Tag: Type Of Food

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Weight Loss Exercise

Ride the Divide Movie

Late on Friday and Saturday nights I will lie in bed and watch a movie on my iPad on Netflix. It is a nice quiet time for me and I tend to watch stuff that no one else in the house would care about. Last night I watched the documentary Ride the Divide.

Ride the Divide is just about an hour and a half long and it follows closely three people out of 16 people in total that do a bicycle race from Banff Canada to the US-Mexico border. The ride is purely individual although everyone is tracking each other and supporting each other as much as they can. There are no teams, or team support like you see in the Tour De France.

I won’t spoil the result but the winner takes about three weeks and the last take about five weeks to complete this race. Not only is the distance absolutely ridiculous but since the race goes down the continental divide they have to deal with mountains, snow, rain, and crazy elevation changes all the time while trying to ride as far as they can every day. Oh, and lots of wildlife as lots of the riding is not on highways but trails instead.

The riders ride as long as they want everyday and they tend to stop where they can in hotel or tent and eat from gas stations, restaurants, or grocery stores. Early on you would see four or five people riding together and stopping at a gas station to get some snacks to get them going, there was a vegan that was struggling to find food but all the riders are very concious of how many calories and type of food they need to keep themselves going.

As the race goes on the riders definitely get spread out and there are all kinds of emotions going through the ride the divide riders, loneliness, fear,  boredom, exhaustion.

And how about the physical toll that these guys go through? One of the riders, Mary Metcalf-Collier goes from strong, to swollen knees and ankles, to better, to worse and back again. I could feel for her everyday of the race as she kept persevering. Another racer Mike Dion left his family for a few weeks to race and had terrible knee problems as well that went away and then came back, while the third racer being followed seemed to have no physical problems at all.

The music in Ride the Divide is great. The scenery is spectacular and the music used compliments it perfectly. for a late night movie Ride the Divide was a fantastic way to spend and hour and a half to see a crazy race with real people competing against themselves and the elements. I know that the maker of the movie has a follow up movie and am looking forward to seeing that one as well.

 


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Weight Loss Exercise

Low carbohydrate food labeling



If you want to lose weight and have a healthy body, it is important that you are mindful of the type of food you eat. If you are on a low carbohydrate food diet, then you need to make sure that the food you buy and consume meets the specifications of your diet. We rely on food labeling to inform us about the content of our food. How accurate are these food labels? Do we take the time and effort to read and understand them before we buy the food?

What to Look at in Low Carb Food Labels

Some people argue that these days some of the labeling about so-called net carbohydrates in various low carbohydrate foods is simply designed to promote and sell more products. This is debatable. So the key question is:

Low carbohydrate food labelingDo food labels actually provide the customers with the accurate information? There are also customers who simply do not look at the details about the contents of the food as stated on the labels. It is strongly recommended that you read the low carbohydrate food labels and understand them, so that you buy and eat what is suitable for you and your diet.

Once you start a diet, you must read the low carbohydrate food labels, and be informed about how the products are actually manufactured.

Some low carbohydrate foods are labeled low carbohydrate foods attain lower carbohydrates by their method of carbohydrate counting; and this is fact you must know. Some of the labels list total carbohydrates, then eventually subtract certain items from the total to arrive at net, effectual, or usable carbohydrates. This is the number that is always shown on the front of the food pack.

On food labels, do you know the difference between the total carbohydrate and the net carbohydrate? There is a wording somewhere on the low carbohydrate package that explains the difference between these two. Amongst the nutritionists and experts, there are some disagreements on the calculating method. Due to the fact that there is no legal definition of the term low carbohydrate or any official means of distinguishing it, most of the low carbohydrate food consumers are not well informed or given good advice.

In order for you to fully comprehend the low carbohydrate food labels, you must know the net carbohydrate content of the food item. Net carbohydrate content is derived from subtracting the grams of fiber and sugar alcohols from the total carbohydrates. The reasoning behind this is that many of the low carbohydrate food manufacturers believe that fiber, while technically a carbohydrate, is not absorbed by the body, and therefore must not be measured as carbohydrate.

As far as sugar alcohols are concerned, the low carbohydrate food manufacturers believe that although these are technically carbohydrates and a source of calories, they have an effect on the blood sugar, and therefore must not be added up as carbohydrates.

Because some of the food labels are not very clear while some are not so easy to understand; it is recommended that instead of buying and consuming large quantities of processed low carbohydrate foods, such as low carbohydrate protein bars and low carbohydrate mixes or drinks, you are better off eating natural low carbohydrate foods such as vegetables, fruits, and whole grains.

If you want to eat low carbohydrate, it is better for you to get away from all processed foods, including low carbohydrate processed foods. Alternatively, be very vigilant in reading food labels and make sure you understand them. Some of the net carbohydrate statements may be a marketing ploy, and the content label may not be essentially a good description of what’s actually contained in these food products.

It is your body, it is your health. Be vigilant in reading the low carbohydrate food labels and be informed about what you are eating!

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General Weight Loss Tips

Free Weight Loss Plans and Programs

Trying to lose weight is a difficult task. Not only are you being bombarded with new diet fads that promise hard to believe results, but you are also being bombarded with information that is completely false and if you try these plans you are going to less likely to stick with the new idea of losing weight. This is why it is vital that you find a healthy diet weight loss plan. Not doing so will only cause you to avoid all weight loss plans in the future and you will ultimately never lose the weight.

There are many websites that offer a free diet plan for you to utilize so that you literally lose nothing when you try these new diets. So how can you find these diets? A simple search online through a search engine will give you thousands of hits. The work then begins as you need to decipher between those that are considered a healthy diet and those that are nothing but fad plans that will only have you lose the weight for a short-term basis. You goal is to find a weight loss plan that teaches you a new way to eat without having to starve yourself in order to finally shed the pounds. Too many times people give into these plans that promise losing twenty pounds within two weeks and are surprised that after they stop the plan that they actually gain that weight back or even more weight.

So, what is the criteria that you should set for a free diet plan? For starters, you should make sure that the plan includes a balanced diet in that you are getting foods from all of the food groups. If you are only eating one type of food, for example, the cabbage diet, though you may lose weight quickly because you are essentially starving your body, you will not keep this weight off. Secondly, you want a plan that will help you lose weight by changing your life. You should not look at this as it is just as though this is temporary and once you lose the weight that you want you can then eat whatever you want. This is where most people find the hardest point to accept, this new plan needs to become how you eat from now on, so that you maintain the size that you want to be once you get there.

With the invention of the Internet, it has literally made it easier to find these free diet plans, which saves you money and the number of resources that respond when you simply type in ‘free diets’ is incredible. However, what should you watch out for? Watch out for fad plans of course, but how can you tell if the plan is a fad? Do a little extra research on the plan that you are interested in and find reviews of what other people say, look at the aspects involved in the plan to see if they appear healthy and above all else, ask your physician before you begin so that they too can look at the aspects in the plan. Also, watch out for those plans that say that they are free then ask for your credit card number in case you ever want to buy something else from them, this can more than likely be called a hoax since they are asking for your personal information.

Overall, use your common sense. If the plan seems to good to be true, then chances are that it is. Once you start it if it feels as if you stay hungry or you notice that you begin to have side-effects such as headache, nausea, fainting or whatnot from the particular plan you choose, then see a doctor as it could be this particular plan is just not giving you enough substance to survive.

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