Category: Nutrition

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Is your diet too acidifying?

While I’d heard about it for years, I became very closely acquainted with the concept of an acidifying diet this past summer while I was going through detox process. As I researched and read about it, I found out a few interesting things.

  1. Our bodies needs to maintain a balance between acid and base (alkaline) or we will die.
  2. Many (most?) acidic foods (like citrus fruits) actually have an alkalizing effect within the body.
  3. We, of course, have mechanisms in place to alkalize or acidify our bodies, whichever is necessary to maintain balance.
  4. The Standard American Diet is highly acidifying.

Fact number 4 above is the reason the detox I did focused a lot on alkalizing the body — most of us swing too far toward acidic, because if the foods we eat.

What are these acidifying foods?

  • Meats
  • Sugary beverages (including fruit juices) and diet sodas
  • Grains
  • Pastries
  • Alcohol
  • Milk and cheese
  • Regular and decaf coffee and black tea

Look familiar? Yeah.

How about some alkalizing foods?

  • Vegetables, especially greens
  • Legumes, especially soy beans
  • Fruits, especially citrus
  • Herbal and green teas

There are levels within each group. For example, beef is more acidifying than chicken, and kale is more alkalizing than a tomato, but you get the idea, right?

All those burgers, tacos, and steaks we eat, all that soda and beer we drink, the coffee we wake up with, well, those all serve to acidify our bodies.

Theres’ nothing wrong with consuming those acidifying foods, at least not in the context of this discussion of the body’s acid-alkaline state. I mean, I said it above: The body needs a balance, and being overly alkaline is just as dangerous as being overly acidic.

However, as we look at the list of acidifying foods, we can easily tell that the Standard American Diet is high is those, and relatively low in the alkalizing foods. We tend to prefer meat to veggies, pasta to legumes, coffee and black tea to herbal tea, and I think most of us will admit that we just don’t eat enough fruit.

I could give you a list of symptoms of an overly acidic body from the book  The Acid-Alkaline Diet, but, really, the list is quite extensive and it would also apply to many other ailments…. Okay, if you insist, here are a few:

  • Lack of energy
  • Feeling of depressions
  • Frequent infections
  • Sensitivity to high-pitched noises
  • Easily stressed
  • Headaches
  • Swelling of the eyes
  • Loose teeth
  • Mouth sores
  • Excess stomach acid
  • Dry skin
  • Skin gets irritated in sweaty areas
  • Hives
  • Leg cramps

What can we do about our acidifying diets? The answer is pretty simple: We need to substitute some of our acidifying foods for alkalizing ones.

Here some things you can do:

  • Limit coffee consumption, substituting green or herbal teas
  • Add lemon or lime juice to your water, although, keep in mind that while those juices are alkalizing agents inside the body, they are acidic in nature, and you probably don’t want acid washing over your teeth all the time, so do this once or twice a day only, or discuss it with your dentist
  • Eat more vegetables
  • Keep greens — kale, spinach — in your fridge and add them to whatever you eat. I buy the containers of cleaned organic baby kale and spinach and add them to just about everything, including sandwiches, pasta dishes, soups, salads
  • Drink less alcohol
  • Eat more fruits, especially avocados, although watch out for the high fat content of avocados
  • Use meat more as a garnish and for flavoring, rather than making it the main focus of a meal
  • Leave off the cheese

As with any change in your diet, it’s much easier to do this incrementally. Try it out for a few days a week, see if you feel any better. If you do feel better, alkalize more and more often. Hopefully, the feeling of well-being can keep you on track.

For me the changes were profound — softer, moister skin overall, especially around my heels and cuticles, and whiter eyes that don’t burn nearly as much as they used to. I should mention that my diet became more alkaline automatically as I switched to a plant-based diet, so there are more factors in play than a focus on alkalizing my body.

That’s the way it is with nutrition and the body, though. There are no silver bullets. With so many variables, both outside and inside our bodies, it’s not possible to say, for example, “Eat more avocados, and you’ll be okay,” or “Eat less meat, and you’ll be healthier.” We are all different, so the only thing to do is try things out, see what works.

