What Does Low Carb Pizza and Passing Gas Have in Common?

There's really not much in common other than I'll discuss both in the post for today. 

Passing gas (OK, letting one loose, or farting) is a normal bodily function.  But how much do you know about what causes it (other than eating lots of beans like Mongo did in Mel Brook's film "Blazing Saddles").  And what about this Jorge Cruise Belly Fat Cure?   If you have started the Belly Fat Cure (or any other diet recommending lots of fiber) then you might be a redneck...oh, sorry, that was the Jeff Foxworthy concert the other night.   I meant to say that if you are eating lots of fiber, like 30 grams or more like suggested by Jorge and health professionals, then you might exhibit an initial increase in the potentially lethal odor emanating from within.(See the fiber on the right...it'll do it to you EVERY time....)

QUIZ TIME!!!  How much (and how often) do you think the average person passes gas?  Harry Aslanian, MD, an associate professor of gastroenterology at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn. says, "...while there's no "normal" amount, the average adult passes about a pint a day, he says. That means passing gas about 14 times a day, other experts estimate."   YIKES!!!!  No wonder the ozone is disappearing so quickly!

So, if you're starting the Jorge Cruise plan or just increasing your intake of fiber you may experience more of that bloating feeling that can ONLY be relieved by what the gentleman on the left is doing.  It takes about three weeks for your body to become adjusted to the fiber change, so instead of three quarts and passing gas about 40 times a day, you'll go back to the pint and 14 times a day!!!  How soothing to know and much more soothed you'll feel!

Ya know what else causes a lot of gas other than beans?  DAIRY, even if you're NOT lactose intolerant.  Maybe that's where the term "cutting the cheese" came from!   And this gets worse as we get older...it really sucks getting OLD (just ask my older brother).

Oh yeah, and the next time you go to the Chinese restaurant, I would definitely skip the stir fried broccoli since that will also help play the wind instrument a bit better!  Artificial Sweeteners as well.  Now I'm not sure about the erythritol, but some of the other sweeteners have a party with the bacteria in the colon and whoop-dee-do---they cause more breaking wind.

Now speaking of pizza, this is actually, really and truly a picture I took of my lunch from yesterday!!  Low carb pizza!!

OK, now ask me which tortilla brand I like the best.  No, really, go ahead and ask me and don't all speak up at once?  Ah there we go, look at everyone trying to answer the question!!!!    Well, since you asked, Tumaro's brand is my favorite...well above the La Tortilla Factory ones. If you can't find Tumaro's locally, you can find Tumaro's at Amazon So, below is a picture I took of the two brands of tortillas I've been using along with the pizza sauce I use most often (Ragu Homestyle Pizza Sauce). 

Make sure that when you buy the sauce you buy any sauce which has no added sugar, corn syrup or other sweeteners.  To make this, I would first lightly toast the wrap/tortilla so it's not too soggy when you eat it.  These are pretty big tortillas, so I use a couple of tablespoons of sauce, maybe a bit more...probably comes out to about 1/8 cup.  The Tumaro's  tortilla wrap has 18 grams of carbs and 12 grams of fiber.  There's less than one gram of sugar.  The 1/8 cup of pizza sauce has about 2-1/2 grams of carbs, and 3 grams of sugar.  I just spoon on the sauce, top with some mozzarella cheese (sometimes I use whole milk to get the stringy effect) and sprinkle on some oregano.  No turkey pepperoni around the house, so I had to live with plain cheese.  Not a bad idea, though...add your own toppings like ground beef or sausage!

CLEAN JOKES FOR KIDS!

Why couldn't the sesame seed leave the gambling casino?
Because he was on a roll.

Why did the student eat his homework?
The teacher told him it was a piece of cake.

What did the hungry computer eat?
Chips, one byte at a time.

Why do fish avoid the computer?
So they don't get caught in the Internet.

1/2 Full or 1/2 Empty: Carbohydrates and Sugar

DUH !!

