Rant about Cheerios

I was at the store the other day and learned an interesting fun fact about Cheerios.  Everyone knows that there are different varieties of Cheerios, the two most popular being regular Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios.  The difference between these two cereals is pretty simple, they are exactly the same except that to make Honey Nut Cheerios, you take regular Cheerios and add a layer of sugar. 

To be clear, the only difference between the two is that Honey Nut Cheerios goes through an extra step at the manufacturing process to add an additional ingredient, sugar.  Using an extra ingredient and going through an extra step at manufacturing logically increases the cost of producing Honey Nut Cheerios...right?  So that would mean Honey Nut Cheerios should be more expensive at the store...right?

Wrong. 

For reasons passing understading, Honey Nut Cheerios are actually cheaper than regular Cheerios.  This is problematic for at least two reasons. 

First, regular Cheerios are significantly better for you because there is literally 11 times more sugar (11g vs. 1g) in Honey Nut Cheerios, this is practically a no brainer; 11 times more sugar = worse for you.  Yeah, everything (including sugar) in moderation is OK, but why does anyone need this extra sugar? 

Second, the only logical reason Honey Nut Cheerios are cheaper seems to be so that parents buy the cheaper cereal (which is clearly more expensive to produce) in hopes that their children will get addicted to the sugar content and eat more than they should, forcing the parents to buy more cereal, thus making up for the extra cost in increased volume of sales. 

The business strategy seems to be tricking parents into buying the cheaper product, then using sugar to encourage children to gorge themselves on sweetened cereal so their parents have to buy more.  Is it any wonder that there is a childhood obesity epidemic in this country?

Weekly Challenge: Week 4 - Nutritional Accountability

Mrs. Gias made grilled chicken salad with asian sesame dressing for dinner tonight. 

Perfect P90X food.

It's been three full weeks on this round and we're moving into our first recovery week.  It's the perfect time to reassess our nutritional goals and to make a conscious effort to evaluate how we've done and to re-double our efforts if we've fallen behind.  In any fitness program if you want results you must have good nutrition. 

One of my favorite sayings is "abs are built in the kitchen".  I don't care how many crunches you do, you'll never get the abs that you want without dropping body fat and eating right.  It just isn't going to happen.  No electronic "ab belt" or "ab circle" or "ab ball" or whatever gizmo you saw on TV is going to get you abs. The ONLY thing that will work, is changing your body composition and lowering your body fat percentage.  To do that, you have to eat good food.  Accordingly, almost all measurable fitness results are dependent on good, solid nutrition. 

So what do we do for nutritional accountability this week?  Simple.  We think about everything that we eat, we write everything down and we review the rules that we set up for ourselves to make sure that we're still on track.

The rules that Mrs. Gias and I are trying to follow during this round are below.  These are guidelines liberally borrowed from an online chat with T-Hort last year.

Diet Guidelines

1: No enriched/processed flour – only whole grain pasta, whole grain bread, no cakes, no cookies, etc.

2: Reduce dairy intake – a slice of low fat cheese is OK here and there, Pizza once a month tops

3: No carbonated drinks – one diet 12 oz cheat per week tops

4: 1 cup of coffee per day + 1 protein shake + water and tea only

5: At least 2 meals a day with vegetables, 1 with fruit

6: No red meat for 30 days

7: Write it all down for the first 30 days (at least).

8: Eat 5 times a day at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm, 7pm

9: Your goal is 40% protein, 40% carbohydrates, 20% fat

10: If you are not hungry enough to eat an apple, you are not hungry – skip the munchies

Remember: Don’t create arbitrary rules for eating if their only purpose is to make you feel in control. Try to eat healthfully, but if there’s a choice between eating ice cream and spending all day obsessing about ice cream – eat the ice cream, just don’t go crazy and don’t make it a habit.

Bringing it during workouts is only 20% of the program.  Bringing it in the kitchen is the other 80%.

New Diet Book Helps you Lose Those Pesky Pounds

I've been actively engaged in my fitness for just over one year and I've had some pretty decent results.  However, as everyone knows, weight loss and fitness are ongoing struggles and I still have a ways to go and still need to work to lose those last few pounds.  Lucky for me (and you) I learned about a new book coming out by Paul Mason.  It takes you through his Journey (also the title of the book) of weight loss and offers tips and secrets to losing a few of those pesky pounds.  When I say "a few", I meant to say "279 pounds". 

Yeah, he lost 279 pounds. 

Amazingly enough, he is STILL the heaviest man on the planet at a staggering 698 pounds.  I don't know about you, but I'm not sure that taking diet tips from the heaviest guy on the planet is going to be all that beneficial. 

Plus, if I followed his advice and lost all 279 pounds, that would put me at about negative 110 pounds, which seems like kind of a dangerous weight for me.

Food for a Week

Check out this facinating post from My Modern Met about what families around the world eat in a week.  It's fascinating to see the differences between the United States and UK and other countries.  The US families seem to have significantly more processed food (everything is in a box!) than many other countries.  It's no wonder that the US leads the world in childhood obesity.

Round 4: Day 12 - Plyo Legs

Plyo Legs again today.  Mrs. GIAS has a terrible head cold and last night I didn't think she was going to make it up for our workout this morning.  She proved me wrong and hopped right up this morning.  By "hopped right up" I really mean "rolled out of bed and drifted downstairs halfway unconscious".  The workout isn't strenuous in a cardio sense, I mean, the heart rate gets up there, but it's more a resistance workout for your legs.  It's a nice change of pace and is definietly developing the lower half.

Speaking of the lower half, I probably should have run yesterday evening; I've got 32 minutes left (short run) to do for this week (plus a long swim and long bike on Saturday).  I'm committed to putting myself into the 8:30/mile time frame for this 32 minutes, which should be just under four miles.  We'll see how that goes.  Anyway, I was just so darned tired last night and was ready to eat that I didn't run.  Of course, tonight Mrs. GIAS and I have a dinner to go to, so running is out for tonight as well.  It'll have to be Friday night (who says I don't have an exciting life!?) or do a mammoth session on Saturday...48 minute swim, 107 minute bike and 32 minute run - yikes.

Finally, last night Mrs. GIAS made a new meal, pictured above.  It's called Italian Sausage Pizza Soup.  She healthified it and made it with turkey sausage, zuchini, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions and chicken broth (with some red peper flakes to give it a kick).  It's like 150 calories per serving, low fat, low sodium, has a great taste and seemed pretty easy to make.  Delicious.

Cheat Meal

So at the end of each of my rounds of P90X, I allow myself a little nutritional armistice day and indulge on old favorites that I don't eat anymore to stay healthy.  It's something to look forward to and gives a bit of a reward for sticking to the nutrition aspect of my fitness (which is probably more important than the workouts).

Normally I go for pizza, 5 Guys Burgers and Fries or Oklahoma Joe's BBQ.  Today I was taking out my brother in law for a birthday lunch and he selected one of my oldest and most favorite places to go...Gates BBQ.  A perfect cheat meal.  If you are from Kansas City, this needs no explanation, if you're not, no explanation will suffice.  Let's just say I had the mixed plate with three ribs, sliced beef, sliced ham and a mound of french fries.  I don't even want to know what the calorie count was, but it was worth it.  Oh my was it worth it.