I was checking out a recipe for power bars the other day and came across an ingredient with which I was not familiar. Along with lots of other healthy-sounding ingredients such as dried fruit, whey protein powder and organic peanut butter, this recipe called for ½ cup LSA. So I went on a Google hunt to learn more!
LSA is a blend of flax seeds, sunflower seeds and almonds and carries quite a nutritional punch! The product, LSA, is not available in the United States, but appears to be a staple in Australian homes for healthy eaters. By following this simple recipe, though, you can have LSA to add to your diet, too.
Ingredients
3 parts whole flax seeds
2 parts sunflower seeds
1 part almonds
For my first batch I used 1 cup flax, 2/3 cup sunflower and 1/3 cup almonds which produces 2 cups of LSA)
Preparation
Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor and grind to a fine mixture. Put in air-tight container and store in the refrigerator. It is suppose to last for a month.
From my first blending experience, I’d caution you that as these seeds contain a high quantity of oil, your blender blades may need to be cleaned and the whole mixture shaken up before completion. In my Magic Bullet, the mixture tended to clump up around the blades and the edge of the cup. I just cleaned off the blades, broke up the clumps and blended it some more. It worked out in the end.
The nutritional value of this little mixture is powerful! 1 tablespoon contains 72 calories which breaks down into 52 calories of fat, 11 calories of carbs (mostly fiber with only a little sugar) and 9 calories of protein. However, the real value comes in the form of the actual nutrients such as vitamins of all kinds, calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, zinc, selenium, omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids, etc. Just Google any one of the three ingredients above for nutritional content and sit back and read the accolades!
By now you must be thinking, “So okay, what do I do with the stuff?” Good question. The real answer is that I’m still experimenting, but here are some easy-to-use initial ideas.
1. Add a tablespoon of LSA to boost the nutrition content of various foods such as oatmeal, yogurt, other cereal, smoothies, etc. If you taste it, you will see that, as anticipated, it’s just a nice nutty blend that will not significantly alter the flavor of whatever you add it to. Of course, it is grainy in texture, so if you add it to something smooth such as yogurt, you will notice the graininess when you eat it. I don’t find this to be a problem, but we all have our peculiarities about food textures.
2. From what I’ve read, it looks like LSA is often used as a substitute for flour in whole or in part when making things like muffins or brownies. I haven’t experimented with this yet, but will report on my results when I do.
3. LSA is a great ingredient to add to homemade power bars or granola bars. I am planning to make peanut butter power bars later today and will report back on the results and provide the recipe if it turns out to be a good one.
In summary, I think this is a powerful nutritional booster and am currently pursuing options for integrating it into my diet. As I learn more about it, I will share this via my blog, both pros and cons as I find them. In the meantime, I’d urge others to try it out and let me know via comments what you think about LSA. Perhaps you already use it and would like to share a recipe or two!
Showing posts with label Eating and Nutrition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eating and Nutrition. Show all posts
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Avoiding Empty Calorie Excess
Call it what you will, munching, carb loading, fulfilling a craving, snacking, having a treat … it’s all the same thing …. Taking on excess calories. Of course, if we only reached for carrots or apples to meet this “need,” then it really wouldn’t be a problem. But the food that usually appears in our hands and subsequently in our mouths is more typically chips, ice cream, cookies, candy, etc. Do we enjoy this? Yes. Have we been inundated since early childhood by advertising to do just this? Absolutely. Is it smart, thoughtful, useful, beneficial to our bodies in any way? Hardly! Other sources address the “why” of this behavior. This article addresses ways to control it so that it no longer subverts our efforts to achieve fitness.
First, take a close look at what you eat every day. Just write down all that you eat. Next, look at what you are doing while you’re eating, (e.g., sitting at the dining table, working at your desk, watching TV, browsing the web.) Your list might look something like this:
• Cereal, coffee and juice, 7:00 a.m., sitting at the dining table
• Coffee and doughnut, 8:00 a.m., grabbed in the break room and taken to my desk
• Soda, 9:30 a.m., at my desk
• Sandwich and chips with soda, noon, eating with colleagues
• Soda, 1:00 p.m., taken back to my desk after lunch
• Coffee and M&M’s, 2:30 p.m., at my desk trying to get an energy boost
• A beer and a couple of jalapeño poppers with friends after work
• Chicken, rice, squash and broccoli, 7:00 p.m., sitting at the dining table
• Popcorn and soda, 8:30 p.m., sitting on the couch watching TV
• Milk and cookies, 10:00 p.m., getting ready for bed and watching the local news
Looking at this all written out makes you want to say, “I don’t eat like that. That’s way too much food!” But I am willing to bet that if you’re concerned about those pants which just don’t fit like they use to, that your list, if you’re honest with yourself, will be very similar. Pick up an old grocery receipt and really look at what’s on it. Look at what’s on your kitchen shelves or in your refrigerator. Large or small, the behavior is there.
