Canada Food Guide

My six year old daughter brought home a copy of the Canada food guide from school a couple of days ago and all weekend she has been comparing our diet with the number of servings of food that the Canada Food Guide says that we should be eating. I am not impressed at the food guide itself but would like to make my own. As some Canadians would know there are always praise and criticisms every time there is a change to the Canada Food Guide and just be reading it it seems that the guidelines are created by the farmers of Canada.

What Foods are in the Canada Food Guide?

5-12 servings of Grain products
5-10 servings of Vegetables and Fruit
2-4 servings of Milk products
2-3 servings of Meat and alternatives

Let’s see where to start. The guidelines set out are very vague. What if I have 12 servings of white bread in a day and five servings of fruit? Does anyone really need 12 servings of grains a day? That would not be balanced. What about the meat? It looks like there is a very small protein component. And why is milk or cheese something that should be mandated? Isn’t the calcium in green vegetables easier for out body to metabolize?

Portion sizes in the Canada Food Guide

The other big problem is serving size. We occasionally see some kind of marketing on what a serving size is and I have dealt with that in this blog before but the fact is that no one knows what the of something is. A 50-100 gram serving of steak is about 4 onces and I have not seen a steak less than 8 onces in a restaurant before.

I definitely am not opposed to a food guide I truly believe that anyone that is trying to stay healthy must have some kind of benchmark for what kind of and how much food they should be eating and I am really glad that six year old kids are being taught the essence of healthy eating, I just wish this education would continue because we all know that teenagers basically forget this info and treat their stomach as some kind of science project.

Stay tuned to my version of the food guide later today.

Update – new Canada Food Guide Out

Well just a couple of weeks after I lay into the Canada food guide a new Canada Food Guide is released by the health minister here in Canada. The new food guide looks at serving sizes which I like and junk food which I also like but I have not had too much of a chance to look at the nuances of the food guide which I hope to do later today.

For now go look at the Canada Food Guide, there is a guided tour as well as lots of other information on the official government website.

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Soluble fiber and insoluble fiber

I was looking through some cereals at the store the other day and noticed that fiber is now being broken up on food labels into the amount of soluble fiber versus insoluble fiber. This made me a little nervous as I was not sure what I would really want in my diet. Is one better than the other? Well in a word NO Here is the differences:

Soluble Fiber

Soluble fiber is a fiber that binds with fatty acids, this helps it sit in your stomach and allows the sugars (carbohydrates) to site in your stomach longer and to be broken down. This will help to lower your cholesterol and to also regulate your blood sugar level better so it is helpful for everyone but especially those with diabetes.

Insoluble Fiber

Insoluble fiber does not bind with anything and is the most common type of fiber in any diet. The insoluble fiber in your diet is the one that people most think about with fiber, it moves the bulk through your digestive system as well as toxins out of your colon. Also insoluble fiber is helpful for regulating the PH level in your digestive tract.

So now you know. You will more than likely, when you look, see that there is more insoluble fiber but do not go out looking for more or less of either more often just go and make sure that you are getting a lot of fiber in your diet. Most North American diets are very low in fiber as it is a natural food and as we know most people eat a lot more very processed and refined food and are therefore missing out on the health benefits of fiber.

Increasing Fiber Intake

How can you increase your intake of fiber easily? Well there are some obvious sources like Bran cereals and bran muffins but also legumes peas, soybeans, and other beans oats, rye, chia, and barley some fruits including apples and bananas, and berries, vegetables, such as broccoli, carrots, green beans, cauliflower, zucchini, celery and tomatoes also root vegetables, such as potatoes and yams. Is that enough sources of fiber? And can you see why most people do not get much fiber in their diet?

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Best Triceps Exercises

One overlooked muscle group is the triceps so I thought I would write a bit on the best triceps exercises. The triceps muscles are the muscles at the top of the back of your arm and are called triceps as they are muscles that have three heads.

There are many ways that you use your triceps  but most of all it is important to remember that even though everyone is working their biceps to have big arms in actual fact your triceps will make your arms bigger a lot fast than working your biceps do. So it is important to do the correct and best triceps exercises to make the most of all three heads of your triceps.

Here are the Three Best Triceps Exercises

Best Triceps Exercises

Triceps kickbacks – This exercise is fantastic, I think it is one of  the best triceps exercises and is done by keeping your body parallel to a bench with your hand and knee resting on the bench.

In this position with your free arm bring your elbow up to your side and then bring your arm up straight.

This exercise is the opposite of a bicep curl and at the top you will have a great peak contraction of your triceps.

Triceps pushdowns – You need a gym to do this exercise. All you do is pull the bar of the machine down to your sides and you will feel the contraction when your arms reach the bottom. When doing this exercise try to tighten at the bottom of the rep and you will get a great burn.

Close grip bench press – this is just like a regular bench press except you are keeping your hands less than shoulder height apart. As you let the down keep your elbows into your body and you will be able to feel the push up as being very difficult.

Out of all of these tricep exercises, I believe that the triceps kickbacks are the best.

When doing triceps exercises try to make sure that you do not work triceps more than twice a week as the triceps are used a lot in doing chest and shoulder exercises as well and can be easily overtrained.

Each set for triceps should be about 6-10 reps and actually my method of doing triceps is to just do two sets of each exercise and each of these sets is to failure.

Many compound exercises also work your triceps. A couple of examples of exercises that also work your triceps are the bench presses and military presses.

Triceps can be worked twice a week with a couple of days between workouts and you should do about 4-6 good heavy sets total between these exercises to work your triceps well.

So are these the best triceps exercises to you or are there others that you like better?

The post Best Triceps Exercises appeared first on Fitness Tips for Life.

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The Oatmeal Diet

I have recently switched from eating Bagels with either Jam or Nutella to eating oatmeal for breakfast.

This morning I found out that January is oatmeal month (Quaker oats names months?).

Anyway Oatmeal is very good for you as it is high in fiber which is good for your heart as well as vitamin E, zinc, selenium, copper, iron, manganese and magnesium.

You can of course add protein powder to your oatmeal if you would like to raise the protein content for this first best meal for the day and I can only imagine how yummy strawberry protein powder with oatmeal would be.

Anyway I just was looking around and found someone that created a diet based on Oatmeal in training for an Ironman race.

Oatmeal diet – introduction is the intro to how this guy feels about oatmeal and even though a diet of oatmeal seems a little crazy eating oatmeal for breakfast is a great idea I believe for making sure that you are starting your day with a healthy step in the right direction.

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