Meagan’s Nu-U Body Blog

From Jordan Rubin’s Desk: I couldnt have said it better!

The same goes for slurping specialty coffees, sports drinks, fruit punch, and sodas. You can cut back on doughnuts and sweets in the break room, but if you’re sipping sweetened ice tea throughout the day, you’re moving further away from your perfect weight.

Let’s say you drink a 20-ounce serving of sweet tea, which is the summer beverage of choice in the Southeast where I live. Bingo, you’ve just consumed 240 calories—the same as cola. Some people drink sweet tea by the gallon, unaware that they’re ingesting nearly 1,500 calories a day that way!

Then there are the sugar-and-salt cocktails like Gatorade, which commands 80 to 90 percent of the sports drink market in America. As someone who attended Florida State University, I’ll be upfront about this: My feelings about Gatorade aren’t derived from the fact that this sports drink was invented at my rival school, the University of Florida, and was named after the Gator football team. I’d be saying the same thing if this stuff was called “Seminolade.”

My gripe with Gatorade is that it’s a combination of non-purified water, sucrose, glucose, fructose (which are nothing more than sugars), and artificial colors with some potassium and sodium (the “electrolytes”) thrown into the mix. In other words, Gatorade is artificially colored and flavored sugar water with a salty aftertaste. Contrary to their claims, I believe Gatorade and other power drinks do more harm than good. It would be better during workouts to consume natural mineral or spring water.

I’m also not a big fan of “fitness waters” like Propel, which, interestingly, was created by the makers of Gatorade. Propel is your basic H20 with four B vitamins and two antioxidants (vitamins C and E) added in various flavors: lemon, orange, and berry.

In case you’re wondering how a manufacturer can pour additives into water and still call it “water,” the International Bottled Water Association (yes, there is one) decided that if the additives don’t add up to more than 1 percent by weight of the final product, then it can still be sold as “water.” I’m still shaking my head how a product with four grams of sugar in each bottle gets to stand on the same shelf as bottled water, but that’s America for you. When it comes to something as basic as water, you should accept no imitations. I hate to see such a wonderfully healthy resource perverted, so to speak, to satisfy our taste buds.

Water is an overlooked resource by those seeking to lose weight. Many times dieters, I’ve found, confuse hunger and thirst. They think they’re hungry when actually they’re dehydrated. Drinking fluids will not only hydrate the body for all the good reasons I’ve just described, but it will put a damper on those hunger pains coming from the pit of the stomach.

A good rule of thumb is to drink a half-ounce of water daily for every pound you weigh. In other words, if you weigh 200 pounds, then try to drink 100 ounces of water throughout the day, which is around 12 glasses.

If you’re trying to reach your perfect weight and get hungry, drink an eight-ounce glass of water. You also find that drinking a glass a half hour before lunch or dinner will act like a governor on an engine, taking the edge off your hunger pangs and preventing you from raiding the fridge or pillaging the pantry.

Copyright ©2008 Jordan Rubin

I will not buy any food—even if I’m shopping at Whole Foods—without looking at the “Nutritional Facts” on the packaging. For instance, one of my favorite snacks is dried papaya. But at some health food stores, the only one dried papaya on the shelves has sulfites, which is a preservative to prevent discoloration. Sulfites can provoke adverse reactions, especially for those with asthma. So why would I want to introduce an unneeded preservative into my body? That’s why I choose dried fruit without sulfites, even if its costs a little more.

Reading a list of the ingredients as well as the nutritional labels is second nature to me, as well as a professional hobby. I just love the fast ones that food manufacturers and beverage makers try to pull. The U.S. government began requiring the listing of trans fats in foods in 2006, which meant that any products with hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats (the source of bad trans fats) had to be listed on the packaging.

Well, makers of snack foods rejiggered their commercial recipes so they could splash their packages with phrases like “Trans Fat Free” or “Zero Trans Fats.” That’s great, except for one thing: manufacturers can still put dangerous trans fats in your food, as long as they ensure there’s less than 500 milligrams of trans fat per serving. The problem is that when you multiply 500 milligrams by the amount of servings you consume, then eat many different foods that play the same tricks with their labels, you’re consuming trans fats when you thought you were being “good” and staying away from these menacing compounds.

Then there’s the amount of the serving, which is another “gotcha.” You might look at a 20-ounce bottle of sweetened ice tea and see that it has 100 calories and 15 grams of sugar. But the “serving size” is 8 ounces, which means there are 2.5 servings in that 20-ounce bottle, so when you gulp all 20 ounces on a hot day, you’ve just consumed 250 calories and 37.5 grams of sugar! The size of the serving on the beverage or food package influences all the nutrient amounts listed on the label. Oreo cookies say that a “serving size” is two cookies. Yeah, right!

As for the “Nutrition Facts” listed on the packaging, pay attention to calories (especially as it relates to serving size), the amount of cholesterol, total fat, and sodium. I also pay attention to the “Total Carbohydrates,” which includes the listing of healthy carbs (whole grains, fruits, and vegetables) and refined carbs (sugar). Obviously, minimize the sugar—actually, you shouldn’t be eating anything with refined sugar anyway—and load up on the fiber.
Better yet, buy and eat as many foods as you can that don’t have ingredient and nutritional labels, and that would be meat, fruits, and vegetables.

Copyright ©2008 Jordan Rubin

I use Advanced Cell Therapy as an energy supplement. A.C.T is all natural is can be bought for $1 online! It is the biggest selling energy drink on the web.  It helps me get through my work outs and helps with my recovery time as well.  There is no max on how many you can take a day because it is all natural and if you are low in B Vitamins this will definately boost them but not to the extreme like other energy drinks that have like 1000% of your daily everything… plus…NO Jitters, but im serious…no jitters…I call it my Feel Good Drink because it makes me feel good and happy!  Check out www.drinkactweb.com/nuufit

 God Bless all!

  Meagan