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| Monday, April 28, 2008 |
| Sometimes you Feel Like a Nut, Sometimes you Eat Them All |
As much as I love nuts, I usually avoid them. I still buy pistachios and peanuts in large quantities for my little girl Pretty, who is a Yellow Naped Amazon Parrot. On my dining room table I have an orange pottery pumpkin filled with nuts for her, but my friends all dig in it too (better to snack on nuts than cheese and crackers).
What I’ve learned from my patients over the years is that people have difficulty controlling the amount of chips, candy, nuts or dried fruit they eat. If it’s there, healthy or “nut”, people just eat and eat, until they realize they ate too much.
Nuts actually work great for people who want to gain weight, (and yes I had lots of clients consulting for weight gain…20 years ago!) but even then I still had more people consulting for weight loss. While nuts contain a lot of nutrition, they also have a lot of calories, and they’re really easy to overeat. Half a cup of nuts is approximately 500 calories, so with one handful a day my patients (who were trying to put weight on) would gain one pound a week by eating good calories, concentrated nutrients and healthy fats.
The debate I have with other health professionals is that while nuts are healthy and can be part of a healthy diet (if people consume them instead of unhealthy food options and not on top of their regular diet) they can easily lead to weight gain. If someone is already overweight and reads about the benefits of nuts, he or she might start eating them because “they’re good for you”, but most probably would not substitute them for something else in their diet.
The same is true for dried fruit (without added sugar)… super healthy, but very concentrated in calories. People would not think of eating 8 fresh apricots, but they’ll easily eat 8 dried apricots. The calories and nutrition are the same, but the water is missing, which provides a filling effect.
I’m going back to what I say all the time: “just because something is good for you doesn’t mean you can eat large amounts of it”. I don’t see anyone overdoing it on V-8! For example, Brazil nuts are a great source of Selenium, but one nut a day is all that someone needs. If you consume more than 3 on a daily basis, you could get an overdose of Selenium (characterized by gastrointestinal upset, hair loss, white blotchy nails, garlic breath odor, fatigue, irritability, and mild nerve damage).
Make nuts part of your healthy diet or substitute for an unhealthy snack instead. Just remember that everything adds up in the calorie department, even with good food choices. We made it easy for you by including nuts in the Sensei meal plans (in small amounts because we love them and they are good for us, but all calories accounted for).
- Josee
Labels: Antioxidants, Diet, healthy eating, Josee, Mindful Eating, nuts, Portion Control
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posted by The Sensei Team @ Monday, April 28, 2008   |
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