Intro

Hello and welcome to the Over 50 Health & Wellness podcast.  I’m your host Kevin English – I’m a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach and my mission is to help you get into the best shape of your life – regardless of your age – so that you can show up in life as the healthiest, strongest, most vital version of yourself.  I want to let you know that if you enjoy this podcast, I have additional free resources over at www.silveredgefree.com.  There you’ll find my mini guides on nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle.  So feel free to head over there, scroll through the guides, and download anything that looks helpful to you.

 

Today we have another edition of the Coaches Corner – so no guest today – it’s just me, and we’ll be back next week with our regular interview format. Here’s what we’re covering in today’s episode. I start out by talking about some foods that often get marketed as healthy, but really aren’t, and I list my top 13 foods that fall into this category as well as healthier alternatives. Then I spend a few minutes pontificating on what would happen if I had a magic wand and could give everyone their perfect dream body. OK, let’s do this – time to get on with today’s show!

 

Foods That Seem Healthy

Many foods sound healthy. For example, if I told you I was having a snack of blueberry yogurt with some granola mixed in, you might consider that to be a healthy snack. Or if I told you I had an Impossible plant-based burger on a whole wheat bun, maybe with some low-fat mayonnaise, you might think that’s not too bad – nutritionally speaking. But many of the foods we consider healthy, really aren’t. And today I want to talk about some of the top offenders, as well as some healthier alternatives. These are foods that seem healthy, but upon closer examination really aren’t.

 

Let’s start with one I hear all the time, and that’s yogurt. Most of the flavored yogurts you see on store shelves list sugar as the second or third ingredient. For example, a single serving - 6 ounces – of Yoplait original blueberry yogurt contains a total of 20 grams of sugar, and 13 of those come from added sugar. That’s more than three teaspoons of added sugar. A much healthier choice would be to select plain unflavored yogurt, or better yet plain unflavored Greek yogurt (due to its higher protein content), and then add fresh or frozen berries.

 

Next on the list is whole grain or multi-grain bread. Most of the bread on your favorite supermarket shelf labeled whole-grain or multi-grain has enriched flour as the first ingredient. While these breads may contain some whole grains, they’re usually more of an after-thought. A step up nutritionally would be to select breads where the first ingredient is whole wheat and avoid anything that has the word “enriched” in the first ingredient. The next step up would be to buy (or better yet make) sprouted grain breads. I’m personally a fan of the Ezekiel line of sprouted grain breads, and you can normally find those in the freezer section of your store.

 

Speaking of bread, a healthy sounding – but not so healthy – bread alternative that’s popped up recently are flatbreads or sandwich wraps. Often these have ingredients like spinach or sun dried tomatoes in them. But don’t be fooled, these often have more calories than eating regular sandwich bread. The first ingredient is almost always enriched bleached flour, the second or third ingredient is almost always some type of vegetable shortening, and the added “vegetable” ingredient is almost always powdered and not enough to have any real nutritive benefit. If you want a healthy sandwich wrap, you’d be much better served going with lettuce.

 

Next up on our list of healthy impostors is granola. Many of the granola cereals on our supermarket shelves are just glorified sugary cereal, only worse due to the added fat. Most granola lists sugar and some type of vegetable oil as the second and third ingredients. And while a quick glance at the nutrition panel on the back might not look too bad, consider that the average serving size is typically a quarter cup. And granola bars are typically even worse offenders. Some brands are worse than others, so make sure you do your research and look for very little (or better yet no) added sugar and no added vegetable oil. Or for bonus points, make you own. I found a homemade granola at a local farmers market that is lightly sweetened with local honey, and I’ll occasionally eat that mixed in with my plain Greek yogurt with some blueberries for a tasty treat.

 

Let’s talk about some of the healthy sounding drinks. Probably the worst offenders in the drink category are the fruit juices. Most store-bought juices contain between 20 and 40+ grams of sugar, but don’t come with the health benefits of eating the actual fruit. For example, a 6-ounce serving of Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Juice has 110 calories and 22 grams of sugar, and it was most likely heat pasteurized and stored in a huge vat for up to a year before it ended up in your grocery cooler. An actual orange on the other hand has about 60 calories and 12 grams of sugar – basically half the calories and sugar of one 6 ounce serving of juice, and the actual orange still contains all its healthy fiber and flavonoids.

