Earlier this year my boyfriend and I found a healthy new energy drink called FRS Healthy Energy. It was a healthy drink, so that was cool, but best of all, they offered a free trial.

That was all well and good. I mean I got the free trial and it the stuff tasted good and it even gave me energy. I didn’t build up my muscles or lose 20 pounds of fat, but it was pretty good. But I had one minor complaint…

When you sign-up for the FRS free trial, you also get enrolled in what’s called an “autoship” which means they automatically ship out FRS products to you each month.

Sure, it’s good stuff, but it’s pretty expensive.

But I guess that’s how it goes with all of those “free” trials. They’re free if you call and cancel before the trial period ends. But the real complaint with FRS is that if you call to cancel, they’ll try to talk you out of it.

I guess it’s not as bad as trying to cancel phone service or something like that where the service is beyond terrible (don’t get me started on phone company complaints…) but I kind of wish there was no catch.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

P.S. I’m not complaining about FRS, because if you look at the terms it clearly states everything you need to know about getting the free trial and what you are signing up for and even the phone number to cancel.  It’s right there.  I’m just saying, some people won’t notice it, so this is more of a warning than a complaint.

Possibly the best energy drink out there - FRS Healthy Energy

It’s healthy cause it’s full of good antioxidants and green tea, and even B vitamins!  So FRS Healthy Energy is indeed healthy.

It also tastes good.  It’s like juice, which means its nothing like a typical energy drink.  No wierd flavors or carbonation.

Just good stuff and a sweet taste.

Several years ago, a very interesting new idea with regard to weight loss became all the rage: eating for your blood type. This concept answered the age-old question of why not all eating plans work for all people. That much seems undeniable – people are very different with regard to the types of food that works for them, as well as the type of exercise program. A weight loss regime that works for one person won’t necessarily work for someone else – that much we know.

Some experts started to link this to blood type. There are four main blood types, and according to this way of thinking, each type represents a body type. If you eat the food that is right for your type, you will lose weight effortlessly. Conversely, most weight problems are the result of eating the food that’s wrong for your type. As well, there are types of exercise that are suitable for some types and not for others.

Though mainstream science ridiculed this idea, thousands of people followed the eating plan for their blood type and many had excellent results. This is the theory: the different blood types evolved at different times in human history, and even nowadays people with those types have traits that are specific to humans at that stage of evolution. This may sound confusing, but it’s clearer with an example: According to this theory, ‘o’ type blood, because it’s the simplest type, evolved first. At that time in human history, people had not yet developed agriculture. They were primarily hunters, and ate meat and greens; they ate no wheat, and no dairy, because those foods developed later on with the advent of farming. Humans at that time in history also exercised vigorously.

So, if you have ‘o’ type blood, your body is similar to this early human physiology. If you eat a lot of carbohydrates and don’t exercise vigorously, you will have weight problems and other health problems, because you are not eating and exercising in the way that is right for your blood type and body type. To lose weight and be healthy, if have ‘o’ type blood, you have to eat plenty of red meat and vegetables, and very little wheat or dairy. You should also have a strenuous physical activity, like running or weight lifting, that you practice several times a week.

But if you are a type ‘a’ or ‘b’, for example, that advice would be all wrong for you. These types developed somewhat later, after agriculture was established, so these individuals can and should eat more fruits, vegetables, and grains. People with ‘ab’ type blood are lucky; their type evolved last, after humans had incorporated all types of food into their diet. So ‘ab’s can basically eat anything – within reason – and not gain weight.

Over the past six or seven years, many people have followed this plan and lost a lot of weight. There are a few problems with it, though. First of all, as mentioned before, there is no hard scientific evidence that shows that people with different blood types are physiologically different. It’s an appealing idea, but it can’t be proven as yet. Also, some of the blood type diets (particularly the diet for type ‘o’) are very restrictive. In fact, the type ‘o’ diet is rather like Atkins at its most restrictive, and some nutritionists feel that this might lead to problems with high cholesterol in the long run. On the other hand, proponents of the diet argue that type ‘o’ people are precisely those who can afford to eat a lot of meat without negatively affecting their cholesterol level. If someone with a different blood type ate in this way, it might be a problem, but not for “o’s”. And it is certainly true that some people develop or don’t develop cholesterol problems seemingly regardless to their dietary intake.

