The biggest cause of obesity is a diet high in sugar, processed foods and refined grains. Unfortunately I just described the diet that most people in the US are eating everyday. Throw in a sedentary lifestyle and we have the perfect formula for diabetes and a slew of preventable illnesses.

If I had to pick a diet that would cure the obesity problem in the US, it would be a diet that is very high in vegetables, low in grains (if your not very active), and high in omega-3 fats with adequate amount of protein from lean meats, chicken, fish, and eggs.

We’re basically talking about an all-natural diet. I like to tell my personal training clients to eat like a vegetarian who eats meat. In my opinion there’s nothing healthier than eating a variety of vegetables every day. When choosing your vegetables make sure you pick different colors. Different colored vegetables have a variety of vitamins and minerals that we all need.

Why I tell my clients to limit grains is because most grains are low in nutrition while relatively high in calories. If you are very active you can, and should, eat grains. But when it comes to weight loss cutting down on the breads, pasta and cereals are a great way to reduce calories without sacrificing good nutrition. Like I’ve said before, cutting back on carbohydrates is most people’s best weight loss option. Here is a review paper that supports these findings.

Not eating processed foods is a no-brainer. No one advocates eating processed foods but many people don’t realize what they’re eating every day is processed. Whenever someone tells me I never eat processed foods, I always ask them to tell me what they ate yesterday. Typically they will say something like…  a muffin for breakfast, a turkey sandwich for lunch and then pasta with chicken sausage for dinner. It turns out that these items are mostly processed foods.

A natural diet means foods that are not altered from their natural state. A muffin is a grain product that things have been added to it. The cold cut turkey and bread of the sandwich is processed. Pasta is processed. All these foods have been altered from their natural state in a negative way. Mostly by adding salt, sugar and oil.

When preparing meals stick to the basics. If you’re eating grains have a bowl of oats with some nuts and berries. Try to stay away from sandwiches for lunch; instead have some fresh turkey thrown on top of a salad. For dinner have a piece of salmon with 2 different colored vegetables. In addition, eat a piece of fruit every day for dessert. Use natural herbs and spices for flavor and stay away from the ketchup, mayonnaise and barbecue sauce.

It’s not always easy to eat a whole natural diet in America. They’re processed foods wherever you go. Sometimes it’s hard finding anything natural to eat in a deli or fast food joint. But we have to be motivated and make the extra effort to eat natural. Instead of a deli, walk into a supermarket. Get a bag of raw nuts and some fruit. This is equally satisfying and so much healthier.

Obesity is really out-of-control in the United States. So lets start believing that whole natural foods can be the solution for obesity.

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Best – Mike Cola

My personal training clients are always asking me what are the best diet foods or what should I eat if I want to lose weight. The best foods to eat for weight loss are low calorie high nutritious foods.

If you eat mostly all natural unprocessed food you will have trouble keeping weight on. One of the problems people seem to have is thinking that they are eating all natural unprocessed food but actually are not.

Eating a piece of oat bread in not natural it was processed; things were added and removed. Cooking plain oats in water is all-natural. This concept holds true for everything you eat. When you take a natural food and add or remove something from it you are most likely taking away some of it’s nutritional content or adding empty calories to it.

When you take a piece of chicken, bread it and then fry it you just changed it by adding breadcrumbs and oil to it. It is no longer in its natural state.

If you want to keep your weight under control and eat a healthy diet you have to cook and prepare foods as closely  to their natural state as possible. Here are some examples of keeping foods in their natural state.

 10 Best Diet Foods

1-  Orange instead of a glass of orange juice

2-  Grilled chicken breast instead of chicken nugets

3-  Natural dried spices instead of barbeque sauce and ketchup

4-  Oatmeal instead of oat toast

5-  Fresh salad instead of veggie burger

6-  Piece of fish instead of canned tuna fish

7-  Steamed spinach instead of creamed spinach

8-  Peanuts instead of peanut butter

9-   Broiled steak instead of meatloaf

10- Unsweetened tea instead of sweetened tea

Sometimes it can be hard to eat all natural. It’s OK to add some things to natural food when cooking such as olive oil but try to keep away from frying, creaming, and adding sugar or too much salt to your dishes. We all have to enjoy our lives and go off our diets now and then but save the cheat days for special occasions.

Challenge yourself for the next 7 days to eat all natural. I’m sure you will be a couple of pounds lighter and feel a whole lot better. Let me know how you do.

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Best – Mike Cola

Fitness Blog

New research has shown that high protein drinks maximize the effects of exercise. The research report appeared online in the FASEB Journal showing that consuming protein drinks right after a workout play a very important role in getting the most benefit from exercise.

Recommended Protein Drink – Primal Fuel

The report demonstrated that drinking as little as 20 grams of protein after you finish a 45 minute aerobic workout will maximizes the training effect better than drinking a carbohydrate beverage. The study also suggested that protein drinks help older subjects build more muscle from their workouts compared to their contemporaries who drank only carbohydrate beverages.