(Read The Label) I just realized this morning that despite my becoming an educated dieter I have failed to be more conscientious in reading the labels on what I'm eating.  I'm being very careful to look at sugars, carbs, and fiber.  I got really upset this morning when I noticed the Ezekiel brand English muffin I was having for breakfast only had 3 grams of fiber.  I was sure that for same brand of bread I was getting 6 grams of fiber when I was making a sandwich.  Well folks,  I wasn't careful.  I thought I was having a 15 carb  English muffin with 3 grams of fiber.    TURNS OUT, my friends, that the nutritional information was for ONE HALF of an English Muffin!!! So I was really eating 30 grams of carbs and getting the 6 grams of fiber.  Maybe I never noticed before, but I always thought English muffins (at least Thomas' brand) was one whole English muffin per serving, not just half!   So I hope I helped you SEE THE LIGHT and be a bit careful in reading the labels.  OR perhaps you should have been telling me to be more careful!

PORTION CONTROL!

 

Not only do you need to look at the nutritional information, but remember to see how much is in a portion! As far as the label over on the left, I have NO idea what product it is, but there's only 1 gram of sugar, only 4 carbs, a bit of fiber, and I can have TWENTY-FIVE pieces of it!!!!   Now, on the other hand I love the SoBe zero calorie Lifewaters, but if you look at the label you'll see that 1 serving is only 1/2 bottle!!  This is the same for everything else you buy!  One other thing the guy at the Whole Foods bakery made me aware of that I didn't notice before.  He said to look at the breads on the shelves that say "Low Carb" because what companies have been doing is slicing their products thinner and repackaging them as low carb...same product, just less of it in a different package.

GETTING KIDS CONDITIONED TO READ LABELS

Speaking of seeing the light...I'm "aged and confused" after seeing Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworth (Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?), and Larry the Cable Guy.  They are three fantastically funny comedians who put on a terrific show at George Mason University's Patriot Center.  Until my ankle is healed after surgery I can't drive. So, my son and I stayed with my niece and her family overnight in northern Virginia so we could see the show and then get picked up by my wife the next day.  Jen and Drew's kids are incredibly cute and smart.  My niece who is also on this Jorge Cruise Belly Fat Cure diet has taught her kids the "Belly Good" foods and the "Belly Bad" foods and they both look at the labels.  It was really cute having my 8 year old grand-niece say to me, "Uncle Dave, you can have these!  Look, < 1 gram of sugar, 15 carbs and you can have 26 of them in a serving!"

Oh man, I hate when people keep pounding on me talking about the same thing over and over....just ask my kids about how I NEVER do that!!!  ha-ha-ha    AND I hate to sound like one big advertisement but this Zevia soda is still my favorite stuff!  While visiting my niece, she and her husband gave me a taste of a flavor I cannot get at my Whole Foods store here in Richmond.  It's the Black Cherry.  Now this soda had no aftertaste and tasted like the black cherry sodas that I used to drink as a kid (and stopped because of all the sugar).  Zevia is a company who has a line of seven different flavors of zero calorie sodas.  Now, this company does not use saccharin, aspartame, or sucalose but rather uses a natural sweetener called Stevia.  There are 12 grams of carbs in each can and all the carbs are sugar alcohols, NOT sugar.  And as an earlier post I had indicated, erythritol carbs have no calories or effect on blood sugar!  The Ginger Root Beer and now the Black Cherry are my two favorites.  I love the Orange, Twist, and Cola as well.  The problem is that the only place I've seen it in stores locally is Whole Foods.  If you don't have a Whole Foods near by you, Zevia is available at Amazon,com.

WHOA!!!!

My son says I'm nuts, but I think if the guy above didn't have a beard and mustache and was a bit heavier in the face, he'd look a whole lot like me!  But that's not the point I wanted to make!   Imagine that bowling ball he's holding is a 16 pounder and imagine he's holding TWO of them.  Then imagine walking around with those everywhere you went. Those two bowling balls represent just about the amount of weight I've lost so far!

Words to ponder

For the end of today's post I want to leave you with some words to ponder:

• The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer far fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans
• On the other hand, the French eat a lot of fat and also suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
• The Japanese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than the British or Americans.
• The Italians drink excessive amounts of red wine and also suffer few hearter attacks than British or Americans.

  Conclusion: Eat and drink what you like.  It's speaking English that kills you.

Exercise and Health - BORING!

I had absolutely no idea how difficult it would be to keep coming up with posts that would keep y'alls attention (I say y'all, but actually I grew up in New York...but living down in Virginia for so long...well I had to pick up something!).