If the theory has no basis, though, how would we explain the weight loss that so many people have experienced? It may be simpler than you think, actually. Any one of the four blood type eating plans, if followed correctly, would have you eating healthier, more natural food. Some, like the ‘o’ diet, are also quite restrictive. It seems likely that these diets make you lose weight in and of themselves, regardless of what blood type you are!

Most weight loss plans are difficult precisely because they involve taking away food – and depending on the psychological issues that may have been at the root of your weight gain in the first place, this can be a particularly challenging thing to do. You might find yourself rebelling, even if you are mentally committed to the idea of losing weight. You might even find that the feeling of deprivation steers you toward other self-destructive behaviors, such as smoking or drinking. If this describes you, you may well benefit from counseling to deal with your weight issues and other issues underlying your weight problems.

In the meantime, eating plans that promise to help you lose weight by adding something, rather than taking food away, might appeal to you and might actually work a lot better. This might seem counter-intuitive, in a way, because losing weight always seems to require eating less. There are some exceptions, though. One of them is a time-honored method that involves adding a meal of semolina – a cooked grain, similar to cream of wheat – three times a day. The argument is that if you eat 300 grams of cooked semolina three times a day it will make you too full to binge on other foods. Your intake of other food will be minimized, and you will lose weight.

This approach is a bit controversial, and may work best as a temporary, transitional method. For one thing, advocates of low-carb, high protein eating would be horrified at this plan. Dr. Atkins himself would roll over in his grave! Semolina is a high carb, high glycemic index food – it is pure starch. Also, eating so much of it tends to make you less hungry for all other foods, including protein. Proponents of Atkins and other high protein plans would say that this is the worst possible thing you can do for your body. Of course, we should remember that the high protein approach is also controversial, however. From a nutritionists’ point of view, neither high protein nor the semolina plan would be ideal. However, most nutritionists’ food guides put grains at the top of the chart, so the semolina plan adheres more closely to a standard food guide, as long as you make an effort to also eat enough fruits, vegetables and proteins to stay in balance.

And if you do, that would almost automatically eliminate junk food and empty calories. Few of us would be able to eat 300 g of semolina three times a day, and adequate fruits, vegetables and protein, and still be able to eat foods with excessive calories or fat. In a sense, the semolina replaces the other ‘empty’ calories that many of us (if we have a weight problem to begin with) eat as a regular part of our diet. Eating semolina might not represent optimal nutrition, of course – but it is preferable to eating foods full of fat and additives, such as potato chips, chocolate or candy. Of course, the semolina diet does not forbid any of these junk foods – it just specifies that you have to eat a certain amount of semolina a day, and make sure that you are getting enough vitamins and protein in your diet. Most people would then automatically eliminate a lot of junk food because we simply don’t have room for it.

In and of itself, semolina is really not that bad as a stable food, unless you subscribe to the ‘low carb’ philosophy (in which case, you would probably never choose this diet to begin with!). It’s low fat, it’s a natural food, and like other cereals, it comes fortified with vitamins and minerals. If eating carbohydrates is your preference – and many of us do pile on the weight by eating excessive amounts of pasta or bread – then the semolina will satisfy you. You are less likely to crave other carbohydrate-rich foods. Also, consider the fact that the semolina plan is actually quite similar to the way in which many traditional cultures ate. In the traditional Asian cuisine, for example, rice was a staple, eaten at most meals. In some European cultures, porridge (oats) would have had the same function. Though these diets might not seem balanced to us today, they kept people alive – and within a healthy weight range – for millennia!

It seems as though every few years, a new diet fad comes along. The low fat approach was popular last decade, only to give way to a type of diet that is almost its complete opposite – the ‘low carb’ Atkins or Zone approach. It’s easy to forget that it was only about a decade ago when pasta was considered healthy – in fact, athletes were told to ‘load up’ on carbohydrates such as pasta before a big race or sporting event!

