Dear Captain Crunch

I’m not one who likes overly sugary cereals for breakfast or even later in the day. Last night, my boyfriend wanted to eat cereals and of course the names he brought up? Captain Crunch, Frootloops, Cornpops! Needless to say that these hold a poor nutritional value, lots of carbs and sodium but that didn’t stop him, of course.

Nutrition Facts for 6 cups of Captain Crunch

So he got home with that box of Captain Crunch and ate 3 bowls. Let’s say that each bowls contained almost 2 cups of cereals… When we look at the nutrition facts, it gets scary especially when (like in this picture), we actually update the amount actually consumed.

He then told me: “You know, I’ve looked at the nutritional facts and there’s plenty of good things such as vitamins and fiber!”.   A general warning to those who read the labels but not completely: quite often, the ‘serving size’ is not representative of the portion you actually serve yourself. It’s, of course, always smaller than the real servings which helps them sell their products and us, think we eat better than we do.

The main argument that was given to me was: I eat fiber!…really? 0.9g is the actual proportion in -1 cup-. If we look at healthier cereals such as Mueslix for example, we are talking of 6.1g of fiber per cup. Of course, he would have been filled with a single cup of Mueslix while he almost emptied his box of Captain Crunch just to feel satisfied. Now if we look at the sodium amount, it’s purely insane….and the fat! 2 Mc Cain’s Deluxe  pizza pockets would have been less sodium (1120mg instead of 1616g), less carbs (54g instead of 183g) even the proteins would have been higher (20g instead of 9.6g) but slightly less fiber (4g instead of 5.6g) and a bit more fat (18g). (Don’t worry, I’m not going to say that pizza pockets are healthier, but in that case, for dinner, it would have been a better choice than what he chose, to some extend.)

Then, I started looking at the ingredients and preservative/additive. Just to discover that the preservative used in these cereals caused cancer in rats.When I said that, he just picked up his bowl and went away, hihi…

We have to remember that the food industry is not there to help us be heathier but to make money. What we can find in industrial food is often beyond logic. Until our governments start taking care of these companies with regulations that prevent the use of toxic agents, it is our job to be awfully careful about what we decide to put in our mouth. Would you really want to know what was on that corn they used to prepare these Captain Crunch? I sure wouldn’t. Nor would I want to know the exact content of pizza pockets, beside the nutrition facts.

Dear Captain Crunch, I would rather not see my boyfriend eat your crap but he’s an adult and he is responsible for his actions. Children however, who are your main target, should never ingest that much sodium, sugar and chemicals…Thanks to you and your friends, it happens everyday.

 

Food vs Exercise – The Heck?!

So! Over and over again, in conversations with friends and even in comments I’ve read in responses to Mrs Obama big campaign on fast food restaurants: just exercise and stop blaming the food! — Exercise doesn’t replace good nutrition, may it be said once and for all! People reading this blog won’t be surprised at all and think it’s common knowledge but you’d be surprised of the number of people who think they can eat pretty much anything as long as they do some work out.

At home, when I told my boyfriend that I was jumping into a 90 days challenge which was making me really enthusiastic, he told me ‘You don’t need that! Just go for a walk after dinner and you’ll be just fine!’ How can it be logical to ingest over 1800 calories per day and have a walk that will burn approximately 175 calories (in my case) bring it down to 1200 calories which should be the maximum I ingest per day. It’s mathematically impossible!

Nutrition and exercise are complimentary and cannot be separated when it comes to weight loss. If you change your habits in only one of these two fields, results will come much more slowly than it would if you were working on the two at once.

Some also seem to think that if you cut calories a lot, you will lose faster. WRONG! If you cut back to 600 or 800 calories per day, not only is it bad for your health but it also puts your body in saving mode which means that it will keeps everything in bank resulting in no weight loss at all.

That’s the end of my rant for today! I know it’s not as informative as I want this blog to be but everything comes in time doesn’t it?