Benjamin F. Miller, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the study said “Studies such as ours help to explain how exercise and nutrition work so that we can better take advantage of those pathways to slow the aging process.”

Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal said “If you want to age gracefully, this study shows that proteins taken after exercise keep your muscles strong and fit” and “You’ve got to feed your body with the proper nutrients after a work-out. Fortunately, protein shakes are cheap, readily available and some say taste good.”

I have always felt that getting enough protein in your diet is very important for workout recovery and optimal training results. But this study, as well as others, has shown that the timing of when you eat protein is just as important. Research has shown that eating a meal with protein or drinking a protein shake within 45 minutes after a workout will produce the best training effect. There is a great book on this subject called Nutrient Timing by John Ivy and Robert Portman.

After reading Nutrient Timing, I started to experiment with nutritional timing to help me recover better from my workouts. I wrote a free report on this subject showing you exactly how to properly make a protein shake and implement it into your workout program. All you have to do is subscribe to my email list and I will send you this free report.

I hope my free report can help you maximize the effects of exercise with nutritional timing. Let me know if you ever tried timing your nutrition and if it worked for you.

Recommended Protein Drink – Primal Fuel

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Best – Mike Cola

Health and Fitness Blog

So many people suffer from all types of joint pain. In some cases the pain is due to osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, which can result from trauma to the joint or just wear and tear on the joint as we age. The pain from osteoarthritis comes from inflammation around the joint and damage to the joint from the disease. It generally begins with the wearing of the cartilage and when the cartilage is worn down it leads to bone on bone. Besides a proper exercise program and healthy diet there is one supplement that is most commonly used for osteoarthritis. My personal training clients and I have tried it and it may help you.

Most Common Supplement for Osteoarthritis

Glucosamine is the supplement that most of my clients have tried for joint pain. Many of my clients feel that is does help. A number of my clients felt that it worked so well that they stopped taking other over the counter medications like ibuprofen (Advil) and naproxen (Alive). Other clients; however, felt it was non-effective. The recommended dose is 1,500 mg per day and you need to take it for a few weeks, if not months, for its full effect. I have personally tried it a number of times and it did not work for me. I had no side effects from it; however, and would try it again.

There have been a number of studies on the effectiveness of glucosamine but the results have been conflicting. Some studies have shown that taking 1,500 mg a day can slow cartilage degeneration while other studies have not. Glucosamine is commonly sold in conjunction with chondroitin. Animal studies have suggested that chondroitin may increase the effectiveness of glucosamine, but it is inconclusive.

Glucosamine is found naturally in the body and is needed to produce glycosaminoglycan, a molecule used in the formation and repair of cartilage. The reason for taking it; therefore, is to help your body repair and build cartilage. Glucosamine is manufactured in a laboratory from substances found in the shells of shrimp, crab, lobster, and other sea creatures. Glucosamine appears to be a safe supplement when taking the recommended dose with only mild side effects like upset stomach. Be sure to check with your doctor before taking any supplement; however, to ensure that it is right for you.

Overall, I would give it a try if you have joint pain. There are not too many down sides to taking it. If you were going to try it I would recommend you take it in the form of glucosamine sulfate as apposed to glucosamine hydrochloride because the sulfate version has been better studied.

Let me know if you ever tried it and did it work for you.

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Best – Mike Cola

Health and Fitness Blog

It’s debatable what the simplest diet on earth is but one of the most popular on-line bloggers wrote an article called The Simplest Diet for Lean Fitness. I want to start expressing other people’s point of view in this fitness blog and so I’m going to start looking for other resources to help my readers live a happy and healthy lifestyle. This article comes from Zen Habits which is one of my favorite life style blogs. Zen Habits was voted one of the top 25 blogs of 2010 with over 200,000 subscribers.

The Simplest Diet for Lean Fitness

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I’m in the best shape in my life.

I’m incredibly happy to say that. For years (as many of you know) I was in terrible health — I was overweight and sedentary and addicted to junk food and a smoker and overworked.

Today after more than five years of living healthy I am about 65 pounds lighter. I’m leaner than I’ve been since probably high school with the same pants size as I had in high school (31 inches) — while being much stronger than I was back then. More importantly I am fitter: I can run and play sports and hike and do activities of all kinds better than ever before.

How have I achieved all of this? Slow change. I’ve done no fad diets or quick weight loss. I’ve done nothing extreme. Everything is about living healthier and eating whole foods and being active most days. And about enjoying the journey.

Today I thought I’d share a bit about how I eat. It’s not meant to be copied exactly but to inform others trying to make a similar journey. Also see the next post: How I Train.

