ARCHIVES

Muscle Building Nutrition Tips at a Restaurant

1. Take One Bite at a Time
Inhaling your food in a few bites, or gulps, results in a larger amount of food entering the stomach at once. This is not only bad for digestion and absorption but it can leave you feeling bloated and with unpleasant gas problems (so I’ve heard). Eating slower will ensure you don’t over eat because it takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that you’re full. If you eat fast or gulp fast then you eat beyond the point of fullness and this leads to unhealthy weight gain. Whether you want to pack on muscle or get ripped, enjoy your food and eat slower.

2. Broiled or Baked?
Do your best to order you food broiled, steamed or baked. Broiling and baking remove fat as the cooking takes place, opposed to frying and deep-frying add extra fat calories.

3. “Take It Away!”
That’s what you say when they bring by the basket of “free” bread. Have your waiter take it away and don’t even bother letting it sit there to tempt you. If it’s not starring at you then you won’t eat it. Nothing in life is “free.” Your belly will “pay” for it later!

4. Avoid Dinner after 6pm
Book early reservations so you’re not ordering a double chocolate ice cream brownie dessert at 10pm at night. You are probably familiar with the theory of eating late causes weight gain and I’m a firm believer in this message. Some experts argue that total calories are the main factor in weight gain and a small amount of carbs in the evening time will have minimal harm, and I agree. However, restaurant dinners usually contain more than a “small handful of carbs” so not only will the excess calories get stored as fat but you’ll spike your insulin causing fat storage while you sleep.

5. Pass the Salt
Although you need a bit of salt for chemical reactions in your body and nerve impulses, you’ll get more in your diet than necessary without even trying. For example, 2 slices of bread supply more than your daily requirement for salt. Too much salt has been connected to heart and kidney diseases. Bottom line; don’t add salt to your food.

6. Steam Your Vegetables
The most nutritious form of vegetables is raw so eat your veggies like this whenever possible. Cooking destroys much of the nutritional content. If you’re in a restaurant, ask them to steam your vegetables instead of boiling. Boiling will suck out 50 to 75 percent of the nutrient value. Considering vegetables are not cheap, this is a horrible way to throw your money down the toilet.

7. Ask For Fruit or Oatmeal Instead Of the Bread
I love eating out for breakfast. While you need plenty of carbs to grow muscle, breads are never your best bet. Even whole-grained breads are more refined than potato or oatmeal. Always ask for oatmeal instead of all the bread that comes with your breakfast meal. You can often get a side of tomatoes or fruit instead of the starch for cleaner calories.

8. Skip the Appetizer
It’s almost sickening to see how much food the North American culture consumes when we eat out. Do you really need an appetizer? Do you have appetizers when you eat at your home? You do realize appetizers are complete money grab right? Enjoy a nice entree by not getting filled up and charged extra for food your body does not need.

9. “Undress” Your Food
For example, instead of ordering a grilled chicken sandwich loaded with fat-packed mayonnaise, ask them to hold the mayo and request some mustard instead, which will control your caloric intake. If you’re ordering any kind of meal with sauce, have the server bring the sauce on the side. If you’re really want to cut weight, just say “No sauce.”

10. Never Order Sodas
Always order water and lemon (and lime) or an unsweetened iced tea. I often just ask for a jug of water for the table so I don’t have to wait around for the server to return. After a few “free” refills on soda, you can consume easily over 500 calories, which is a meal in itself!

11. Don’t Let the Menu Bully You Around
Never be afraid to custom order your meal. I’ve walked out of restaurants because they would not honor some simple requests like “no sauces”, “extra veggies”, “steamed instead of boiled”, or would not be “extra egg whites” into my omelets.

12. Save the Alcohol for Special Occasions
Not only is alcohol overpriced in restaurants but it also costs your waist line 7 calories for every gram. If your goal is to get shredded then be prepared to cut back on your alcohol and if you “must” get an alcoholic beverage than go with a glass of red or white wine to get a bit of nutrition. Limit your intake to just one drink. Another problem with drinking more than one beer or glass of wine at a restaurant is that it impairs your judgment – making you likely to order more deep-fried foods, extra bread and a some dessert. Not to mention, tomorrow’s workout is going to suffer.