If you eat a Standard American Diet, though, it’s safe to say your diet is too acidifying. If you don’t feel 100% all the time, alkalizing your diet may be just the thing you need. Give it a shot!

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Being fat is not inevitable

Fitness is a lifelong struggle. It takes work. I tell young people all the time, “Develop a fitness habit now, because when you get older, it’s that much harder to get into the swing of things.”

How often do we not even try a fitness program, because we “know” beforehand that we will not be able to complete it? How many times has our prejudgement of the outcome caused us not to even attempt it in the first place?

We almost certainly base this attitude on past fitness failures.

You know, when we were young and saw the first signs of body bulge, we watched our calories or carbs and hit the gym. That lasted a little while, months or years even, but then our lives filled up, and fitness took a back seat.

A few years — and more than a few pounds — later, we decided that we have got to do something about all this weight we’ve gained. We joined a gym, tried to do the same routines we did back in the day, but it wasn’t so easy anymore, and, anyway, our lives kept interrupting. With our long hours at work, it was just impossible to eat right. The kids — the kids — were always needing a ride here or there. Oh, and then there was that morning we woke up and couldn’t move our neck for 2 weeks.

Now we are even older and fatter. We think about the gym — are we really still paying the monthly membership? — but we know that’s not going to work. We look around and we compare ourselves with others our age, and we come to the conclusion that, “Being fat is inevitable. Might as well get used to it.”

I was so there. That story is mine — well, without the kids — and it may be a lot like yours, too.

So what can you do? You have to do something? Or are you happy being overweight? You know that being overweight is the road to diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, so you would like to lose some pounds, but if your mindset is that the path to fatness is inevitable, then you will likely just accept that “fact” and take your chances. After all, not everyone dies of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, right?

Well, hell, go buy yourself a carton of cigarettes, then, if that’s your attitude. After all, only 20% or 25% of smokers get lung cancer.

The other day, a friend of mine was telling me that he knows he needs to find time for fitness, but he is just can’t work it into his schedule. Believe me, I get that.

Regardless of your reasons for not eating right, for not exercising, at some point, something will click. Something will change inside your brain that says, “You know what? I need to make time to get healthy and fit.”

I don’t know what it will be for you. I really don’t know what it was for me.

I mean, I know I was feeling weird pains. I know I was on medications that I didn’t want to be on. I know I was shopping for size 44 pants. I know I saw a photo of my fat self that jarred me. But I have no specific recollection of an epiphany. It just happened.

At some point, I knew I had to turn things around.

At some point I realized that being fat is not inevitable.

I hope that realization comes to you before it’s too late.

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The Easy Way to Get Healthy

I was recently disturbed by something I saw on Facebook. (I know I shouldn’t take things so seriously, but, honestly, some things are just disturbing.)

One of the people in my timeline had posted a status update about some fitness program he is doing, how he loves it, is losing weight, his cholesterol is going down, you know, the kind of weird post that only fitness fanatics can love.

In the comments section, the conversation went something like this:

  • Commenter: Wow, that sounds great, Original Poster. I have been looking for something like that myself.
  • Original Poster: It is great, Commenter.  You should give it a try!
  • Commenter: Maybe I’ll do that. Is it easy? It has to be easy, or I won’t do it.
  • Original Poster: It’s not easy, but anything worth doing isn’t easy.

And the Commenter was not heard from again.

Getting fit is definitely not easy. It takes hard work to build muscle, because the only way to build it is to tear it down first by lifting heavy objects.

But wait a minute.

Getting fit is one thing. Fitness involves building muscle and aerobic stamina. There is almost no way to make that easy. It takes time and effort, like one of the fitness programs in the ads on this page.

However, getting healthy is a different matter.

I mean, sure, they tend to go hand in hand, but, honestly, you can get healthy — e.g. get your blood pressure and cholesterol down, avoid heart disease, severely lower your risk of cancer — relatively easily. All you have to do is change the way you eat.

