9781422269916

Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet Eating Healthier as a Family Eating Whole Foods, Minimally Processed Foods for Peak Fitness Fruits and Vegetables for Health

How to Eat a Balanced Diet Eating in Moderation and Intermittent Fasting Lean Protein for Health Nuts and Seeds for Health What’s in a Label?

Eating in Moderation

and Intermittent Fasting

By Tony Lozzi

MASON CREST M i a m i

Mason Crest PO Box 221876, Hollywood, FL 33022 (866) MCP-BOOK (toll-free) • www.masoncrest.com

Copyright © 2024 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Series hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4222-4823-2

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4222-4830-0 Series ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-6984-8 ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-6991-6 Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file with the Library of Congress Developed and Produced by Print Matters Productions, Inc Cover and Interior Design by Torque Advertising+Design

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KEY ICONS TO LOOK FOR: Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase readers’ understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills. Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send readers back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented there. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase readers’ ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field. Eating in Moderation................................................59 Chapter 5: Dietary Changes for Long-Term Success........73 Series Glossary of Key Terms........................................88 Further Reading & Internet Resources..........................92 Index.......................................................................... 94 Author’s Biography & Credits.......................................96 Chapter 1: Food, Energy, and Your Body..........................7 Chapter 2: Eating in Moderation...................................25 Chapter 3: What Is Intermittent Fasting?.......................41 Chapter 4: Combining Intermittent Fasting with

WORDS TO UNDERSTAND

Inflammation: A state where parts of the body become swollen, often as a result of injury or infection. Systemic inflammation, which can cause long-term health problems, is internalized swelling on a microscopic scale, often a result of poor dietary choices or allergic reaction. Insulin: A hormone that triggers cells to grow and accept glucose, and that turns off fat burning. Macronutrients: The building blocks of foods that provide calories and are necessary in the diet for living. Micronutrients: Vitamins and minerals that are necessary in small amounts to keep our bodies functioning.

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Chapter

Food, Energy, and Your Body

Most people don’t think about the food they eat—who has the time? Either someone else makes meals for us, or we grab whatever is moderately appealing in between matches or classes, or after school. Humans eat for fuel, but we also eat for pleasure, and never in history has food been more scientifically tuned to be pleasant-tasting than it is now. Food scientists are working diligently to make snacks and meals more palatable than ever before, and typically that makes them more energy-dense. But what does that mean, anyway? What is “energy” when you’re talking about food, and what does it matter? The energy in food comes in the form of calories, and the definition of a calorie is “the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of gram of water by 1 degree Celsius.” Simply put, however, a calorie is a measurement of the energy in food. Whether we’re talking about berries, steak, or a fast-food burger, the food we eat can affect our weight, our health, and even our mental state. Food can make you happy, sad, energized, or tired, all depending on what kind and how much of it you’re eating. There are a lot of fad diets, “hacks,” and medications that people use to lose weight. In reality, however, the best tools we have are

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free and readily available: intermittent fasting and eating in moderation. But before we get into eating windows, moderation, and a healthier relationship with food, we should probably understand some basics about nutrition. Macronutrients—The Building Blocks of Food All food can be broken down into four major macronutrients : protein, fat, carbohydrates, and alcohol. The overwhelming majority of food isn’t alcohol, though, so we’ll be focusing on protein, fat, and carbs. You will find these in everything you eat, though not everything has all three. They’re the major players on the nutritional labels in stores, and they exist even if the food doesn’t have a nutritional label. Each of these macronutrients has a different function in the body, and each causes different effects in your body. Protein Proteins are the building blocks of all life, and not a single cell can exist without some manner of protein. For humans, protein provides energy—around 4 calories per gram—and helps rebuild muscle. From ligaments to biceps, blood cells to cartilage (your nose), your body uses protein nearly everywhere. If you’re an athlete, protein is especially important to help you get stronger and repair your muscles after practice, exercise, or a game. When you exercise, your muscle fibers are striped with little tears, and your body uses protein to patch them back up. If that happens with regularity, your muscles get bigger, which is what happens to bodybuilders. Protein is usually self-limiting in terms of overeating, which means it can be hard to eat too much in one sitting. Even if you love steak, the meat by itself can be difficult to overindulge in, because it makes you quite full rather quickly. If you do overeat protein, you’ll likely just feel uncomfortably full for a while.