Once you’ve made such a list, cross out the meals and then look at what’s left. This is the part that contains most of the excess empty calories (i.e., the calories that have little to no nutritional value and serve no purpose for your body except to pack on extra weight.)
Once you clearly recognize and acknowledge this behavior in yourself, then you can work to change it. Here are some tips that can help you make this change.
• Keep a list going every day. Believe me, your conscious mind doesn’t want to keep seeing that junk on your list.
• Start reading the nutrition facts about the extra foods you choose to put in your mouth. Read the package or check it out online.
• Once you know what’s in the food you are thinking about eating, ask yourself, “what does this do for me?”
After you have repeated the above steps enough, you can boil all of this down to one simple question. “Is eating this food a smart choice?” If the answer is “no,” then consider taking another action. Here are some tips on other actions.
• Choose to eat something else to which the answer to the “smart choice” question is “yes!” Try fruit, yogurt, nuts or seeds, a protein drink, an energy bar or some other small snack that you know to have nutritional value (i.e., something that feeds your body with protein or vitamins.)
• If you’re not really hungry, then do something else. A lot of this munching behavior is driven by the need to be doing something in addition to or other than what you’re already doing. Find something to do with your hands … crafts, crossword puzzles, games, web-surfing, etc. At work I keep a star-shaped slinky on my desk and when I feel the need to reach out and grab something, I pick it up and run it through my hands till the urge passes. It’s much better for me than M&M’s and co-workers love to play with it, too. At home I crochet to keep my hands busy while watching TV. It’s all about finding something to do instead of picking up worthless food and putting it into your mouth.
Here are a couple more tricks to break this unconscious behavior.
• Don’t keep that kind of food in the house or office. This can be a problem if you live or work with others who don’t have the same commitment to improve eating habits, but see what adjustments you can make. You don’t have to stock the foods that really tempt you. If chocolate is your thing, then buy cookies for the family, but don’t buy chocolate cookies. Minimize your bad options so that at 10:00 at night when you find yourself in the kitchen looking for something to munch, there just isn’t anything there that’s bad for you.
• Choose the time when it’s okay (i.e., the least damaging to your fitness and health), to eat the things you really like. If you really love ice cream, then use it as a treat for yourself after you’ve gone a whole week without excess eating. I definitely like sweets and so I limit myself to only eating sweets that are really very good and therefore worth expending the empty calories. This means that I don’t munch doughnuts just because someone brought them into the office, but if we go out for lunch to a restaurant that has great tiramisu, then I let myself have it. But it has to be really great as opposed to just on the menu!
Finally, no discussion of consuming empty calories is complete without discussing alcohol. When, where, what and why you drink alcohol is your own business and not the topic of this article. Being aware of calorie intake when you drink alcohol, is. Hard liquor ranges from 25 to 110 calories per shot, and liqueurs are closer to 150. Mixed drinks really start to escalate caloric intake and those with several kinds of alcohol, sweeteners and whipped cream start to rival rich desserts for calories. 16 ounces of beer averages around 200 calories and 4 ounces of wine ranges from 65 to 100calories. The important thing to remember here is notwithstanding claims of benefits to health from wine, these are all empty calories, and should be given the same choice test above for eating snack food. Any perfectly nutritionally balanced day topped off with consuming 500 calories of alcohol will result in weight gain. But don’t take my word for it, just step on your scales!
We’re talking about replacing a bad habit with deliberate action to improve fitness. It’s not easy, but it is the smart thing to do. There are basically three steps:
1. Identify and define the behavior of consuming excess, empty calories for yourself.
2. Identify what triggers this behavior.
3. Either eliminate the trigger or replace the behavior it triggers with something more beneficial to your health.
The goal is to be able to say, “I make smart choices about what I eat!”
