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 loss following pregnancy and hanging up the tent sized maternity clothes is something all new mothers look forward to with anticipation. For most women, but for others, the baby fat is a bit more difficult to shed. Each woman is different and there is no one size fits all formula for shedding the weight gained during pregnancy. However there are a few weight loss guidelines to follow that will have the new Mom back feeling great and wearing her jeans once she gets her strength back.

How much weight did you gain during pregnancy?

The 25 pounds the average woman gains during a pregnancy are spread out more or less like this
-Baby-8 pounds
-Placenta-1.5 pounds
-Amniotic fluid-2 pounds
-Breasts-2 pounds
-Uterus-2.5 pounds
-Fat, blood volume and water retention

If you were already a little overweight when you first became pregnant, remember that the numbers on your scale kept going to go up almost every time you stepped on it. Fasting or Weight-loss fasting diets following pregnancy are absolutely not a good idea.

A Latino tradition following pregnancy

One of the best Latino traditions during the time right after childbirth is cuarentena, or the quarantine. The mother will spend forty days resting with the newborn after delivery and only worry about taking care of the baby. The new mother doesnt even consider weight loss issues during this time. Other members of the family will keep house and watch over the other children. While this may not be practical for most new mothers of today, if you do have relatives who live nearby, it would be a good idea to follow some version of this tradition. You’ll feel like a new woman after those forty days of recuperation or even twenty.

A nutritious diet is more important than weight loss for the first six weeks.

Pregnancy is a magical and mysterious time of life and many women worry about how to achieve weight loss after they give birth. During the first six weeks of postpartum, a healthy diet is much more important than a weight-loss diet. Continue to eat a balance of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, protein, calcium, and iron. Whether or not you’re breastfeeding, your body is still recovering from the pregnancy and birth, and a nutritionally balanced diet will help you heal and feel better much faster.

Your care provider or doctor may recommend that you take an iron supplement for the first six weeks postpartum, while your body recovers. If you’re breastfeeding, it’s even more important to eat a well-balanced diet, since you’re still sharing all the calories you’re consuming. If you count calories, a breastfeeding woman should consume the same amount as she did before pregnancy to maintain her weight plus about 500 calories. For many, this means about 2,500 to 2,700 calories a day, which will support milk production and allow for moderate weight loss of half a pound per week.

Continue to avoid fish that are high in methyl mercury in your weight loss plan. Other foods, such as sushi, raw milk products, and deli meats, are less risky these days, but you should still take reasonable precautions to avoid food-borne illnesses. Precautions include cooking meat and poultry all the way through, washing all cooking utensils thoroughly, washing all fruits and vegetables thoroughly, and only eating raw foods like sushi from a dependable source.

Healthy weight loss

Other than feeling good and having more energy, there are many motivators for systematically striving for weight loss following pregnancy. If you carry extra pounds, you have an increased risk of diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. Losing weight will improve your health not only now but it can also influence your weight in future years to come. Studies have shown that women who breastfed beyond 12 weeks and participated in postpartum aerobic exercise had lower weight gain 15 years later. Excess pregnancy weight gain and failure to lose weight in an appreciable time are indicators of obesity in midlife. Weight loss following pregnancy involves three things Nutrition, exercise and scores of patience. Its generally difficult to lose weight without exercise being part of your weight loss program.

If you’re breastfeeding, a good bit of the pregnancy weight will come off fairly quickly. But this isn’t a time to try to lose weight. Whether or not you’re breastfeeding, your body won’t recover as well or as quickly if you cut back drastically on your portions or calorie intake. If you ate a lot of sweets or treats during your pregnancy, you can start to cut back on those. But otherwise, there’s no need to add the extra pressure of dieting to an already stressful period pf taking care of a newborn baby.

Cautions of exercise

The six-week postpartum visit is a simple check-in with your caregiver or doctor. You’ll be weighed, have your blood pressure taken, and you’ll be asked about any problems. You will probably be given the green light on exercise.

Most caregivers recommend waiting until the six-week postpartum checkup before starting vigorous exercise, but that’s a somewhat arbitrary time frame, based on the typical model of obstetric care. If youre stitches seem to be have healed, and if you want to be more active. Moderate exercise before the six week postpartum visit shouldnt be a problem

Listen to your body. Dont push yourself hard. Start out slowly, and if you find youre tired or uncomfortable, take your activity level down a notch. There is no reason to rush the healing process. There will always be time to exercise and address weight loss.

If you suffer from obesity, your doctor will tell you what kind of diet and exercise you should follow following the childbirth for weight loss.