13. Sugar Substitutes
When you’re finishing your dinner with a coffee, cappuccino or espresso, go for a sugar substitute i.e. fake sugar instead of real sugar. Even though sugar substitutes like aspartame have got a lot of bad press, they are among one of the most tested food compounds in the world and for the most part are considered safe. One sugar contains about 15 calories while artificial sweeteners contain no calories. I advise you to use the famous saying, “Everything in moderation.” The ideal standard to shoot for would be to avoid sugar and artificial sweeteners completely.

14. Table Rules
After a night out for a dinner you can drive home knowing that either 1 of 3 things happened based on how you feel: Leave the table hungry and you will lose weight. Leave the table satisfied and you’ll maintain weight. Leave the table full and you will gain weight.

15. Buy Yourself an Awesome Cookbook!
Eating out is great but there is nothing like cooking a gourmet dinner in your own home at a fraction of the cost. An awesome cookbook will provide creative freedom over what you eat. Without options, you’ll always cater to the “same-old-same-old” which can get boring and bland. If you want to spice up your eating and get hundreds of healthy food choices then check out Dave Ruel’\s Anabolic Cooking, which is an awesome cookbook and complete nutrition guide for bodybuilding and fitness.

Three Hormones You MUST Address For Fast Fat Loss

It seems like most fat loss programs focus on one main thing: to burn fat, you have to expend more energy than you take in. Such a focus makes sense, of course, because if there is a universal truth to fat loss, that’s it. This is what we call “energy balance.” In order to lose fat, you have to create what we call “energy debt” or “energy deficit” – that is, eliminate the balance and instead be on the negative side of the balance scales.

That works very well for “beginning” fat, of course. However, success doesn’t last forever. As anyone who’s ever been on a diet and exercise program of any kind can tell you, at first it’s pretty smooth sailing. Eat less, do more, lose fat. And then it stops — and usually, stops suddenly, as those same people can also tell you. Of course, the first instinct people have is a very natural one: to simply do more of what was bringing them success in the first place. So they eat even less and do even more. And … have no results.

You see, what these people fail to realize (and what most fat loss programs fail to address) is that: After a certain point, simple energy deficit No longer works entirely. It becomes more about what type of deficit. Speaking generally, you actually have to eat closer to maintenance calorie levels (instead of far below) and expend more Calories through exercise. Even then, things don’t always happen as quickly as you want. You see, once you’ve hit a fat loss plateau — or when you’re trying to lose the last few pounds, like I am right now for the wedding on the beach — fat loss becomes a bit less about energy balance a lot more about hormones.

Even Max is training hard right now!

Some hormones, such as leptin, actually control the majority of your general fat loss efforts and all the factors thereof: appetite, satiety, “starvation mode.” However, assuming you’re eating enough and trying to create an energy deficit through training, leptin isn’t the issue. At Pro-Fitness, you’re never on a severe diet, At least not for very long, so you don’t have to worry about leptin. There are other hormones which are a bit more insidious in their effects on your physique. They don’t just determine IF you gain fat—they determine where you gain it, and whether you’re able to lose it from those areas. Those “problem” areas on your body are there for a reason. “Problem areas” are created by your hormonal environment, and it’s your hormones that force your body to have particular fat storage patterns. In this article, we’re going to talk about the three most common types of regional fat storage, and the hormones that cause them.

