HOW TO CHOOSE A MULTIVITAMIN

Multivitamins are good insurance for the day you don’t get the daily maximum
amount of nutrients. Look for one with a concentration of chromium and vitamins
B6 and B12. Chromium improves your body’s ability to convert amino acids
into muscle. A University of Maryland study found that men who exercised regularly
and took 200 micrograms of chromium a day added more muscle and
lost significantly more body fat than lifters not taking the supplement. Also,
since hard workouts deplete your B vitamins, it’s good to find vitamins with high
doses, like Solaray Men’s Golden Multi-Vita-Min, which has megadoses of vitamins
B6 and B12, plus your entire daily allowance of endurance-boosting zinc.
Take control of your trans fat intake. Check the ingredient labels
on all the packaged foods you buy, and if you see PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED
OIL on the label, consider finding an alternative. Even
foods that seem bad for you can have healthy versions: McCains
shoestring french fries, Ruffles Natural reduced-fat chips, Wheatables
reduced-fat crackers, and Dove dark chocolate bars are just
a few of the “bad for you” snacks that are actually free of trans
fats. And remember—the higher up on the ingredients list PARTIALLY
HYDROGENATED OIL is, the worse the food is for you. You might
not be able to avoid trans fats entirely, but you can choose foods
with a minimal amount of the stuff.
The other way to avoid trans fats is to avoid ordering fried
foods. Because trans fats spoil less easily than natural fats and
are easier to ship and store, almost all fried commercial foods are
now fried in trans fats rather than natural oils. Fish and chips,
tortillas, fried chicken—all of it is packed with belly-building
trans fats. Order food baked or broiled whenever possible. And
avoid fast-food joints, where nearly every food option is loaded
with trans fats; drive-through restaurants ought to come complete
with drive-through cardiology clinics.
For more on trans fats—where they come from, how they act
inside your body, and how to fight back, see the Special Report on
page 127. In the meantime:
AVOID
Margarine
Fried foods
Commercially manufactured baked goods
Any food with PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED OIL on its list of ingredients
Saturated fat: BAD. Saturated fats are naturally occurring
fats found in meat and dairy products. The problem with saturated
fats is that when they enter your body, they tend to do the
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same thing they did when they were in a pig’s or cow’s body:
Rather than be burned for energy, they’re more likely to be stored
as fat in your flanks, in your ribs, even—ugh—in your loin. In fact,
they seem to have more of a “storage effect” than other fats. A new
study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that the amount
of saturated fat in your diet may be directly proportional to the
amount of fat surrounding your abdominal muscles. Researchers
analyzed the diets of 84 people and performed an MRI on each of
them to measure fat. Those whose diets included the highest rates
of saturated fat also had the most abdominal fat. Saturated fats
also raise cholesterol levels, so they increase your risk for heart
disease and some types of cancer.
I don’t want you to eliminate saturated fats entirely; they’re