Answer Fitness®: Practical Fitness Advice for Everyone

Skim Milk | Healthy Food of the Day

Learn how adding skim milk to your diet can help you build muscle, strengthen bones and maybe even lose some body fat along the way.

“Milk - it does a body good” has a new meaning for people looking to add muscle, stave-off bone loss and reduce body fat.

A flurry of research — albeit, mostly funded by the dairy industry — over the past few years has suggested that including skim milk or fat-free milk into your diet can actually help you lose weight. But aside from the weight loss claims (which we’ll take a look at later), there are additional reasons that including skim milk in your diet can keep you fit, trim and healthy.

What is Skim Milk?

Skim milk is whole milk from dairy cows that has most or all of it’s fat removed. 

Traditionally, this was done by letting milk settle, and then “skimming” the fat off the top of the milk. What is left is the protein-rich, low-fat liquid below the layer of fat. In modern milk processing, the de-fatting process is done with centrifuges (basically the milk is spun around inside a big stainless steel tank and the fat is separated and drained off.)

Skim milk (also labeled as “fat-free milk” or “non-fat” milk) generally has less than 0.5 percent milk fat. Low-fat, semi-skimmed milk or “1% milk” has between 1 and 2 percent fat. For comparisons sake, whole cows milk has around 3.5 percent fat, or 7.9 grams of fat (4.6 grams of which are the “bad” saturated type of fat) in a 1 cup (16 oz) serving. In terms of calories, whole milk weighs in at 147 calories, in comparison to the 91 calories in skim milk.

Clearly choosing skim milk over whole or even 2% milk makes the most sense from a fat and calorie perspective.

But what about the difference in nutrition between skim milk and whole milk? Does the skimming process remove any nutrients?

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The Special K Diet - Does It Work? | Diet Reviews

Can Eating Special K® Cereal Really Help You Lose Weight?

I’ve noticed lately on Yahoo Answers a lot of questions around the Special K diet.  Does it work? Can it help me lose body fat or weight? And more importantly, is it sustainable?

So I decided to dig a little deeper on this particular diet, since it seems to be gaining in popularity.

First, it’s important to understand that to be successful at hitting your fat loss and overall fitness goals, you have to stop thinking about “a diet” as something you do before your vacation to the Caribbean.  Your “diet” is a combination of your choices in food and your lifestyle, not something you do for a few weeks. In other words, it’s a long term commitment to eating more healthy.

That said, can eating Special K cereal help you lose body fat or weight?

What Is The Special K Diet?

According to Kellogg’s website, the Special K Diet has you eating a serving of Special K cereal for breakfast with 2/3 cup skim milk and some form of fresh fruit, or a Special K waffle with light syrup. 

You then replace another meal with a serving of Special K Cereal, or one of their “meal replacement” products, which is typically a Special K Protein Bar.  You then eat your third meal (dinner?) as you normally would.

The Special K diet then allows you two snacks during the day, but they need to be Special K products — either Special K cereal or their pre-packaged snacks like Special K Protein Snack Bars,  Protein Water and Mixes, Special K Cereal Bars, or Special K Snack Bites. You are also encouraged to eat fresh fruit and vegetables throughout the day.

With this diet plan, they tell you that you can lose up to “1 inch from your waist in two weeks.”

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Am I Fat? | Why Body Fat Percentage Is More Important Than Weight

Here’s a Little Secret: The scale lies. Learn why you should focus on decreasing your body fat percentage, instead of just your weight.

Stepping on the bathroom scale is a daily ritual for many dieters, athletes and fitness enthusiasts. After all  being healthy and in-shape means weighing less, right?

Scales seem to be everywhere: The home bathroom, the gym or health club locker room, and – of course — the doctor’s office.  We’re a society increasingly obsessed with our weight, but ironically, one that is becoming fatter than ever.

But what if you knew that your trusty scale was deceiving you? What if you found out that losing a pound or two (or even five) doesn’t mean you’ll look any thinner or more in-shape? What if I told you that losing weight is actually making you fatter?

