Choose Your Hard

Plenty of things in life can be hard....or are hard.  But there are so many beautiful things in life that it makes all the hard crap worth it.  Parenthood is a great example.  I KNOW parents can relate.  Parenting is some HARD stuff, but then there's those sweet moments among the chaos that make all the tough parts seem not so tough and totally worth it.

Kate helping our dog eat his dinner

Losing Weight Is Hard & Being Fit Is Hard

I look at fitness in much the same way.  I'm not going to sugarcoat it.  Losing weight is hard.  Building muscle is hard.  It requires a lot of work physically, mentally and emotionally. You may think you're going to drop dead after your first week(month) of training.  You may feel like your lungs will literally explode right out of your chest.  You may puke.  You may feel hungry.  Resisting food temptation is hard.  It requires constant monitoring.  After all, those living the fit life are recovering sugar addicts and are constantly on the verge of relapsing...or at least I am.  Will power is much like a muscle, and the more it is worked, the stronger it gets.  It's hard, too, but the benefits of strengthening your will power and your body FAR outweigh the hard that comes along with it.

Because of being fit, breaking down and tossing a 30 lb jogging stroller in the back of my car isn't a wind-sucking, red-faced task.  I can do it with ease and not miss a beat, all while holding my 11 month old who weighs as much as a sack of potatoes (lucky for her, chunky baby thighs never go out of style).  Because of being fit, unloading a full load of groceries

doesn't take forever, and I can usually get them all in 2 trips. ;) Because of being fit, I know I am setting a good example of what health and loving your body is for my girls.  They are learning early on the importance of eating healthy food to fuel their body, not learning to indulge in junk food to drown their emotions.

Because of enduring the hard of being fit, I know that I'm doing everything I can to ensure I am here for my family as long as possible.  Not only am I ensuring my longevity, but I'm insuring that my quality of life is optimal for those years.  What good is living until old age if you can't get out and move around and enjoy it?  That only happens by getting in shape and staying there.  You can't be in shape without giving a damn about what goes into your body and that also takes hard work.  Eating clean and eating for fat loss are both hard.  Food prepping is hard.  Researching the right foods to eat is hard.  Taking the time to try new recipes is hard.  So is being fit hard?  Yes, but is it worth it?  ABSOLUTELY HELL YES.  

Being Fat Is Hard
Being overweight is also hard.  I know, I have been there.  I was never morbidly obese, but I was 201 lbs after having my first daughter and on my 5'4" frame, that wasn't a pretty site.  I had never been that big before.  In high school and college I fluctuated between a size 4-8, 120 lbs-145lbs.  I had never truly been on the other side of the weight fence (despite feeling like I was fat everyday of my teenage and college life).  I have felt the discomfort of thigh chafing.

Obesity makes driving hard.

I have felt like an over-sized giant in my car. I have avoided the mirror completely getting out of the shower.  I have hated every article of clothing in my closet.  I have avoided shopping (and that killed me!).  I have been nearly snubbed next to young college girls in a sub shop line.  I have been ignored by construction workers (and that's hard to do).  As nice as it was to not hear a whistle and an 'owww!', it kinda hurt too.

When you're overweight, it's hard to be on your feet all day.  They feel bruised after six hours.  It's hard to feel out of breath going up 10 stairs...or for so many, it's just going 10 feet.  It's hard to have Diabetes and have to manage it--and pay for it-- on a daily basis.

It's hard to take time off of work to be sick and laid up in a hospital room.  It's hard to afford and take medication everyday for high blood pressure and cholesterol.  It's hard to deal with the digestive issues the Standard American Diet gives you.  It's hard to tell your kids you can't play with them because you are too big or too tired or can't run or have bad knees.  It's hard to see their disappointment.  It's hard to hear them say they don't want to be fat like their parents.

Photo credit + article on
obesity's relation to arterial stiffness

It's HARD to be overweight.  And what are the benefits of being overweight?  What's the reward at the end of the day?  There isn't one.  Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada.  It takes a lot of hard work to be fat and what do you get in the long run?  An early death.  A gazillion medications to pop every day to keep you from keeling over.  Is being overweight hard?  Yes, but is it worth it?  ABSOLUTELY HELL NO.