First, take a close look at what you eat every day. Just write down all that you eat. Next, look at what you are doing while you’re eating, (e.g., sitting at the dining table, working at your desk, watching TV, browsing the web.) Your list might look something like this:
• Cereal, coffee and juice, 7:00 a.m., sitting at the dining table
• Coffee and doughnut, 8:00 a.m., grabbed in the break room and taken to my desk
• Soda, 9:30 a.m., at my desk
• Sandwich and chips with soda, noon, eating with colleagues
• Soda, 1:00 p.m., taken back to my desk after lunch
• Coffee and M&M’s, 2:30 p.m., at my desk trying to get an energy boost
• A beer and a couple of jalapeño poppers with friends after work
• Chicken, rice, squash and broccoli, 7:00 p.m., sitting at the dining table
• Popcorn and soda, 8:30 p.m., sitting on the couch watching TV
• Milk and cookies, 10:00 p.m., getting ready for bed and watching the local news
Looking at this all written out makes you want to say, “I don’t eat like that. That’s way too much food!” But I am willing to bet that if you’re concerned about those pants which just don’t fit like they use to, that your list, if you’re honest with yourself, will be very similar. Pick up an old grocery receipt and really look at what’s on it. Look at what’s on your kitchen shelves or in your refrigerator. Large or small, the behavior is there.
Once you’ve made such a list, cross out the meals and then look at what’s left. This is the part that contains most of the excess empty calories (i.e., the calories that have little to no nutritional value and serve no purpose for your body except to pack on extra weight.)
Once you clearly recognize and acknowledge this behavior in yourself, then you can work to change it. Here are some tips that can help you make this change.
• Keep a list going every day. Believe me, your conscious mind doesn’t want to keep seeing that junk on your list.
• Start reading the nutrition facts about the extra foods you choose to put in your mouth. Read the package or check it out online.
• Once you know what’s in the food you are thinking about eating, ask yourself, “what does this do for me?”
After you have repeated the above steps enough, you can boil all of this down to one simple question. “Is eating this food a smart choice?” If the answer is “no,” then consider taking another action. Here are some tips on other actions.
• Choose to eat something else to which the answer to the “smart choice” question is “yes!” Try fruit, yogurt, nuts or seeds, a protein drink, an energy bar or some other small snack that you know to have nutritional value (i.e., something that feeds your body with protein or vitamins.)
• If you’re not really hungry, then do something else. A lot of this munching behavior is driven by the need to be doing something in addition to or other than what you’re already doing. Find something to do with your hands … crafts, crossword puzzles, games, web-surfing, etc. At work I keep a star-shaped slinky on my desk and when I feel the need to reach out and grab something, I pick it up and run it through my hands till the urge passes. It’s much better for me than M&M’s and co-workers love to play with it, too. At home I crochet to keep my hands busy while watching TV. It’s all about finding something to do instead of picking up worthless food and putting it into your mouth.
Here are a couple more tricks to break this unconscious behavior.
• Don’t keep that kind of food in the house or office. This can be a problem if you live or work with others who don’t have the same commitment to improve eating habits, but see what adjustments you can make. You don’t have to stock the foods that really tempt you. If chocolate is your thing, then buy cookies for the family, but don’t buy chocolate cookies. Minimize your bad options so that at 10:00 at night when you find yourself in the kitchen looking for something to munch, there just isn’t anything there that’s bad for you.
• Choose the time when it’s okay (i.e., the least damaging to your fitness and health), to eat the things you really like. If you really love ice cream, then use it as a treat for yourself after you’ve gone a whole week without excess eating. I definitely like sweets and so I limit myself to only eating sweets that are really very good and therefore worth expending the empty calories. This means that I don’t munch doughnuts just because someone brought them into the office, but if we go out for lunch to a restaurant that has great tiramisu, then I let myself have it. But it has to be really great as opposed to just on the menu!
Finally, no discussion of consuming empty calories is complete without discussing alcohol. When, where, what and why you drink alcohol is your own business and not the topic of this article. Being aware of calorie intake when you drink alcohol, is. Hard liquor ranges from 25 to 110 calories per shot, and liqueurs are closer to 150. Mixed drinks really start to escalate caloric intake and those with several kinds of alcohol, sweeteners and whipped cream start to rival rich desserts for calories. 16 ounces of beer averages around 200 calories and 4 ounces of wine ranges from 65 to 100calories. The important thing to remember here is notwithstanding claims of benefits to health from wine, these are all empty calories, and should be given the same choice test above for eating snack food. Any perfectly nutritionally balanced day topped off with consuming 500 calories of alcohol will result in weight gain. But don’t take my word for it, just step on your scales!
We’re talking about replacing a bad habit with deliberate action to improve fitness. It’s not easy, but it is the smart thing to do. There are basically three steps:
1. Identify and define the behavior of consuming excess, empty calories for yourself.
2. Identify what triggers this behavior.
3. Either eliminate the trigger or replace the behavior it triggers with something more beneficial to your health.
The goal is to be able to say, “I make smart choices about what I eat!”
