Did you know that the food you eat could be prematurely ageing you? Science has made some amazing discoveries in the last decade in nutrition. We really should be taking note of what we put in our mouth because more than ever, “we are what we eat”. Do you know the impact of what you are eating? Probably not. It’s time to find out because over-indulgence in certain types of food cause the body to prematurely age.

Would you like some more free radicals with your lunch…? There is frequent mention these days about ‘free radicals’ and how they are constantly attacking the body, causing potentially serious damage.

A free radical is the name for a molecule that has an unpaired electron. They are a normal by-product of metabolism and without them you would die.

To put the record straight, it’s the over-production of free radicals that causes damage to the body. We are advised by nutritional experts to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables.

This is because they are rich in antioxidant phytonutrients…substances that neutralise free radicals and so help protect the body.

One of the essential tasks of free radicals is in producing energy from the food you eat. Every time you eat, free radical activity is intense. The more food you eat, the more free radicals are formed, and the more antioxidants your body needs to neutralise them. Big meals are big trouble!

Effective Antioxidants include vitamins A, C, E; minerals such as selenium, zinc, and herbs such as aloe vera and grapeseed extract.

The Reality of Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are root vegetables, pasta, rice, bread, grains, fruit, pastries, cakes, biscuits, crisps, sweets etc. They are easy to prepare, filling, tasty and cheap. Most meals are dominated by carbohydrates, as most of us ‘full up’ on them. When you eat carbohydrates you’re eating a form of sugar.

Carbohydrates are converted by the body into glucose, which is either used immediately for energy, or stored in fat cells. Carbohydrates make up an excessive proportion of the diet, add together a lack of exercise and excess sugar and the inevitable result is excess weight.

By reducing your overall carbohydrate intake and reducing the size of your meals, you reduce your body’s exposure to free radical activity, and, the amount of excess food that meals, you reduce your body’s exposure to free radical activity, and, the amount of excess food that gets stored as unwanted fat. A double bonus!

Big meals are too much stress

Food is in abundance – look around the supermarket shelves at the food mountain! Fill your trolley, take it home and fill your kitchen cupboards – fill your plate and fill your stomach till you can barely move. How many times a week do you overeat? How many free radicals are attacking your body and accelerating the aging process? You could choose to eat less.

Think about your meals over the last week.

Better still, keep a food diary for the next week, record each meal by drawing a plate divided up showing how much protein, carbohydrate, fat, vegetables and fruit you eat at each mealsnack. After a week you’ll be able to see for yourself how much sugar you are eating.

Weight lossif we could just find the right diet we would achieve our goals, right? The sad truth is that weight loss diets, for the most part, dont work and are becoming a thing of the past. Research shows that 85-95 of dieters regain any weight theyve lost within 3-5 years. Most diets simply dictate what to eat and how much, and usually dont teach us to make better food choices once we go off. When we go back to our old habits the weight comes back and we end up in a constant battle to get the weight down again.

When you quit diets and instead change to eating nutrient rich foods and enjoy fun foods in moderation, weight loss can be the natural result. Other well-known benefits include increased energy, vitality and freedom from disease. Additionally, if you stay active and eat in moderation you dont have to give up the foods you enjoy. Yes, that means you can enjoy cake, cookies, and other treats and still lose weight when you learn how to balance them appropriately in your diet. So the BIG question is Why dont more of us choose a health-promoting lifestyle vs. the diet djour in our world today?

Part of the reason is that we are conditioned in the diet mentality that the answer lies in a secret formula that will only work if we follow it rigidly. Lets face it, we like the bells and whistles. Instead of following another weight loss diet we should pay attention to those people who have lost weight and kept it off. What did they do?

People who have successfully achieved their ideal weight and better health without dieting report the following success strategies

They made a commitment to changing habits long-term vs. just losing weight
They became educated about sound nutrition principles
They learned to cope with emotions and stress without food
They consciously eat when their hungry and stop when their full
They shift the focus from looking good to honoring their health and well-being
They learn to adjust portions or food intake to match activity level
They dont sabotage themselves, when they blow it
They seek ongoing support as needed to stay motivated

Making positive change is possible with the right commitment, education, and support. Rather than spending precious energy and time going on a diet, make a different choice. Choose high-level health so you can lose weight once and keep it off for a lifetime.

