I'm always impressed by how well Carl prepares prior to the interview.  You can listen to the interview here.

The Reality Check podcast

Pat Roach of the Reality Check podcast interviewed me about the scientific validity of the "carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis" of obesity.  The Reality Check podcast "explores a wide range of controversies and curiosities using science and critical thinking", and a dash of humor.  This one should be very informative for people who aren't sure what to believe and want a deeper perspective on the science of insulin and body weight regulation.  You can listen to it here.

Obesity Society conference

Next Thursday 11/9, I'll be speaking at the 2013 Obesity Society conference in Atlanta.  My talk is titled "The Glial Response to Obesity is Reversible", and it will be about my work on the reversibility of obesity-associated hypothalamic neuropathology in mice.  My talk will be part of the session "Neuronal Control of Satiety" between 3:00 and 4:30, specific time pending.  See you there!

Foods for Healthy and Strong Bones

Having healthy and strong bones is essential at every stage of our life and to achieve this and prevent, to the extent possible, diseases such as osteoporosis, it is important to take care of food and include two essential nutrients, calcium and Vitamin D. Both help to keep the bones in optimum condition and ensure good growth. If you want to know what ingredients you can find, in this article we suggest you through a selection of the best foods for healthy and strong bones.

The milk and other dairy products like yogurt and cheese are, as we know, one of the main sources of calcium and are essential to healthy and strong bones. Are preferred low-fat dairy products, they are healthier and offer the same or greater calcium intake than the rest. It's recommended daily consumption of 3-4 servings of dairy products, so you can complement or supplement the milk with yogurt and a few ounces of cheese. A highly recommended product today, for lactose intolerant, is soy milk, although it does not contain much calcium, is very rich in vitamin D, essential for the body to absorb calcium and growth bones.

Among the blue fish, find some like salmon, sardines and tuna are excellent for strengthening bones. Its rich content of vitamin D and omega 3 makes it especially good for increasing bone mass, since they increase the absorption of calcium in our body. They are very tasty and healthy food, so do not hesitate to include them in your diet, you can take them in different ways, either grilled, marinated or with salad, pasta, etc.

Another food that helps maintains strong bones are the spinach. In fact, this vegetable dish contributes approximately 25% of the recommended amount of calcium, and also allows us to benefit from their content rich in fiber, iron and vitamin A. Similarly, other vegetables that are good for the care of our bones are broccoli, chard, turnip and cabbage.

Nuts such as hazelnuts and almonds are also a rich source of calcium. Besides being great for the strength of our bones, provide an important contribution of vitamin E, iron and protein to our body, so take them without overdoing it a good choice for our health.

The egg yolk contains enough amount of vitamin D and, being one of the more easily incorporate foods in our diet, turns out to be an ingredient that we can use to promote bone density and strengthen bones.

Other ingredients that can be taken daily and that will help us to have healthy and stronger bones are cereals such as oats and wheat. They are ideal to take with milk, yogurt or as a component of salads or other dishes.

Buckwheat Crepes Revisited

One of my most popular posts of all time was a recipe I published in 2010 for sourdough buckwheat crepes (1).  I developed this recipe to provide an easy, nutritious, and gluten-free alternative to flour-based crepes.  It requires no equipment besides a blender.  It's totally different from the traditional buckwheat crepes that are eaten in Brittany, in part because it's not really a crepe (I don't know what else to call it, maybe a savory pancake?).  I find these very satisfying, and they're incredibly easy to make.  They're especially delicious with fresh goat cheese, or scrambled eggs with vegetables, but they go with almost anything.  Chris Kresser also developed his own version of the recipe, which is fluffier than mine, and more like a traditional pancake (2).

Buckwheat is an exceptionally nutritious pseudograin that's rich in complete protein and minerals.  In contrast to most whole grains, which have low mineral availability due to phytic acid, buckwheat contains a high level of the phytic acid-degrading enzyme phytase.  This makes buckwheat an excellent source of easily absorbed minerals, as long as you prepare it correctly!  Phytase enzyme works best in an acidic environment, which may be part of the reason why so many cultures use sour fermentation to prepare grain foods.  My original recipe included a sour fermentation step.

But there's a problem here.  Buckwheat doesn't ferment very well.  Whether it's because it doesn't contain the right carbohydrates, or the right bacteria, I don't know, but it spoils rapidly if you ferment it more than a little bit (using a strong sourdough starter helps though).  Others have told me the same.  So here's my confession: I stopped fermenting my buckwheat batter about a year ago.  And it tastes better.

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