Counting Calories: The Bane of Any Fitness Program
Let’s face it. None of us like to do it. Some of us don’t know how to do it. Some of us know how, but aren’t any good at it … all those numbers and conversions and deciding when to add, subtract, multiply or divide! Some of us are pretty good at it, but get really tired of all the time it takes to count everything that goes into our mouths every day. To overcome this kind of bad calorie karma, there must be a very strong “why” behind the need to do it. Fortunately, there are several, very good whys.
Like any other goal we want to achieve, the outcomes are strongly tied to what we put into it. Our pets’ social behavior is much enhanced if we put time and effort into training them. That big project at work is more successful if we put in the right amount of time, research and energy to get it done. Our cars run better if we spare the expense to maintain them properly. Similarly, our bodies become more fit if we make smart choices about what we feed ourselves, and the only way to make really smart choices about what we eat, is to become very familiar with the nutritional content of the food we prepare. Sure, we can read the nutrition facts on the package and we can read books about nutrition and all that is very worthwhile, but to take it to the next level, to be able to determine exactly what all this means in terms of our daily intake of food, we have to turn that microscope on ourselves and what goes into our mouths.
For years, we have associated “good food” with what tastes good. It’s mostly about what we like to eat, which is strongly driven by the types of food to which we are exposed. I’m not going to go into how food can be tied up with all kinds of psychological aspects of our lives, but it is, and therefore our lifetime of experiences with food very much drives the choices we make today. In order to change those choices, we must first understand what it is we’re eating and what it is we can eat that will help us be more fit.
The good news is that we don’t have to count calories forever. Once you’ve done it long enough to be aware of the basic nutritional content of the things you typically eat, and once you’ve made enough smart choices about food to know what to eat to achieve the daily caloric intake that works for you, then the daily counting is no longer necessary. You will be able to think back over the day and mentally assess both the quantity and quality of your food intake and decide what if anything you should add to it.
How long does this take? That depends on you and how much work is needed to boost you over the learning curve. I can tell you that it takes real commitment initially. I counted and charted calories for about 2 years, charting daily intake for stretches of six weeks to 4 months, with breaks between, before I reached the point where I can do this without charting. That’s not to say that I won’t ever chart again, but by being fully aware of everything I eat, stopping to choose whether to eat it or not, and looking up the nutritional value of new foods, I can effectively keep myself at or under my daily goal.
Here are some tips for counting calories.
• Find a good, go-to source for nutrition facts. This can be a book or a web site or a phone app, or a combination of several such things, but it’s important to know where you can go to find the information you need. I have found that putting “(food name) nutrition facts” into a search engine will do the trick most times.
• Decide whether you want to count your intake in calories or grams. There will always be the need to convert grams to calories to get the full picture, but on your chart, you can choose to record in calories or grams. I like calories. You’ll notice that nutrition facts typically give you total calories, fat calories, and then everything else in grams. This isn’t really enough information. I convert the grams into calories and count calories from fat, carbs, protein and total calories.
Converting Grams to Calories
Fat G X 9 = calories
Carbs G X 4 = calories
Protein G X 4 = calories
• Decide your method for keeping track of calories. There are a number of web-based methods for tracking your calories. If this is for you, find a site with nutrition information you trust and then sign up to track your daily intake. Most of these are free. Excel spread sheets are good for tracking as well as you can put in formulas to do the calculations. If you’re comfortable using Excel, this method may work for you. It’s my preferred method and I have a set of spread sheets that will help you calculate what your daily intake should be as well as chart your daily intake for free at http://groups.google.com/group/health-scape. There’s also nothing wrong with a pen and pad. Put it somewhere handy and just jot down what you’ve eaten, look up the caloric content and keep a running total each day. The method is only important to the extent that it works for you. Find one and stick with it.
• Be honest with your tracking. You don’t have to show this information to anyone else if you don’t want to, but you must be honest with yourself. It’s not okay to leave out that mocha frappuccino you grabbed after lunch just because you don’t usually do that. You need to know what you were putting into your body when you drank it and therefore you will be able to decide whether you want to do it again and how often. It’s not about taking away the things you really like; it’s about learning how to manage the things you really like so that they don’t interfere with your over-all fitness. (BTW, 16 ounces of Mocha Frappuccino Light with no whipped cream from Starbucks is 167 total calories, with only 18 fat calories. Not a bad thing to know, huh?)