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Eating in Moderation and Intermittent Fasting

When you exercise, your muscle fibers develop little tears, and your body uses protein to patch them back up.

Fat Fat is the most energy-dense macronutrient, with around 9 calories per gram. Fat comes from, well, fat—butter, oils from plants like coconuts or olives, meat, and even certain fruits and seeds, like walnuts and avocados. Fat is useful because it insulates our nerves—without fat, electrical impulses would misfire and not travel to their intended destination. Our organs are cushioned by fat, and it insulates our bodies. Despite the negative press fat gets, it’s essential to proper bodily functioning. Not all fats are created equal, though, and there are many different types. Saturated fats, like coconut oil, butter, and lard,

Chapter 1: Food, Energy, and Your Body

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are solid at room temperature. For a long time, these fats were considered to be very unhealthy, but modern nutrition science seems to have changed its tune. Saturated fats, including lard, are now considered to be healthier than previously thought. In fact, modern studies indicate that there is no real link between saturated fat intake and heart disease. Still, the current recommendation is to use them sparingly and not go overboard. Unsaturated fats are liquid at room temperature, and there are tons in this category: olive, soybean, canola, and corn oils are all unsaturated. Many processed foods that we eat everyday have these oils added to make them taste better and stay on the shelf longer.

Olive oil is a good source of unsaturated fat.

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Eating in Moderation and Intermittent Fasting

Trans fats are fats mostly created by food scientists and have been discovered in recent years to be quite harmful. While trans fats occur naturally through bacteria in our intestines, and those are considered safe, artificial trans fats were added to many foods for a long time. But in 2018 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned them for having a reasonable link to heart disease and negative effects on cardiovascular health in general. By itself, fat can be very difficult to overeat—just consider eating a stick of butter and how unpleasant that would be. The problem is that fat is very energy-dense and is often consumed in the presence of other macronutrients, particularly carbs. Chips are fat-dense foods that are easy to overeat because of how they’re presented. Carbohydrates, like fats, are easy to overeat because of how the brain reacts to them. In nature, fats and carbohydrates don’t often exist in the same foods, except for nuts and seeds. Our brains are primed to want as much energy as we can get, and since carbs and fats are both delicious, combining them creates a state of easy consumption. Overeating fat can have some negative effects apart from the added calories and potential weight gain. In order to be digested, fat requires bile, which is secreted from your gall bladder and liver. When you eat too much fat, it can cause discomfort stemming from your gall bladder, and too much bile in the colon can have a laxative effect. Carbohydrates Rounding out the macronutrients are carbohydrates, with roughly the same energy profile as protein—4 calories per gram. Carbs come from many different food sources, from dairy to plants, but, ultimately, most can be broken down into sugars. Lactose comes from dairy; glucose comes from bread, pasta, and other such foods; and fructose comes from fruit, honey, agave, and other similar sources.

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ATTITUDES ABOUT FAT HAVE CHANGED OVER TIME

For over forty years, nutritionists and scientists thought that saturated fat was worse for you than other fats. This was based on conclusions reached by Dr. Ancel Keys, who analyzed heart disease and diet statistics from seven countries and concluded that saturated fat contributed to heart disease. Studies since then have suggested that the idea of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils was, at best, incorrect. It was thought that eating a diet high in saturated fat would be terrible for your heart, but modern science disagrees. Butter, coconut oil, and other natural saturated fats are being understood to be part of a healthy diet. Some scientists are even suggesting that saturated fats are healthier than the unsaturated industrial vegetable oils, like canola or soybean, that are in most processed foods. These studies suggest that the dangers of saturated fat’s effect on blood cholesterol levels is overblown. There is also an indication that some vegetable oils may be bad for the lining of the blood vessels when consumed in high quantities over time. It’s important to understand that science evolves over time, and food and nutrition science is no different. Eggs were considered unhealthy and to be limited for decades because of their cholesterol level, but they have since been shown to be extremely healthy in modern diets. Similarly, there has been fear about MSG (monosodium glutamate), which is a popular seasoning in Eastern cuisine. In the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, it was villainized for essentially no good reason, but modern food science has proven there is no reason to be afraid of it.