Back Got Back: Low Body Fat Storage

One of the most common types of fat storage that we see in women is the “pear shape” –fairly thin on top but heavy on the bottom (and IN the bottom, if you know what I mean). This is so common that we often refer to a “pear shape” as a body type. This is true to an extent, but this type of fat storage is also heavily dependent on the female sex hormone estrogen. This is one reason why you see this type of fat storage primarily in women. High levels of estrogen are awesome for enjoying Grey’s Anatomy and making’ babies, but terrible for fat loss, which makes it obvious that women usually have more trouble losing fat than men. However, anyone—male or female — with high estrogen levels will have trouble losing fat, especially from the lower body. In essence, the higher your estrogen levels, the greater the likelihood you’ll store fat in your lower body; mainly in the hips and thighs. And yes, it IS possible for men to have high estrogen levels. Unfortunately, outside of having to deal with a declined rate of fat loss and lower body fat, these guys ALSO have to deal with the ignominy of man-boobs. On the whole, estrogen related fat storage is a pain in the ass (get it!?) but it is not completely unmanageable. You see, you can offset this phenomenon with certain types of training. In addition to helping you lose fat stored in the lower body, these specifically designed workouts will also be great for fat loss in general. Essentially, they’re great for burning calories and for shedding lower body fat through estrogen management — combine the two and the result is rapid fat loss, with a heavy concentration on lower body fat stores. No worries, ladies (and gents!), we are here to help.

Muffin Tops: No Love for the Love Handles

Probably my least favourite incarnation of regional fat storage is love handle and lower back fat. Very prevalent in today’s society The reason people store fat this way is because of how their body reacts to certain hormones, and because of the effect those hormones have on fat storage. Some people have a screwed endocrine system. Nothing too serious, but a decade of eating rapidly digesting carbs followed by…well, followed by more rapidly digesting carbs causes an insulin spike and crash and spike and crash all over the place. On top of causing fat in that immediacy, it also completely has a pretty negative effect on the way the body processes and handles insulin period. The degree to which you are able to process and respond to glucose (sugar) in your body is called insulin sensitivity. The higher this is, the easier and more efficiently your body utilizes carbohydrates for energy, and the less likely you are to store carbs as fat. On the other hand, insulin resistance is the opposite: you don’t deal well with carbs, and anything other than a low carb diet pretty much means you’re going to hang on to some fat. And, to make matters worse, as I mentioned previously, there are regional effects. It’s been shown that people who store fat in the love handles are generally very insulin resistant—and therefore it can be reasoned that insulin resistance leads to love handle and lower back fat storage. This means, of course, that insulin resistance makes it very hard to lose fat from that area as well. The good news is that insulin resistance (and the resulting regional fatness) can be mitigated with certain types of training. For example, with careful planning and selection of exercises, you can start to whittle away at love handle and lower back fat while you increase insulin sensitivity. The better news is that we have figured out a specific series of training sessions that will do just that.

The One, the Only: Belly Fat

Without question, the most common type of regional fat storage is belly fat. If this isn’t you, it’s someone you know. Abdominal fat storage obviously has a lot to do with your diet and overall body fat level; that should be obvious but it never hurts to touch on it. Outside of that, it’s hormones baby, hormones. The one we’re talking about here is cortisol. This hormone has been in the media a lot the past few years, and I’ve talked about it a bit, so by now you know that cortisol is sometimes called a “stress” hormone. That moniker is more appropriate than you know. Basically, that means your body will produce cortisol (and encourage belly fat storage) under conditions of nearly any type of stress—both emotional and physical. So to combat cortisol, it’s not enough to just get more sleep. Instead, it is of far greater effect to combat cortisol through resistance training. Now, if you’re observant, you may have noticed what seems to be a contradiction. As I said, cortisol is also produced through physical stress. In fact, training is actually one of the primary means through which your body will produce this sneaky little hormone. Additionally, because cortisol has been linked to overtraining and has a catabolic (muscle wasting) effect, producing too much of it through training is certainly counterproductive. It’s important to note, however, that long duration cardio (more than 45 min) and extended lifting sessions (2 hours) are what produce the most cortisol, and I always recommend against those. Instead, short, intense training sessions using a particular type of training modality will help to counteract the effects of cortisol; both the muscle-wasting effect, and the cortisol related belly fat storage. I’ll share that with you later. In fact, I’ll be sharing another entire article with you. In that article, I’ll teach you how to fight hormones with hormones. I’ll show you how to use specific types of training to combat the nefarious three hormonal nemeses by producing hormones that offset the effects of estrogen, insulin and cortisol. Believe and stay the course!