Choose Wisely
There are plenty of things in life that are hard.  Many of those things should be hard so that we appreciate them more.  If a workout wasn't called a WORK out, it would just be an easy out. The hard work is rewarding in the long run because it benefits you and everyone who loves you. Conversely, the hard associated with obesity is empty.  You get nothing out of it in the long run but lost days, lost memories, lost time.  Choose your hard, and choose it wisely.  

Sugar Sabotage

It's no secret that sugar will make you fat.  Glucose is our body's primary source of energy, the other being from protein.  Any excess glucose not used up by the body is converted to fatty acids by the liver and are then stored around your waist.  It may not seem like something so small and sweet could do such awful damage to your body, but OH it can.

The Danger of Sugar

When many think of obesity, they immediately think of Type 2 Diabetes.  This disease is NO

JOKE y'all.  I know you see commercials with Wilford Brimley and think it's just some old person disease, but this is the furthest thing from the truth!  Type 2 Diabetes causes nerve damage, can lead to amputation of limbs, blindness and death.  It's probably the most direct and serious consequence of America's excessive sugar problem.  In the US, more than 24 million people have been diagnosed with it, and another whooping 57 million suffer from insulin resistance, which is a baby step to full blown diabetes.

Sugar contributes to all around cellular inflammation.  It's like giving yourself multiple paper cuts one after the other.  These small wounds compromise cellular function.  They occur below the pain threshold, so we don't feel the damage that's being done.  It's when we can't see the damage being done on the inside that falsely leads so many to think 'I've eaten it my whole life and I turned out just fine."  Have you really??

Sugar has also been linked to heart disease and  ESPECIALLY cancer.  Cancer cells LOVE sugar.  If you've ever had the scary experience of getting a PET scan done to detect it, you know the first thing they make you do is a drink a sugary drink.  The scan works by identifying possible

malignancies by highlighting the areas within the body that eat the most sugar the fastest.  Think about this for a moment.  If this is so, it makes perfect sense that eating a diet high in sugar would skyrocket your chances of developing cancer at some point.  If you're genetically prone to it already, it seems to me that eating a cancer-friendly diet would seal your fate.

Another ailment sugar causes.... Candida. Or better known as YEAST infections.  We have yeast in our gut naturally.  It's kept in check by healthy bacteria.  When you eat a crappy, nutrient deficient diet, it throws off the balance of good vs bad bacteria in the gut.  In addition to that, the bad bacteria--or yeast--is fed by all the sugar your consuming, so they go nuts running a muck throughout your body.  Yeast infections can occur in different places on the body, not just the 'feminine' type we see so many commercials for.  If you have cracked feet with whitish flaky dry skin and toenails with fungus, you more than likely have a yeast infection on your feet.  It's more common than you think!
(resources)

It's a deadly legal drug
Sugar is addictive.  As addictive as cocaine, in fact.  Seriously.  This stuff affects our neurological receptors in the brain by producing opium-like effects.  Lab rats have experienced binging, withdrawal and cravings similar to those experienced by amphetamines, nicotine and alcohol addictions.  Many times people engage in 'emotional eating' to cope with stress, much like drug users use drugs to cope with stress.  Even after you stop eating sugar, the cravings persist long afterwards, and various things can act as triggers that can cause relapses.

The big industry packaged food companies put sugar in EVERYTHING.  It's swimming in things you may not think would even have it in there.  They put it in everything because they know you are addicted to it and if their product tastes good enough you will keep coming back for more.  It doesn't have to be sweet to have sugar in it.  If you eat the 'Standard American Diet' (SAD), you ARE addicted to sugar.  Sorry.  Accept it and take the next steps toward getting this monkey off your back...or should we say back fat.

Fact:  If you do nothing else right this very minute but cut sugar out of your diet, you WILL see results quickly!  Those with significant amounts of weight to loose (40lbs+) especially will see benefits quickly, just by cutting out sodas and bread.  You will not believe the toxic impact sugar has on your body until you rid yourself of it.