So today, I thought I would devote a boring post to some exercise and health information stuff.  So ladies, what's one of the important things to you in your appearance to the guys?  How about a cute, well defined butt?  Well, I happened to get an email from WebMD today with an article called:

The Butt Workout: Exercises to Sculpt a Better Backside

 

1. Squats. WebMD says that this is "one of the best exercises you can do for your butt, hips, and thighs."  Now I'm not sure this guy to the left really wants to sculpt his butt to impress the guys, but I thought the picture would fit well here.

So to do this you need to "stand with feet parallel and shoulder-width apart. Slowly lower your hips, making sure not to let your knees go out past your toes."  There's lot of variations. Use your imagination!

2. Lunges. Not meaning take the plunge.  In this one keep your feet parallel and hip-distance apart. Take a giant step either forward or backward. Michele Olson, who's a PhD, CSCS, and exercise physiologist says to then "slowly lower your body, bending both knees. Bend your knees no farther than 90 degrees, keeping your front knee aligned over your front ankle. Step together and repeat." (kind of like shampoo---shampoo, rinse, repeat, shampoo, rinse, repeat.....).    She says that beginners should stay in the lunge and just lower and lift by bending the knee....   Look over there to the right so see what lunges did for Jessica Simpson (I think that's who this is!)--------------------------->

Sorry, folks, that was WAY boring for me...on to something else..

How about exercise????  I really don't exercise that much, but one of the people I really trust for advice on exercise equipment is someone from epinions.com.  Her screen name there is jo.com.  One of the pieces of exercise equipment she's written a great review on is the Body by Jake Cardio Cruiser.  I was going to give you the web site for Jake Cruise but it's really annoying because when you get to it you have to and hear Jake and quite honestly, he's REALLY annoying to listen to.

Brownie Recipe and other Food Stuff

OK, I found this recipe out on the web and I'd rather not tell you WHERE because I don't want the person who posted this to get upset at me, but here goes:

Best Brownie Recipe?

Ingredients:
½ Cup melted butter or vegetable oil
¾ Cup xylitol or more to taste
1 Tsp vanilla
2 eggs
½ Cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 Cup cocoa
¼ Tsp baking powder
¼ Tsp salt
½ Cup chopped walnuts
Directions:
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Stir oil or melted butter, xylitol and vanilla together in a large bowl. Add eggs, beat until well blended using a spoon. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt; gradually add to egg mixture. Add nuts if desired. Spread into a greased 9 inch square pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until brownie pulls away from the edge of the pan. Cool in pan and frost with chocolate cream cheese frosting. Makes 16 brownies.

  <-------------Here's the result!!!!

Here's where they ended up----------->

I was going to post the recipe for the creme cheese frosting that should go on top of them, but based on how the brownies turned out, I won't be making the frosting or posting the recipe. By the way, the above pictures are ones I took this morning with my own camera!

In one of my previous posts (last one, maybe?) I gave a suggestion on making a parfait with Fage 0% fat yogurt and Nature's Hollow jams.  Well!  Just your luck that I decided to make it this morning and take a picture of it before I ate it.   Now this was incredibly delicious!  Just to refresh your memory, here's what I did:  First I measured out  1/2 cup of the Fage Greek style yogurt. I stirred in about 2-3 tablespoons of erythritol to sweeten it up. One tablespoon of yogurt on the bottom of the glass.

One teaspoon of the Nature's Hollow apricot jam and I topped with a sprinkle of Uncle Sam cereal. From there I just layered it and alternated with yogurt, apricot and blueberry jams, and Uncle Sam cereal.  In total I used one heaping tablespoon of jam along with the 1/2 cup of yogurt.  I'd say there was less than 1/8 cup of Uncle Sam cereal used.  I had a cup of java and I was set until lunch.  Oh yeah, almost forgot!  I started with a Jay Robb vanilla protein drink mixed with 2 teaspoons of Benfiber, and a couple of tablespoons of Da Vinci sugar free banana syrup (OK, the syrup DOES have a bit of sucralose in it).  So there it is!  That was my breakfast and I'm proud of it!  Now, all those above pictures are REALLY my own pictures that I took of all this stuff this morning before work!!

