48 Part I: Eating Right with Every Bite
✓ 100 percent whole-grain bread
✓ Brown rice
✓ Fruits
✓ Vegetables
✓ Low-fat or fat-free dairy
✓ Beans
✓ Whole-grain cereals
✓ Whole-wheat pasta
Carbs should equal about 40 to 50 percent of your daily calories. Your goal is
to consume a minimum of 100 grams a day.
Staying away from added sugars
When you read labels you see the category Sugars. These sugars count as
carbs, and they may include natural sugars found in healthy carbs (like the
lactose in milk and fructose in fruit) as well as added or simple sugars. You
need to look at the ingredient label to see if the food has added sugar, in
which case, avoid it. Check out Chapter 2 for all of sugar’s aliases.
Interestingly, many foods you wouldn’t suspect, such as ketchup, barbeque
sauce, pasta sauce, and bread, have added sugar in them. The next time you
go to the grocery store, inspect ingredient labels for added sugar before
adding foods to your cart.
Besides increasing your calorie intake, eating too much sugar may cause the
dreaded dumping syndrome. While not everyone experiences dumping
syndrome (generally only gastric bypass patients), the resulting diarrhea,
nausea, and shakiness will make an anti-added-sugar believer out of you.
(Refer back to Chapter 2 for a refresher on dumping syndrome.)
Getting the skinny on fats
Like carbs, fat has been given a bad name. In fact, we need some healthy fat
in our diet. Too much fat, though, especially saturated and trans fats, not
only sabotages your weight loss but also can increase your risk for chronic
disease.
Without adequate fat in your diet you’ll experience the following outcomes:
✓ Your hair and nails will be brittle and dry.
✓ Your skin will be dry.
✓ You may develop deficiencies of some of the fat-soluble vitamins.
