Manuel Villacorta talks about metabolism:

What’s a metabolism?
Metabolism refers to your body’s ability to digest and utilize food energy (in calorie form) in order to maintain essential bodily functions like breathing and regulating heartbeats. “It’s the amount of calories that your body uses to make sure that it’s continually surviving,” Villacorta explains. One’s metabolic rate is determined by how quickly it can use up consumed calories, and that rate is affected by a variety of factors: age, weight, exercise, eating habits, and so forth. In order to condition our metabolisms to perform at peak levels, we must address each of these factors when coming up with a plan.

If you want to learn more about metabolism, read the entire article on DivineCaroline.com

O.k. of course not.  But today when I was finishing up my morning workout at my athletic club I noticed something.  I looked over into the lounge area and there was a huge tray of donuts there for the taking.  Free of charge.  Congratulations on a good workout it said!  I couldn't believe it.

Wow. I've talked about mixed messages before and how detrimental it is to your nutritional well-being.  This is just one glaring example of how it can get out of hand. There are two things that are important to recognize.

1. It's very easy for people to distract you with bad or over-simplified advice

The headline "Donuts are good for your workout" certainly caught your attention.  It's something we want to be true, but unfortunately it's not.   When you read nutrition advice on the web, or see and hear it on radio and television, you need to take a look at the motivations of the qualifications of the person providing the advice.  Do they really just want to sell you pills? or food? their book? or advertise their thigh master?  If so they still might have credible advice, but remember that it's always going to be skewed towards their own product, not your health.  Also take a look at the credentials of the people providing nutrition advice.  If that person is not a registered dietitian (RD) then they are not focused 100% on nutrition and diet.  Even a licensed M.D. generally only has a small amount of training in nutritional science.

At Nutrition for You we are clear about our motivation and credentials.  We want you to lose weight and we want you keep it off permanently.  We want you to be proud to tell everyone that meets the "new you" how you did it with sound nutrition, not fad-diets, gimmicks, or pills.    Our program was created and is maintained by Manuel Villacorta, MS, RD, CSSD a board certified registered dietitian, and certified specialist in sports dietetics and a team of people that want you to succeed.

2. Mixed messages do not help you with weight loss

Everyone has to eat, so it generally fools all of us to think we are food experts.  We're not.  If we were we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic in the United States.  What works for one person may not work for you.  Each of us is an individual.  If you follow food, nutrition, and weight loss expertise from everyone you'll get many conflicting messages and end up even more confused.

What do I mean by mixed messages will not help?  Here are some examples:

• Your friend telling you that carbs are bad (they aren't) and that they lost 25# on Atkins while snacking on a muffin is a mixed message.
• Your grocer telling you that Organic is always better even if the food was shipped overseas using a lot of fuel rather than locally cultivated.
• Web sites that give you solid nutrition advice but have ads saying "How I Lost 44 Lbs Fast!" on the same page is a mixed message.
• and yes, Donuts in your gym is a mixed message.
  

Nutrition for you will not give you mixed messages to confuse you. We really want you to succeed so we want you to focus on what we teach you.  We are experts at weight loss and weight management.  Work with us with your mind open and ready for a change and you will succeed.

As a co-founder and developer for Nutrition for You I am always trying to see what our competition is doing and to keep track of the latest trends with online companies.  Not just other companies that are direct competitors, but with how other companies are packaging their services.  One of the most common is Facebook.  Today Facebook was in the news because one of their cofounders Duston Moskovitz and their "top engineer" Justin Rosenstein are leaving to create a new startup.

The reason this is important to Nutrition for You and makes me post periodically about sites like Facebook is advertising.  So many online sites are writing content and updating their site with the main goal of getting as many users as possible.  Not to build a community, but to advertise to you. Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg has done a wonderful job of bringing together people with social content that they find useful and entertaining.  Advertising on Facebook should be fine with most people, because if you don't like it, you can quit any time.  No committment required.

But for nutrition and health and weight loss it is a completely different story. Most free nutrition, health, and weight loss sites are trying to sell supplements, and food products, weight loss machines, books, and gimmicks.  All of these are conflicting messages.  By simply going with a free or cheap online service driven by advertising or product sales you cannot be certain that they really have your best interest in mind.

Everyone likes a good deal.  And free is the best deal for many. However it isn't always the best deal if you are trying to commit to something like losing weight permanently.  You need to invest in yourself.   By joining Nutrition for You you will be more likely to commit because you do have a small amount of money invested.  We also provide expert coaching and all of our coaches want you to succeed, and will help you stay committed.  Invest in yourself.  Prioritize yourself.  More importantly commit to changing your relationship with food.  When you commit, so do we. We want every single person that joins our site for weight loss to lose weight and succeed.  We don't want to advertise to you. That makes us feel good and we hope it makes you feel good too. 

You don't have to tell those of us at Nu4You that tracking what you eat can help lose weight.  We know it.  That's why our Success Tracker's Food Record is a key part of our nutrition program.  It's simply a fact that if you record keep you are more likely to lose weight and to lose more than if you do not. 

Yesterday there were innumerable articles on the web about Kaiser Permanente's new study that basically says that keeping a food diary doubles the weight loss over those that do not keep a food diary.  That study is not new news for us, however it is nice to see scientific studies that validate our own experience.

Studies come and studies go, but this article by TIME magazine's Anita Hamilton explains it in a way that we can all understand. 

 

 

Dennis Allio, co-founder of Nutrition for You and Nu4You.net was interviewed by the Columbus Dispatch.  Dennis is originally an Ohio native having moved to the San Francisco Bay Area only 4 years ago.  Dennis met Manuel during his own weight-loss journey which is described in the article.

Full Link to the article on Nutrition for You in the Columbus Dispatch