 

And speaking of fruit juice, another drink masquerading as healthy are fruit smoothies. These are popular in national smoothie chains, as well as grocery stores. I remember once going to one of these smoothie chains with my daughter years ago, we had just spent a couple of hours at a climbing gym, and I ordered some sort of avocado spinach mango smoothie with a scoop of protein powder – and it tasted exactly like a milkshake. Because for all intensive purposes it was – when I later looked up the nutrition information it had 65 grams of sugar. 65! Today many of these chains have added zero sugar smoothies to their menus, but with the artificial sweeteners and most of the ingredients coming out as a syrup from those pumps on the counter, you’re much better off skipping these all together. A healthy alternative would be to completely skip the store-bought versions and make smoothies at home in your blender.

 

Staying on liquids for a few more minutes, next up are sports drinks. These are essentially expensive Kool-Aid. Considering that a single 20 ounce serving of the classic orange Citrus Cooler flavored Gatorade has 34 grams of added sugar – that’s over 8 teaspoons – and combined with the fact these are chock-full of chemicals to flavor and color them, there’s really no reason to drink these sports drinks – ever. If you’re an endurance athlete and you’re concerned about electrolyte balance, there are a number of healthier alternatives – I really like LMNT powders for this.

 

Another sneaky healthy-sounding drink are diet sodas. Besides the fact that there are zero health benefits from diet soda, many people consider these to be at least a healthier version of regular sodas. And on the surface that would seem to be the case. A regular soda averages about 140 calories and 30+ grams of sugar, whereas most diet soda these days have zero (or very few) calories and no (or very little) added sugar. However, study after study shows that people who switch to diet soda don’t lose weight. And there are a number of reasons why that might be, but one of the reasons that diet sodas are unhealthy is in the artificial sweeteners. These sweeteners range from 200 to 14,000 times sweeter than table sugar, which tends to lead people to seek sweeter and sweeter tastes. You’d be much better served by switching to plain or carbonated water, perhaps with a small squeeze of lemon or lime.

 

Next up on our list of healthy-sounding foods is dried fruit. Many people are surprised when I tell them that dried fruit isn’t really healthy. The problem occurs in the drying process – drying the fruit removes all the water-soluble nutrients, leaving a sugar-filled snack that’s easy to overeat. You’re much better served eating fresh whole fruit.

 

Next up are nut and seed butters. We have so many options to chose from right now – almond, cashew, walnut, and macadamia butter just to name a few. But many of these have labels claiming things like all-natural, no high fructose corn syrup, and organic, but are actually health food imposters. The best bet is to flip your nut butter over to the ingredient list – if you see sugar or palm oil (or any other vegetable oil) on the label, put it back and find an alternative with only nut or seeds in the ingredient list. The trade off is you’ll need to stir it up before each use. I’m personally a huge fan of NuttZo products, especially their Power Fuel blend.

 

Another gross offender of foods that sound healthy but aren’t – protein bars. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these are glorified candy bars, chock full of sugars, vegetable oils, and other ingredients that outweigh whatever benefit you derive from the actual protein in the bar. Note that quality of ingredients varies wildly from brand to brand, and some are definitely better than others. On the rare occasions that I eat protein bars, I like Atlas bars.

 

A relative new-comer in the healthy-sounding foods are the plant-based meat alternatives. These are marketed as better for the environment and better for our health than their animal counterparts. But the reality is that most of these products are ultra-processed and contain harmful added oils, salts, sugars, and flavors. If you’re selecting these products because you don’t eat meat and you like the taste of them, that’s fine… just don’t mistake these as a healthy alternative to meat! You’re much better off eating healthy meat protein sources or opt for whole plants sources if you are vegetarian or vegan.

 

I’ll leave you with one last group of foods that are advertising themselves as healthy – and that’s anything labeled fat free or low fat. In almost all cases these products will be processed or ultra-processed foods that have little or no redeeming nutritional value in either their full fat or reduced fat forms. In fact, one study found that low fat and fat free foods can contain up to 10% more calories and 40% more sugar than their full-fat counterparts. When we remove the fat from foods, we remove both flavor and texture, and so companies end up adding artificial flavoring chemicals and added sugar to compensate.