Losing weight doesn’t have to be boring when you focus on living foods. What does this mean? Simply by making sure your plate reflects a range of colours, you’ll naturally create more balanced and healthful menus complete with a range of living foods.

What are living foods? They are re live, colourful, fresh and raw – fruits, vegetables and salads!

Let’s Look At The Positives

1. Colourful foods have no preservatives and no added colour!

2. Provide an abundance of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fibre, water and trace elements.

3. Have a high water content – an excellent source of hydration for the body.

4. Are visually appetising.

5. Their firm textures demand a good chew, so we eat them more slowly and feel full afterwards.

6. Are quickly and easily processed and assimilated by the body – less work for the digestive system.

7. Are safer – contain less undesirable man-made chemicals.

8. Are as nature intended unlike processed, pre-packaged modern fast foods!

9. Are pure energy – living food.

Consuming Cooked Foods

1. Heat destroys the vitalising nutrients in colourful foods. So much so that sometimes, you may as well be eating cardboard for all the good it does your body!

2. The effectiveness of fibre in cooked fresh foods is reduced – vegetables that are floppy and overcooked pass through the body with a reduced ‘cleansing’ action.

3. If you cook vegetables, always steam them lightly and aim to retain their ‘crunch’!

4. Cooked vegetables tend to turn out soft and therefore require less chewing, which means they are usually eaten more quickly, so are less satisfying.

5. Heat also destroys the enzymes in fresh foods, which are essential for digestion. This means the body has to tap into its own precious supply of enzymes to support the digestive process.

6. Heat also destroys the enzymes in fresh foods, which are essential for digestion. This means the body has to tap into its own precious supply of enzymes to support the digestive process.

This year millions of people will embark upon a diet and most will fail to lose weight. The usual response to this failure by the people marketing the diet is to blame the individual for the failure. This leaves the person feeling defeated and guilty because of their lack of "will-power"

Blaming the individual also preserves the illusion that diets are an effective way to lose weight. I think it is time to move the discussion beyond this "blaming" level and explore the real reasons diets fail.

I will use an example to explain my position.

When most people are presented with something like a chocolate candy bar it is not long before they feel a desire to eat the thing. Most will simply blame the chocolate for causing the desire. They will then try to battle the craving with "will-power". Usually they lose this battle and sooner or later give in and eat the chocolate bar. This "giving-in" often marks the end of the diet.

Now lets look at why this "giving-in" occurred. We know that the cognitive process that caused the craving to eat the chocolate bar went something like this; sensory input was received through the appropriate receptors mainly eyes in this case and the mind formed some type of neural or sensory representation of the object that will be defined as a chocolate bar. We can regard this process as inescapable. If the sensory receptors are in working order, the mind must form a representation or neural image of the object.

When a neural image has been formed we have been taught to assign meanings, from memory, to these images as they occur in the mind. The assignment of meaning is followed by an emotional response appropriate to the meaning assigned. In the case of the chocolate bar the meaning assigned included past memories of pleasant experiences assosciated with eating chocolate bars, hence the craving to eat this chocolate bar. So really it was not the presence of the object that will be defined as a chocolate bar that caused the craving, but the cognitive process outlined.

Specifically it was the assignment of meaning that caused the craving. And because this assignment of meaning has become totally automatic in most people, the chocolate bar gets the blame for the craving when in fact it only had the power to cause the mind to form a meaningless image. For most, the meaning and image have become "fused", with the meaning now seen as an inherent part of the neural image itself rather than something assigned from within the mind. This of course gives the stimulus the power to be the cause of the response.

Just thinking about or reflecting upon a chocolate bar has the same effect. A neural image is formed from that reflection and when it has been formed the cognitive process of automatically assigning meaning to it is exactly the same as with images caused by an external stimulii. We feel a strong desire to eat the chocolate bar.

