Ahhhh, feels like summertime! This warm weather makes us shed layers and go for summertime food and beverages – what could be better than BBQ’s and cold beer!

Well, if you are concerned about weight loss, or not gaining weight this summertime, Beer is a beverage that has the most significant impact on both!

First let’s look at the five major reasons people gain weight and then look specifically at alcohol consumption..

1) What you eat, poor eating habits such as skipping meals, and bad food combinations.

2) Your genetic and hormonal make-up.

3) Your emotional state: many people “eat their emotions.”

4) Certain medications.

5) What you drink: we’re taking  about alcohol here!

The calories in alcohol are considered “empty calories.” This means they provide absolutely no nutritional value and no cell in the body can use ethyl alcohol as a fuel source. Moreover, alcohol is a toxin which the liver must metabolize into non-toxic substances. What happens is that when alcohol enters the blood stream your liver becomes focused on getting rid of this “toxin” and our fat burning is compromised…it slows down your weight loss and facilitates fat storage!

Alcohol contains 7 kcal/gram, so it’s sort of a cross between a carbohydrate (4 kcal/g) and a fat (9 kcal/g). A “shot” (1.5 oz or 45 ml) of 80 proof liquor contains 98 kcal from the alcohol, and the same amount of 100 proof liquor contains 125 kcal from the alcohol (if it’s a sweetened “liqueur,” then there will be way more!). A 6 oz. glass of “dry table wine” contains about 150 kcal, so having ONE glass of wine everyday will add an additional 4500 kcal/month (or over a pound of fat!).

And Then There is Beer!

Beer is perhaps the worst type of alcohol to drink, as far as weight issues are concerned. There are two primary reasons for this: 1) The main sugar in beer is maltose. Maltose is a disaccharide composed of two molecules of glucose…this means it’s very high on the glycemic index and will trigger a “double shot” of insulin! 2) Beer “tastes like more.” It does not quench thirst because alcohol is a diuretic…the more you drink, the more you “pee.” It is not uncommon for some folks to drink three six-packs of beer over the course of a three-hour football game. Try drinking that same amount of water… bet you can’t!

Incidentally this is the same “trick” soft drink companies use: They put large amounts of sodium and caffeine (also a diuretic) in their sodas, thus you never quench your thirst (it actually makes you MORE thirsty) and you drink more.

Alcohol is produced by fermentation involving millions of yeast cells. When these cells die, their DNA and RNA are released in the solution. DNA and RNA supply large amounts of “purines,” which are molecules that will ultimately be metabolized to uric acid (wine and beer, particularly “Weiss” beer [wheat beer] have very large amounts of these).

People with “Syndrome X” generally have higher than normal levels of uric acid in their blood already, so drinking alcohol will further increase this tendency and the risk of gout will go up. Coupled with this, the metabolism of alcohol requires energy (i.e. ATP). When ATP gives up its “energy” (high energy phosphate moieties) AMP is produced. AMP is a purine also, so excessive AMP production will further increase uric acid (fructose can also do this as cells in the body cannot use fructose directly either).

Finally, and perhaps most important, alcohol can inhibit the mechanisms of gluconeogenesis to a significant degree. The body cannot transform the glycerol (produced by alcohol metabolism or contained in the beverage itself) into glucose for use as fuel. Instead, it is converted into triglycerides (fat) and is usually deposited in the liver. As Dr. Tran from Ideal Protein says, “Drinking alcohol is like handing the adipocyte the ingredients to make fat on a silver platter”!

This information is what we share with our Ideal Protein weight loss clients. The link below gives the science behind the mechanism of the inhibition of gluconeogenic activity following alcohol consumption in humans.

http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/275/5/E897.full.html#ref-list-1

In fact, drinking diet soda can be worse for our health than regular soda. Read on…

By Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine | Healthy Living

Yet another study confirms what people have been saying for ages: Stop drinking diet soda. Like, right now. Drinking just one 12-ounce can of an artificially sweetened fizzy drink per week can increase your risk of Type 2 diabetes by 33 percent, French researchers found. And given that most people don’t stop at a single weekly serving, your real risk for diabetes could actually be much higher.

Diet Soda May Increase Risk of Depression

The study, which was announced Thursday and will be published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, was conducted by France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research and covered 66,118 middle-aged women whose dietary habits and health were tracked from 1993 to 2007.

