Just to reiterate the main points:
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Posted by:
Editor, 1.2.2010
Losing weight is not such a hard task if you don't even notice you're doing it. Here's how to trick your tastebuds into enjoying healthier foods, making weight loss a pleasure rather than a chore.
(1) Find a selection of nutritious, lower-calorie foods that it's quick and easy to prepare - for example, naturally-sweet fruit like grapes and mango, and delicious savoury bites such as marinated prawns and chicken kebabs.
(2) Take it in stages. If you're addicted to white bread sandwiches, switch to 50:50 white/brown bread first and move on to wholemeal later.
(3) Adapt favourite dishes - baked cod and oven chips instead of battered fish and fried chips for example, or pasta arrabiata (with spicy tomato sauce) instead of creamy and fattening carbonara.
(4) Zing up your salads. Include plenty of crunchy textures and add an interesting low-fat dressing to make a salad really delicious. Bake your own fat-free croutons and sprinkle over some Parmesan - at 40 calories per grated tablespoon, it won't ruin your waistline.
(5) Instead of sweet treats high in both sugar and fat (cream cakes, chocolate or biscuits) switch to equally yummy, but lower-calorie, alternatives that contain only sugar and virtually no fat like marshmallows, fruit pastilles or a meringue.
Tags: Diet, Help, Advice, 5 Points, Tips, Reiterate
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Why Diet Coke is not the way to go...
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Posted by:
Editor, 17.12.2009
Scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston have revealed results from a study outlining some of the effects of artificial sweeteners on the body. Conducted on a group of 3,000 women, the results indicated that those who drank two or more artificially-sweetened beverages a day doubled their risk of more-rapid-than-normal kidney function decline.? ?The study accounted for various other risk factors including the woman's age, her blood pressure, if she smoked, and if she had any other pre-existing conditions such as heart disease or diabetes. The 11-year study evaluated the effects of all sweetened drinks on progressive kidney decline and discovered that two or more diet drinks leads to a two-fold increase in rapid kidney decline incidences.? ?Though study results did not show any correlation between sugar- or corn syrup-sweetened drinks and the onset of rapid kidney decline, these ingredients are implicated in causing diabetes and obesity and should not be perceived as safe merely because they did not have a direct correlation in this particular study topic.? ?High sodium intake was also implicated in the study as promoting progressive kidney decline. Since diet soda contains excessive amounts of sodium, higher than sugar soda, it is no surprise that diet sodas were the primary offenders in the study. However it is unclear from this particular study which ingredient plays the larger role in progressive kidney decline, the artificial sweeteners or the sodium content.?
Studies on aspartame
When aspartame was first approved in the 1970s under the name "NutraSweet", studies were submitted as supposed proof that the artificial chemical was safe. The FDA initially approved the chemical in 1974 for use in a limited number of foods based upon the studies submitted by G.D. Searle Co., the company that invented aspartame.
Following a discovery made shortly thereafter by a research psychiatrist who found that aspartic acid, a primary ingredient in aspartame, caused holes to form in the brains of mice, the FDA decided to form its own internal task force to investigate the initial claims made by the Searle Co.
What the agency discovered was a series of falsified claims, compromised study results, and missing information. The claims made in favor of aspartame were so dubious and the evidence so faulty that the FDA decreed that a grand jury should investigate Searle Co.'s claims. Unfortunately, the case failed to move forward when U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan and Assistant U.S. Attorney William Conlon failed to initiate any legal action. Conlon was later hired by the law firm that represented Searle Co.
Investigation revealed that aspartame had caused tumors, seizures, brain holes, and death in many of the studies. All negative findings had been altered or scrubbed from the final reports delivered to the FDA when aspartame was first reviewed.
Time and time again the question over whether aspartame is safe has led to investigations that never go anywhere. Studies are continually released in support of the chemical's safety even though they fail to address the results of other studies that show it to be harmful.
Other artificial sweeteners
A study published in the January, 2008 issue of the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health revealed that the newer artificial sweetener, sucralose, alters gut microflora and inhibits the assimilation of dietary nutrients.
Commonly marketed as being "made from sugar", sucralose had undergone no long-term human studies to verify its safety in humans. Like aspartame, initial studies revealed negative reactions by lab animals on whom it was tested, indicating that there could be the same potential problems in humans.
The EU Food Commission, Canadian health officials, and the U.S. FDA all rejected the initial studies submitted by McNeil Nutritionals, the marketers of sucralose, because of the negative results. However they encouraged the company to continue researching until they "got it right". McNeil simply lowered the levels of sucralose used in their studies until an acceptable limit was found. After several tries, sucralose was finally approved.