Load Up on 'Super Foods', Find Time to Exercise, Consider Breastfeeding to Help Shed Excess Pounds

Now that your new baby is here, you have a lot to think about: when to feed her, what to do if she cries -- and how to get rid of those extra pounds you packed on during your pregnancy.

If you started out at a normal weight and gained the 25-35 pounds your doctor probably recommended, it shouldn't take you more than a couple of months to get back to your pre- pregnancy weight if you watch what you eat and excercise.

If, on the other hand, you were overweight before your pregnancy or you put on more weight than your doctor advised, it could take much longer -- up to a year -- to get the weight off. Any baby weight you don't take off could stick with you for a long time.

"It's very critical that you do get the weight off, because if you don't it has been associated with overweight and obesity 15 to 20 years later in life," says Debra Krummel, PhD, RD, endowed professor in the University of Cincinnati department of nutrition.

And although every new mom is eager to look like her old self again, one of the most important things to remember is to be patient with yourself. Your favorite celebrity might have gone straight from the delivery room into her size 0 jeans, but she may not have done it in a way that was good for her body.

"All the magazines ask, 'How did she do it?' The more important question is, 'Why did she do it?'" says Melinda Johnson, MS, RD, registered dietitian and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association (ADA). "They do this with very, very strict diets, and a lot of them do it by getting back into activity before their body is really ready for it."

Johnson advocates a more gradual approach to weight loss. "The number one thing new mothers have to have is a certain amount of patience with their body," she says. "It took nine months to get there. It should take at least that long to get back to their fighting weight."

With that in mind, here are some tips to help you lose weight after pregnancy and fit back into your old jeans -- whatever their size.

Don't diet.

It may sound strange, but going on an official " diet" could derail your post-pregnancy weight loss goals. Feeling deprived of your favorite foods while you're already stressed out by your new role as mom could actually cause you to gain weight, Johnson says.

"If you go back to eating healthy and eating for your hunger, most women find that the weight comes off pretty naturally," she says.

Instead of dieting, she recommends eating a well-balanced variety of foods. Keep different snacks in the house to keep you from feeling hungry and give you energy throughout the day. Apple slices, carrot sticks, and wheat crackers are all good for noshing.

No matter how much you want to lose weight, try not to dip below 1,800 calories a day, particularly if you are breastfeeding. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's MyPyramid site can help you design a personalized eating plan based on your age, activity level, and weight loss goals. The site even has a special section for breastfeeding moms.

Load up on "super foods."

When you're a new mother, your body needs maximum nutrition, especially if you're nursing. Choose foods that are heavy in the nutrients you need and light in calories and fat.

Fish is one of these "super foods" because it's packed with DHA, an essential omega-3 fatty acid that helps your newborn develop a healthy brain and nervous system. The best sources of DHA are cold-water fish such as salmon, sardines, and tuna (stick to canned light tuna because albacore tends to be high in mercury).

Milk and yogurt are also super foods because they're high in the calcium you need to keep your bones strong. And don't forget the protein. Lean meat, chicken, and beans are low in fat and high in protein and fiber. They're good for you, and they'll keep you feeling full for longer.

Breastfeed

Whether breastfeeding can actually help you lose weight is still up in the air -- some studies find that breastfeeding exclusively can help you return to your pre-baby weight faster, while others find no difference in weight loss between women who breastfeed and those who bottle feed.

What is for sure is that breastfeeding is good for your baby, boosting immunity and providing a number of other important health benefits. And nursing exclusively lets you add about an extra 300 calories a day to your diet (you can add slightly more calories if you have a really big eater or twins). Just make sure that if you do breastfeed, you don't use it as an excuse to eat whatever you want.

Drink up

Drinking plenty of water throughout the day prevents you from getting dehydrated. It also fills you up so that you don't eat as much, and some research has found that it may speed up your metabolism.