That sort of advice would be ridiculed today, and maybe that’s understandable. But the low fat approach to eating and weight loss deserves a second look. After all, there are so many harmful types of fat out there. Nowadays, most of us know that we should avoid the ‘trans fats’ that are in many snack foods, and we try to avoid foods that are high in saturated fat or cholesterol. There is solid medical evidence that shows us that eating low fat is better for heart health.

Susan Powter, a popular fitness guru, lost more than a hundred pounds using a low fat approach to eating coupled with a lot of exercise. She claims to eat about 3000 calories a day – way more than you would eat on any diet plan, and about a third more than is recommended for a woman – but she maintains her slim, fit physique. Her secret? She eats no foods that deliver more than 30% of their calories in the form of fat. In fact, she tries to keep that fat percentage down as low as possible – around 10 – 15%, with 30% being the maximum allowable. Powter claims, in her no-nonsense manner, that ‘fat makes you fat. That’s why they call it fat’. Does she have a point?

It is a bit controversial, because according to her plan, you could eat plates of bread and pasta all day long on the basis that they don’t have much fat. By now, everyone knows that that wouldn’t be the best idea, particularly if you’re eating bread or pasta that’s made from white rather than whole wheat flour. For one thing, these foods fill you up without giving you much nutritional value, which is a serious problem in and of itself.

Also, simple carbohydrates raise your body’s glycemic level, which provokes an insulin response and has been proven to lead to weight gain, particularly around the stomach, where it puts you at risk for diabetes and heart disease.

The secret, then, is to limit fat but to make wiser carbohydrate choices as well. Whole grains, for example, are on top of the food chart as the type of food most recommended by many nutritionists. If you replace your white bread, rice and pasta with whole grain versions, that might be the best idea of all. The fiber in these foods will help you feel fuller, and you will get all the benefit of a tasty, low-fat diet with added nutrition.

The jury is out on whether one can really eat 3000 calories worth of low fat food and still lose weight. Unless you’re exceptionally active, it seems doubtful – that’s a lot of calories. But if you want to follow the low fat approach to eating, you can definitely eat enough to stop you from feeling hungry. You can have all your favorite foods, but the low fat version of them. For example, you’re welcome to have popcorn, but don’t slather it in butter. Instead, you can add great taste by sprinkling a little soy sauce on your popcorn, and that makes it less dry as well. You won’t even miss the butter. And you can have pizza, but make it yourself,, and put about half the cheese on it than you would otherwise have done. Use strong, good quality parmesan, for example. You won’t even notice that there’s less cheese if the cheese you do use has a lot of flavor.

Fruits and vegetables also figure prominently on this eating plan. Chances are, if you are eating a lot of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, you won’t even miss the higher fat foods you used to love. In fact, there may be no reason to mix them, because the supermarket shelves are full of lower fat alternatives!

People are social beings, so for many of us, it doesn’t make sense to try and lose weight alone. Many people do better in a group program such as Weight Watchers. In fact, Weight Watchers has been one of the most successful weight loss programs around for many years now. It operates on a simple, yet ingenious formula that makes weight loss simple for the majority of people.

The first element is the grading of foods according to points. The key is that it’s a simple system. Different foods are given a different number of points based on their fat and calorie content, and you are given a daily ‘allowance’ of points depending on how active you are and how much weight you want or need to lose. This means that you don’t need to stick to pre-planned menus, you don’t need to buy special foods or supplements, and you can eat the foods you love. There are no forbidden foods.

This is very different from a lot of other diets and weight loss programs, which tend to target a particular type of food and blame it for everyone’s weight problems. For people who subscribe to the low –carb approach to weigh loss, simple carbohydrates are the ‘enemy’. For fitness guru Susan Powter, fat is the enemy. The problem is that all of these diets lose their appeal after you have been on several different ones, and they all tell you different things. In fact, as a society, we almost expect a new approach to eating to come along every year or so, just to confuse us!

