Posts by songswriter

Disc;

Thanks for the advice and encouragement.   This calorie counting etc is kind of new territory for me so I kind of get a little anxioius I guess.   I'll take your advice and make some good choices while at the restaurant and just enjoy the sharing the meal with my wife.    Thanks again.

I use Stevia to sweeten things.  Its 100% natural and it's calorie free.   So I can take an apple for instance.  I peel it and slice it up (throw away the seeds and core.)   I then put them in the mircrowave oven to make them hot and soft.  Now I take them out.  Add just about 1/4 cup of unsweetened apple sauce.  NOw I add in some all spice and cinamon and a teaspoon of stevia.   Now I have apple pie without the crust.    Want a little bit of a crust taste.  YOu can add a few ground almonds and a 1/4 cut of cooked rice you end up with a kind of crust flavor.   However, to keep the calories down I would recommend leaving out the amonds and rice.    

YOu can add stevia to a lot of things and it really makes them taste sweet.   You can cook with it too.  NOt a problem.    You can get stevia pure or with lactose in it.  1/3 teaspoon is as sweet a a teaspoon of sugar.   Yeah Stevia is very sweet.    So find your low cal snack and add stevia in place of sugar and you'll take care of the sweet tooth.

Original Post by feanor:

I've heard this mentioned once before, but not by anyone who knew anything. Why shouldn't you drink water with or right before a meal?

Okay I'm looking in my nifty "The Owner's Manual" by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. adn Mehmeet C. OZ,  M. D.    ( No that is not the wizard of OZ. )    Here's what I get from the book.

You place a bite size protion of food in your mouth.  First thing that happens is you start to crush the food in you your mouth and while your doing this your mouth adds a little saliva that contains calcium and enzymes.   Is that a good thing?  Well I think it is so I think I don't want to dilute that down just yet so I'm going to avoid drinking between bites.

Next the food slides on down through the Esophagus and through the gastrosophageal junction.   Why this junction?   Well your stomach actually kind of curls around the esophagus so that the food has to enter from a side entrance so to speak.  This is so that acid and stuff does not just keep spashing right back up into your throat.  Good idea when it works right?  

Now the food is in the stomach.  What happens there?  Well first of all it's the weigh station.  The more it fills the more it signals your brain its getting full.  THis where a lot of people mistakenly over eat.  They eat too fast and by the time the brain gets the full signal they've over filled the stomach stretching to the point they've got to undo their pants to breath.  Not good.    Hey what about all that spicy stuff.   Well the stomach has a protective layer of mucus that lines it to keep it from getting injured by those spicy foods you and I love.   (I love Mexican Cuisine)

 Now remember those enzymes?  You want them to soften and prepare that food for further digestion right?   For me myself- I think that's a pretty good idea since I'm counting calories I guess I might as well try to get some good out of the smaller portions I'm eating.  (I like to get my moneys worth)  So I'm not going to water down the stomach quite yet.  Instead of drinking anything  let's let those enzymes and good stuff from the saliva keep working cause pretty soon the food is going to start on a journey of more breakdown and digestion.  

After the stomach the food starts to move into the small intestine.  Feel that?  Yeah starting to feel like you might be able to fasten your pants again.  Okay now the Gallbladder is going to add a little something called bile.  Yeah that's that hydrochloric acid that can burn a hole in a rug.  That the stuff we hate when it comes up with the stomach flu.  Nasty.  That greenish stuff works the way soap dissolves grease. It makes fat soluble in water so you can digest food more efficiently.   By the way the gallbladder gets if bile from the liver.  The liver is important part of the human engine.    Any way now the food is really ready for some digestion.  OKay we don't want to water that down either right?  Our body goes through all the trouble to get that done right and we could mess that up watering it down.  I know but now there is acidity- I get that.  That will have to be taken care of when it's time.

Now that your food is broken down the nutrients are being picked up by the blood stream some of the components of this food is being sent to the liver for processing to compounds like sugars and for clotting blood and just a whole bunch of necessary things needed. 

 Now at as the food get to the large intestine it needs water to make the feces.  Oh  yeah that is where the the water comes in.  Remember the acid we called bile?   Got to dilute that down now.  Hey and there's a need to keep that stool soft and moving along right?  By the way that is also another reason fiber is so great.  But anyway now it the time for water because your large intestine also known as the colon is absorbing water to make the feces.  That's right.  Your body is now sending water into the process.  The large intestine  moves around like a snake pushing the food toward the rectum.  