Diet Soda May Be Making You Fat

The results were unexpected. Though it’s well-known that people who consume a lot of sugar are more likely to develop diabetes, the researchers found that participants who drank “light” or “diet” soft drinks had a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes than those who drank regular, sugar-filled sodas. Those who drank 100 percent natural squeezed fruit juices instead had no additional risk.

Women who choose artificially flavored soft drinks usually drink twice as many of them as women who choose regular soda or juice—2.8 glasses per week compared to 1.6 glasses. “Yet when an equal quantity is consumed, the risk of contracting diabetes is higher for ‘light’ or ‘diet’ drinks than for ‘non-light’ or ‘non-diet’ drinks,” the researchers, epidemiologists Francoise Clavel-Chapelon and Guy Fagherazzi, said in a statement. Women who drank up to 500 milliliters (about 12 ounces) of artificially sweetened beverages per week were 33 percent more likely to develop the disease, and women who drank about 600 milliliters (about 20 ounces) per week had a 66 percent increase in risk.

Drinking sweetened beverages increases the risk of becoming overweight, which is itself a risk factor in developing diabetes. But the study didn’t find that the results were the same even among overweight women. So how can artificially sweetened drinks be making the problem worse if they’re fat- and calorie-free?

“With respect, in particular, to ‘light’ or ‘diet’ drinks, the relationship with diabetes can be explained partially by a greater craving for sugar in general by female consumers of this type of soft drink,” the researchers explained. “Furthermore, aspartame, one of the main artificial sweeteners used today, causes an increase in glycaemia and consequently a rise in the insulin level in comparison to that produced by sucrose.”

Translation: Drinking artificially sweetened drinks makes you crave other sweet things (hello, chocolate!). And your body reacts to aspartame—also known as NutraSweet and Equal—much in the same way that it reacts to plain old sugar.

According to the American Diabetes Association, about 25.8 million children and adults in the United States have diabetes—about 8.3 percent of the population. The disease is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in people age 20 and older, and can also cause heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and damage to the nervous system. Type 2 diabetes—which can be controlled by diet and exercise rather than a daily insulin injection—is the most common form of diabetes in the United States.

The study’s authors cautioned that more research was needed in order to prove a true causal link between diet sodas and Type 2 diabetes. “Information on beverage consumption was not updated during the follow-up, and dietary habits may have changed over time,” they admitted in their report. “We cannot rule out that factors other than ASB [artificially sweetened beverages] are responsible for the association with diabetes.”

It is going to be a GREAT YEAR!

I can feel it!!

Many of us are also feeling the after effects of a joyous holiday season, full of seasonal “treats”, libations and scheduling anomalies. Is weight-loss a primary Resolution for you? (And at the same time, at the back of our minds we question, how long will the resolution – and the results- last “this year” ?)

Let’s look at a few facts about Fat ~

Location, Location, Location

You have fat you can see – and fat you can’t see. We all do.
We store most of our fat in two ways:

• Just under the skin in the thighs, hips, buttocks, and abdomen. That’s called subcutaneous (under the skin) fat. It’s the fat that you notice.
• Deeper inside, around the vital organs (heart, lungs, digestive tract, liver, etc.) in the chest, abdomen, and pelvis. That’s called “visceral” fat. It’s so deep inside you that you can’t notice it from the outside.                                                                                                                                        Many people are self-conscious about the fat they can see. But actually, it’s the hidden fat — the visceral fat — that may be a bigger problem, even for thin people.

Like Another Organ

Fat doesn’t just sit there. It makes “lots of nasty substances,” says Kristen Hairston, MD, assistant professor of endocrinology and metabolism at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

And although we all have and need visceral fat, the problem is when there’s too much of it. That’s linked to a greater chance of developing high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and certain cancers (including breast cancer and colon cancer.)

How Did I Get It?

When overweight/obese, a body runs out of safe places to store fat and begins storing it in and around the organs, such as the heart and the liver.

“Fatty liver disease was, until recently, very rare in nonalcoholics. But with obesity increasing, you have people whose fat depots are so full that the fat is deposited into the organs,” says Carol Shively, PhD, professor of pathology-comparative medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine.  “Now there is much interest in fat being deposited around the heart, as well.”

Bon Vie Weight Loss, utlizing the Ideal Protein methodology, is focused on reducing that midsection ‘belly fat’. We have the scientific protocol and personalized coaching for you to gain and sustain your weight loss and health goals for 2013 – for life. Bon Vie is focused on making your efforts and investment in weight loss sustained!