You are going to eat anyway, right? 75% to 80% of your body composition is determined by what you eat, right? So … why not just eat the right things? Assuming you don’t have access to some kind of magic wand, what can be easier than that?

Well, maybe it’s not so easy. After all, there are some things that make it difficult for people to change the way they eat.

  • Ingrained beliefs – We learn what is good and bad for us as children, and what we learned way back then tends to stick. We have a hard time overcoming those beliefs that were hammered into us all those years ago.
  • Disbelief – How can being healthy be as simple as changing what I put into my digestive tract?
  • Not wanting to stand out  – As humans living in society, we tend to be continually influenced by peer, family, and other social pressures, and many of us simply want to fit in. Why stand out from the crowd because we “eat weird”?
  • Playing the odds – That [insert ailment or disease here] won’t happen to me, right?

The funny thing is that most of those barriers to healthy eating go away once we suffer some kind of medical trauma, like a heart attack or stroke. Once that happens, oh, yeah, then we are ready to make a change.

That is kind of like installing the alarm after the burglary. Sure, you may help prevent future problems, but you are lucky that first incident didn’t put you under.

I prefer to take preventive measures to avoid the issue altogether, and the current route I am taking toward staying healthy is a plant-based diet. When I use the term “diet”, by the way, I am referring to a way of eating, not a short-term plan.

Why plant-based? Check out this short written interview with T. Colin Campbell for a quick rundown.

Plant-based is my choice, but yours might be different.

Whatever you choose, please know that you can be much more healthy if you simply change the way you eat! Be conscious of what you put into your mouth. Stay away from all that refined and processed food. Try to eat whole foods. If you include meat, try to get the good stuff without all the drugs and other gunk in it. Keep dietary fats low.

Eat to satisfy your hunger, not your emotions, and, while you won’t see the changes overnight, you may be surprised how quickly your health improves.

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Is being overweight some kind of joke?

I was on Facebook the other day — as I often am — and one of my friends, a person I know and like, not just some random Facebook “friend”, posted the following:

  • “Double-chocolate fudge brownie for breakfast! #thatiswhyimfat”

Cute, right?

A few people commented on the post, primarily laughing along with him, commenting on why they are fat themselves, offering up other desserts that might make good breakfasts, all with a few LOLs tossed into the mix.

As I said, I know this guy, and he’s a bit pudgy, but he’s not hugely obese, so maybe that’s why he jokes about it. He knows he needs to lose a few, but might never get around to it.

But why laugh about it?

A big part of the reason we laugh at being overweight is because, for most people under the age of 40, dropping pounds is more about looking good than feeling good, and everyone feels good when they’re young, right? So, maybe at some point, looking good is not a priority, which means there’s no real need to lose weight.

You know the story. Life takes over once we graduate from high school and college. We get a real job, find ourselves in a long-term relationship, have a kid or two, and, yeah, we gain a few pounds. No big deal, it happens to everyone. We just buy bigger clothes and accept the idea that as we age, we gain weight. Plus, we’re busy, so we don’t really have time to worry so much about how we look.

As we get older, though, we start to see the health implications of being fat. We have pain for no apparent reason. Our joints start to ache. Our doctor puts us on medications, and at that point many of us try to drop poundage to bring down our blood pressure, cholesterol, lower our risk of heart disease, and just to, overall, feel better.

Anyway, back to the Facebook comment, I can’t help but wonder if my friend would have received the same light-hearted responses to his status update, if his hashtag had been #thatiswhyillgetheartdisease or #thatiswhyillbediabetic or #thatiswhyilldieyoungerthanishould.

Not so cute now, right?

Excess fat on our bodies leads to a host of ills, including heart disease, diabetes, hypertension — this is well-documented. But still we joke about it, and our friends joke about it right along with us.

There is a point where we know it’s no longer a joke, though, right? We all know a super huge person or 2 (or 3 or 4 or 5 these days), and we don’t joke about that kind of obesity. That guy has a problem, not us. Many of us, though, do have a problem, and we don’t even know it.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 35% of the adults in the United States are obese, which is defined as a BMI (body mass index) of 30 or more. Are you part of the 35%?