This all means of course that every time we are presented with a chocolate bar or some other desirable food, the mind automatically performs the cognitive process outlined and creates a desire to eat the delicacy. These continual emotional responses build up and eventually wear us down. This is the reason we "give-in" and the diet goes out the window.

My point is then, the only way to reduce our food intake and still feel comfortable is to modify this process of automatically assigning meaning to the images that come into our heads. This way we can reduce the desire to eat unnecessarily and thereby modify our eating behaviour so that we lose weight and keep it off.

Diets do not supply these techniques and in actual fact they fail the individual not the other way round as their providers would have you believe. If changing our behaviour was easy as making a decision to go on a diet, most of us would have changed many things about ourselves long ago. The truth is we need techniques that will help us to bring that change about or we are setting ourselves up to fail.

R.J.
2006

So you’ve made the resolution that THIS is the year you’re going to lose weight and get in the best shape of your life. You’re not going to settle for second best – you’re going to achieve that dream body you’ve always wanted.

Great news – this is actually the best time to make that commitment. Why? Because you can take advantage of the powerful momentum and energy a New Year brings to achieve your weight loss dreams.

But there’s nothing worse than committing to lose weight, only to get lost among the 5 gazillion diets out there. It can get confusing – you may end up wasting a lot of money and effort. You may end up wondering which diet is really the BEST diet for you.

You may even end up feeling so frustrated that you give up on your dream of becoming slim and healthy. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

In order to have rapid weight loss success, you have to find the best diet for you a.k.a. the diet that will speed you towards your dream body at lightning pace. There are millions of diets – but only a few that are best for you and your lifestyle.

The best diet for you will have the 3 key features listed below. Choose your diet with these 3 key features in mind and you’re already halfway to your weight loss dreams.

1 Proven Success Rate

Are there before and after pictures of people who have lost weight with that particular diet? Are there customer testimonials? Have there been independent studies done on the diet’s success rate?

The diet you choose doesn’t have to have all three of these but try to find at least some kind of proven success rate before choosing that particular program.

Finding a diet with a proven success rate not only lets you know that the diet works but it also helps give you the confidence that the diet will work FOR YOU.

Confidence is one of the most underrated factors in a successful weight loss program. If you’ve tried and failed with diets before you especially need that extra boost of confidence to carry you through the more difficult times in the diet. By reminding yourself that this diet has been proven to work – you’ll be able to keep going and reach your weight loss goals.

A related feature that gets extra points is if the diet has been recommended by an expert or a physician. Again this boosts your confidence that the diet is safe and effective.

2 Affordable.

Losing weight should not cost you thousands of dollars unless we’re talking about surgery here and that’s an entirely different article. The best diet will be affordable for the average person.

If the diet costs too much, be very suspicious and look elsewhere. There are too many shady diets out there and as a consumer, it pays to be cautious.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean

A close friend of mine went to a well-known weight loss clinic in our area and was told she had to pay the yearly fees up front around 1000 NOT including food. They also told her she had to buy their food in bulk like 500 for a year’s worth of chocolate. When the chocolate gave her heart palpitations and she had to take it back, they told her it was non-refundable. She was out the money for the chocolate. Plus, she feels she can’t leave the program because she’s paid the yearly fees which, you guessed it, are also non-refundable.

She unfortunately made the mistake of ignoring her instincts and paying way too much money for a diet program. If you notice you’re being asked for hefty fees right out of the gate, warning lights should be flashing in your mind.

Now on the other hand, the best diet WILL cost you something. It actually is better if you put some cash on the table for your diet program. Why? Because when we invest in something we’re more likely to stick with it. When we invest in something we are more likely to follow through and get the results we want.

For example I did a liver detox several months ago. I’m not really into liver detoxing but I read an article and figured I’d try it.