Speaking of pictures that I took.....   I didn't take the one above.  Someone took it in the Bahamas and this is a shameless plug for a friend's blog about the Bahamas. She didn't take that photo either. No kidding though, this is the blog to get some cool info about the Bahamas and see some great pics that I also didn't take.  I don't get any, zip, nada, nothing in terms of royalties for that plug!



Oh man, I am the king of getting off track on a conversation.  Oh yeah...Lunch, if you care to know... and durn, I'll have to take a picture of it when I make it another time because I had to make it before a conference call started at work.

But I did have a tortilla pizza.  Sounds disgusting, huh?  Well, what I meant was that I used a La Tortilla Factory tortilla as a pizza crust.   So, one of these suckers has 12, yes TWELVE grams of fiber and only 18 carbs.. WOOHOO!  I used only 2 tablespoons of my favorite pizza sauce (RAGU Homestyle pizza sauce with no added sweeteners) and some mozzarella cheese.  We were out of turkey pepperoni, durn it!  These tortillas are really good.  But I also found another brand that is equally as good if you can't find these.   Look for Tumaro's brand.  They are also delicious! I bought the Multi Grain Low In Carbs Wrapp-Arounds.  They have only 18 grams of carbs for a HUGE wrap and it's got 12g of fiber.   And folks, can guess what I had to drink with lunch???? ZEVIA!!!! I absolutely love all this stuff!

Ya know, while I was looking for some food humor I somehow found a site that sells thousands and thousands of t-shirts, mugs, and just about anything personalized. Whatever link it was that I clicked on brought me to a bunch of food related t-shirts and mugs.  Now instead of spending time writing a new post for this blog, I spent about 2 hours looking to buy something for myself.  The site is called Cafe Express. Not only can you spend a couple of hours going through thousands of images, but you can actually start with a blank mug and design your own.  I opened Print Master, got some free stock images and designed a cool 15 ounce coffee mug.  Unless one of you readers wants to purchase it for me, I'll wait until next payday before I order it, then I can let you know if the place is on the level and how good the product is.  The total cost for the 15 ounce coffee mug (dishwasher safe) will be about $21 after shipping.

How do I do it?  Got off track again! Ah, the heck with it....I'm going to bed!  You gotta remember to remind me to tell you how I used the Nature's Hollow Maple BBQ sauce on chicken wings....

FRENCH TOAST FOR BREAKFAST

Now, seriously folks!  I have an important question to ask you all...If you've read any of my posts about Jorge Cruise's Belly Fat Cure (BFC) you may have had a similar question....You look in your pantry for something to eat and all you've got is onions and baked beans.  So what do you make with those two items?  OK, well since you asked, I'll tell you:  Tear Gas.   :-)    OK, if you ask any of my kids they'll tell you that I'm just not all that funny. But you can't fault me for trying!  Follow-up note...I had to just edit this post because my wife just saw this poor excuse for a joke and said it was REALLY bad and I should remove it.  What do you all think?  Anyway,

What's THIRTY - FOUR 

That's my total weight loss since mid January.  I'm sure that now my weight loss will be much slower going forward than it's been so far.   If that's what happening to you...don't be discouraged if your weight isn't coming off that fast.  If you follow the diet, then it WILL come off.  One thing I do need to mention is that on this diet, Jorge Cruise said there's the 15-6  S/C value.  That's no more than 15 grams of sugar a day.  Someone reading an earlier post had a good comment.  She said that it's important to make sure that IF you do use the 15 grams, don't eat something with all 15 grams of sugar all at one time because it can cause havoc with your blood sugar level. 

<------But you can have a French toast breakfast like this:--------->

Now it won't look quite like this because the French toast in the picture above is made with that disgusting, awful (yuk) white processed bread flour, but you can take a fairly low-carb, high fiber bread like Ezekiel 4:9, dip it in a mixture of eggs, almond milk, and a bit of cinnamon and you've got some decent French toast! Add a few links of sausage (or turkey sausage), a Jay Robb protein drink (with some Benefiber), and a cup of coffee.  The two slices of bread have a total of 30 carbs. All that and it's only one of your 6 allowed servings of carbs!!  That's also quite a bit of fiber to start your day!