Stevia, a safe alternative
A great many varieties of artificial sweeteners have been approved, many scandalously, despite the fact that safe, natural alternatives exist. Stevia, for instance, is a sweet herb from South America that is up to 300 times sweeter than sugar. Claiming inadequate safety research, the FDA has long refused the herb from being included on the "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) list.
Up until last year, all forms of stevia could only be sold as dietary supplements. The extract could not be labeled as a "sweetener" and it could not be included in any food items.
Once the parent companies of both Pepsi and Coca-Cola discovered how to manipulate and patent a segment of stevia, however, it suddenly became safe to use as a sweetener and is now sold on grocery store shelves in packets similar to the artificial sweeteners. The FDA reluctantly added the natural stevia extract to the GRAS list as well.
Stick with natural and unprocessed
When it comes to health, a person's best bet is to avoid artificial sweeteners altogether. There are plenty of preferable, safe alternatives such as stevia which will allow for a little extra sweetness without all the harmful side effects.
Tags: Diet, Soda, Fizzy, Aspartame
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Chocolate can make you lose weight!
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Posted by:
Editor, 19.11.2009
There are many new diets cropping up every day, so which is the one that tempts you the most? If your answer is 'none, I HAVE to go on a diet!' then this will definitely change your outlook.
Now there is a chocolate diet. Mmmm. Do not mistake this for some Atkins-like feature where you will lose weight if you eat nothing but chocolate, the world does not work like that (much to the dismay of humanity.) It has to be a diet of anything you want that includes the Lola chocolate. That still sounds good though!
But all this product consists of is an appetite suppresent crushed and added to chocolate. This is made clear by the obvious green tinge the chocolate takes on, which many people have found to be off putting. Perhaps they should make a mint flavoured version, it might help people overcome the abjection that comes with strange coloured foods.
The chocolate is manufactured by Cocoa BIO, a Spanish company set on the idea that a microscopic algae has appetite suppresant advantages so have mixed it in with chocolate to create an algae-chocolate mix. The guess is that though microscopic, this particular algae may be of the green variety due to the oh so appealing hue taken on by the chocolate.
So we are left with a radioactive looking chocolate that contains living organisms. As off-putting as this sounds, it sure does help. Makes a person never want to eat another chocolate bar for the rest of their entire life! Well, maybe for an hour...
Tags: Chocolate, Lose, Weight, Appetite, Suppress, Supp...
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Can you Really Think Yourself Thin?
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Posted by:
Editor, 7.9.2009
An account by self-confessed extreme dieter Emma Robertson
We've tried giving up the cakes but extreme willpower isn't always possible. We've tried exercising three times a week but it's a big commitment and causes muscle ache. So, asks Emma Robertson, is it possible for a girl to simply "think" herself thin?
In theory, I should be a size zero by now - but after decades of calorie counting, all I have to show for my efforts is a first class degree in dead-end diets. Sadly, I'm not the only one looking for a lasting figure-fixing solution - research shows most British women spend an average of 31 years on a yo-yo diet too.
We've been brainwashed to believe success on the scales depends on restricting what we eat, when we eat and even how we eat it. But so far, all my obsessive-compulsive knowledge of fat contents and calories has achieved is an even wider waistline and a miserable feeling of shame at my lack of willpower to resist the tasty things in life.
I felt like giving up on the dream of ever squeezing into a pair of skinnies, but just before I did, I came across a new rebel weight-loss technique, developed by celebrity lifecoach and hypnotherapist Ali Campbell. He believes the fastest way to change your waistline is to use your brain instead of punishing your body with extreme exercise regimes or deprivation diets to achieve a long-term, healthy size.
In fact, in his new weight-loss kit, the Slim Girl's Box of Secrets, Campbell controversially claims you can eat what you want, whenever you want, and still lose weight - as soon as you've learned how to switch on your brain's 'slim switch' through his hypnosis box-set.
It might sound like a gimmick, but in recent years, Campbell - whose clients include Kelly Rowland, Mica Paris and Sinitta - has made a name for himself as an authority in helping women to lose weight and keep it off!
The kit itself is a beautiful gift box, containing a package deal of self-help wisdom on all aspects of healthy weight loss: from confidence-building tricks and expert style advice on how to make the most of your body shape, to efficient exercise tips delivered in DVDs, CDs and a book.
Campbell boasts his technique requires no effort, but strictly speaking this isn't accurate. While no physical effort is needed, you need to use your mental muscle to change your relationship with food instead. For best results, keeping a journal is recommended and there are various meditation and visualisation tasks required to get you into a slim state of mind too.
For a semi-professional dieter, it took a leap of faith to get my head around Campbell's unorthodox approach to weightloss. Unlike every other slimming programme I've subjected myself to, this one doesn't require any starvation, complex calorie calculations or endless treadmill training. While there is an emphasis on being active for good health and to speed up weight loss, Campbell claims simply listening to his CD every morning for five weeks can still deliver dramatic results.
