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Cooking Light Magazine Review | Magazine & Cookbook Reviews

Looking To Cook Lighter, But Don’t Know Where To Start or Even How To Do It? Cooking Light Magazine Could Be Just The Ticket.

Magazine: Cooking Light
Publisher: Southern Progress Corporation/Time
Price: $4.99 (Newstand)/$18 yearly subscription
Publication Schedule: Monthly (11 issues)

Ratings (1-4 Scale: 1= poor, 2= fair, 3= good, 4= excellent)

Recipe Originality: 4
Directions/Ease of Prep: 4
Overall Content: 3
Design & Visual Appeal: 4
Price/Value: 4
Overall Rating: 3.8

Cooking Light Pros:

• Nearly 100 healthy recipes each month
• Photos accompanying nearly every recipe
• Full-nutritional labeling for each recipe
• Easy recipe index lets you quickly find meals that interest you or fit your schedule
• Good selection of meatless and meat-based recipes
• Tested recipes with clear directions
• Regular tips, tricks and tutorials that can help you become a better cook
• Excellent website that supports the magazine
• Good value from a price perspective
• Good supporting editorial content on nutrition and health news

Cooking Light Cons:

• One-third of the article content is not directly related to cooking (travel, lifestyle, wellness, etc.)
• Exercise advice and routines are kind of fluffy

Cooking Light Magazine Review

Eating healthy and cooking light doesn’t have to mean bland.

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Negative Calorie Foods: Fact or Fiction? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

Are Negative Calorie Foods for Real or Just A Bunch of Diet Hot Air? The Fitness Nerd Separates Fact from the Fiction Around Negative Calorie Diets.

Dear Fitness Nerd,

What’s your opinion on negative calorie foods? I’ve read that certain foods like celery require more energy to digest than they provide in calories. Is this true? And if it is, do you have a list of negative calorie foods? Thanks! (Aimee B — Dallas, TX)

Negative calorie foods are one of those dieting concepts that sound so good that you want to believe it’s true.

Just the term “negative calorie foods” conjures up images of eating all you want, and still losing weight. It’s a very powerful promise — and one that fad diet and weight-loss pill marketers rely on on every day to sell you their latest pill, potion or ”weight-loss-secret-revealed” eBook.

Take a look under the hood though, and you’ll find that the concept of negative calorie foods has more in common with a good urban legend than with solid nutrition advice. And like an urban legend, negative calorie foods do have a grain of truth at their center, but that’s about it.

What Is A Negative Calorie?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept of negative calories and negative calorie foods, here’s the short version:

The theory is that a negative calorie food is any food that requires more energy to digest than the energy (calories) actually contained in the food. The idea here is that by eating these foods, you can burn more calories than you consume and lose weight more rapidly and efficiently. 

Origins of the Negative Calorie

The concept of negative calorie foods has been around for almost a decade, and has been popularized via two main sources: Internet discussion boards and the 1999 book, Foods that Cause You to Lose Weight: the Negative Calorie Effect, by Neal D. Barnard, M.D. 

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Losing Belly Fat: How Can I Do It? | Ask The Fitness Nerd

Trying to lose belly fat can be frustrating. The Fitness Nerd takes a look at the best ways to get rid of belly fat and keep your stomach flat … for good.

Hi Fitness Nerd,

I have a question about losing belly fat, and getting in better shape overall. I’m 24 years old and 5′ 7″ if that helps.

So here is my story… All through college, I never weighed more than 145 lbs. (that was at my heaviest). I was competing in the Miss America pageant system, walking back and forth to class, etc. But eating the same as I do now. While this helped keep my belly fat in check — I never really was able to achieve that truly flat belly that I was looking for.

Two years later, I weigh just under 170 lbs. I don’t look that heavy, all the weight is in my buttocks and belly. I went on a special eating program to get ready for the Miss USA pageant a few months ago and was very strict with it for 3 months, brown rice, grilled chicken, eggs, sweet potatoes, green beans, salad, yogurt, and lots of water plus cardio and very small weights every day. I GAINED weight!! (about 10 pounds).

So I got very, very frustrated and quit all together. Now I have a job where I sit at work all the time, and my hours are unusual so it’s difficult for me to workout all the time. Also, I am frustrated with how I look in clothes, really want to lose the belly fat and am ready to do something to change that. I typically just do cardio at the gym, but not as religiously as I could. I get bored with it easily. I do like lifting weights though. Also, I had a personal trainer, but just wasn’t making the progress I wanted. So I stopped that as well.

My diet is pretty off - I still eat a lot of grilled chicken and brown rice (just because I love it). But, my biggest issue is that I don’t eat fruit or veggies at all - except select salads, and green beans. I eat a lot of turkey and cheese sandwiches, pizza, and drink a good bit of Coke.  I’m also kind of a picky eater. It’s time for me to change, I just want something that I know will work.

How do I get rid of the belly fat for good?  Can I lose belly belly fat, or am I just a lost cause? Thanks for your help!! (Elle — Alabama)

Elle, losing belly fat is right at the top of the list for most people when it comes to fitness goals. So you’re definitely not alone.