At Weight Watchers, though, they just let the numbers speak for themselves without judging the foods. Some foods are simply higher in calories, so if you want to eat them, you have to eat less in order to lose or maintain your weight. It’s very simple. So, for example, if you want to plan to have dessert, you can cut back on some of your other food for the day, or just exercise a bit more.

Another thing that makes Weight Watchers so successful is the group approach. Everyone comes to meetings together, a little bit like AA or any other support group. There, everyone is weighed in public, though there is no scolding or shaming, Psychologically, though, that really does make people try harder to lose weight. People know that if they slip up, everyone will know. Everyone will probably be very understanding, but by the same token, everyone is likely to applaud you when you do stick to the plan and lose weight.

Weight Watchers is the original, but there are many other weight loss programs that are based on this group approach. It’s very helpful to many of us, much as exercising with a friend can be much easier than doing it on your own. Basically, eating is a very social thing, and one of the reasons why people fail to lose weight may be that they feel the need to participate in the social aspect of eating.

Weight loss groups deal with this need very constructively. You have the opportunity, on a regular basis, to be with a large group of people who are in the same boat, so to speak. Weight Watchers also has qualified counselors on hand to help you with any trouble you might be having with your weight loss plan. That kind of support is definitely well worth the very reasonable fee you pay for joining.

Weight Watchers is a diet, not a way of life – you set goals, and when you meet them, you’re ‘finished’, so to speak. However, one of the aims of this program is to teach you certain skills that you will be able to keep for life. These include a sense of portion control – because we are often served huge portions of food in restaurants, for example, some of us seem to have lost touch with what a reasonable portion of food looks like, or what it feels like to eat it. This, in and of itself, leads to a lot of weight problems. Weight Watchers and other similar weight loss programs help you reinstate the sense of portion control by limiting the amount of food you eat at a single sitting down to a more reasonable size.

Think about the number one reasons why people are overweight nowadays. Overweight people fall into one of two different categories. Either they have an unhealthy lifestyle – working long hours, eating out all the time, not getting enough exercise – or they simply eat too much, often in a compulsive way. This type of eating – eating when one isn’t hungry, for example, or eating for emotional reasons rather than physical hunger – is really a type of addiction. It should be understood as an addiction, and it often is. For example, the group Overeaters Anonymous functions on many of the same principles as AA or other twelve step programs. Excessive eating is treated like an addiction because that’s exactly what it is.

But if that’s the case, it’s easy to see why this addiction might be harder to treat than some others. The way to deal with an addiction is to stay away from the behaviour that’s out of control – alcoholics can’t touch alcohol, for example. The idea is to not do it at all until the addiction becomes a thing of the past – in fact, for many addicts, they can never indulge in their addictive behavior again, not even once.

With food addiction, though, that’s obviously impossible. People have to eat – there’s no getting away from it. That’s why food addiction, though it’s an addiction to a non-lethal substance, may be the hardest of all to deal with. And that’s also why companies such as Slim-fast, who produce and market meal replacements for people to use while dieting to lose weight, actually do succeed in helping some people.

The idea behind meal replacements is that you don’t really eat at all for a good part of the day – instead, you have a special shake or other product that gives you all the nutrients you need, and stops you from feeling hungry. This works in two ways: first, it controls the calories you take in, because the meal replacements are quite low calorie. Second, it breaks the cycle of addictive behavior because you’re not really eating. You can get away from the behavior much as an alcoholic can (and must) get away from alcohol, and that gives you a better chance of breaking the addictive process.

Though most meal replacement plans do recommend that you eat one ‘normal’ meal per day, some people who are serious about losing weight don’t do even that. That’s precisely how Oprah Winfrey once lost a lot of weight – about fifty pounds. She said that she found it easier not to eat at all (subsisting on meal replacement shakes and bars) than to control her eating. When you know that you won’t be eating ‘real food’ at all for a while, it takes the guesswork out of it. Everything becomes very straightforward, and it’s a fact that many people have lost weight using this method of weight loss.