Oh oh!! Its time to visit the porcelain chair and make the deposit.  Don't forget the paper work after the job is finished.   Hit the flusher handle.  Oh don't forget to wash your hands cause your going to go get another glass of water now to rehydrate the body from the water you just lost in that waste elimination process. 

So you see why I don't drink water while I eat.  I want that food to digest first then after it's done and it headed for the back door I want lots of water to help that elimination of toxins and acid.   Cool? 

I used to worked in the hight tech industry as an engineer and manager of an Ultra Pure Water Plant.  Stress and long hours took their toll.   I would do the same thing you just described.  Eat for no reason.    And of course I was not prepared when the cravings would hit so I would go the the cafeteria and buy the junk or hit the vending machine.   It was ironic because before I became and manager I used to go to the gym every day after work and power lift.   But I ate garbage.  

What I did not realize was I was dehydrated really bad.  I would mistakenly eat.   Well to finish up this comment before it gets too long winded.....   I finally learned in just the past year about how most people are dehydrated and they don't know it.  SO what they do is eat!  THey eat when they aren't hungry because they are thirsty.    By the time they really start to think their thirsty they are already dehydrated.  Not good. 

They don't know that they are craving water.    Now many of them drink coffee, tea, pop, but those things act cause you to loose water so you become more dehydrated.   SO if your eating all the time and stressed you might be craving more water.   It's got to be water that is not acidic.   Carbonated water is acidic so it will again not be very effective.     It should also not be RO (Reverse Osmosis) water either.   In some parts of Europe RO water is considered hazardous to your health.  For good reason - it has to little in it and there for pulls minerals from your body and you end up flushing them down the toilet.  

Drink good water and snack on some vegetables and some fruit.   These also have water in them plus fiber.   Some people also find that if they chew sugar free gum (only with Xylitol for sweetner)   they then take care of the need to chew on something.      By the way water helps your body deal with stress.  Sipping water is a good way to decompress some.   But get plenty of water and see what happens.     Warning:  You will visit the rest room more often but hey if you urine is dark now then you are definitely needing water.  SO when you urinate check the color of your urine.   If it is clear your doing well.  If it is not clear - get some water into you body.      P.S.  Don't store water in plastic containers.    

Well there are a few tales out there about coke.   But when a person looks at some of the research on the ingredients then one can come away with a better assesment.   Fact 1:    Straight from your basic chemistry books.   Cabon dioxide (carbonation soda pops and other drinks)  when under presure in a contain disolves into the liquid of that container into carbonic acid.   It takes severl cups of an high alkaline water (ph above 9) to neutralize the cup of soda pop or coke.  Too much acid in the body is harmful because your body has to take calcium from it reserves to neutralize it.    So all carbonation is a less health choice in drinks.

Fact:2   High corn fructose syrup is used in regualar soft drinks.  WE all know very concentrated sugar of any kind is a calorie dense.  

Fact3.    Diet sodas have harmful sweetners that a lot of research now has shown to be harmful to the body.   And these diet sweetners make loosing weight more difficult.  

Fact4.    A low ph in your body cause dehdration.  Sugar is acidic,  caronbic acid from the carbonation is harmful.  So carbonated beverages tend to increase dehydration.  By the time you feel thirsty you are already dehydrated.

Here are a couple of good reads to learn how important water is to diet and how dangerous acidification of the body is.  

 "The pH Miracle for Weight Loss" by Robert O. Young, Ph D and SHelly REdford Young. 

"Benefits of Alkaline, Ionized Water" by Dr. HIdemitsu Hayashi, M.D.  Director, Water Institute of Japan. 

Drink a clean cholrine free water and avoid too much acidic drinks and you can speed up your weight loss.     Get a good chart that lists the acidic and alkaline foods to choose from for your diet planning.   Incorporate more alkaline foods and reduce the acid foods and then when you follow your calorie count plan it will go more according to plan and less of a roller coaster ride. 

I wished I would of learned this a long time ago.   Now that I have I'm finding the weight loss to be a bit less difficult this time around.   I hope that it will continue to be this way as the weight drops.   I will keep drinking the water to keep myself on track.