The detox kit cost me a whopping 50 and when I opened the instructions they told me I had to give up junk food for two weeks. In any other universe I would have laughed and simply forgotten about detoxing my liver. But because I’d shelled out 50, I was invested – I decided that I hopefully wouldn’t starve from lack of junk food over two weeks and suffered through it.

If I’d gotten the detox kit for free there’s no way I would have followed those instructions. But because I was invested, I followed through and now have a healthier liver thanking me for it.

So when searching for the best diet, putting out some money on yourself and your dreams of a better body is actually a healthy thing. Just keep in mind that you shouldn’t have to spend thousands of dollars on it.

3 Compatible with Your Tastes and Lifestyle

This is THE most crucial step however it’s the one where most people go wrong. When choosing a diet, they simply pick one and go, without considering if it is compatible with their tastes and lifestyle.

For example, if you hate feeling deprived or empty you might want to choose a program that lets you eat many times during the day so you don’t feel hungry. If you get bored easily you want a diet program that gives you tremendous variety and flexibility. If you don’t do a lot of cooking or food preparation, you’ll want to look at a program where the food is pre-made for you.

Diets are like cars – there are hundreds of different models out there, each with their own unique features. And they can get you where you want to go. But your personality might gel better with certain features than others.

Dieting is hard enough. Don’t make it harder on yourself by choosing a diet not compatible with who you are. Setting yourself up for success will also guarantee that you’ll stick it out until you reach your goal.

And one other thing, the best diet will be one that you can get excited about. Choose a diet that you enjoy, that you believe in, that may actually be – gulp – fun.

Emotional excitement will fade in time, yes. But it can give you enough of an emotional push to get you over the initial hump. By that time your first few pounds will have come off and will serve as your continuing motivation.

So those are 3 key considerations when looking for the best diet. Keep them in mind and you will progress in leaps and bounds towards your dream body. Remember, planning now may seem boring – but it’s the key to your future weight loss success.

So if diet pills work and I am overweight, why shouldnt I use them to get myself back to where I want to be? The truth is that we live in an obese society. With that being the case, then it stands to reason that the business of losing weight is big. We are all busy, so we want the easy way out, the quick fix, and to lose those extra pounds without having to disrupt our busy lives. Diet pills seem to be an easy answer, so why not give them a try? Well there are actually two big reasons harmful side effects and addiction physical and emotional.

The biggest reason that the dangers on diet pills exist is that they are not really regulated. The law does not require a diet pill to be tested by the FDA before release to the public. The FDA will pull a diet pill product from the shelves if it shows to be dangerous, but by then you may already be taking that particular drug. So what are the side effects that can result from this lack of regulation?

Diet pills generally do one or two of a few things they may suppress appetite, increase metabolism, block fat absorption, or even make use of laxatives to flush the body of waste and fluid. The chemicals in the diet pills that helps them accomplish these things have been known to cause varying side effects. Some of the best known of these are anxiety, insomnia, heart palpitations or attacks, stroke, fever, dry mouth, blurred vision, hair loss, disturbance in sex drive and menstruation, urinary tract problems, digestive problems, and even congestive heart failure. There are numerous others as well, so the risks can be high when it comes to side effects with diet pills.

The other danger with diet pills is addiction. The chemicals and drugs used in the pills can very often cause physical addiction. On the other hand, if they pills do work, even to a small degree, emotional addiction can follow. You may think that you cannot keep your weight or even live without the pills and can find yourself in the midst of complete dependency.

When there are side effect problems in conjunction with dependency, there are overdose risks as well. In the rush to lose as much weight as possible as quickly as possible, you might be tempted to take more diet pills than is recommended. The result can be convulsions, hallucinations, breathing difficult, or even a heart attack. It is important that if you feel or have any of these symptoms that you get medical attention promptly.

The risk of using diet pills is varied and high. Without regulation and with the high availability, those seeking an easy fix to a large problem may end up jumping from pill to pill, ending up addicted, or suffering terrible side effects. What many dont realize is that the only proven way of keeping weight off for a sustained amount of time is through a balanced diet and exercise.