Eating for one

When you were pregnant, you may have eaten more than usual to support your baby’s growth and development. Proper nutrition is still important after the baby is born – especially if you’re breast-feeding – but your needs and goals are different now. Making wise choices can promote healthy weight loss after pregnancy. Focus on fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Foods high in fiber – such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains. These foods provide you with many important nutrients while helping you feel full longer. Other nutrient-rich choices include low-fat dairy products, such as skim milk, yogurt and low-fat cheeses. White meat poultry, most fish, beans, and lean cuts of beef and pork are good sources of protein, as well as zinc, iron and B vitamins. These foods will help in your weight loss program.

1. Avoid Temptation- Buy healthy foods at the grocery store and dont keep junk food in the house.
2. Eat smaller portions – Dont try starving yourself or skipping meals. Just cut back on the portions.
3. Eat only when you are hungry – Distract yourself with an activity if you are constantly hungry.
4. Drink water before meals.

Beginning exercise

It’s a good idea to start taking short, easy walks as soon as it feels comfortable for you. If weather permits, simply load up the baby in the stroller and take brisk walks to the park, library, neighborhood coffee shop or anywhere that makes the exercise walk enjoyable. If you have a reliable baby sitter, joining a local gym would be an excellent idea.

The most important factors in weight loss after pregnancy will be patience and consistency, along with a sensible, healthy diet and an exercise plan. It generally takes about 6-12 months to achieve the total weight loss following pregnancy.

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.

With todays corporate marketing firms, specialized nutrition companies are really selling the powerful weight loss elements that their newest product contains. But what is true and what is false? And does there really exist a magical weight loss pill. The answer may surprise you.

For the past 10 years or so, Ive taken all sorts of diet pills and systems to help with my own weight loss. What Ive come to determine is that yes, some pills were work BETTER with your body structure than other pills. For me, personally, my body reacted quite well to a combination of ephedra, synephrine, and caffeine. Sometimes I would add aspirin to the mix as well so as to thin my blood out so that the effects of the pills would become more apparent, faster.

But before the ephedra rage, other diet pills also worked. For the most part I attributed it to the caffeine contained in the pills. Im not a coffee drinker, so my body more readily was affected by the sudden boost in thermogenics. But, I really did well with the pills when I used them in combination with exercise and proper eating.

No, I dont mean ordering LESS when you eat out, but changing the way you look at eating. Lets face it, just because we order a diet coke doesnt mean were eating better. Drinking water is eating better well, drinking that is. By forcing your body to adapt to new eating patterns, increasing your cardiovascular activites, AND supplementing with some kind of thermogenic pill, you could definitely benefit from all of them combined.

Its like the team concept. Sure, you could have a star quarterback, but he needs someone to throw too..the receiver! And who tells the quarterback which plays to call? The coach! By themselves, sure theyre good at what they do, but all together theyre awesome. Just something to think about in the grand scheme of being healthy.

And another thing to consider- diet pills may or may not be for you. Only your doctor can say for sure whether something is healthy for you take based on the physical condition you are in. If you need any support or have any questions that need to be answered, dont hesitate to stop by my official website-

The e-mail comes out at noon. “To celebrate your hard work this week, there is cake and ice cream in the big kitchen at 3 today. Be there!”

The universal reward for hard work always seems to be food cake and ice cream, a catered lunch for in-service training sessions, pizza for the overtime crew, bagels and cream cheese to brighten up a bleak Monday morning.

Food seems to be the perennial favorite for any kind of work reward because it is universally accepted. Some of us we hard core dieters may pass on the sweet stuff but usually find something allowable. In a world where two thirds of us are overweight or obese, is there nothing else available as a gift that cuts across all individual interests?

Recently, we had a whole week at my company devoted to employee appreciation. The primary rewards were, of course, food but other things were added a company baseball cap, a hiking water container, a lunch bag, and a handwritten note of thanks to every employee from their supervisor. The cap was a bust for those of us with any modicum of fashion sense; the insulated flask and bag were food related, and the handwritten notes were superfluous – good supervisors show their appreciation of hard work constantly while a handwritten note from a harsh supervisor, no matter the “thanks” stated, means diddly squat to a resentful employee.

The HAS to be something else, doesn’t there? We human beings have few things totally in common and eating is the primary universal. Other common bodily activities such as urination and defecation are not easily translatable into some kind of reward system. We are all involved in physical activity, to some degree, but that is often more a chore than a delight.

When it comes to our other senses, we all differ so much that one person’s pleasure is another person’s pain music, perfume, pictures, or massages are differential tastes rather than general givens.

Money is almost always acceptable but the small amounts that would be individually generated to replace a free dessert or snack would be so minimal that their reward value would be insignificant.

So what can those of us on a permanent diet, and alarmed about our coworkers’ increased girth, suggest?

