I do work out every day and take great pleasure at ignoring the calories and total fat in a food product. It might not give me my six-pack, but it will give me short term euphoria.
What item listed on the nutrition facts of a product could really harm me despite the fact that I workout every day? I was thinking maybe saturated fat, but I don’t know for sure.
Trans Fat is supposed to be really bad, on par with saturated fat. As in, you should try to just about eliminate it from your diet.
Still, if you’re otherwise healthy and eating well, it probably won’t be the thing that will kill you…
Saturated fats aren’t as bad as most people seem to think it is–a small amount is good for your heart–but trans fats are bad news.
Trans fats not good. Really quite bad.
Don’t forget that fats, particularly trans and other polyunsaturated fats, can cause cancer.
How about sodium/salt? High amounts wouldn’t be good for your blood pressure even if you work out. Even low-fat foods may have a lot of sodium for preservation and that’s not healthful.
I’ve never heard of polyunsaturated fats causing cancer. And trans fats are no longer unsaturated once they are hydrogenized, and they initially were monounsaturated not polyunsaturated. So, if you have a cite, please give it. Polyunsaturated fats are good for your health, along with monounsaturated fats, for different reasons. So avoid any product that states: “partially hydrogenized … oil.” Avoid synthetic chemicals as well, such as dyes, artificial preservatives, etc. Avoid nitrites and nitrates since they are carcinogenic. Avoid white bread and try to use whole grains instead.
Transfats aren’t, in my opinion, substantially more dangerous than saturated fats, but it’s best to avoid both. The important thing, though, is that it’s easy to eliminate trans fats from your diet by avoiding foods that contain hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils. Watching for foods that are high in saturated fat is wise from a health perspective; watching for foods that are particularly high in calories or any sort of fat is wise from an fitness perspective.
If you’re working out strenously every day (assuming it includes strength training), maybe you should be most scared of foods that don’t contain much protein. You might have heard advice that you get something like one gram of protein per pound of lean body weight, which for most people is an insanely large amount of protein. You may not need that much to recover and gain muscle, but you’ll need at least the RDA, and it’s hard to achieve even that if you’re eating a lot of low-protein foods.
Also, working out every day isn’t a license to eat as much as you want. Figure out how many calories your body requires each day (your base metabolic rate plus the energy burned by exercise), and try not to go above that; if you do, you’ll store energy as fat regardless of how much you exercise.
This is not a matter of opinion, but facts that can be readily obtained. Trans fats are worse than saturated fats since they increase your LDL while decreasing your HDL, as well as being implicated in diabetes. In addition, completely hydrogentated fats (as opposed to partially) does not result in trans fats. (Very few foods have completely hydrogenated fats, anyway.) It is very easy to reach your protein requirements. All you need to do is eat enough food that contains all the essential amino acids, not necessarily protein-rich foods, and you don’t have to do that in one meal.
http://www.benbest.com/health/essfat.html
And trans fats are not saturated; saturated means that there are no carbon-carbon double bonds, since the carbon-chain is saturated with hydrogen. A trans fat is one in which there’s a carbon-carbon double bond, and the carbon chain attached to each end is on the opposite side of the carbon-carbon double bond (as opposed to a cis fatty acid, in which they’re on the same side.) A saturated fat thus cannot be a trans fat.
It’s possible that all trans fats are monounsaturated, but there’s nothing about the chemistry that would require that. I was careless when I said that. Most dietary fats, though, are bad for you. Even the good ones aren’t great if you eat too much.
Calories. Period.
If you exercise more, and burn more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. if you exercise more, and still take in more calories than you expend, you will still gain weight.
I was wrong. They can be polyunsaturated, but I can’t agree that most fats are bad for you. Both polyunsaturated and monounsaturated are good. Saturated and trans fats are bad. Yeah, polyunsaturated can possible cause cancer due to free radicals, but it’s impossible to avoid free radicals, which mainly contribute to aging and not cancer, anyway. Merely exercising creates more free radicals. So, if you want to lessen the amount of free radicals in your body, don’t exercise. I exercise, but I also take antioxidants to reduce those free radicals, and if you take polyunsat, take also some antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, beta-carotene, selenium, etc. On needs some fats in the diet, since they are necessary for many biological functions, necessary for the fat-soluble vitamins, and are constiutents of cells. Moderation in all things.