If none of this dieting stuff sounds like something you wanna do then a guy named Frank Verano had another type of diet he said won't fail.  He said "A great way for to lose weight is to eat naked in front of a mirror. Restaurants will almost always throw you out before you can eat too much."   And this particular home after you've been thrown out will also be conducive to losing weight.  :-)

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT!

 <---------This is me after 3 months

OK, so I lied.  Truth to be told,  I hate seeing guys that look like that anyway.  But one thing I really don't do which I should is exercise.  I've never been big on exercise (no pun intended).   But while I don't do much to keep in shape--other than using the remote-- I can give some suggestions.  Now most of those "Seen on TV" infomercials are probably wastes of $$$.   But one of those types of products which does appear to be worth the money is an inexpensive product called the Bender Ball Mini Ab Ball.  I would never have even considered one of these but there's a great review of this on epinions.com.  You can see a review from jo.com on epinions.com for this product here.

I wanted to give one more idea for either a breakfast item or to satisfy a sweet tooth for a snack.  Jorge Cruise does say that yogurt is FULL of sugar but he does recommend Fage Greek style yogurt because the sugar content is much lower than most yogurts. He has a recipe for a parfait using this yogurt.  You can use about 1/2 cup of  the Fage (I buy the 0%) which has 4-1/2 gm sugar, 4-1/2 gm of carbs, and 10 gm of protein.  I'll mix in about a packet of Truvia sweetener to sweeten up the yogurt (I don't like plain unsweetened yogurt).  I'll start with a couple of tablespoons of yogurt on the bottom of the glass, top with a teaspoon or two of Nature's Hollow preserves, and layer it until the 1/2 cup yogurt is gone. These Nature's Hollow preserves are incredible.  1  tablespoon equals 7 gm of carbs.  I'll top off the parfait with a tad bit of Uncle Sam's Cereal which gives a bit of crunch.  The result is incredible and it's a total of about 25 grams of carbs or 1 carb serving...though it is a bit high on the sugar (4.5 gm).

I had to one more follow-up item before I forget.  Our Whole Foods store has Zevia six packs on sale for $2.00 off their regular price. I believe that around here the sale goes on until 4/27/10.  Twice we went in looking for my favorite ginger root beer and they were out.  A couple of the employees said they can hardly keep the shelves stocked with that soda so evidently word is spreading on this incredible zero calorie all naturally sweetened soda.

So What Can I Eat for this Diet???

I'm always wondering what delicious, fattening, unhealthy foods I have to give up in order to start a new diet.  Well, this one is no exception.  There goes my PIZZA.  I figure I will crave the crust, the savory sauce and stringy cheese.  Say good-bye to cake, cookies, ice cream, and all kinds of other good stuff.

But ya know...believe it or not I have never missed it, even when others are eating those things around me. Go figure!  I'm not sure exactly why.  On all the other diets (OK, don't tell anyone else about this) I had incredible cravings that were so strong that I had to occasionally go downstairs in the  middle of the night and satisfy those cravings.  More than once, I would hear my kids say the next day, "what happened to those 15 chocolate chip cookies that were here before we went to bed last night?"  Or they would say something like, "hey, how come there's no white cream inside these Oreo's?  

So, what am I doing?  

Here's an example of what I might do for some meals.  For starters, for breakfast, I'll start off with a chocolate Jay Robb shake and put in a couple or three teaspoons of Benefiber.  I make it with almond milk and believe me when I tell ya, you cannot taste the difference between the almond milk and regular milk.   For the real food, I have taken one of the Ezekiel 4:9® Organic Sprouted Whole Grain English Muffins and top with a teaspoon of Nature's Hollow sugar free preserves on each side of the muffin. I have found the Ezekiel products in the frozen food sections of Whole Foods and several different grocery stores in my area (Richmond, VA).

Before I continue, if you're anything like me the first thought in your mind when you read sprouted whole grain was "CARDBOARD."  But these are surprisingly good! Jorge also recommends Rudi's english muffins but I haven't found them around my area yet.