The recommended maximum intake of sugar each day is about 12 teaspoons, or 48 grams.  There are 4g of sugar in every teaspoon, so when you are reading labels and see that something has 12g of sugar, you now know that means it has 3 tsp of added sugar.  If you are dieting, would you dare go to the sugar bag and dip out 3 spoon fulls of sugar and eat it?  Hell no!  So you MUST read labels and know what is going into your body.  Without doing so, you may as well be eating right out of the sugar bag, and I assure you that your waistline will not shrink despite whatever you're doing in the gym.

Sneaky sneaky sugar

It may sound easy enough to cut out sugar.  The obvious foods you need to avoid are cookies, donuts, sodas, juice drinks, frosted cereals, etc.  But what about the foods with hidden sugars?  The ones that are marketed as 'Fat Free' and 'Lite' that lead you to believe eating them will help you reach your goals.  This is where label reading comes in real handy!

• Breads and cereals often have sugar added to them.  Especially those labeled cinnamon raisin or honey wheat.  
• Tomato sauces often have sugar added.  Ketchup is also in this category.  Nearly 1/3 of an entire bottle of ketchup is sugar.  This extends the shelf life in canned goods, as well as counters the acidity of the tomatoes, especially if they are picked too early.  
• Canned Soups are the same.  In addition to the added sugar, canned foods should be avoided when possible because of BPA.  I've found that organic tomato sauces in glass jars tend to have the least, if any, added sugar.  
• Yogurt:  Unless it is PLAIN, it likely has added sugar.  There is some naturally occurring sugar in yogurt.  Approximately 10g.  Anything on top of that is added.  Your best bet is to use 0% plain and add a low/no sugar preserves, fresh fruit or honey.  There are also flavor drops out there, such as Capella Flavor Drops you can use.  Most of the flavored yogurts on the shelves, fat free or not, have almost as much sugar as a candy bar or a couple donuts.  AVOID THEM!  The only time these would be ok would be immediately post workout mixed in a protein shake.  That is IT. 
• Prepackaged Oatmeal should also have made the above list, I forgot to stick it in.  Do yourself a favor and get a huge 6lb bag of oats from Costco or Sams and make your own.  Add protein powder and a little PB2, or almond milk and cinnamon.  If it's made for you and in a box, it's loaded with crap.
• Protein Bars -  The majority of the 'mainstream' protein bars have as much sugar as a Snickers.  That's really all they are--glorified candy bars.  DO NOT purchase them.  DO NOT eat them.  Make your own!  I have a couple recipes for them on my facebook page and I will add a section on the blog too.  You can also google it.  
• Fat Free dressings.  The same as fat free yogurts.  LOADED.  Read the labels!
• Fast Food - This is a no-brainer, but many think if they're not eating dessert, then it's sugar free.  NOPE.  Most of the nasty fast food chains add a sugar molasses type mixture to the meat to bulk it up a little bit.  It's also typically in the breading of fried foods and of course, condiments like bbq sauce, honey mustards, sweet n sour, etc.  Candied pecans and dried fruits in fast food salads will also sabotage your salad efforts, so order those salads without them!

Reading labels is a MUST when losing body fat is your mission.  There's no way around it.  Big businesses don't make it easy for us to know the truth.  You gotta go a little digging from time to time.  

Start Slow
Don't overwhelm yourself by cutting it totally off.  Remember, sugar addiction is FOR REAL and you will experience similar type symptoms as addicts do during detox.  Start with cutting our sodas, or drop to one soda a day, then one a week, etc.  You may get headaches, tremors, irritability, fatigue, etc., but instead of saying 'Screw this diet stuff, I feel horrible!' remember that is your body's response to DETOXING all these horrid chemicals and sugar from your body.  It will pass in a few days to a week and then it will be like the sun is shining down on you and you can see clearly.  The SAD diet is poisonous to our bodies, so it's inevitable to have those symptoms while your body is cleansing itself.