Although I braced myself for a load of psycho-babble, the book is a surprisingly down-to-earth read, written to motivate and reassure even disillusioned dieters like me. At times his visualisation tasks can be a little cheesy, but are somehow remarkably effective at helping to focus the mind.
He also recommends emergency techniques to control cravings - one of which involves tapping a sequence of energy points on the face and body. When I was handed the desserts menu in a restaurant, my confused friends watched me frantically tapping my eyebrow, collarbone and hands and wondered if I'd taken to communicating in the secret sign language bookmakers use at racecourses. While it might not discreet, it's certainly effective and in the end, I smugly passed on pudding.
But Campbell's CD is where the magic really begins. As recommended I tuned in to his mysterious hypnotic journey every morning before I ate breakfast, to get me into the right mindset for the day. There's nothing scary about the practice, in fact it's more like daydreaming.
At first, I found it hard to focus my pragmatic imagination on Campbell's bizarre talk of inner diamonds and life luggage, so my mind began to wander. Thankfully, an overactive brain like mine doesn't affect the technique's efficacy as Campbell apparently talks to the subconscious.
While the ritual of listening to the same 25-minute hypnosis every day did get tedious fairly quickly, I soon discovered it was a small price to pay. Unexplainably, and without any conscious effort, my self-esteem and energy crept-up while cravings for comfort food began to evaporate. Convinced it was just my imagination, I tested my resolution by tempting my tastebuds with my favourite chocolate - but when it came to the crunch I didn't enjoy the taste and I chucked it in the bin.
Eating more slowly, drinking plenty of water and breathing a little deeper became instinctive and I began to lose a pound here and a pound there - then with exercise, the weight dropped off even faster. However, I got complacent too soon and stopped listening to the CD before five weeks were up and the cravings soon started to creep back.
Now the programme is over, I still can't explain exactly how it works, only that it does - if, that is, you're dedicated to the CD and your mind is open to the concept. These days, if I feel the cravings sneak-up, I simply trance-out on-demand which puts me back on track and is far easier to maintain longterm than any fad diet I've tried in the past. For the first time ever, I finally feel in control around food, instead of it controlling me.
The Slim Girl's Box of Secrets, £79.95 (theslimgirlsboxofsecrets.com)
Tags: Account, Hypnosis, Think, Thin, Slim, Slim Girl, ...
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Balanced Diet for Children
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Posted by:
Sub-Editor, 19.8.2009
Child obesity has increased is alarmingly. Establishing healthy eating habits early in life and making sure that your children grow up with a healthy body is essential.
Ensuring that children eat a healthy and balanced diet is not easy. You cannot supervise them constantly, especially when they are at school, or if they come home and eat what they like to from kitchen while you are still at work.
There are ways to give a balanced diet to your children even if you are not standing over them 24 hours a day and you can still include treats - making for a more harmonious life all around.
Some steps only parents can take, such as serving healthy meals or deciding to take the family on a nature hike so they can gain exercise.
But kids can play a role as well.
Here are few suggestions to achieve a balanced diet for kids :
Make one day in a week for whatever you want, be it ice-cream or a pizza or a burger, the rest of the days eat healthily.
1. Eat a variety of foods, especially fruit and vegetables. You may have a favourite food, but the best choice is to eat a variety. Try new recipes and new flavours as the change will prevent boredom with food.
2. Drink water and milk regularly. When you are really thirsty, cold water is the best thing. Kids need calcium to grow strong bones, and milk is a great source of calcium.
3. Listen to your body. What does it feel like to be full? When you are eating, notice how your body feels and when your stomach feel comfortably full stop eating right away.
4. Limit screen time (watching T.V., D.VD, Computer games) as the longer you spend sitting down the less time you will have to be active.
Press Release from Life Century
Tags: Health, Diet, Balanced, Lifestyle, Family diet, F...
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Dietary Quotes
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Posted by:
Sub-Editor, 31.7.2009
“No diet will remove all the fat from your body because the brain is entirely fat. Without a brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office.”
George Bernard Shaw
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
Albert Einstein
“In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.”
Winston Churchill
“A friend doesn't go on a diet because you are fat.”
Erma Bombeck
“Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet.”
Dan Bennett
“What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.”
Alexander Pope
“Food is an important part of a balanced diet.”
Fran Lebowitz
“An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.”
Irv Kupcinet
“Drinking freshly made juices and eating enough whole foods to provide adequate fiber is a sensible approach to a healthful diet”
Jay Kordich
Gluttony is the source of all our infirmities and the fountain of all our diseases. As fire extinguished by an excess of fuel, so is the natural health of the body destroyed by an intemperate diet.”