Now where was I?  Oh yeah, I was going to tell you about Nature's Hollow products.  Another one of Jorge's recommendations.   I buy Nature's Hollow at Amazon. They are all sugar free and made with Xylitol.  Now the preserves are delicious! The ketchup is good, but definitely not Heinz.  The maple syrup is pretty good, though not as thick as I'd like.  The honey is definitely lacking in taste and texture. Hickory Maple Barbeque Sauce is another item.  I kind of like it and I'll have to tell you later (if I can remember) how I've used it.

I think I digressed....breakfast!  That's right.  Thanks for the reminder.... With the English muffin I'll have some turkey sausage or beef bacon, or turkey ham, or all three (Heck I don't care....I'm hungry in the morning.  You can have regular sausage or bacon if you want...we just don't eat pork in the house. Add a cup of coffee to that and it's a decent meal.  The Jay Robb shake with the Benefiber and the high fiber English muffin really helps fill you up and keep you full until lunch.

WHAT'S FOR LUNCH????

Now, I work at home so I can do this easily...or you can also have this for dinner...PIZZA....no no no...not Italian Pizza but enough to keep you satisfied.  I start off with a whole wheat pita.   I get mine at WalMart.  I always look for whole wheat pitas with no more than 2 gm of sugar and what would be 1 serving of carbs (between 21-40).  THEN, I use Ragu Homestyle Pizza Sauce.  If you get Ragu, ya  GOTTA GOTTA use this particular one because there's no added sugar.  If you use another sauce, make sure there's no added sugar or corn syrup.  I use about 2 tablespoons of sauce and then pile on some mozzarella cheese.    If you want you can top with some pepperoni (I use the Hormel turkey pepperoni). Pop it in the oven at 350 degrees until the cheese is melted and enjoy!   To drink, I'll pop open a can of my new favorite ZERO CALORIE soda: ZEVIA!!!!  So I've got the fiber from the wheat pita and it makes a pretty good pizza.  Add a small salad and you are a ready-Freddie.  And the Zevia takes care of my sweet tooth!

Dinner!!!!

Wow!  This one can be pretty easy.  I love steak or chicken or pasta.  PASTA????  Yes...I will eat pasta...but only WHOLE WHEAT or whole grain pasta.  I do follow the serving information....like 1/2 cup means HALF OF CUP.   The problem is trying to find a whole wheat or whole grain pasta with as few carbs, lots of fiber BUT does not taste like cardboard.  I'm still checking the different brands and I'll have to get back to you with my taste testings.   So far the one I like the best is Eden Foods Kamut spirals.  In the interest of my readers, I will go back and taste test the others and let you know which ones you might want to stay away from!  The things I do for you guys!  Hope you appreciate it!!!

Durn, I did it again...I got off track....we were talking about dinner.  With the pasta I'll heat up some marinara (again, I look for those that are made only with tomatoes, olive oil, etc. but NO NO NO sugar or corn syrup or other sweeteners.)  You have to take a look at the label for the serving amount.  Tomatoes have a lot of natural sugar so you need to keep that in mind before putting it on the pasta. Instead of the marinara, you could also just heat up some butter/margarine or olive oil, and some fresh garlic and use that as a sauce.  Have some green beans, broccoli or other veggie, a salad and you're doing great for dinner.

That's only ONE idea for a day's meal....just to give you an example.  Jorge has meal ideas using whole wheat or whole grain tortillas and making a number of different types of sandwiches....You can be creative, but remember what I said in a previous post....GET IN THE HABIT OF READING THE NUTRITION LABELS.

Jorge Cruise's Belly Fat Cure - May have Cured Me!

I started mentioning this in an early post.  I knew something HAD to be done about my weight. When your 13 yr old son says, "Dad, you look pregnant" or your 13 yr old daughter says, "Dad, you're fat and disgusting looking" you know it's time to diet.    And then to hear the constant nagging from your parents and brothers, it was like overload.  Oh and I almost forgot...the doctor telling me that I might be in early stages of diabetes and wanting me to buy the blood sugar testing kit to keep track of my blood sugar...that was the scare that really got me thinking I better get moving to lose this weight.

I had tried Weight Watchers, South Beach Diet (both, very healthy diets), and also tried just cutting back on "stuff" (sweets, fried foods, etc).  But none of those diets kept weight off for any great amount of time.