Whether you need the often-recommended eight glasses a day isn't certain, so Johnson recommends using the color of your urine and how often you need to go to the bathroom as guides. If you're drinking enough fluids, your urine should be relatively clear, and you should be going to the bathroom about every three to four hours.

Move it!

Diet is important, but it's only one part of your post-pregnancy weight loss plan. You also need to incorporate aerobic and strength training exercises after pregnancy to burn calories and keep your muscles and bones strong. "Exercise, beyond helping you lose weight, provides so many benefits to a new mom," "It helps with depression, it helps with the sleep issue ... it helps in relieving stress -- and having a new baby in the house can definitely be stressful."

You don't have to hit the gym to get back in shape after pregnancy -- taking a brisk walk with your baby in the stroller is enough to get your heart pumping and muscles working. "You want to shoot for at least 150 minutes a week," says James M. Pivarnik, PhD, FACSM, professor of kinesiology and epidemiology at Michigan State University and president-elect of the American College of Sports Medicine. With a new baby, finding 30 minutes in a row might be impossible, so Pivarnik suggests breaking up the time into 10-minute increments. Then try to work your way up to 20- or 30-minute sessions.

Lugging around a baby all day is itself a workout, but you still need to add some strength training. Use light weights -- or even a couple of soup cans -- as resistance. Many health clubs and community centers offer "mommy and me" classes that will let you incorporate your baby into your workout routine. But before you start any exercise program, get your doctor's approval, especially if you had a C-section.

Get some sleep

It may seem impossible to get a full eight hours of sleep when you have a baby summoning you like clockwork throughout the night, but being sleep deprived could make it harder for you to shed the baby weight. In one study, new moms who slept five hours or less a night were more likely to hold onto their extra pregnancy weight than women who slept seven hours. When you're tired, your body releases cortisol and other stress hormones that can promote weight gain. "Also when you're exhausted, you don't feel like taking good care of yourself," Johnson says. "You're less likely to choose healthy food. You're more likely to grab something through a drive-through. You're also less likely to get physical activity."

Your friends or family members may have told you to "sleep when your baby sleeps," and that's good advice. Catch as many naps as you can during the day and go to bed early -- at least until your baby starts sleeping through the night.

Ask for help

If you're struggling to lose the weight, enlist the help of your doctor and a dietitian. The dietitian can help you design an eating plan that will let you lose weight safely and effectively, while the doctor can guide you on how much weight you need to lose and when you can start exercising.

With summer rapidly approaching, I've been getting lots of questions about which conditioning methods will help you get ripped and in playing shape without compromising your size or strength.

First of all, I recommend a strength training schedule of Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This leaves Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday or Sunday for conditioning and/or playing. To start you should be training on a four-way upper/lower split. This means that you have two upper body days and two lower body days. You’ll train three days per week rotating through the four workouts. Some weeks you will do upper body twice and other weeks you’ll do lower body twice.

As summer nears and you are doing more conditioning and running you may want to switch over to an upper/ lower/ upper split. Therefore you will train upper body on Monday/Friday and have only one leg workout per week on Wednesdays. This schedule will be more than enough since you will be doing alot of sprinting which will take care of your leg work. Any more than one direct leg workout per week when you are sprinting multiple times per week will lead to overtraining.

The best fat loss/conditioning methods are hill sprints, sled sprints and Prowler pushes. These are safer and less taxing on the body than regular flat ground sprints and require less preparation, warm up and mastery of the technique. Simply head outside and do a brief warm up of mobility work, dynamic flexibility and some basic running drills and progressions, you will be good to go.

These conditioning workouts should last about 20 - 40 minutes. Over time, try to increase the number of sprints you do and decrease the rest periods.

If you're an athlete or have some athletic ability, you can definitely do flat ground sprints. Just be prepared for them to make you quite sore if you haven't done them in a while. The risk of injury is also far greater.

If you squat every Wednesday, Tuesday is the only day that I wouldn't recommend sprinting. You could do it on any other day however, with no problem. If you want to do conditioning on Tuesday I would opt for the battling ropes or jumping rope. Start out with two conditioning days and work your way up from three to four over the next two months.