How about plants? Small individual pots or a larger department shrub would save our waistlines while adding to the health and esthetics of our environment. I calculate, just within my call center, that if a plant had been given to each department, instead of an edible goodie, for celebrations over the past 5 years, that I would now be working in a lush rain forest of exotic plants where the stale re-processed air conditioned air would be purer, more humid, and a thousand times fresher. Morale booster and health benefits in one fell swoop!

How about the gift of time? In our overly busy pressured lives, who would not be immensely grateful for a free hour here or there. Rotate it through each department, letting one or two people leave early on a Friday afternoon. That would means something and would carry no cost so upper management should be ecstatic.

Instead of a handwritten note, how about getting Supervisors to perform their subordinates work duties for an hour or so, once in a while? Can you imagine the morale boost for an employee to get off the telephone, or the machine, or the computer, and shoot the breeze with friends for an hour while their duties are performed by their supervisors? And if mistakes are made – so much the better. It creates a sense of equality and inter-relationship between workers and supervisors that is generally lacking in a corporate environment.

How about free “Get out of jail” cards for every line worker? Each person gets one free card and additional cards can be given by supervisors for outstanding work, ensuring that the better workers have more cards. The cards can then be used as excuses for small transgressions – coming in a little late, leaving early, making minor mistakes. With the use of the card, a worker avoids verbal coaching, warnings, or being put on report. And let employees use their cards for coworkers who may need them – think of the teambuilding that would accomplish!

Flexibility of hours, assignments, and days, is another area where workers will universally respond not to money, or food, but to accommodation of individual needs. Give each employee a wish card and then allow them to use it to get something they need.

What does all of this accomplish? It allows for employee rewards without fats and carbohydrates. Now isn’t that worthwhile?

P. S. I’m recommending this to my company. I’ll let you know if they buy it!

We are so eager to lose weight that we swallow the promises of every diet guru on the planet and eagerly plunk down our hard earned cash, praying that this time it will work.

What are the costs of the popular diets? The initial cost is to buy the Bible for the diet or join the program. Those initial fees range from 20 or 30 for a book to several hundred dollars for a personal program.

Then theres the food. Studies have shown that the average cost of a weeks food purchases, per individual, is slightly above 50. To start the South Beach Diet, tack on an additional 25 per week. For the Zone and Weight Watchers Diets, the additional cost is about 40, for Atkins 50, for NutriSystems almost 60 and for Jenny Craig about 85!

Wait a minute, you say. Im losing weight by cutting back on eating. Shouldnt that SAVE me money?

Looking at it logically, you would certainly think so. But we dont try to lose weight logically, we approach the whole process through our emotions. It is our emotions that lead us to buy things on impulse, to sign up for programs we know well never complete, and to join projects well never actively pursue.

Our emotional thinking is our weakness and it has nothing to do with intelligence or education or social level. We all get suckered into scams at some point in our lives and we all occasionally suffer from buyers remorse its a part of the human experience.

The marketers and ad men know it well and spend their days devising tricks for which we all too often fall. How often have you eagerly dialed an 800 number during one of those brilliant infomercials only to receive something that doesnt work as it did on TV, is either shoddily made or just too complicated, and you stick it in the back of a cupboard where it gathers dust until you finally toss it?

When it comes to our weight, our emotions reign supreme. We so desperately want to be more attractive, more respected, and more desirable. We will even subject ourselves to painful and sometimes dangerous surgery to bring our reality closer to our ideal. And we will rob our piggy banks, deplete our bank accounts, and run up our credit cards for anything that promises us a slender future.

Do we get what we pay for? Sometimes. There are a few successful disciples in every program. It is their pictures and stories that are prominently displayed in promotional literature. It is the old before and after trick that sucks us in. Our logic and a tiny footnote tells us that the featured results are not typical.

The wary left side of our brain wonders if a little airbrushing might have been employed. Then the right side explodes, filled with desire, well-meaning intentions, and an overwhelming urge to believe. And we fall for it again.

Notice that we never hear or see about the failures, the hundreds of thousands who start a diet with such high hopes yet live the rest of their lives overweight. All the diets have their failures but never bother to mention exactly what their percentages are. They may caution that their program must be followed exactly if it is to work, but lets be realistic. How many of us can follow an unswerving routine for the weeks, months, or years it is going to take to reach our ideal weight? We may be creatures of habit but life seldom fits into one unsquishable box for very long. We adapt the routine to meet our immediate needs and everything falls apart.

Sadder, wiser, guilt-ridden and self-critical, we vow to start again until, eventually, we give up. Is there a better way?

We can start by realizing that it really doesnt matter what diet we choose. The secret is to address our emotions, that infatuation with food that has, nationally, reached crisis proportions. We have to break off our affair with what we eat and restore food to its rightful place something that keeps us alive and healthy, not our primary source of excitement and self-satisfaction.