Read the ingredients first!!! Make sure it is ground "Turkey Breast" and if it has the words..."partially hydrogenated..." don't even bother! LOL
TheElmo...if your current diet works for you then by all means stick too it...
Personally I ONLY cut carbs completely when I am dieting down for a show...I continue to eat complex carbs such as brown rice, oatmeal, sweet pots, etc...but I NEVER eat fruit except for RR Grapefruit....Is natural sugar in fruit is better than simple sugars? yeah..but sugar is still sugar
TheElmo...I totally get where you are coming from...I agree that you must have a combination of fat, COMPLEX carbs, and protein in order to achieve the "Lean" look. But...if you use fruits as part of your carb intake the results will be much slower than that of a person who strictly uses complex carbs. REMEMBER David Zinczenko is out to sell his book "The Abs Diet "....if he said "Cut out all fruit" how many people do you think would really buy his book? So...he has to play it safe and not be too restrictive...I don't blame him...look at the millions he is making off of the book! :laugh:
....this is a good read...it will help you Southern, because you do need to eat some complex carbs throughout your day, or your body will begin breaking down muscle for energy...which totally defeats what you are trying to do. If you monitor your carb intake you will be fine
CARBOHYDRATES 101
Whether it is the cereal you had for breakfast or the roll you ate at dinner, all carbohydrates are organic compounds containing carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Carbohydrates are formed directly or indirectly from green plants through a process called "photosynthesis," which you probably learned about in grade school. In this process, the sun's energy is captured by chlorophyll, the green coloring in leaves, to turn water from the soil and carbon dioxide from the air into an energy-yielding sugar called glucose. Plants require glucose for growth and repair, and any extra, unneeded glucose is converted to starch and stored in the plant.
Carbohydrates are amazingly diverse, present in foods not only as sugars and starch, but also as fiber. Sugars are sometimes called "simple" sugars, a term that describes their chemical structure. Simple sugars, for example, are constructed of either single (monosaccharide) or double (disaccharide) molecules of sugar. The three major single sugars are glucose, fructose, and galactose. Glucose and fructose are found mostly in fruits and vegetables, and galactose is a component of milk and other dairy products.
When two single sugars link up chemically, a double sugar is formed. The most common double sugar is sucrose, better known as table sugar. Sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose and is one of the sweetest of all sugars. Found in sugar cane and sugar beets, sucrose is purified and refined to provide the various sugar products you see on grocery store shelves: table sugar, candy, cakes, cookies, and other sweets.
A pairing of galactose and glucose yields the milk sugar lactose, found in dairy foods. Another double sugar is maltose, which is constructed from two units of glucose. Maltose is found in plants during the early stages of germination. Sugars, regardless of their molecular makeup, are very easily and quickly digested in the body.
Starches are created when three or more glucose molecules hook up. Most plant foods, including cereals, whole grains, pasta, fruits, and vegetables, are starches, also known as complex carbohydrates. Starches take longer to digest than sugars do.
Found in starches and in less-starchy vegetables like lettuce, fiber is the indigestible remnant of plant food. Although it contributes little energy to your diet, fiber provides bulk, which is vital for intestinal action. Fiber has an array of health benefits: It improves elimination, flushes cancer-causing substances from the system, and helps normalize cholesterol levels. A diet high in fiber will help you control your weight, too -- in several ways. Fiber makes you feel full so you don't overeat. More energy (calories) is spent digesting and absorbing high-fiber foods. In fact, if you increase your fiber intake to 35 grams a day, you'll automatically burn 250 calories a day, without exercising more or eating less. And fiber helps move food through your system more efficiently. This means fewer calories are left to be stored as fat.
Making up roughly half the calories consumed in the average American diet, carbohydrates are to your body what gas is to your car -- the fuel that gets you going. During digestion, all sugars and starches are broken down into glucose (blood sugar) for energy. Assisted by a hormone called insulin, blood glucose is then ushered into cells to be used by various tissues in the body. Carbohydrates, therefore, nourish your body's tissues, providing energy for your brain, central nervous system, and muscle cells in the form of glucose.
Several things can then happen to glucose in your body. Once inside a cell, it can be quickly metabolized to supply energy. Or it might be converted to either liver or muscle glycogen, the storage form of carbohydrate. When you exercise or use your muscles, your body mobilizes muscle glycogen for energy. Blood glucose can also turn into body fat and get packed away in fat tissue. This happens when you eat more carbohydrates than you need or than your body can store as glycogen. Some blood glucose might also be excreted in your urine.
Above all other nutrients, your body prefers to run on glucose from carbohydrates, even though two other nutrients, fat and protein, can provide energy, too. Fat is considered a food fuel, but it is more of an understudy or backup source. Only if carbohydrate stores dwindle will your body tap in to fat for fuel.
Protein is not a good source of energy for your body and is, in fact, underemployed when called upon as an energy provider. Its most important job in your body is to build and repair tissue. Using protein as an energy source is like hiring a computer specialist, then relegating him to the mailroom. Protein simply has more important jobs to do in the body than supply energy.
If you don't eat enough carbohydrates or fat, however, protein will be used as an energy source, because energy production takes metabolic priority over tissue-building. But the problem is that food protein and body protein (muscle and other tissue) will be sacrificed to supply energy, causing parts of your body to waste away. So you see, carbs hold fort as your body's best supply of energy.