There are drawbacks, though. For one thing, while a weight loss program is supposed to teach you about how to eat for the rest of your life – to establish healthy habits, in other words – using meal replacements clearly doesn’t do so. Once you go back to eating real food, you might find that your problems with controlling your food intake are still there. Though you will have lost weight, you are more likely to gain it back if you haven’t learned healthy eating habits.

Also, there’s a danger that some people will keep on using the meal replacements for extended periods of time, just because it’s easier and more convenient. Though they re designed to give you a minimum level of calories and nutrition, meal replacement bars cannot substitute for real food over an extended period.

However, if you know or suspect that your problem with food resembles an addiction or compulsion, it may be worth your while to think about using meal replacements for a while in order to lose some weight. Try to make the time you spend using them as productive as possible, though. Really come to terms with your past behaviour, and learn what it feels like to be full but not stuffed. Figuring out the answer to these and other aspects of healthy eating will help make your weight loss permanent.

Did you understand the importance of calcium in your diet before the widespread news of the effects of too little calcium was published?  Probably not.  Chances are you still don’t fully understand the effect of calcium on your digestive processes and the functioning of your heart.

Calcium is one of the essential elements that must be present during the metabolism of our food, and during the beating of your heart.  Calcium deficiencies in these two areas are what helps lead to heart disease and osteoporosis.  When you don’t take enough calcium in through your daily intake of food and vitamins, your body will draw on the calcium reserves in your bones in order to have enough to maintain body processes.  This is why women, who are older, often develop osteoporosis, and don’t even begin to realize they are at risk.  When the amount of calcium in your blood drops to a low level, the body will draw calcium out of the bones.  This causes your bones to become more porous and brittle. This explains the rise in broken hips in older people, especially women.

In order to absorb calcium into our bones, we need the presence of estrogen and exercise.  Both of these are in short supply during our later years, chiefly because your body doesn’t produce estrogen after menopause, and as we age, we lose the ability to exercise.  Vitamin D is a backup to the estrogen and exercise problem, however, because Vitamin D does continue to help our body absorb Calcium.  Hence, we have the addition of Calcium to milk, naturally high in Vitamin D.

If you have determined that you need supplemental Calcium, there are certain forms of calcium that are more easily digested.  The best absorbed form of calcium comes in a pill in the form of calcium salt like carbonate or phosphate.

There is a further warning to some forms of calcium that are available on the market today  Both the bone meal calcium and dolomite calcium have been  found to contain toxic metals such as arsenic, mercury, lead, and cadmium.  One additional piece of advice, if you’ve heard that antacids contain calcium that you can use as a supplement instead of vitamins, the information is correct.  However, you’d have to take a handful of antacids and quite often they contain substances that disrupt the digestive process. The best advice to date is to purchase a good calcium carbonate or phosphate as a vitamin supplement and establish a regular habit of taking them first thing in the morning with breakfast.

If you have heart, kidney, liver disease, or high blood pressure, you should consult a physician before taking calcium supplements as the medicine you’re already taking may contain a built in supplement, or may cause a reaction when combined with calcium.

The recommended daily dosage for children is 800 milligrams of calcium each day. This level is fairly accurate for women until they reach the post-menopausal age and the level of estrogen production is reduced or eliminated.  At that point, calcium intake should reach a level of 1500 milligrams per day; almost double that of pre-menopausal women.

In the beginning, there was cereal. The cereal was rather plain, not very tasty.  So, the ingenious cereal manufacturer added sugar.  He came up with great ways of adding sugar to the cereal, so that all the kids loved the way the cereal tasted.  This was a wonderful invention, and it worked for some twenty odd years.  Then one day, someone thought to ask what all that sugar might do to the children consuming the cereal.

The cereal wagon train had to circle the wagons, and come up with a better plan.  Thus was born the “vitamin fortified” label you see on the box of cereal now.  Vitamins and minerals essential to the development of our healthy children were added to the cereal mix, and all the parents were happy.