The challenge, of course, is that there are no easy, fast, ”silver bullet” solutions to losing belly fat, regardless of what all the “Belly Fat Diet” ads say.

If you are looking for 1 way to lose belly fat, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Also, if you’re looking for the best way to lose belly fat fast, I don’t want to get your hopes up. This is going to take some work and changes on your part. But if you want to succeed …. you will.

If you really want to reduce belly fat, it really takes a combination of diet and exercise — and the most effective combination will vary considerably from person-to-person, as you’ve learned first-hand. While improvements to diet and lots of cardio might help one person get rid of their belly fat, others do better with less cardio, better diet and more weight training.

So the trick is finding what works for you. You can either accomplish this with the help of a good personal trainer (which, unfortunately, you may not have had)  or you can try to go it on your own, based on what you learn about yourself and what works.

The good news is that you aren’t hopeless, and there are some pretty effective way to lose belly fat, starting today.

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What Are MUFAs? | Ask the Fitness Nerd

What’s a MUFA? The Fitness Nerd explains what this funny acronym means and why MUFAs are suddenly the rage among dieters.

Dear Fitness Nerd:

What are MUFAs? I keep hearing people talk about them, but I still haven’t quite figured out what they are. I know they are a type of fat, but I thought fats were unhealthy and should be avoided. Are they a supplement of some type like CLA? - Kayla R, (West Hollywood, CA)

MUFAs are an acronym for a “monounsaturated fatty acids” — a class of healthy fats found in foods like nuts and seeds, avocados, olives and certain vegetable oils. MUFAs are not typically taken as a supplement (as Conjugated linoleic acid or CLA often is), since they are plentiful in foods. 

MUFAs have gotten a lot of attention recently for three reasons:

1. MUFAs may help you lose weight.

There is some evidence that people who regularly consume MUFAs have lower body fat levels and are more successful at dropping body fat and weight than people who are on low-fat, carbohydrate rich diets.

This research flies in the face of  the conventional-wisdom that drove the low-fat craze of the 80s and 90s, which advised people to reduce their fat consumption as much as possible in order to lose weight, lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of stroke, high-blood pressure and heart disease. The latest research actually suggests that diets which are higher in healthy fats like MUFAs may be more effective at weight-control than low-fat diets.

2. MUFAs may reduce the risk of disease.

A growing body of research shows that MUFAs may not only help people lose fat, but that they also have protective properties that may lower the risk of developing certain diseases, including Type II Diabetes, heart disease, stroke and possibly certain types of cancers. MUFAs are also part of The Portfolio Diet, which is an approach to eating that combines MUFAs with other cholesterol-lowering foods like soy, plant sterols and soluble fiber from things like oatmeal and may reduce blood cholesterol-levels as effectively as prescription statin drugs.

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Herbs and Spices: The Secret Spice To Clean Eating | Fitness Food

Learn how picking the right herbs and spices can make eating clean go from dull to delicious 

Healthy, whole foods get a bad rap when it comes to flavor.

“Eating clean” often gets associated with eating “bland” — especially among fitness buffs, bodybuilders and athletes who think that a good “training diet” consists of meal-after-repetitive-meal of oatmeal, boiled chicken breast, yams, steamed broccoli and green side salads with some kind of fat-free liquid on top that calls itself “dressing.”

The good news is that there is actually a simple solution to making clean eating not just tolerable, but enjoyable — and it’s as close as your grocer’s baking isle: Herbs and spices.

Herbs and Spices: The Key To Making Clean Eating Enjoyable

Any cook worth their salt knows that a recipe or dish isn’t complete until it’s been seasoned.

“Seasoning” could simply mean adding some salt and ground pepper, but more often than not, it includes the use of all kinds of other herbs or spices to either layer additional flavor on top of a food, enhance or complement an existing flavor, or provide a contrast.

While it’s pretty hard to screw up a dish or recipe by adding the wrong herb or spice, it does pay to know your seasonings ahead of time to avoid some funky combinations that might send that brown rice to your dog’s bowl, versus your plate.

Herbs and Spices: Not Just For Flavor, But Also Healthy 

Herbs and spices also have an additional role in healthy, clean eating beyond simply seasoning foods, recipes or dishes.

Nearly all herbs and spices have very high concentrations of healthy phytochemicals and antioxidants. Scientists believe that these naturally-occurring plant compounds work together in the body to protect tissues and cells from damage and may help prevent diseases like cancer and heart disease. 

When you combine herbs and spices with other antioxidant-rich foods like fruits and vegetables, their protective properties may be enhanced even more, similar to The Portfolio Diet approach to cholesterol-reduction observed by researchers like David Jenkins at the University of Toronto.

Just how much antioxidant punch do certain herbs and spice have? Plenty.  

In fact, oregano, that ubiquitous herb found in nearly every batch of pizza or spaghetti sauce is one of nature’s most concentrated sources of antioxidants, having four times more antioxidants than blueberries. Just one tablespoon of dried oregano has the antioxidant content of a large apple.