The CDC provides an easy way for you to calculate your BMI here.

Even if you are not obese, are you overweight, with a BMI of 25 or higher? You have to be overweight before you’re obese, hint, hint.

The bottom line is that our excess body fat is killing us, so, come on, let’s stop joking about being fat and start doing something about it by getting our diets in line! And, trust me on this, if you start eating right when you are younger, you’ll be a whole lot better off when you’re older.

Need help? Email me at .

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Breaking your food addictions

Last night I ran into a couple of friends I haven’t seen in a few months. One of them commented, “You’re looking fit.” I replied, “Why, yes, I am,” because, you know, why deny it?

Anyway, we started talking about how to go about achieving the level of fitness I’ve achieved — which still has a way to go, I might add — and the first thing I told my friends was, “You have to get your diet right.”

I am not telling you that you need to go vegan, as I recently did — you don’t — but I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “You can’t out-exercise a bad diet.” People seem to know this intuitively, but, still we try, oh how we try.

Our body composition is 75-80% determined by what we eat, so why do we try to find ways to continue to eat our cheese and candy, our burgers and ice cream, our french fries and donuts? The answer is plain and simple: We are addicted to those things.

Oh, sure, when we start running or lifting or aerobicizing, we may go on some kind of short-term eating plan, but that quickly gets kicked to the curb, because, hey, we are working it out, so we can eat whatever we want, right?

WRONG!

Maybe we realize we should eat right, but have a problem determining what “right” is. There is, after all, a lot of conflicting information out there.

While that may be true, if you need to lose 20+ pounds of fat, there are a lot of proven ways to do it: Low Carb, Plant-Based, Low-Fat, Low-Calorie.

(I would caution you — as we’ll discuss below — that working out and eating a low-calorie diet don’t mesh. When you are working out, your body needs more calories, so be sure to adjust your idea of “low-calorie” to include extra food to allow your body to get the proper nutrition. Here’s a cool little calorie needs calculator.)

All you have to do is choose whichever way of eating works best for you and is sustainable.

Sustainable? What’s that about?

Sustainable in this case just means that you can continue eating that way for … the rest of your life!

Diet and fitness are not short-term goals. We’ve all been there, done that, right? We get on a low-calorie diet. If we are determined enough, we hang with it for a couple weeks. We may even think, “Hey, this isn’t so bad. I could keep eating like this.”

Then the trigger events show up — birthdays, holidays — and we reason, “I’ve been so good, it’s okay to let myself go today.” Slowly we see the trigger events become more general — Tuesdays, Saturdays. There’s always some reason to celebrate. Eventually, we give up on [insert your chosen diet here], because life just keeps getting in the way.

If you look at any diet and think to yourself, “I can’t do that forever,” then forget it, because all you will see is short-term weight loss. As soon as you return to your normal diet, you’ll gain it all back — and more.

I remember when I tackled low-carb, I thought, “I can do this forever.” And I could have, until I learned about the health benefits of a plant-based diet. But that’s a subject for another post.

Let’s go back to last night again, when I was talking with another group of friends. Of course, the conversation turned to fitness — without prodding from me, I might add — and we discussed the addictive effects of sugar and cheese, and the convenience factor of fast food.

While I often claim my fitnessquest began in 2007, it really started many years before that with a desire to break my fast food habit. I became a vegetarian just so I could do it — can’t stop for a quick nosh at MacBurgerBell if you’re a vegetarian, right? And it worked!

Fast forward to many years later, when I finally decided to break my sugar addiction. How? I just refused to eat anything that was created to satisfy a sweet tooth. Donut? No thanks. Cinnabon? Keep it. Birthday cake? Happy birthday to you, but get the cake out of my face.

Is that rude? Too bad. This is my health and fitness we are talking about, and I control that, not you.

Eventually, people got the idea, and they saw my results over time.

Let’s say, then, that you buy into this notion of getting your diet in line. Admittedly, this is not an easy task. How can you get it done?

HOW TO BREAK YOUR FOOD ADDICTIONS – TIP #1

When I tell people I’m eating vegan, the first response is almost always: “No cheese?!?!? I couldn’t live without cheese.” If you think that’s true, you are addicted to cheese.