Remember that sprinting for fat loss and conditioning is different than sprinting for speed. The latter requires specific timing, longer rest periods, etc. But to drop body fat and bring up your conditioning without compromising your strength gains, just do the sprints, that's all that matters.

Finally, here is a sample schedule you can follow:

• Monday - Upper body strength training
• Tuesday - foam roll, mobility work or day off
• Wednesday - Lower body strength training
• Thursday - Prowler pushing
• Friday - Upper body strength training
• Saturday - Hill sprints
• Sunday – Day off or Sled sprints

Cocoa for Diabetes?

Compounds in Cocoa Could Help Ward Off Heart Complications, Study Shows
By Kelli Miller Stacy

A cup of hot cocoa may seem like a no-no for people with diabetes, but the beverage may actually serve up a healthy dose of prevention and ward off heart disease, the leading cause of diabetes-related death.

New research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology provides substantial evidence that compounds in cocoa called flavonols improve the function and overall health of blood vessels. Unhealthy blood vessels are a leading cause of cardiovascular complications in people with diabetes.

Flavonols are naturally occurring plant compounds found in chocolate, red wine, and certain fruits and vegetables. A growing body of evidence suggests that cocoa flavonols have circulatory health benefits.

For the study, Malte Kelm, MD, a professor and chairman of cardiology, pulmonology and vascular medicine at the University Hospital Aachen and the Technical University Aachen, in Aachen, Germany, and colleagues examined the effect of a specially made flavonol-rich cocoa on patients with stable, treated type 2 diabetes.

The study participants randomly received cocoa containing either 25 milligrams or 321 milligrams of flavonol per serving. They drank the cocoa three times a day for 30 days. Researchers calculated each patient's blood vessel function before and after cocoa consumption at the start of the study and on days 8 and 30, using a combination of ultrasound images and blood pressure measurements.

Patients who drank the high-flavonol cocoa for one month had their blood vessel function improve from severely impaired to normal. Drinking the low-dose flavanol cocoa did not result in any significant changes in blood vessel function.

Researchers caution that the high-dose flavonol cocoa used in their study greatly exceeds the typical U.S. dietary intake of 20 to 100 milligrams daily, and you can't buy the extra-strength version in stores. Rather, they are optimistic that flavonol-containing diets offer an innovative approach to preventing heart disease.

"This research focuses on what's at the true heart of the discussion on 'healthy chocolate' -- it's about cocoa flavonols, the naturally occurring compounds in cocoa," Kelm writes. "While more research is needed, our results demonstrate that dietary flavonols might have an important impact as part of a healthy diet in the prevention of cardiovascular complications in diabetic patients."

In an accompanying editorial, Umberto Campia, MD, calls the study "important and thought-provoking," adding that "this is the foundation we need for doing a much larger prospective study that looks at the effect of cocoa flavonols not just on endothelial function, but also on the risk of heart attack, stroke, and other serious forms of cardiovascular disease."

Eating Well with Type 2 Diabetes

How to make healthy changes without giving up all your favorites
By Sylvia Davis

Forget the idea of the "diabetic diet" -- a restrictive regime that puts certain foods strictly off-limits. The healthiest diet for people with type 2 diabetes is the same diet that's best for everyone else.

That means eating a wide variety of foods, and including items from all the major food groups represented on the Food Pyramid -- protein, dairy, grains, and fruits and vegetables -- every day. It means watching your portion sizes. It means getting enough fiber, and avoiding an overload of fat, salt, alcohol, and sugar. (Yes, you can have dessert -- in moderation, and with a little planning!)

Following these steps will not only help control your blood sugar, but can also help you reach a healthy weight, something that's especially important for people with diabetes. Your Healthy Eating Plan As with any medical condition, people with type 2 diabetes should check with their doctors before starting any diet or exercise program. It's also a good idea to work with a registered dietitian and/or diabetes educator to come up with an eating plan that suits your needs.