As a fairy tale, the cereal industry is a little lacking in appeal, as a breakfast food; however, they’ve remained an expert.  When cereal first came into being, almost 200 years ago, it did not have very much appeal. It tasted awful, and didn’t look much better. The purpose of the invention was for convenience and health.  And those were the only purposes it served; taste and presentation were not figured into the equation.

Then along came the Kellogg brothers, and cereal received a boost. Taste became an issue in the effort to sell more cereal.  The World’s Fair was in Chicago, and the cereal industry was primed for their piece of the pie.  It came, too.  The cereal was a smashing success, puffed rice.  It’s still around today, with sugar added.  It had the added sugar at the fair, too.  It sold like fire ripping through old lumber.  The Kellogg Company was on the map.  You still buy cereal from them today.  A better grade of cereal, with many drastic changes since the turn of the 20th century, but cereal none the less.

There is truth to the story in that at some point in time, parents began to question the good that cereal packed with sugar could do for our children.  They believed them to be consuming entirely too much sugar, and not enough of the food they needed to meet their nutritional needs.  The Kellogg Company, and others like them, saw part of their market slipping away, and set about to correct the problem.

It was during the 70’s that so many cereals acquired the “fortified with vitamins and minerals” labeling that you still see today.  Thanks to many advances in the processing and extracting of vitamins from their natural sources, they could be added to the cereal mix during the early stages of processing, and presto, good cereal that’s good for you.  This continues today in many of the varieties of cereal we have available, many of them just for your health.  Many cereals have combined wheat products, grains, and fruit into cereals that are not only vitamin fortified but also health fortified.  These cereals provide your vitamins, minerals, grain, and some fruit needs when you sit down to your breakfast meal.  Cereals are one instance where demand has had a profound effect on the market.

The ABC’s of Eating would be a great title for an education course that addresses all of the food groups, the benefits and detriments of those groups and how to ascertain what our individual needs are from each category.

That doesn’t seem like such a difficult concept, but do you see any class being taught that addresses those issues?  No, and more than likely you won’t.  Because our society doesn’t feel like it is an issue that should be addressed by our education system.

Let me put this proposition before you, however.  Has there always been an evident need to learn to drive?  No, driving wasn’t around until the turn of the 20th century.  Driving is included in the education system, and taught as a matter of course each year.  The need to be educated in the ability to drive is relatively new, and is not one of the “old world” school topics, but it’s included because a need developed.

Education about our eating is a need that has developed over the last 30 years, and has now reached epidemic portions. Advertisements about our eating choices are driven by the need to make a profit.  The commercials our children are watching have nothing to do with their real nutritional needs, or the foods that actually are good for them to consume.  Here is where the educational process should bridge the gap.  Just as our education system teaches our children how to count, read, and write, they should teach them about their eating habits.  We educate our children because knowledge is power.  It provides them with the power they need to make good decisions, acquire jobs, create new products and processes, and to live out their lives as they see fit.  Shouldn’t they also have a basic knowledge of how to utilize the food resources around them? 

Teaching and educating about the basics of the food groups, how they work with your body, the metabolic process of digesting those foods, how the body uses and stores energy, and how to keep all those processes working at optimal levels is as important as understanding the algebraic theorems  and how they apply to our ability to perform mathematically.  Determining just where in the education realm that such a class would fit is another matter.  Members of the educational system will probably tell you that it simply isn’t a matter of concern for the school system, that it is an issue best addressed at home.  But how can it be addressed at home, if the person at home has no knowledge to impart?  We don’t just acquire the knowledge needed for intelligent food consumption with the birth of our children. 

The basic food groups and what foods fall into each category is a topic lightly addressed during the health classes taught at our middle schools.  But what about the metabolic process of digesting those foods, the interaction of the food, the nutrients, and our energy needs? Knowing how to differentiate between what foods will provide both energy, nutrients, and good taste is a learned knowledge.  Do you suppose children would continue to stuff something in their mouth if we addressed the consumption of Twinkies in the same way we do dirt?