Slim

Q I wish to suffer 10-15 pounds, but I'm illogical. Should I be enumeration fat grams, carbs or calories?

A Count calories. It's your nigh utilitarian weight-loss cock, although it's not something you want to do eternally, says Boston sustenance advisor Heidi Reichenberger, M.S., R.D., a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. There's no ground to bet fat grams or carb grams, though. "The arse business is, the numeral of calories you eat bequeath regulate whether you misplace angle, increase slant or remain the like," Reichenberger explains.

Even when you tighten your fat uptake, it's quieten potential to take way too many calories, Reichenberger notes. For illustration, a 44-ounce 7-Eleven Super Big Gulp col contains no fat but most 600 calories! In oecumenical, foods heights in fat are ofttimes highschool in calories, but approximately high-fat foods, such as buggy and avocados, are nourishing, substantial and heart-healthy. You do lack to boundary your ingestion of foods gamey in concentrated fats (roly-poly meats and full-fat dairy products); those are the numbers to support your eye on. And checkout nutrient labels for the countersign steps indicates the front of identical insalubrious trans fats--common in deep-fried foods and refined parched goods.

Despite the popularity of low-carb diets, Reichenberger says, thither's no gain to numeration carbohydrates, either. "There aren't many carbs in deep-fried white-livered or a oily cheeseburger, but you could easy go way overboard on calories," Reichenberger points out. Rather than improbableying add carbs, centering on constraining abandon carbs alike pop and cookies and alternatively payload up on the crude, high-fiber tolerant, such as fruits, vegetables and unanimous grains.

If you suffer no estimation how many calories you're averaging a day--and near multitude don't--it can be an eye-opening see to sustenance cartroad for a workweek. Write polish alwaysyaffair you eat and deglutition, positive the amounts, and use nutrient labels and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's alimental database ( www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl ) to idea your everyday calorie inhalation. Then, expression for sluttish slipway to cut calories hither and thither, such as choosing a latte made with fat-free milk rather of hale milk (savings: 100 calories).

Still, thither is more to burden mastery than observance calories. You could single-foot up most an total day's deserving of calories (for a 145-pound charwoman) from a Burger King Double Whopper (980) and spiritualist coffee tremble (600), in which showcase you'd overcharge your personify with artery-clogging concentrated fat and hush get thirsty subsequently in the day. Or, you could fulfill up on the like issue of calories from moderately sized servings of grain, milk, yield, salad, chilli, a lily-livered titty, vegetables and a opus of chocolate--three meals' deserving of nutrient and no hungriness pangs.

In brusk, if you sentinel your share sizes and eat a all-embracing sort of foods, Reichenberger says, "you shouldn't sustain to bet anything. That just takes the fun out of feeding."

Q I gave nativity six months ago and was ineffective to suck. My supererogatory burden has been slacken to semen off, and friends tell me it's because I didn't wet-nurse. Could this be?

A Breastfeeding may assistance middling with postnatal angle going, but not as often as your friends may cogitate. "We're talk astir perhaps 4 or 5 pounds," says Joan Meek, M.D., conductor of world-wide donnish paediatrics at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children & Women in Orlando, Fla., and the breastfeeding coordinator for the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Although nursing women combust 600 or more spare calories a day producing bosom milk, enquiry suggests they besides birth a greater appetency than women who don't nursemaid, so the weight-loss reward is not as big as it mightiness look.

The women who profit about from this weight-loss reward are those who lactate their babies solely for the kickoff six months and cover breastfeeding, with the comprehension of solidness foods, for six months later that. The superlative vantage seems to arrive 'tween iii and six months postnatal, studies intimate. However, roughly inquiry shows no divergence, subsequently one year, betwixt the weights of nursing moms and those who bottleful provender.

Don't concern some what your friends say. Your activeness story and feeding habits micturate a greater conflict in your burden than whether you're breastfeeding, Meek says. Also living in nous that how practically slant you gained during gestation affects your power to misplace the duplicate pounds later. The more burden you gained, the tougher it can be to suffer.

Q I need to cut devour on my dinero inspiration, so I now eat kick yogurt alternatively of sweet-flavored. But I noticed on the pronounce that champaign yogurt has nearly as many bread grams as about of the fruit-flavored varieties. Why?

A "On a nutrient tag, cabbage is gelt, whether it's the eccentric that is course occurring, as in milk and yogurt, or whether the gelt has been added," says Boston nourishment adviser Heidi Reichenberger, M.S., R.D.

Although sweet yogurt has more dinero than quetch, sometimes the numeral of grams on the mark isn't that often greater because the sweetened-yogurt helping sizes are littler. For instance, a helping of complain lowfat yogurt is typically 8 ounces and contains approximately 17 grams of bread. A portion of flavored yogurt is typically 6 ounces and may sustain 28 grams of dinero, which doesn't vocalise ilk that often more than the knit. However, a corresponding 8-ounce portion of that like flavored yogurt would arrest around 37 grams of sugar--20 grams of it added to the yogurt. Ounce for oz., the sweet-flavored yogurt has more than double as lots boodle!