Remember to stay consistent with making changes, and don't give up!  If you 'relapse' try not to beat yourself up.  Call a friend, send me a message, go to an online support group, read success stories....do whatever you must to shake it off and start anew from that second on.  You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great!

xoxo~Ashley

Everything You Need To Know About The Glycemic Index

Beachbody Newsletter 8/18/10 by Steve Edwards

Those of you who pay attention to your diet probably hear a lot about something called the glycemic index (GI) these days. It's become another in a growing list of misunderstood buzzwords in the nutrition world. Today, we'll take a look at everything you need to know about the GI, which is going to take a lot less of your time than reading through the entire GI diet book. That's not to ding these books, by the way. If you're bored you'll probably learn something by reading any one of them. But in my experience, the glycemic index is not the be-all and end-all of your diet concerns. So I take the opposite approach and say that if you learn to eat properly, you can strike the phrase from your vocabulary entirely.

Simply put, the glycemic index is a way to measure how carbohydrates react in your blood. It's measured on a scale from 1 to 100+, where products with a GI of 55 or under are classified as low GI, those with a GI between 56 and 69 are classified as medium GI, and those with GI of 70 and above are classified as high GI. A high GI number means that a food is quickly converted to glucose in the blood (in layman's terms, a "sugar rush"). The lower the number, the slower the food is converted to glucose. The scale was invented for people with diabetes, but the advent of processed foods becoming a cornerstone of the American diet and the rise of type 2 diabetes have given the average person a good reason to pay attention to the GI index of foods.

Essentially, if we ate nothing but natural whole foods, the GI scale would have little meaning for anyone who didn't have diabetes. Even then, the highest GI foods have low numbers in their natural state. It's the cooking and processing of food that alters it so it breaks down much more rapidly. Eating too much food that is converted to glucose rapidly can lead to type 2 diabetes over time. Pretty much the highest of high GI foods are processed junk foods. There are a few exceptions, which we'll get to, but essentially if we eat a balanced healthy diet with very little junk food, the GI index is far less important to us.

Sugar is the big villain in the GI world. In nature, sugar comes from plants, where it's surrounded by fiber. Fiber in foods slows digestion, lowering the GI number of even foods that are high in sugar, like bananas. Processing, as well as some types of cooking, break down or strip these plants of their fiber. This makes them sweeter to the taste, but it also makes them less healthy. And along with the fiber, processing usually removes a lot of the vitamins and minerals.

The main problem in the American, as stated above, is that we're eating too many processed foods. Although we seem to understand that desserts are mainly sugar, crafty advertisers have been pulling the wool over our eyes by hiding the fact that most American processed foods are not much better for us than sugary desserts are. Breads, cereals, some potatoes and pastas, some rice, crackers, chips, fruit juices, sodas, and condiments, plus almost anything that's ever received a "no fat" label or comes in a box or bag, is high in sugar and probably low in fiber and nutrients. When these processed, packaged foods are all you're eating, you cause your body's insulin response to work overtime. Do this enough, especially without exercise (the great equalizer in the sugar game), and you can wind up with type 2 diabetes.

Of course not every food in the categories I listed above is bad. There are companies that make healthy versions of pretty much everything. But marketers can be tricky. As a consumer, it can be hard to know what you're getting. Even reading food labels can be misleading, which is why every diet that comes with a Beachbody® program consists mainly of whole, natural foods.
So the very simple rule is to make sure your diet consists mainly of whole, natural foods and you will no longer have to pay attention to the GI index. There are some variables worth mentioning, especially since eating nothing but natural foods can be challenging in today's hectic world. Here are ten quick tips to help you understand the GI index:


1. Desserts. These tend to be mainly sugar and/or fat, and as such, they generally don't try to fool anyone with health claims. If we could keep our desserts small and make them a once-a-day indulgence, we'd have no problems. My tip is to do just that: with desserts, keep a close eye on portion size and frequency. Also, fatty desserts lower the GI influence of the sugar, meaning that, especially if you're insulin sensitive, a richer, fattier dessert might actually be preferable to a "no fat" dessert that's all sugar. But either way, unless you're diabetic or borderline, if indulging in desserts is the only way you stray from your diet, it's not going to cause much harm in the big picture.