Well  yes, this does seem obvious – but the salient point in any discussion about obesity related disease  - is that excess of any carbohydrate (carbohydrate = sugar) causes an insulin response from our pancreas.  Read on ~

www.webmd.com Nov. 27, 2012 — Countries that mix high-fructose corn syrup into processed foods and soft drinks have higher rates of diabetes than countries that don’t use the sweetener, a new study shows. In a study published in the journal Global Health, researchers compared the average availability of high-fructose corn syrup to rates of diabetes in 43 countries. About half the countries in the study had little or no high-fructose corn syrup in their food supply. In the other 20 countries, high-fructose corn syrup in foods ranged from about a pound a year per person in Germany to about 55 pounds each year per person in the United States. The researchers found that countries using high-fructose corn syrup had rates of diabetes that were about 20% higher than countries that didn’t mix the sweetener into foods. Those differences remained even after researchers took into account data for differences in body size, population, and wealth. But couldn’t that mean that people in countries that used more high-fructose corn syrup were just eating more sugar or more total calories? The researchers say no: There were no overall differences in total sugars or total calories between countries that did and didn’t use high-fructose corn syrup, suggesting that there’s an independent relationship between high-fructose corn syrup and diabetes. “It raises a lot of questions about fructose,” says researcher Michael I. Goran, PhD, co-director of the Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. Although the study found an association, it doesn’t establish a cause/effect relationship.

The Industry Responds

Not everyone is convinced. Audrae Erickson is president of the Corn Refiners Association, an industry group that recently petitioned the FDA to change the name corn syrup to corn sugar on ingredient lists. “Just because an ingredient is available in a nation’s diet does not mean it is uniquely the cause of a disease,” she says in a prepared statement. “There is broad scientific consensus that table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are nutritionally and metabolically equivalent,” Erickson says. “It is, therefore, highly dubious … without any human studies demonstrating a meaningful nutritional difference between high-fructose corn syrup and sugar — to point an accusatory finger at one and not the other,” she says. On that point, nutritionists who were not involved in the research think the corn industry is right. Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, professor of food, nutrition studies, and public health at New York University, says the study “is based on a questionable and highly debatable premise: that high-fructose corn syrup is significantly different in its physiological effects from sucrose, or table sugar.” Both table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are a mixture of two simple sugars — fructose and glucose. Nestle says studies show that the body responds to table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup the same way. The bottom line, she says, is that too much of any kind of sugar isn’t healthy, no matter where it comes from.

It’s More Complicated?

But Goran says the problem is more complex. There’s some scientific evidence that the body treats fructose differently than glucose. Table sugar is about half fructose and half glucose. The percentage of fructose in high-fructose corn syrup isn’t disclosed on food labels, but it’s thought to range from 42% to 55%. But it may be even higher than that. In a study published in 2011 in the journal Obesity, Goran found the percentage of fructose in drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup ranged from 47% to 65%. “I know there’s a lot of consumer confusion about fructose: It’s a fruit sugar; it’s healthy; it’s already in sugar,” he says. But, again, it’s not that simple. Goran thinks there’s a big difference between fructose in fruit — where it’s paired with fiber, which slows down its absorption — and fructose that’s refined into syrup. “There are lots of other aspects of the way fructose is handled by the body which are different than glucose that make it metabolically dangerous for the body,” he says.

By Leslie Becker-Phelps, PhD

So much to do, so little time. You check off things on your to-do list (or, if you’re like me, your many lists) – and move on to the new issues at hand. While this approach to your day might help you efficiently accomplish your goals, an unanticipated consequence is that it can leave you forever staring at, and thinking about, all the things you have yet to do. And this can make you feel empty and overwhelmed. So, it’s an important practice to also build into your day a way to reflect on the successes and joys. Fortunately, Thanksgiving serves as a wonderful reminder to do this.

To help train yourself to appreciate – and be thankful for – the positive, make a daily effort to do three things:

Pay attention to the good stuff: It’s too easy to be governed by thinking, “Now that I’ve got this done, I need to…” It’s also too easy to not think about all the blessings in your life – you know, your job or loved ones or home or the free country you live in… (For instance, right now you might find yourself thinking about the things you don’t have or how what you do have is inadequate.)