Maybe cheese is not your poison. Maybe it’s sugar that always derails you — 3 or 4 Cokes a day? Maybe it’s too much convenience food — burgers every day for lunch?

Take a good look at how often you eat those foods, and make a plan to scale back.

For example, if you drink 3 or 4 Cokes a day, tell yourself, “I’m not going to drink Coke on Tuesdays and Fridays.” Every couple of weeks, add another day, until you are only drinking Coke 1 day a week. Then cut it back to 2 Cokes on that 1 day. Then 1 Coke. Then none.

If you eat burgers and fries every day for lunch, follow that same kind of plan. It would be nice if you would get yourself a salad on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Or find some decent burger-like patties in your grocer’s freezer and see how you like them. Don’t reject those after 1 bite, by the way. You are accustomed / addicted to beef burgers. Eat 3 or 4 of the non-meat burgers (not all at once) before you decide, “I don’t like these,” then try another brand. Or, better yet, lose the burgers altogether, get  a good cookbook, like Melissa Costello’s Karma Chow Cookbook, and make meals to take with you.

Eventually, and you’ll have to trust me on this, you will break the bad habits.

As anyone who’s quit smoking can tell you, it takes a while. I’ve found that 18 months is about right for me. You may never totally lose the craving, but your body will feel so much better, the cravings become very easy to resist.

HOW TO BREAK YOUR FOOD ADDICTIONS – TIP #2

Understand tip #1? Great. But I know that’s not so easy to implement, if you are battling multiple food addictions, so tip #2 is to work with only 1 addiction at a time.

If you are, as many of us are, addicted to fast food, cheese, and sugar, don’t get all crazy and try to quit all those at once! Are you kidding me? Talk about a recipe for disaster.

I will repeat: Fitness is a life-long journey. You — hopefully — have plenty of time, many years ahead of you. Take it slowly.

Using Technique #1 above, quit fast food.

18 months later — more or less, depending on how you feel — quit cheese (and all dairy, I would recommend).

18 months after that, quit desserts. Then sodas. Then cookies. Then birthday cakes. Then ice cream. (Actually, you may want to add ice cream to the top of the list — that’s what actors always eat when they want to gain weight for a role.) You can add all that sugary stuff to your “I’m not eating it” list in rather rapid order, depending on how determined you are. Don’t rush it, but don’t make excuses to delay it, either.

Okay, that’s it. Easy? No. Worth it? Yes.

HOW TO BREAK YOU FOOD ADDICTIONS – TIP #3 (ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE WORKING OUT)

Of course, some of you will be working out during the entire time you are breaking your food addictions. I highly recommend that — click on any of the fitness program links on this page to see some great ways to get it done — but keep a few things in mind.

When you work out, you are expending more energy, so your body requires more food. Be prepared for that sensation. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive to us to eat more food when we are trying to lose weight, but when we move more, we have to keep our body fueled. (Here’s that link to the calorie needs calculator again.)

If you are going to eat more food, but less of your addictive foods, you need to find alternative fuel sources. Sure, you can buy protein shakes and other meal replacements, but I would recommend you try to get accustomed to consuming less processed foods and more vegetables and fruits. Not only will this add fiber to your diet, but it will get you on the road to a level of wellness you never thought possible.

Instead of that burger for lunch, have a baked sweet potato with some sriracha sauce and broccoli. Instead of pie for dessert, have a bowl of berries. Sounds weird, right? You’ll be surprised how quickly this becomes second nature.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS…

Look, there are several reasons to get fit. One is to simply look better. As we age, though, we find ourselves in touch with just how mortal we are, and getting fit translates into getting healthy. “Looking better” becomes a side effect.

Whatever your fitness goals, whatever your age, you have to realize that fitness is not something you achieve and then have forever. It is a way of life. That is why fad diets are doomed to fail. They are short-term fixes.

To achieve true fitness, you have to be in it for the long haul, and the first step is to get your diet in line by breaking your food addictions.