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Eating in Moderation and Intermittent Fasting

Carbs are broken down and provide energy in the form of blood sugar, particularly when we need it in quick bursts. Snacks and supplements marketed to athletes are usually sugary, because of the easily accessible energy they provide. Through social construct and advertising, we’ve have come to look to highly carb-laden foods, like cereal or oatmeal, as “breakfast.” We eat a lot of bready sandwiches, fries, and chips for lunch, and we tend to lump on the mashed potatoes and pasta for dinner. Most people eating a standard American diet are being fueled by carbs, and a lot of them. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with carbohydrates, moderation is key, which we will cover in more detail later. Overeating carbohydrates can be a problem, because it triggers an insulin response, and over time it can lead to insulin resistance and then to diabetes. In the short term, eating too many carbohydrates at a time can make you sleepy, irritable, and mentally cloudy. It is quite easy to overeat carbohydrates, particularly when paired with fat, such as in cookies or other snack foods. Sugar and fat both trigger dopamine release in the brain. Dopamine is a reward chemical. It is a remnant from when humans were more primitive, and calorie-dense foods were scarce, so that people would fill up on them. Now that it’s easy to get energy-dense foods, it can be a problematic trigger that causes us to want to keep eating unhealthy foods. Micronutrients—Tiny but Mighty You’ve probably heard the phrase “vitamins and minerals” used in food advertising, but what are they, really? Our bodies need certain trace amounts of metals like iron, zinc, and copper, as well as a variety of vitamins for various natural processes. Vitamin A is necessary for proper vision, while vitamin D helps the immune system, and vitamin C is essential to synthesize collagen.

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Eating too many carbohydrates at a time can make you sleepy, irritable, and mentally cloudy.

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Eating in Moderation and Intermittent Fasting

Scurvy: Not Just for Pirates

Micronutrients are present in the foods we eat in varying amounts, and certain ones occur more readily in specific foods. Meat, spinach, and kidney beans are great sources of iron, which is needed for red blood cells and for protein to synthesize into muscle. Brightly colored fruits and vegetables, like bell peppers and carrots, are full of vitamin A, which is needed for proper vision. The foods we eat are either naturally full of these essential micronutrients, or, in the case of processed foods, they have been added. White breads and processed cereals are great examples of taking a nutritionally poor food, like white flour or puffed rice, and artificially adding nutrients. In many cases, the naturally occurring nutrients are easier for your body to access and therefore are better sources. Scurvy is a disease that is most commonly mentioned in reference to pirates and sailors hundreds of years ago. That is because scurvy is essentially a vitamin C deficiency, and it afflicted sailors on long voyages because they didn’t have access to vitamin C–rich foods, like citrus fruits. Scurvy is essentially a breakdown of the the processes that create collagen. It causes bleeding gums, reopening of scars, rashes, and bruising. The treatment now is vitamin C supplements and a diet rich in foods containing vitamin C, like oranges, potatoes, and broccoli. And though pirates aren’t around that much anymore, scurvy still affects between 20,000 and 50,000 Americans every year. Just eat your vegetables , is what we’re saying.

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Brightly colored fruits and vegetables, like bell peppers and carrots, are full of vitamin A, which is needed for proper vision.

Basal Metabolic Rate Your energy needs for the day vary according to your height, weight, age, and activity level. The total energy needs of all your various basic life functions is called the basal metabolic rate . That is the amount of energy needed just to keep you alive, and at your current weight, more or less. If you are taller, have more muscle, and/or participate in sports, your basal metabolic rate will be higher, and the opposite is true for shorter, smaller, more sedentary people. While the energy needed for respiration and digestion is similar from person to person, the number of calories burned simply to maintain existence is not. The energy needed to keep a

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Eating in Moderation and Intermittent Fasting