2. Sports. When you're active, and especially when you're operating at your physical limit, your body burns up its stored carbohydrates (known as blood sugar) very rapidly. During and after hard or long bouts of exercise, sugar isn't bad for you—in fact, it's actually good for you. This is the only time this is true. Unfortunately, we often like to eat sugary stuff at the opposite times, like when we're watching TV, and no Wii Fit® game has yet been designed that'll burn off blood sugar unless you do it all day long. When you're not active, you should severely limit your sugar intake.

3. Sports drinks are for sports. This may seem redundant, but Gator/Power/Acceler-ades et al are only good when you're playing sports that make you sweat. This is also true for things like P90X® Results and Recovery Formula®. These are not your standard foods. They're formulated for when you're playing sports vigorously. The difference between the "-ades" and Results and Recovery Formula is that the former only give you sugar and a small amount of electrolytes you lose when you sweat, whereas the latter uses its sugar (which gets absorbed rapidly when you're out of blood sugar) to transport all sorts of other nutrients to help repair your body after exercise. Oh, and also that the "-ades" market themselves as things you might want to drink all day long, exercising or not.

4. Salads are your friend. Not only are they loaded with fiber, but many of the things we tend to put on salads, including vinegar, lemon juice, and lime juice, as well as pickled vegetables, etc., tend to have acids that lower the GI index of other foods.

5. Add protein to all your meals. Like fats, proteins slow absorption rates of high GI foods.

6. Use semolina or whole wheat pastas. These have a much lower GI number (around 30 to 55) than pasta made from refined, enriched white flour.

7. Use long-grain or brown rice. All rice is fairly high in the GI index, but long-grain rice can be fairly low (50 to 60), whereas white short-grain rice can be as high as 130.

8. Eat crisp fruit. Fruit is not a real concern unless your diet has an inordinate amount of it. If so, the mushier—and sweeter—a fruit becomes, the higher its GI number. But even the sweetest fruits, like ripe papaya, are only around 60.

9. Beware of fluff. Fluffy and puffy foods tend to have a high GI number. Cereals are a good example. When a cereal is chewy, that generally means it has more fiber and is less processed, as opposed to soft, fluffy cereals that have been excessively processed and injected with air (and sugar). Potatoes, especially white, fluffy ones, can have extremely high GI numbers, often in the 90s. Fortunately, we tend not to eat potatoes plain, and, as stated above, adding meats, fats, and acidic ingredients will bring the number way down. Oddly enough, sweet potatoes, despite the deceptive name, have a very low GI number. Yams, too.

10. Some sugar can be OK. If you see a trend here, it's that sugar speeds itself into your system, and if this is your primary mode of eating, it's bad. However, sugars can also speed other nutrients into your system, so you'll sometimes see sugar as an ingredient alongside a lot of healthy nutrients to serve this purpose. A good example is Beachbody's Shakeology® meal replacement shake. It has around 10 grams of sugar (40 calories) in a serving that also contains a lot of protein and 70 other healthy ingredients. In lab tests, Shakeology scored a 24* on the glycemic index, as low as a lot of vegetables. So while sugar is generally the GI villain, you need to look at the entire profile of the foods you're eating before you pass judgment.

*Shakeology was tested by Glycemic Index Laboratories, Inc., a premier facility for testing the metabolic responses to foods and ingredients. GI Labs is the only lab in North America recommended by the Glycemic Index Foundation. GI Labs follows a Determination Standard protocol of testing in vivo with ten human subjects. GI Labs' protocol exceeds the standards set by the World Health Organization.

6 Foods With Hidden Sugar

It's amazing what can happen with your body when you eliminate, or really cut back on your sugar in-take. I never realized how many foods have hidden sugar until I found clean eating. Soft drinks are one of the biggest culprits. One soda a day is like eating 21 Tablespoons of sugar a week. It adds up and can make a huge difference in reaching your goals. Below is another exerpt from the P90X Newsletter, written by Joe Wilkes. There's such great info in them, I can't help but to share it. Look through them all here if you're curiosity gets the best of you.