I’m not trying to tell you that counting calories is easy, but I am trying to tell you that it is necessary. Understanding and regulating our daily nutrition is not a skill set that most people have. If we really want to get fit and maintain that fitness, it is a skill set we need to learn. Counting calories is how it’s done. Give it a try and I think you will be surprised at what you discover!
Like any other goal we want to achieve, the outcomes are strongly tied to what we put into it. Our pets’ social behavior is much enhanced if we put time and effort into training them. That big project at work is more successful if we put in the right amount of time, research and energy to get it done. Our cars run better if we spare the expense to maintain them properly. Similarly, our bodies become more fit if we make smart choices about what we feed ourselves, and the only way to make really smart choices about what we eat, is to become very familiar with the nutritional content of the food we prepare. Sure, we can read the nutrition facts on the package and we can read books about nutrition and all that is very worthwhile, but to take it to the next level, to be able to determine exactly what all this means in terms of our daily intake of food, we have to turn that microscope on ourselves and what goes into our mouths.
For years, we have associated “good food” with what tastes good. It’s mostly about what we like to eat, which is strongly driven by the types of food to which we are exposed. I’m not going to go into how food can be tied up with all kinds of psychological aspects of our lives, but it is, and therefore our lifetime of experiences with food very much drives the choices we make today. In order to change those choices, we must first understand what it is we’re eating and what it is we can eat that will help us be more fit.
The good news is that we don’t have to count calories forever. Once you’ve done it long enough to be aware of the basic nutritional content of the things you typically eat, and once you’ve made enough smart choices about food to know what to eat to achieve the daily caloric intake that works for you, then the daily counting is no longer necessary. You will be able to think back over the day and mentally assess both the quantity and quality of your food intake and decide what if anything you should add to it.
How long does this take? That depends on you and how much work is needed to boost you over the learning curve. I can tell you that it takes real commitment initially. I counted and charted calories for about 2 years, charting daily intake for stretches of six weeks to 4 months, with breaks between, before I reached the point where I can do this without charting. That’s not to say that I won’t ever chart again, but by being fully aware of everything I eat, stopping to choose whether to eat it or not, and looking up the nutritional value of new foods, I can effectively keep myself at or under my daily goal.
Here are some tips for counting calories.
• Find a good, go-to source for nutrition facts. This can be a book or a web site or a phone app, or a combination of several such things, but it’s important to know where you can go to find the information you need. I have found that putting “(food name) nutrition facts” into a search engine will do the trick most times.
• Decide whether you want to count your intake in calories or grams. There will always be the need to convert grams to calories to get the full picture, but on your chart, you can choose to record in calories or grams. I like calories. You’ll notice that nutrition facts typically give you total calories, fat calories, and then everything else in grams. This isn’t really enough information. I convert the grams into calories and count calories from fat, carbs, protein and total calories.
Converting Grams to Calories
Fat G X 9 = calories
Carbs G X 4 = calories
Protein G X 4 = calories
• Decide your method for keeping track of calories. There are a number of web-based methods for tracking your calories. If this is for you, find a site with nutrition information you trust and then sign up to track your daily intake. Most of these are free. Excel spread sheets are good for tracking as well as you can put in formulas to do the calculations. If you’re comfortable using Excel, this method may work for you. It’s my preferred method and I have a set of spread sheets that will help you calculate what your daily intake should be as well as chart your daily intake for free at http://groups.google.com/group/health-scape. There’s also nothing wrong with a pen and pad. Put it somewhere handy and just jot down what you’ve eaten, look up the caloric content and keep a running total each day. The method is only important to the extent that it works for you. Find one and stick with it.
• Be honest with your tracking. You don’t have to show this information to anyone else if you don’t want to, but you must be honest with yourself. It’s not okay to leave out that mocha frappuccino you grabbed after lunch just because you don’t usually do that. You need to know what you were putting into your body when you drank it and therefore you will be able to decide whether you want to do it again and how often. It’s not about taking away the things you really like; it’s about learning how to manage the things you really like so that they don’t interfere with your over-all fitness. (BTW, 16 ounces of Mocha Frappuccino Light with no whipped cream from Starbucks is 167 total calories, with only 18 fat calories. Not a bad thing to know, huh?)
I’m not trying to tell you that counting calories is easy, but I am trying to tell you that it is necessary. Understanding and regulating our daily nutrition is not a skill set that most people have. If we really want to get fit and maintain that fitness, it is a skill set we need to learn. Counting calories is how it’s done. Give it a try and I think you will be surprised at what you discover!
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