Then towards the end of last year my brothers started talking about this guy Jorge Cruise and his "Belly Fat Cure."   So I asked them what kind of gimmick this was.  "ya know, Steve, you told me that South Beach Diet was THE best diet in the world and you lost all this weight, and it was so easy and I could do it, and ..and..and..
Now you're telling me that this guy Jorge (Horhay) Cruise has some kind of miracle cure for all the weight I've put on."

So, my brother starts by telling me about some kind of sugar and carbohydrate ratio.  Oh terrific...something else to count. If it's not calories, or protein, or carbs, or points; now I have to count both sugar AND carbs.  So Steve continues to rant on with this 15/6 ratio.   I hated ratios in math class  and 15 divided by 6 looks like 2.5. 2.5 what?  See, I got confused pretty quickly. Actually, Jorge calls this the S/C value which is sugar/carbs.  Always keep this in mind. Stay very low on the S value, for sure!

After doing some reading, I found out what this stuff is all about.  It's really easy.  If  ** I ** can do this diet, ANYONE can do it. His Belly Fat Cure is basically cutting WAY down on sugars and swapping out bad carbs for good carbs. Bad carbs are processed foods and "white foods" like white bread, potatoes, and pasta made with white enriched flour.  You swap those out for as much whole grain and high fiber products as you can.  Jorge ( Horhay!) recommends about 30 grams of fiber per day.  I haven't actually hit that yet.

Now you may be wondering what the picture off to the right has to do with what I'm talking about.  Actually, nothing at all. I thought it looked like exactly where I wanted to be right now, so I thought I would stick it in here and also to see if you were paying attention.

Now, I'm not saying it won't take a bit of work on your part...but losing weight takes work.  I hate to exercise, but there's still some work even for those of us who don't like the gym.
The work part is that you HAVE to get used to looking at the nutrition labels on food packages and also the serving size!!!!   It is important because you need to pay attention to the sugars, carbohydrates, and the fiber.  Low, Low, HIGH!  S/C  LOW LOW

Anyway...here's how it works. 15/6.  You are allowed 15 grams of sugar a day, and 6 servings of carbs.

OK I know you're asking what 6 servings of carbs are.  HA! If you had read an earlier post, you'd be ahead of the game, here.

Here's how it works and while it seems difficult it's really NOT.
0-4 grams of Carbs is free (like free parking in Monopoly)
5-20 grams of carbs is 1 serving
21-40 grams of carbs is 2 servings
41-60 grams is 3 servings, etc. etcl.

So on the left, what ever product that is, if you had about 1 cup of it (prepared) you'd eat no sugar (hooray!) and the carbs of 43 grams is considered 3 of your 6 allowed servings.  and no fiber...not so great....a lot of carbs and no fiber.

You can have a total of 120 grams of carbs a day.


So you gotta pay attention.  The first week or two, I carried a little piece of paper and marked down what I was eating so I knew how many carbs I had for the day..  After the first or second week, you probably don't need to keep track anymore as you have a pretty good idea what you've eaten.

Like I said, there are things you will have to give up. I was a REALLY big sugar fan.  It was pretty high there on MY food pyramid!  I also was a big evening nosher.  I thought giving up this stuff would be difficult.  But I found that the more fiber I ate, the less I really cared about sweets, chips, ice cream, etc. Also, I was really surprised to read of all the foods that are full of sugar.  Milk for example has something like 12 grams of sugar for a 8 ounce glass.  OUCH! 12 grams of sugar for one glass of milk!!   Now I know the thought of almond milk may sound disgusting, but I have been buying Diamond Breeze UNSWEETENED almond milk   
which I use for baking, cooking, etc.  Jorge highly recommends Jay Robb protein shakes which are delicious and I use the almond milk for that well.  I have made french toast (on whole grain bread) using almond milk instead of regular milk.

Hidden sugars also hang out in juices, fruits and vegetables.  I didn't know that tomatoes were so high in the sugar! Same with onions!

So just review the labels and you'll find it easy to get started on this. In upcoming posts I'll delve more into the belly fat cure and provide some examples of meals that Jorge has passed on.  I won't go into a whole lot of detail because I think you need to really get his book to get an appreciation of how good this diet is.

As of the other day I am down 33 pounds since starting in mid January. But you gotta remember one thing!
This is a LIFESTYLE change in eating.  Meaning cutting sugar intake down to almost nothing and then eating lots of whole grain foods and foods very high in fiber.  It's not bad..again, if I can do this, then ANYONE can!