Instead, consciously think about your positive qualities, accomplishments, and the blessings in your life. Challenge yourself to view life from a more positive perspective. If you tend to struggle with being shy or introverted, focus on how you are a loyal and devoted friend and how you are wonderfully creative or committed to a healthy lifestyle. At your job, you might notice how helpful you tend to be to others, or how you excel in certain areas.

Reflect on the good stuff: To become a naturally more appreciative person, you need to remember the things that feel good. So, think back over the past day, week, or month and replay those situations that made you happy or feel positive (e.g. proud, thankful).

You might even help your memory along by keeping a daily gratitude journal in which you briefly remind yourself of the good stuff in your life. If you keep it specific, you can repeat the same topics and still keep them fresh. For instance, you can address how your children made you happy by writing, “It made me feel good to see how sweetly the girls played together today.” Then the next day you might write, “I felt so loved and blessed when Suzie said she loved me and gave me a big hug this morning.”

Interpret experiences as part of the good stuff in life: If you tend to be a bit of an Eeyore and see the dark side of everything, then you would do yourself a favor by practicing a bit of positive thinking. It won’t help to flat out deny problems, but maintaining perspective can be extremely helpful. For instance, you will not be happy that the love of your life just dumped you. However, you can still appreciate that you have good friends who are there to support you; or that you have a career that you love. And, with a little time, you might even acknowledge to yourself that he or she wasn’t such a great catch after all.

By approaching Thanksgiving – and every day – with these three guidelines, you will find that you are more thankful. And this will make you – and the people around you – happier.

Thank you to WebMD.

Spinach may not give you superhuman strength to fight off villains like Popeye’s nemesis Bluto, but this leafy green and other foods containing iron can help you fight a different type of enemy — iron-deficiency anemia.

Iron-deficiency anemia, the most common form of anemia, is a decrease in the number of red blood cells caused by too little iron. Without sufficient iron, your body can’t produce enough hemoglobin, a substance in red blood cells that makes it possible for them to carry oxygen to the body’s tissues. As a result, you may feel weak, tired, and irritable.

About 20% of women, 50% of pregnant women, and 3% of men do not have enough iron in their body. The solution, in many cases, is to consume more foods high in iron.

How Your Body Uses Iron in Food

When you eat food with iron, iron is absorbed into your body mainly through the upper part of your small intestine.

There are two forms of dietary iron: heme and nonheme. Heme iron is derived from hemoglobin. It is found in animal foods that originally contained hemoglobin, such as red meats, fish, and poultry. Your body absorbs the most iron from heme sources.

High-in-Iron Food Sources

Very good sources of heme iron, with 3.5 milligrams or more per serving, include:

• 3 ounces of beef or chicken liver
• 3 ounces of clams or mollusks
• 3 ounces of oysters

Good sources of heme iron, with 2.1 milligrams or more per serving, include:

• 3 ounces of cooked beef
• 3 ounces of canned sardines, canned in oil
• 3 ounces of cooked turkey

Other sources of heme iron, with 0.7 milligrams or more per serving, include:

• 3 ounces of chicken
• 3 ounces of halibut, haddock, perch, salmon, or tuna
• 3 ounces of ham
• 3 ounces of veal

Iron in plant foods such as lentils, beans, and spinach is nonheme iron. This is the form of iron added to iron-enriched and iron-fortified foods. Our bodies are less efficient at absorbing nonheme iron, but most dietary iron is nonheme iron.

Very good sources of nonheme iron, with 3.5 milligrams or more per serving, include:

• Breakfast cereals enriched with iron
• One cup of cooked beans
• One-half cup of tofu
• 1 ounce of pumpkin, sesame, or squash seeds

Good sources of nonheme iron, with 2.1 milligrams or more per serving, include:

• One-half cup of canned lima beans, red kidney beans, chickpeas, or split peas
• One cup of dried apricots
• One medium baked potato
• One medium stalk of broccoli
• One cup of cooked enriched egg noodles
• One-fourth cup of wheat germ

Other sources of nonheme iron, with 0.7 milligrams or more, include:

• 1 ounce of peanuts, pecans, walnuts, pistachios, roasted almonds, roasted cashews, or sunflower seeds
• One-half  cup of dried seedless raisins, peaches, or prunes
• One cup of spinach
• One medium green pepper
• One cup of pasta
• One slice of bread, pumpernickel bagel, or bran muffin
• One cup of rice