Two of the main tools doctors and dietitians use to help you plan healthy meals are:

• Food exchanges. This system divides foods into major categories -- starches, fruits and vegetables, dairy, proteins, and fats -- and tells you how many portions of each you should have each day.
• Carbohydrate counting. With this system, you keep track of the grams of carbohydrate (starches and sugars) you consume, with the idea of spreading them out through the day to help keep your blood sugar steady.

The end result should be a plan tailored to your needs: one that takes your age, gender, lifestyle, and eating habits into account.

Putting Your Plan Into Action

While you should be able to eat most of the same things as everyone else, people with diabetes often have to limit the amounts they eat, prepare food in different ways than they may have been used to, and think about when they eat.

Consider the issue of consistency: If you have diabetes, you need to eat about the same amount every day, and at about the same times. You shouldn't skip meals, or go more than four or five hours without eating during the day.

Another important element of a healthy diet is portion control. Your health-care team can help you learn to gauge correct portion sizes, which are often smaller than we've come to expect in the age of super-sizing. For example, one serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards, and a serving of pasta is about the size of half a tennis ball.

But just what should those portions consist of on any given day? Here are some guidelines for various types of foods you may have questions or misconceptions about:

• Sugar: Most experts now agree that it's OK for people with diabetes to have a little dessert now and then. Sugar is just another form of carbohydrate, so you can substitute a sweet for another starch (say, bread or pasta) in your eating plan. But keep in mind that most sugary foods have lots of calories, and few of the nutrients your body needs.
• Fat: Too much fat is bad for anyone, but especially for people with diabetes. A high-fat, high-cholesterol diet increases your risk of heart and artery disease -- and people with diabetes already are more likely to get these diseases. And, of course, eating too much fat can make you fat. So choose lean cuts of meat, or fish or skinless poultry. Switch to skim or low-fat dairy products. Cut out butter, and substitute low-fat margarine or other seasonings such as broth, herbs, and fruit juices.
• Salt: People with diabetes are at higher risk of high blood pressure, which can be affected by the sodium in your diet. To cut down on salt, limit packaged convenience foods and fast food, as well as pickles and salty condiments like mustard. Use herbs, garlic, or fruit juices instead of table salt.
• Fiber: Fiber is the non-digestible carbohydrate found in plant-based foods. It keeps you feeling full longer, and may also help lower blood sugar and blood fat levels. Choose whole grains and cereals, and eat lots of fruits and veggies, to help you reach a healthy goal of 25 to 35 grams of fiber per day.
• Alcohol: If your doctor approves, you may include small amounts of alcoholic beverages in your healthy eating plan. (The American Diabetes Association recommends no more than two drinks a day for men and no more than one a day for women.) If you do drink alcohol, never have it on an empty stomach. And remember that alcohol tends to be high in calories and has few nutrients. Choose light beer or dry wine, and sugar-free mixers.
• Artificial sweeteners: Unlike sugar, artificial sweeteners have no calories, don't raise blood-sugar levels, and don't have to be counted as a starch in your meal plan. But don't overdo it: Many artificially sweetened foods still have plenty of calories and few vitamins and minerals.

While many, many people are living happily and healthily with type 2 diabetes, change doesn't always come easy at first. Here are a few tips to help you get -- and stay -- with the program.

• Ask for support. Let your friends and relatives know about the changes you'll be making, and why they're important for your health. Ask them to help you stick with your plan.
• Plan ahead for temptation. If you're going to a party, prepare your own healthy dish and bring it along. Or, if you're headed to a restaurant, figure out ahead of time what you'll order and how it fits into your eating plan.
• Educate yourself. Learning as much as you can about your condition will help you make informed decisions about it.
• Make changes gradually. For example, if your goal is to eat more veggies, add one serving at dinner every day. Once you're used to that change, start sneaking in a second serving at lunch.
• Get some exercise. Not only will exercise help control your blood sugar and boost your health in other ways, it can reduce stress and improve your outlook. See your doctor about getting started.

At Pro-Fitness Training, our mission is:

" to empower OUR clients with the education and tools needed to obtain a healthy lifestyle, within a safe, comfortable and encouraging environment."