Why Weight Loss Should Never Be Your Goal

Our preoccupation with moving that pointer on the bathroom scale down closer to zero is at the root of most people’s frustration with becoming healthier and more fit.  Crash diets, fad diets, endless hours of cardio, extreme calorie restriction and eating disorders can be traced directly to our desire to step on the scale and see that we’ve lost weight.

Yet the number that you see on the scale each morning is a terrible indicator of body composition.  Weight alone can’t tell you anything about the distribution of that weight. It doesn’t take into account the ratio of fat to lean tissue, which can cause very lean people to think they are fatter than they really are, and fat people to think they are leaner.  

In other words, losing weight can actually be a bad thing, especially if you are doing it at the expense of lean tissue like muscle.  If all you are using to gauge your fitness progress is scale weight alone, you are only getting half-the-picture.

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About Answer Fitness®

Answer Fitness® provides practical fitness advice and information on diet and nutrition, exercise , weight-loss and weight training for people who are passionate about fitness and staying in shape, regardless of their experience level.

My Goal

This is not a diet blog.

While food is major focus of Answer Fitness®, my goal is to shift people’s thinking regarding good nutrition from something that they pay attention to only when they need to lose weight, to something that they think about every day. Once you begin eating healthy, you should never have to go “on a diet” again. 

So who is this “Matt” guy and why should I listen to him?

The simple answer is that I’m one of you. I’m not a professional athlete, competitive body builder or a doctor. 

What I am,  is a “fitness nerd.”

And I wear this badge proudly.

This means I feel strongly that working out is 75% mental. 

For me, physical activity is a medititation of sorts. And I love the science of it all. The amazing ability of the body to adapt to whatever we heap on it. The chance for us to live longer, be healthier and more fit than our parents or grandparents. The physical challenge to be better than what we are drives me. 

I also want to break the stereotype that being fitness-minded means you can’t be … um … minded.

I have dual bachelors degrees in Philosophy and History from the University of Michigan and am working on my personal trainer certification … just for the hell of it.  I’ll probably never make a dime at it, nor do I care. It’s a personal challenge thing for me. That’s all.

Finally, I don’t blog because I need income.

I do it instead, because,  like my readership, I’m passionate about eating healthy, staying in shape and passing on some knowledge.

I don’t know it all and I admit this. So I spend a lot of my free time (what I have of it), digging through scientific research to try to come up with something objective and proven that I can pass on to the people who visit my site.

My day job is interactive marketing, which means I spend a lot of my time sitting behind a computer or in a meeting room. Fitness for me is both a hobby and a necessity. Working out let’s me blow off steam, clear my mind and focus for 90 minutes each day on something other than Google algorithms or website conversion. For me, exercise and eating well are just as important as feeding your mind. I try to do all three. 

In the end, it always comes back to the basics: eat well and close-to-the-earth, exercise frequently and workout hard in the gym. There are no “magic pills” or “revolutionary” diets that can substitute for these three principles.  Period. I know it, because I’ve been there.

Answer Fitness® was inspired by my experiences as a Top Contributor to the Diet and Fitness category in Yahoo Answers.

Fitness and healthy eating seem of the surface to be very simple things, but people are perpetually confused. Between the seemingly contradictory scientific research around diet that people read online and in the news, the amazing claims of diet and supplement marketers, and the practical challenges of staying active in an increasingly sedentary society, people are looking for answers, not just hype, to stay healthy and fit.

Finally, you’ll see me talking a lot about food. Yes, I want you to eat. While it may seem counter-intuitive, you can’t lose fat without eating. But I also want to challenge the perception that a lot of people have that you can’t eat healthy and burn fat and have your meals taste phenomenal.

I actually flirted with the idea of naming this blog “No Boiled Chicken” because the idea that eating healthy requires you to consume bland foods like boiled chicken, canned tuna and brown rice drives me crazy.

I have bodybuilder friends who struggle to gag down yet another boiled chicken breast, when — with a little help – they really could be eating “clean” and enjoying their food, instead of dreading it. I want to change that.

So welcome to Answer Fitness® and say goodbye to canned tuna!

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