Sorry, but no. Some calories are awful simply because they offer little or no nutritional value. In essence they fill up the tank, but don’t give your vehicle any fuel. New meaning to the phrase “running on empty”, huh?

I particularly dislike the whole “Carb Free” and “Fat Free” crazes. A no carb diet is just about as bad for you as an all carb diet. Any diet that tells you to shun a specific food group (well, except refined sugar – yes, in my world it’s a food group!) is probably not going to be healthy for the long haul.

As homo sapiens sapiens, we are omnivores. Our bodies are designed to run optimally on a varied diet. That is to say, a NATURAL varied diet. But the minute modern man started adding colors, flavorings, texturized, processed, whatever to the food – is when we started having problems.

Can you eat carbs and still stay healthy and slim? Sure. But as with all things, there are rules. You need to stay away from those processed carbs. Eat the ones that nature offers. Here, let me lay down the carb rules for you.

1. Simple carbs are for infrequent treats.

Some people are able to swear them off completely. More power to them. The rest of mere mortals will cave once in a while.
These are carbs that come from refined sugar and flour. Bad ju-ju. Think ice cream, pies, cakes, donuts, and most refined flour baked goods. Not only do they make your poor liver work overtime trying to process all that sugar, but most are by nature, loaded with chemicals when they are processed and refined. I figure in several hundred years when they dig up American corpses for archeological research, no one will have decomposed because of all the preservatives we eat! (that’s a joke, people)

2. Complex carbs have a place in your daily menu as long as you pick the right ones and keep the others in firm control.
Let’s face it, the USDA food pyramid we learned as a kid messed us up a bit. We grew up thinking a big plate of pasta was healthy and every meal should have a starch of some kind. The reality is that your liver only processes so much carbohydrate at a time.

Roughly 100g of your carbs are stored as Glycogen in your liver. (This of course depends on each individual’s health, activity level, etc…) The rest of those carbs you eat get broken down and distributed elsewhere to be used in brain functions, etc.   However, if you don’t USE that quick energy given by the carbs…you guessed it – it gets stored for later use.  FAT.  So unless you’re an elite athlete and you’re going to be burning that entire carb load right away, you can probably do without a big serving of grains at most meals.   If you do eat grains – you should stick to 100% organic (if possible), minimally processed, WHOLE grains.  Read the label, it won’t kill ya.

I say organic because so many grains are processed with chemicals that are linked to MSG that you have to be really careful. (MSG in it’s varied disguises has been shown time and again to promote weight gain as well as influence a host of other illnesses and disorders) The closer the food is to its original form, the better off you’re going to be.

The bulk of your complex carbs should come from a variety of fruits and vegetables. Yes, they’re carbs and they are totally OK in my book. In fact, try going an entire day each week with just fruits, veggies, lean protein and fat free Greek-style yogurt. You might just learn to love it. Lots of fiber, protein and vitamins. Good stuff.

3. Try to have a protein source at every meal.

That helps make sure those complex carbs are digested a little more slowly and you get maximum benefit from the full feeling they impart.

Follow those rules and you’ll get your carb cravings under control. Sounds easy, huh?   Well, I know for a fact as a recovering carbo-addict that rule number 1 is the hardest one to follow, but if you can – you’ll be well ahead of the game.

As always, I must remind you that this is simply my opinion.   I’m not a nutritionist, so do the research and do what you think is best for your body.

I’m just relating information that I’ve found to be true for me and the many people I worked with as a personal trainer years ago.  There are MANY different ideas about nutrition out there and the science is literally changing daily about what is good for your long term health.

This is an excellent site that talks about nutrition, exercise and health in general. Check it out, book mark it and return to it often.

Now, that we’re going to eat right…don’t even get me started about exercise!

A good friend of mine lost 100 lbs recently.  When I asked her how she did it, she said that she’d simply started eating vegetables.  I had to laugh at her comment that if you asked someone to tell you what a veggie tastes like – they can’t do it.  She’s right, though.  Veggies taste like…well, veggies.

