Interesting

What's the first thing you need to know about reading food labels? Too often, people with the best of intentions don't realize that unless you read the entire label, you're not going to get a true idea of the food's ingredients. Even then, you have to know how to interpret what the label says to be absolutely certain that you're getting what you want.

"When it comes to processed foods, if it says it's natural, ignore the claim," says Organic Lifestyle Magazine. "It means nothing. If it says it's organic, it doesn't have to be 100 percent organic unless it says it is. Remember processed foods can be labeled organic if only 80 percent of the ingredients are organic. And organic junk food is still junk food."

The best advice is to simply not eat any processed foods at all. But if you must, a short list of ingredients and phrases to avoid includes artificial colors, artificial flavorings, artificial sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, sodium nitrates or nitrites, and others.

While I take a break from here...

Eating Fructose is Far Worse than Eating Fat

However, the physiological problems of fructose metabolism extend well beyond a couple of pant sizes:

• Fructose elevates uric acid, which decreases nitric oxide, raises angiotensin, and causes your smooth muscle cells to contract, thereby raising your blood pressure and potentially damaging your kidneys.[1]
  
  Increased uric acid also leads to chronic, low-level inflammation, which has far-reaching consequences for your health. For example, chronically inflamed blood vessels lead to heart attacks and strokes; also, a good deal of evidence exists that some cancers are caused by chronic inflammation. (See the next section for more about uric acid.)
• Fructose tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism—it turns off your body’s appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the “hunger hormone”) and doesn’t stimulate leptin (the “satiety hormone”), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance.[3] [4]
• Fructose rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity (“beer belly”), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
• Fructose metabolism is very similar to ethanol metabolism, which has a multitude of toxic effects, including NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease). It’s alcohol without the buzz.

These changes are not seen when humans or animals eat starch (or glucose), suggesting that fructose is a “bad carbohydrate” when consumed in excess of 25 grams per day. It is probably the one factor responsible for the partial success of many “low-carb” diets.

One of the more recent findings that surprised researchers is that glucose actually accelerates fructose absorption, making the potential health risks from HFCS even more profound.[1]

You can now see why fructose is the number one contributing factor to the current obesity epidemic.

Weeks Review

Ran both Saturday and today, Sunday....

Yesterday I did a 8.18km ( 5.08 miles ) with my hubby and today a 10km ( 6.21 miles ) with some girlfriends.

Felt good both days...

Am finding running with my hubby who takes bigger steps compared to me, my pace is improving as I have to run faster to keep up, even though I am the fitter of the two.

Today when I ran with my girlfriends, the one said my pace was too fast, she could not keep up...

I think its time for me to start running on my own again if I want to improve and get fitter for the half marathon I want to do in September.

My one girlfriend who has run 3 half marathon's says that my fitness is so good at the moment I will easily be able to run it NOW...without any special training.

My Training for the week.

44km ( 27.3 miles )

4708

9 Workouts that I logged in

Did 30 mins of Kettlebell each morning which I didnt log in

Thursday was my one off day for the week.

I'm going to be taking a break from this blog ~ I do have another blog, a private one, if you are a regular follower here and would like me to add you to my private blog, please email me with your email address.

I send out reminders when I post on private blog as the updates do not appear in your feedreader.