Overall philosophy

My general philosophy of eating:

• I don’t go for anything extreme. I’ve made small changes to my diet over the years and have found this works best: if you try for drastic changes you’ll hate it and won’t stick to it for long. But add a few extra fruits and veggies and it’s not hard. Change soda to water next month and it’s not deprivation.
• I eat slowly. OK … not always but most of the time. Eating slowly allows me to fully savor the taste of the healthy food I eat and at the same time eat less while still feeling satiated (not stuffed).
• I eat real foods. I try for veggies and fruits and raw nuts and seeds and beans and some whole grains. Sometimes my food is processed but mostly it’s just the stuff you’ll find in the produce and bulk sections of a supermarket (or farmer’s market).
• I eat plants. I do that mostly for reasons of compassion (killing animals for pleasure doesn’t feel right to me) but I’ve found it’s also an extremely healthy way to eat. Sure it’s possible to be vegan and unhealthy (eat processed fake meats and sweets) but if you’re a whole-food vegan it’s hard to go wrong. And yes it’s easy to get protein as a vegan.
• I enjoy myself. I look for healthy foods I love — berries for example — and savor them. I’ll eat sweets now and then but in small portions and truly enjoy the few bites I have. I have red wine and love it. I drink beer sometimes and it’s wonderful. I have pizza about once a week and it’s delicious. Eating healthy isn’t about deprivation but about finding ways to enjoy yourself while living a healthy life.

My Diet

This month I’ve cut my less healthy choices down to Saturdays — as inspired by Tim Ferriss’s book The 4-Hour Body. That means I only eat pasta and pizza and sweets and beer and French fries on Saturdays. This has gotten me even leaner and I recommend this way of living.

The rest of the week I eat my own version of Tim’s Slow Carb Diet — the Leo version. That means I eat a little fruit and a few whole grains and I don’t eat the meat. I don’t eat fried foods or drink calories (other than red wine at dinner) or eat white carbs (pasta bread rice potatoes pizza).

What I eat:

• Beans – lentils and black beans and kidney beans and pintos and soybeans.
• Nuts and seeds – raw almonds and walnuts and seeds and olive oil and avocadoes.
• Veggies – lots of greens like kale and spinach and chard and broccoli. Carrots and various bell peppers and sprouts and so on.
• Fruits – berries and apples and oranges and a little dried fruits like raisins. In moderation.
• Whole grains – steel-cut oats and Ezekiel flourless sprouted-grains bread and quinoa (not technically a grain). That’s about it — I don’t eat pastas or whole-grain muffins or the like.

My Meals

My typical day usually goes like this:

• Breakfast: Every day I eat steel-cut oats for breakfast late in the morning (usually between 10:30 and 11:30). I cook it and then mix it with flaxseeds and cinnamon and blueberries and raw almonds and a few raisins and maybe a small amount of banana or raspberries.
• Lunch: Typically a big-ass salad with kale and spinach and sprouts and avocados and beans and raw nuts and a little fruit with balsamic vinegar. Sometimes I’ll eat a tofu stir-fry with greens.
• Snack: If I’m hungry in the afternoon I’ll eat some raw nuts and dried fruit or veggies and hummus.
• Dinner: Beans and veggies or a tofu-stir fry or veggie chili with beans. This meal varies. Sometimes the beans will be Indian style or Mexican style. Usually the veggies will be greens like kale or broccoli or chard. Sometimes I’ll have quinoa. Red wine with dinner.

And that’s about it. Over time I’ve found I need less food than I used to. Eat slowly and you’ll find yourself full on less food.

The Results

I used to spread my “cheats” throughout the week — a whole-grain muffin here and some pizza there and beer more than I’d like to admit. But putting everything on Saturdays has helped me be honest the rest of the week.

I honestly enjoy eating whole foods. I enjoy being lighter and leaner. I’ve gained muscle eating these foods though I might focus on building more muscle later in the year.

I run faster than ever. I can do more intense workouts than ever before. I was tested for various health indicators recently and everything was perfect. Eating this way has absolutely changed my life.

Notes

A couple notes to answer potential questions:

• Soy is not unhealthy. You might have read various scare articles on the Internet about soy (usually based on misleading articles from the Weston A. Price Foundation) but they’re misinterpretations of science. I eat soy in moderation and try for whole soy in natural forms (tofu, tempeh, edamame, some natural soy milk). I don’t have man boobs and I’m absolutely healthy. Instead of pointing to “scientific” explanations of why soy is unhealthy show me the actual peer-reviewed studies that show that moderate amounts of natural soy (not soy protein isolate) have caused health problems.
• You can absolutely get enough protein and calcium and iron on a vegan diet if you eat whole foods and not junk.
• Sugar is junk and that includes white flour pasta and breads and French fries. It’s worthless calories. Whole grains in moderation provide nutrients and fiber.
• A little meat in moderation is not unhealthy — especially if you choose grass fed and free range. Most people eat unhealthy amounts of meat and eggs and dairy. Those foods in any amount are unethical in my opinion — even if they’re grass fed and free range. Exploitation of animals as objects and their suffering for our pleasure is not compassionate. We don’t need animal products to live healthy lives — as my example shows — so the only reason to eat them is for our pleasure (we like the taste).

I hope you found Leo Babuat’s simple diet plan helpful. Let me know if you liked the article and if you are interested in me expressing other bloggers points of view in the future.

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Best – Mike Cola

PS - Recommended Protein Drink - Primal Fuel