Herbs and spices can also have beneficial medicinal uses, in addition to simply making your food taste better.

For instance, ginger aids digestion and can calm nausea and even alleviate motion sickness. Fennel and juniper berries can help with fat digestion, and cinnamon has been shown to help reduce cholesterol and increase insulin sensitivity, helping people better digest sugar. It also may lessen the symptoms of certain inflammatory diseases like arthritis.

So herbs and spices don’t just make your food taste better, they’re good for you as well.

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Weight Loss Plateau: Diagnosing & Overcoming a Weight Loss Plateau

Asking yourself “How do I get out of a weight loss plateau?” Try these ten tricks to jumpstart your fat loss and get back on track.

The weight loss plateau.

It happens to everyone, regardless of their level of physical fitness or training experience.  For weeks or even months, the fat and pounds just seem to be melting off. You’re riding high and seeing the fruits of your labor. Maybe you’ve lost a couple inches in your waist or dropped a dress size or two. The gym doesn’t seem like such a chore anymore. Life is good.

And then suddenly, everything stops.  

The scale is no longer your friend, but instead transforms itself into a daily source of frustration.

As far as you can tell, nothing has changed. You’ve still been eating healthy, exercising frequently (maybe even following your regular routine to the “T”) and keeping your portions under control. Yet something has changed: You’ve stopped progressing. And it’s driving you crazy. Even worse, it’s de-motivating you.

Welcome to the dreaded plateau: The bane of everyone from athletes, to fitness models to average people who are just trying to lose their gut, get ready for a holiday cruise or fit into that pair of skinny jeans.

The plateau doesn’t discriminate: Everyone has to deal with it eventually, and it doesn’t just apply to weight loss, but all kinds of other things, including how much you can lift during resistance or weight training, the amount of muscle you are able to add to your frame — or if you are a runner or biker — your distance or speed. 

And what makes the plateau particularly vexing is that it usually hits when you when you feel most unstoppable.

Weight Loss Plateaus: What’s the Cause?

Weight loss plateaus are typically caused by one of two things (and sometimes, a combination of the two):

1. A metabolic adaptation to your current diet and exercise regimen
2. Accumulated changes in your existing exercise and eating routine that are causing you to eat more or burn less calories with exercise, even though you aren’t aware of it.

Let’s take a look a each of these causes in detail.  

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Clean Eating: Why Eating Clean Is The Unfad Diet That Works

Clean Eating Isn’t a Fad Diet …. It’s The Real Deal. Learn the Basics of Eating Clean and Reap The Health, Weight-Loss and Fitness Rewards.

At any given time, more than two-thirds of Americans are “on a diet.” Yet only 5 percent will experience lasting weight or fat loss.  We’re a nation on a perpetual diet, yet America continues to lead the world in obesity, heart disease, Type II diabetes and metabolic syndrome — a combination of risk factors that predispose people to developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

Here’s the irony: Even though American’s are “dieting” more, we’re getting fatter each day.  

Enter “Clean Eating” — a simple, common-sense approach to diet and nutrition that ditches the complicated menu plans of dieting gurus; avoids the single-food focus of the worst fad diets; eschews the loopy pseudo-scientific underpinnings of “Detox Diets” and instead emphasizes sensible, nutritious eating.

In other words, follow this approach and you’ll be less hungry, more satisfied, healthier, and slimmer … for good.

Clean Eating is the ultimate “un-fad” diet. And once you get the hang of it, you’ll never be able to imagine that you thought eating cabbage soup everyday was the key to getting lean.

The Origins of Clean Eating

The concept of “clean eating” isn’t new.

While it’s a phrase you’ll hear tossed around a lot by bodybuilders, athletes and fitness models, the Clean Eating philosophy has its original roots not in the bodybuilding and fitness communities, but rather in the co-op-shopping-Birkenstock-and-granola-crowd.

That’s right, thousands of buff beach bodies can thank tofu-eating, Deadheads for helping them shape better abs, drop body fat and improve their cholesterol profile to boot.  

The Clean Eating philosophy is really based on the natural health food movement of the 1960s, which then got transformed into the “whole foods” approach to eating, which emphasizes consuming foods (preferably organic) that are unprocessed or refined as little as possible before consumption. 

Canadian fitness model and author Tosca Reno is often credited with popularizing this approach to eating with her series of Clean Eating cookbooks, but the basics of this diet have been around for decades. Fitness trainer, natural bodybuilder and Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle author Tom Venuto has been talking about “eating clean” for years, and makes it a central part of his fat-loss and muscle gain plan. 

At it’s root, the diet is so common-sense and back-to-basics, that no one really can take credit for developing this approach to diet and nutrition. 

In fact, all of the recipes and nutrition articles on Answer Fitness are been based on the Clean Eating philosophy. Until recently, I wasn’t even aware that there was an “official” Clean Eating movement out there … it was just a term that I and a lot of others had been using for years to describe healthy eating habits.

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