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The average American eats approximately 1,500 pounds of food every year. Of that, 160 pounds are primarily sugar. Of course, sugar is delicious, and I know I'm happier for its existence, but of all the things we consume, it has the least nutritive value. In fact, except for the energy in its calories, there's not much to recommend about sugar. It's a prime source of empty calories, and for those of us who are trying to lose weight, sugar's the first thing we should start trimming from our diets. But here's the problem—despite our best intentions to remove excess sugar from our diet, the food industry has found more and more devious ways of slipping us the sweet stuff. Whether the food industry calls sugar by another name or adds it to foods we never thought would have needed it, our sweet tooth is constantly being bombarded. Fortunately, with stricter labeling laws, we have a fighting chance at cutting back on sugar.

Why does the food industry want to fill us so full of sugar?

It's basically the same as any other industry. For the oil industry to make more money, it needs us to use more of its product by driving more miles. The food industry needs us to use more of its product by eating more calories. The problem is that the American food industry is already producing around 3,900 calories per person per day, which is way more than we need. One solution to this surplus is to sell the food cheaply overseas, which the industry does. The other solution is for Americans to eat more calories. And sugar and its corn-sweetener brethren are great calorie delivery systems, as they pack a huge caloric punch without causing much satiety or feeling of fullness. Most people would probably stop eating steak after they reached 1,000 calories, because they'd be stuffed, but after you drank 1,000 calories from your Big Gulp® cup, there'd still be room for dinner. The other reason the industry pushes sugar so hard is that it's cheap to produce, and the cheaper the calorie, the larger the profit margin.

Sugar in labels—hiding in plain sight.

One of the best ways to disguise the amount of sugar in a product is something the government already requires—printing the information in grams. Most Americans only have the foggiest idea of how much a gram is, because we're unaccustomed to the metric system. So when we pick up a can of soda that contains 40 grams of sugar, we pretty much shrug our shoulders and pop the top. And that attitude is all right with the soda industry! But what if the label said that it contained over 10 teaspoons of sugar? If you saw someone ladling 10 teaspoons of sugar into their morning coffee, you'd think they were crazy, but that's how much people consume in a typical 12-ounce can. A 64-ounce fountain drink you'd get at a movie theater or a convenience store contains more than 53 teaspoons of sugar—almost two cups! Naturally, people would probably think twice if the nutritional information on products was given in measurements that were meaningful to them. But until our heavily food industry–subsidized government decides to change its policy, it's a metric world, we just live in it. But we can take note that four grams equals one teaspoon. So when you check out the label, divide the grams of sugar by four, and that's how many teaspoons you're consuming.

Sugar by any other name would taste as sweet.

Another strategy the sugar pushers use to get us to consume more calories is to rename the offending ingredient. We know to stay away from sugar, but how about molasses, honey, sorghum, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup (HCFS), glucose, fructose, lactose, dextrose, sucrose, galactose, maltose, or concentrated juices like grape or apple? Another path to profit that the food industry has discovered is that instead of harvesting relatively more expensive sugar cane and beets, they can produce sweeteners in a laboratory more cheaply and with just as many calories as beet and cane sugar. And with some sweeteners, especially the popular HCFS, it is believed that your body will be less likely to reach satiety than with sugar, so you can consume more. Mo' calories, mo' money. Another advantage to these doses of -oses is that, aside from the fact that many people won't guess they're just different forms of sugar, they can be spread out in the ingredient list required by law, so it won't be as obvious that what you're consuming is pretty much all sugar. When you look at a list of ingredients on a product, the manufacturer is required to list them in order of amount, from highest to lowest. So they can bury a quarter cup of fructose, a quarter cup of sucrose, a quarter cup of dextrose, and a quarter cup of corn syrup in the middle of the list, so you won't be as likely to notice that when you add them all up, the main ingredient in the product is sugar.

Hide and seek. You're it.