411 on Sugar Substitutes - Part III

LAST BUT NOT LEAST!!!

The scoop on 

The familiar yellow packet: Splenda

Here's the scoop for the last of the artificial sweeteners! Jorge Cruise for his Belly Fat Cure also says this is poison to the body.  This has been the toughest of the sweeteners in researching.  Well, maybe not.  All of them have such conflicting reports when you search on the Internet!

 OK--Saccharin was first said to cause cancer. That was later delisted as not being dangerous. Some feel it's still safe, some say it's not.  Aspartame...wow...that seems to be THE one which almost everyone agrees is dangerous, except of course the American government (should the FDA be trusted? What does FDA stand for? Falsified Drug Approval?).  

Now we get to Sucralose. This one is really puzzling! 

First some history. This is the last of the 3 big artificial sweeteners to be placed on the market.  This one was discovered in 1976 by some scientists who were trying to develop, of all things, pesticides. At least you'll know that ingesting sucralose will help you rid your insides of insects and other undesirable bugs.

  This sweetener is 600 times sweeter than table sugar and is now in about 4500 products. Unlike aspartame, this one won't embalm you and you can use it in baking as well!  How lucky can we get?

There are SO many conflicting articles on the Internet that I don't know if I'm coming or going. If you go to Wikipedia you'll get some history on this.

OK is THIS ONE safe or not?  Your guess is as good as mine...again very puzzling. Some studies have hinted that there may be an effect on the thymus.  For those who don't remember their middle school or high school (or college) biology, the thymus is an "organ  located at the base of the neck, that is involved in development of cells of the immune system. It is prominent in the young but shrinks after puberty."  Now I'm really not sure if the tests showing shrinkage of the thymus had started with pre-teen rats and continued with them until after puberty. But I guess that would invalidate the results.

Either way, all the studies were only conducted on rats and not on humans. But the way rats metabolize stuff is not necessarily the same as humans. 

The Australian National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) cites two studies. The equivalent amount of sucralose for humans (in relation to what was given to the rats) would be equal to about 17,200 packets a day for a month.Wikipedia goes on to say that "The dose required to provoke any immunological response is nearly 4,300 Splenda packets/day."


DIABETES SCARE????
Uh Oh!!!  Oh wait! Doesn't appear to be a problem here according to Canadian Diabetes Association 2008 Clinical Practice Guidelines.  Health Canada (Health Canada is the Federal department responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health) has approved sucralose and said it is safe when used by people with diabetes.

So, if you've had the patience to read all of this mumbo-jumbo, you're probably saying that there's probably nothing wrong with Splenda. Well, about 3,246 web sites (OK, I'm exaggerating) say there's dangers in this stuff.  The site womantowomen says that there just isn't enough information and that it IS accumulating little by little. It's been said that there is a possibility that sucralose is a migraine trigger. 


One of the most common things I've read is that tests were only conducted on rats and that there were NOT ENOUGH studies done and for long enough periods of time to really see the long term effects.
Now, this web site listed a table prepared by Medline (the National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences):

Now here's the kicker which makes me wonder just how reliable all these sites are.  Medline says that no studies have shown that there are any adverse effects found from ingesting the small amounts of sucralose.


Also while reading through quite a bit of stuff on web sites it appears that many of the ones citing the dangers and what's really been found in testing have taken a lot of stuff completely out of context. It was really amazing to see that.  Ya know, it's kind of like religious fanatics who take small parts of bible passages, and twist them completely out of context to make them fit their own wild beliefs.

So, here we are again!  Safe or not safe. There are no instant replays here. Holy sucralose, Batman! I can't even get a straight answer on whether this stuff accumulates in the body.  Some say it does and some say it doesn't.  So what's a human to do?


Like the other two, MAKE YOUR OWN CHOICE!!!! For me here's the way I feel...I'll stay away from saccharin mostly because I can't stand the taste. I'm DEFINITELY staying away from aspartame.  Sucralose? I'm not sure on that one. I'm thinking that I'll cut MOST of it out of my diet but still have occasional small amounts...certainly not 17,000 packets a day!