Burton
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Moist Spiced Low Fat Carrot Cake Recipe
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Posted by:
Editor, 23.7.2009
Ingredients
¾ cup whole-wheat flour
3/4 cup plain flour
1tsp Baking soda
1tsp Baking powder
1 ½ tsp cinnamon
1 /4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
2/3 cup Brown sugar
3 tbslp oil
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla essence
½ cup skim milk
1 ½ cups grated carrots (squeeze the excess moisture)
1( 8 oz) crushed pineapple tin well drained
½ cup raisins
¼ cup walnuts
Method
Step 1 Shift the flours and add Baking powder, Baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.
Step 2 In bowl mix egg and sugar, add oil, essence and milk. Mix well till the sugar is dissolved.
Step 3 Add the crushed pineapple to the above mix.
Step 4 Gently add the flour mix and blend till well incorporated.
Step 5 Add the grated carrots, raisins and walnuts.
Step6 Preheat the oven at 180 c. Grease a loaf tin and bake for 25 to 3o mins till done.
Editor's Tip: If you want a light cake, sift all siftable ingredients.
Tags: LowFat, Carrot, Spiced, Cake, Cake, Cake
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Sutton Cabbie Loses the Equivilent of a Person!
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Posted by:
Editor, 17.7.2009
A black cab driver shed the equivalent of a whole person in weight in only seven months, after joining a diet and exercise programme.
Mark Powell, 40, of Frederick Road, Sutton, decided enough was enough when his weight reached 27st in October last year and lost 9st by dieting, doing power walks and jogging as he got lighter.
Mr Powell said: “I’ve been a taxi driver for 14 years and I think because of my job, sitting around all day and eating the wrong things at the wrong times, my weight got out of control.
“I went on holiday in Florida last year and saw that a lot of people there were supersized as well, but when I got back I decided it was time to lose all that weight.”
The father-of-three then joined the Sutton Weight Watchers group and started on a points-based diet, where different types of food have a value and the dieter can only eat a certain amount of points per day.
Mr Powell said: “I knew I needed to do something. The challenge when you need to lose weight is finding the right thing that works for you. It's also important not to starve yourself, but to eat the right amount of food.”
Sons Stephen, 16, George, 12, daughter Rebecca, 10, and wife Michele were pleased with the decision.
He said: “I didn’t want to be that heavy anymore. I wanted to shed weight so I could play football with my boys.”
The cabbie is now continuing with his diet and exercise and hoping to lose a bit more weight and stay healthy.
Tags: Sutton, Black, Cabbie, Cab, Driver, Taxi, Loss, W...
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Do You Have Hunger Pangs?
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Posted by:
Editor, 23.6.2009
When food is present in the stomach, peristaltic or wavelike, muscle contractions sweep through the walls of the stomach and help to mix food with gastric juices. However, another kind of intense muscle contraction, called hunger contractions, occur when the stomach has been empty for several hours. Hunger contractions are peristaltic contractions, mainly restricted to the body of the stomach. They can often be particularly strong, resulting in a contraction that lasts for two to three minutes. Hunger contractions are usually most intense in young people, who often have a higher degree of gastrointestinal "muscle tone" than older people. In addition, these contractions are increased by a low level of glucose in the blood, which usually occurs when an individual has not eaten for several hours.
Despite contrary belief, a person who is over-weight has a faster metabolism than someone who is not. An easy way to explain this is to observe the following:
- An over-weight person needs more energy to carry themselves around.
- This means a heavier person will burn more energy climbing the stairs for exmple than a relatively lighter person.
- This in turn means that the body has to produce more energy for the task and therefore speeds up the metabolic rate to acheive this.
- If the metabolic rate was slower in an overweight person, they would not be able to move. If they could, it means that they would have enough of an energy input to not put on any excess weight.
It would seem then that not eating much would burn off a lot of fat quite quickly, more so than it would on a relatively lighter person. But then come the hunger pangs, as described above. If one were to slow down their metabolic rate, the pain in the stomach that results from hunger would decrease which, ironically, disables exercise. If the body can be trained to use less energy for tasks, then it would not require a lot of food to keep it going.
Then, when the metabolic rate is sped up through exercise, the fat will burn off a lot quicker without the pain of hunger and a desire for energy driving forth. Most people, in order to lose weight, decide on exercising without training their body to lower its metabolism. This means that the more exercise one partakes in, the more their stomach is going to call for food. Denying it is extremely unwise as the body will not start burning fat reserves but instead shut down.
So to fight the hunger pangs lower the moving body's metabolic rate by not over-exerting yourself when you carry out simple tasks and then go for the exercise.
Tags: hunger, exercise, misconceptions, energy, metabol...
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