So, if you're like me, you may have sworn off soda except for special occasions, and turned the candy bowl into an unsalted-almond bowl. No more sugar, no more problems. Except for this problem—the food industry has cleverly snuck its sugars into products where we never would have thought to look for sugar. It's good for the manufacturer. It jacks up the calorie load, can enhance the product's appearance (high fructose corn syrup gives hamburger buns their golden glow), and can keep our sugar jones simmering at a low boil, in case we ever decide to go back to the real thing.

Here are some types of products whose labels could bear more scrutiny.

Spaghetti sauce. A half cup of store-bought sauce can contain as many as three teaspoons of corn syrup or sugar. While some of the naturally occurring sugar in tomatoes and other vegetables will show up on the nutrition label, most of the sugar is added. Look for brands that don't include sugar or its aliases or make your own from fresh or canned tomatoes.

Ketchup. Ketchup can be 20 percent sugar or more. Not to mention that you'll get 7 percent of your daily sodium allowance in one tablespoon. Look for low-salt, no-sugar brands, or make your own, using pureed carrots to add flavor and texture to the tomatoes.

Reduced-fat cookies. Most brands of cookies now offer a reduced-fat version of their product. Nabisco® even offers its own line of low-fat treats, Snackwell's®. But while you're patting yourself on the back for choosing the low-fat option, check the label. The sneaky food manufacturers did take out the fat, but they replaced it with, you guessed it, sugar. Many times, the reduced-fat cookie is only slightly less caloric than the one you want to eat. And because there's no fat to make you feel full, you'll be tempted to eat more "guilt-free" cookies. And just because there's less fat, it doesn't mean you'll be less fat. Fat doesn't make you fat. Calories make you fat.

Low-fat salad dressing. As with low-fat cookies, manufacturers have taken the fat out of the dressing, but they've added extra salt and sugar to make up for it. Check the label to make sure you're not replacing heart-healthy olive oil with diabetes-causing sugar—because that's not really a "healthy choice." Your best bet? Make your own vinaigrettes using a small amount of olive oil, a tasty gourmet vinegar or fresh lemon juice, and some fresh herbs.

Bread. Most processed breads can contain a good bit of sugar or corn syrup. As always, check the ingredient label, and consider getting your bread at a real bakery or a farmers' market—it's the best idea since, well, you know.

Fast food. Needless to say, fast food is generally not good for you. But even if you're staying away from the sodas and the shakes, everything from the burgers to the fries to the salads is a potential place to hide sugar. Check out the ingredients carefully at your favorite restaurant. You may be getting more than you bargained for.
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So remember these things and if you cut out sugar, I bet you'll see a big difference!!

Top 4 Fat Fighting Foods

I took this information from this month's First magazine for women. It's from an article on the Eat-Clean weight loss plan, developed and written by Tosca Reno (who is an amazing woman, by the way).

FLAXSEED: Eating flax is one of the best things you can do for your waistline. The seeds' lignans cleanse the digestive tract of up to 6 pounds of waste per week, plus help to enhance the liver's metabolism of body fat. The easiest way to eat flax is buying it ground and adding it to oatmeal, smoothie or protein shake. http://www.drugstore.com/ has a 16oz container for $8, and it lasts quite a while.

YOGURT: Women who eat 3 servings of plain yogurt daily loose 61% more fat --and 81% more belly fat--than women who pass on dairy, according to s study in the International Journal of Obesity. Yogurt is rich in branched chain amino acids which stimulate the production of parathyroid hormone and calcitriol; compounds that work together to promote the release of fatty acids from adipose tissue and increase the ability of muscle and liver cells to convert these fats to energy.

MUSHROOMS: A lunch that's rich in mushrooms helps women to consume 400 fewer calories throughout the day according to a study done at Johns Hopkins University. It also suggests that a 1 cup serving a day can help women loose 13lbs of belly fat over a 2 month period. The polysaccharides in mushrooms help to block fat formation and rev metabolic rate.

SOY: Consuming soy helps your body to fight fat at the cellular level by working inside cellular mitochondria to activate fat burn and stimulate weight loss within 72 hours--even without calorie restriction! Additional research also shows that soy's anorectic peptides help to reduce the formation of new abdominal fat by 57%.