 

There you have it; those are my top 13 foods that sound healthy but really aren’t.  Of course there’s more, but hopefully this gives you some food for thought (pun intended) before your next trip to the grocery store!

 

The Health Lottery

I recently heard of a study that followed people who came into a large financial windfall – these are people who literally won the lottery or inherited a large amount of money unexpectedly. And they discovered something very surprising. A full 80% of these lucky people reverted back to their previous financial state after three to five years. That is, they spent their millions and were right back where they started. And I’ve heard similar reports of this in the past, people like music stars and superstar athletes ending up broke after their careers were over. The proposed cause of this drastic loss of new-found wealth seems to be that these people who suddenly come into unexpected great wealth don’t have the knowledge or experience to handle finances, in other words they maintained the exact same financial habits they had before, just with a boat-load more money. So perhaps before they were suddenly rich, they spent whatever they made – and so each month they netted zero and never got financially ahead. And they continue this same behavior, except now instead of splurging on fancy dinners or designer clothes they are buying mansions and yachts.

 

And this seems such a shame. I can’t imagine how life altering winning the lottery would be, to wake up one morning to find out I’m a multi-millionaire. But I’d like to think that my newfound wealth would last my entire life, that maybe I could even build on it and pass some down to my children. And maybe I would, but statistically speaking the odds are against me.

 

And this got me thinking, what if I had a magic wand and could make everyone fit and healthy. Everyone would have their dream body, the perfect weight and body composition, lean and toned or big and muscly – and glowing with health and vitality. They’d enjoy pain free movement through entire ranges of motion. They’d feel energetic and vibrant. But what would they look like in three to five years? How many of them would still own their miraculous healthy bodies?

 

Sadly, I expect that exact same thing would happen to our newly healthy folks as happens to the newly rich… but I suspect it would take less than three to five years to revert back to their former bodies. The reason for this is simple, if these people don’t make permanent changes to their habits and lifestyle – in other words, if they don’t make fundamental changes to their relationship to food and exercise – they simply can’t maintain their newfound perfect bodies for any length of time. And this is why diets and weight loss supplements don’t work.

 

A diet by its definition is a change in eating habits done until a desired weight is obtained. Studies tell us that 95% of diets fail when it comes to long term weight loss. Let’s take an example of a woman who wants to lose 20 pounds. And let’s assume that she has a reasonable time goal – say 3 months – and that she has a well thought out diet that puts her in the appropriate calorie deficit for these three months. And we’ll further assume that she’s diligent with her diet and that she successfully accomplishes her goal and loses 20 pounds. Now what? If she thinks to herself “thank God that awful ordeal is over” and goes back to eating the way she was eating pre-diet – quite possibly the way she’s been eating most of her life – she won’t maintain her new weight, she’ll gain her weight back and chances are good she’ll gain a little extra to boot. And most likely she’ll start the cycle all over again.

 

Just like we’d all like to be filthy rich, we’d all like to have ideal bodies that are functional with excellent body composition. And just like we could all improve our financial position by making permanent lifestyle changes, we can have our ideal bodies, but only if we’re willing to make permanent healthy lifestyle changes. We need to fundamentally shift our mindsets to improve our relationship with our food, exercise, and our bodies. Unfortunately, there is no magic wand that will give you a perfect body, there is no pill, powder, or potion that will melt away fat or give you a six pack. Your chances are actually greater of winning the lottery than to wake up in your dream body. But there’s no need for despair, your ideal healthy body is absolutely within reach. You own the magic wand, all you need to do is wave it and start your journey today.

 

Outro

OK, that’s our show for today folks – I’ll put links to everything we talked about in the show notes and you can find that over at www.silveredgefitness.com/episode90, and don’t forget to check out www.silveredgefree.com for more great free resources on how to live you healthiest, strongest life after 50.  In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you.  You can always leave a comment on this episode page, or feel free to email me with any comments or questions from today’s show.  Send emails to [email protected].  I want to thank you so much for spending your time with me today.  I’ll be back next week with my regular interview format.  That’s it for today, so until next time, stay strong!