Cold Water Harmful??

I kept hearing this during the weekend and I had to look it up. Apparently, it would be better to drink room-temperature water when we wake up in the morning than cold water. I’m trying to figure out why.

First of all, cold water would be less hydrating than tap water for the simple reason that your body needs to warm it up and will use the water in your system to do so.

Then, we have an empty stomach and we go and traumatize it with ice-cold water first thing when we wake up. I’m just trying to think how I would react if ice-cold water was thrown at me first thing in the morning. Would you believe I’d actually  hit the bastard who would do that right in the face?? (ok, I’m not violent but I’d clearly scream at him like he’s never been screamed at before).

Hehe…guess our stomach feels the same way. Test it out! Iced-cold water first thing in the morning tomorrow, and tap water the next morning. Did he put up a fight?

But…that’s pretty much the only reason I found, that wasn’t an urban legend, that would justify drinking tap water over cold water when we wake up.

Other interesting facts about drinking water

We all know how important it is to drink lots of water during the day to stay hydrated and also to lose weight. Researchers at the University of Utah discovered that subjects who drank eight to 12 full glasses of water daily had higher metabolic rates than those who drank only 4 glasses.

 

A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology states that people drinking 5 glasses of water a day are 41% less likely to die from a heart attack than those who drink less than 2 glasses.

Drinking an healthy amount of water per day can have awesome effects on your skin. It doesn’t happen overnight but you should start seeing a difference after a week.

Water cleans toxins and waste from our body.

Drinking an healthy amount of water reduces risk of colon cancer by 45% and bladder cancer by 50%. Plus? It might even reduce risks of breast cancer.

Dehydration can be the source of fatigue, muscle weakness, dizziness, headaches, constipation, etc…!

Drinking so much water per day can seem like a very difficult task but I’m telling you, you get used to it after just a few days! I always walk around with 1L water bottle that I refill during the day, I don’t even notice that I get through it until I need a refill!

Oh, and by the way… where’s your glass??

 

 

 

Good nights of sleep reduces risk of obesity??

Interesting yet not so surprising! A recent study published in the International Journal of Obesity seems to indicate that having a good night of sleep has a good impact on weight control. Ok.

Basically, they took 43 people who were sleeping less than 6 hours per night and followed them during 6 years. Most of them (23) brought their sleep schedule back to normal (7 to 8 hours per night) while the others remained on their short night habits. Results?

For those who kept lacking sleep: they took 3.5kg in fat and their BMI went up of 2 points.

For those who changed their habit: they went up twice less than the others.

Of course we could think that this can have various causes. They didn’t eat the same amount of calories (well yeah they did). Some were working out more than others? (nope…they didn’t). Reasonable hypothesis made their way in our logical minds already just like in the article though. If you sleep less, you have more time to eat and less energy to exercice, for example.

BUT! On a physiological level, here’s one interesting hypothesis: Lack of sleep would have an effect on the hormones influencing appetite. It would be the first time that a study demonstrate this and it would justify why we need to take into account the duration of our nights of sleep when it comes to weight gain according to the researchers.

Ready to offer yourself some more restful nights?

 

Why should we go Organic!

I came across this video a few weeks ago and I just couldn’t help sharing it with you guys. It is somewhat easier nowadays to find organic food on the grocery shelves but of course, they are a little more expensive than the ‘regular’ food. Is it worth the investment?? In my opinion? ABSOLUTELY! I will go into more details eventually but for now…give a look at this!

Welcome!!

Greetings!!

It’s a pleasure to welcome you to my new blog! We will discuss here anything related to health and nutrition along with general well-being. As overly-stressed individuals often struggling with money and random issues, our nutrition is often pushed aside as long as we manage to calm the hunger. Why not make the best of what we have and learn to save time and money along the way by making good decisions!

I’m really eager to get started and I hope to be able to provide all the information you need to finally start feeling better about yourself just like I am.