Today's Fitness Quickie

Today we have a special article from Mike Geary, a Certified Nutrition Specialist and Personal Trainer.  Mike has some great information for some foods that really should be avoided.  


Today's Fitness Quickie:

3 "Healthy" foods that you should AVOID

1.  The first food that I'd like to mention that's promoted as "healthier" than the original food is "reduced-fat" peanut butter.  I've compared labels on some of these brands, and many of them aren't even lower in calories due to the extra SUGAR that they contain.  And other brands, you might only save 10 or 20 calories per serving.

BUT, there's a problem with this... even if you do save a tiny amount of calories with some brands of reduced-fat peanut butter, you end up getting almost double the amount of carbohydrates and sugar, which is going to have more of an effect on your blood sugar compared to regular peanut butter.

My advice:  just stick to regular peanut butter instead of "reduced-fat" varieties... it's more natural, with less additives, and will have less negative effects on your blood sugar.  Plus, the extra healthy fats that you get help to curb cravings later in the day.  Just make sure to choose a natural brand of peanut butter that doesn't have added trans fats (hydrogenated oils).  If possible, choose organic too, to help protect yourself from estrogenic pesticide residues.

One more thing... I actually prefer to use a variety of nut butters instead of only peanut butter, so I sometimes mix almond butter with cashew butter, or almond butter with pecan butter to make a more nutrient-diverse nut butter mix.  These types of mixtures have more diversity of vitamins and minerals than just peanut butter.

2.  The next so-called "healthy" food to avoid is orange juice.  Sorry, although it does contain a decent amount of vitamins, orange juice just simply contains too much sugar and not enough fiber to count as a healthy food.  Orange juice is a big culprit for some people in throwing their blood sugar out of whack and reducing insulin sensitivity.

Remember that whole fruits are great, but juices are NOT!  When you drink a juice, you're getting a big dose of sugar, but leaving out a lot of the fiber and other beneficial nutrients that are left behind in the fruit pulp/fiber.  A glass of orange juice may have 35 grams of sugar and only 1 gram of fiber, whereas eating a whole orange may have 20 grams of sugar and 4-5 grams of fiber.... big difference!

3.  The third so-called "healthy" food to avoid that I'd like to mention today is canola oil -- yes, that's right...  Despite the clever marketing propaganda, there is NOTHING healthy about canola oil.  Instead of going into details in this email, I have a full article for you here which describes why canola oil is NOT healthy and how you've been deceived!

Have a healthy day, and I'll be back soon with more Lean-Body Secrets!

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
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