But, she didn’t know what they tasted like because before her “transformation”, she hadn’t ever eaten any!  Seriously!  She was such a picky eater that her diet was very limited and as such, very unhealthy.

Now, I’m not a nutritionist.  I’m just making a personal observation here and it’s simply that pickiness may contribute to the difficulty that many people have in losing weight.  I know it’s true with me.  The more nutritionally set I got in my ways, the more overweight I became.

A healthy body needs a diverse and nutritionally balanced selection of foods to operate at it’s maximum level.

It’s important for you to understand – for your health’s sake, that you’ve got to push aside fad diets and goofy regimes that call for totally eliminating any food group – well, ok, you can eliminate refined sugar if you want…that doesn’t do anyone any good. The ONLY way to lose weight my fluffy friends is with the good old standard, come on everyone – say it with me…

Eat right and exercise.

Yep. That’s it. Calories in, calories out. Now the quality of the calories count too – but that gets into hormone production and chemical impedance of body systems and all sorts of stuff that’s at least a book’s worth of information that I can’t/won’t/not qualified to talk about here.

So, next time you get the urge to give your picky child the same thing they’ve had every meal for the last two weeks and then comment about how they’ll never get fat eating that way…think again. Lots of neurotic eaters are forged in childhood and grow up to be adults with weight problems.

Encourage the kiddos in your life to eat a variety of foods from all food groups. They don’t have to actually like everything – but just keep trying new things. They’re bound to find new foods they like eventually and they’ll grow up to be adventurous eaters. And, probably healthier to boot!

So, I thought that I’d use this as an opportunity to share some information with all my email friends in hopes of stemming the increasing tide of junk mail in my inbox as well as in yours.

First things first:

As a rule, any email that says it’s “tracked” is a hoax. The technology to do that isn’t there yet. Also keep in mind that charities, like American Cancer Society don’t donate money to anything. They GET money and fund research. There are some charities that are formed to help individuals pay medial bills, but generally the “Biggies” don’t. They are focused on research to cure the disease.

This goes for petitions, etc. There’s no governing body in the U.S. that will accept a forwarded email with only people’s names and city on it. The petition process requires that each name be verified and matched to an individual for accuracy. That’s why a REAL petition will require a full address and possibly even a phone number. It’s part of the democratic process, one person – one vote philosophy.

Most of the time, when you see something “warning” you of some hazzard that you knew nothing about – it’s fake.   If it’s that big of a deal, don’t you think it would have been picked up in LEGITIMATE media at some point so that you would have heard about it before you got a chain email?  Occasionally, you’ll hear something with a grain of truth – but a grain is all.

Take the “sticker on your window car jack warning” Here’s the link that debunks it…http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/crime/a/carjacking.htm

If you read link, it says Sure! That COULD happen.   Anything COULD happen.   But this particular incident didn’t.   When you get stuff like this, you just need to use common sense.   Again, if it were REALLY an epidemic – wouldn’t the legitimate media have reported on it by now??

Let’s say you get an email talking about how Obama’s going to kill senior citizens with medicade or that a virulent flesh eating virus from china has contaminated lipsticks made with red dye #5. (yes, I’ve gotten both of those…)

BEFORE you click forward and send it to everyone on your email list…make sure that you’re not sending full on lies, half-truths or propganda. The world doesn’t need anymore of any of those things, don’t you agree???

It’s easy to just do a quick little check to see if it’s a hoax or not before you forward.  How do you do that??   Well, I just go to Google and type in the subject – for this email I typed in “slow dance poem”.  I found lots of information about it…all stating it was a hoax.

When doing this, make sure you don’t just rely on SNOPES…esp. for political chain letters.  SNOPES is wildly liberal and sometimes I have found their view on the veracity of a given subject to be slanted to the left.   I like www.hoaxbusters.org and http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/internet/a/current_netlore.htm more.

I’m sorry if this offends anyone.   Please just take it as some friendly advice and feel free to forward it on to any of YOUR email buddies.   Maybe together, all of us can stop the terrorism of email hoaxes.