Sweet poison: why sugar is ruining our health

by | Apr 17, 2013 | Cravings, Diabetes, Sugars | 0 comments

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Being a child of the 60s I grew up with everything being sweetened, with tons and tons of sugar. And of course in later life that didn’t do me any good.

Thankfully in my late 20s I realized what this was doing to my body and decided that the two spoonful of sugar in my tea and the two or three in coffee had to stop simply because when you add up how much sugar I was having each day, it was probably somewhere around 40 teaspoonfuls and that of course doesn’t include what was in the food that I was eating.

According to this article by Victoria Lambert, the average person consumes around about 238 teaspoons of this potentially toxic substance each and every week. And she asks the question; just how hard is it to go sugar-free? Well thankfully, she also answers it as well.

So do follow the link below and find out how you can get sugar-free or at least drastically cut down something that is probably ruining your health.

Cutting Out the Sugar Cravings in Your Diet

by | Mar 28, 2013 | Artificial Sweeteners, Cravings, Diabetes, Food Choices, Obesity, Sugars, Weight Loss | 0 comments

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Some food manufacturers engineer products to contain (from their point of view) the optimal balance of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. Then when you eat them you feel maximum crave and keep eating, drinking and buying more of their products. Its what they call your bliss point!

They aim for that sweet spot that keeps you coming back for more. Its why you’ll find sugar in spaghetti sauce, peanut butter, ketchup, yogurt and (watch out for this!) low-fat, processed, frozen foods that say healthy or lean on the package.

But what can you do about it? see here

HUNGRY!

by | Mar 22, 2013 | Cravings, Low carb diet, Weight Loss | 0 comments

 

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This has already been said, this isn’t unusual and there are quite a few people who do go through it but I would like to reinforce the fact that it will pass.

Personally during those hungry times I found eating fat was always the good way of dealing with the hunger and also it gave the body more of what it was needing as it was now trying to or attempting to consume fat for energy.

Above all, know that the short period of discomfort will be well worth it as over the days, weeks and months ahead you start seeing the new slim you in the mirror.

Hope that helps,

 Mark

This was a comment I made on a low carb forum post

 

How To Avoid Regaining Your Lost Fat

by | Jan 8, 2013 | Cravings, Fat Loss, Sensible Eating | 0 comments

Here is a recent post at Foodblogforum.com that I have responded to regarding fat loss and how to avoid gaining it back again

Grace wrote:

How To Avoid Regaining Your Lost Fat Losing weight is one of the toughest tasks. You have to sweat out to lose a considerable amount of weight. In fact, sweating out is not the only thing you have to do, you may have to do many other things as well. If you managed to lose weight, then you should consider yourself lucky and you should thank yourself for putting the required effort and time.

However, you could not afford to relax after shedding your body weight. You should not consider the weight loss forever. After losing the weight, you may regain the same. The chance of regaining is very high as well. Then, is there any way out to avoid regaining the lost weight? Yes, if there are ways to lose weight then ways are there to stop regaining the lost weight.

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I responded:

Grace is right, we can’t afford to relax after we’ve lost a lot of weight. In fact, we should remain vigilant and still eat the same way that we ate in order to lose the weight in the first place. After all, like she says, the chance of regaining weight is quite high if we go back to the old ways of eating, that’s obviously given.

But frankly, there is something that we should all look at. That is simply, why did we gain weight in the first place. If that hasn’t been tackled then it will be far too simple for us to get back into old habits. Let me give you an example, I gained weight because I was in a bad relationship and I was simply comfort-eating. It wasn’t until I faced up to the fact that the lady I was with at that time was causing me more emotional turmoil than emotional gain and did something about it that I could go on to successfully change the way I was eating and therefore start to lose weight and keep the weight off.

So, in addition to what Grace has already said, I would encourage you to simply look at why you put on weight in the first place, deal with that and then you will find both weight loss and keeping fit and trim far more easy now and in the future.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Small Changes in Your Diet can Make a Huge Difference

by | May 27, 2012 | Cravings, Fat Loss, Food Choices, How Your Body Works, Metabolism, Sensible Eating, Snacks | 0 comments

Each day we make as many as 200 food choices.

These are influenced by many things, even the folk we’re eating with.Even though each of those choices may only represent a small contribution to our final health – they all add up to making an
immense difference.

You’ll probably notice that many of our reader’s questions are about small things. They are about the details in diet. Sometimes people ask me “surely, if I just take care of the big things then I don’t really need to worry about the small things?”

But when you analyse anything, the big things are made up of lots of small things. If you take care of the detail in your diet, then each of those things that you take care of will add up and make the big things far more effective. Here are a couple of those small things that you might like to consider:

Firstly, when you go to the supermarket or your local shop to stock up, look down the ingredients list to make sure you avoid eating foods that have got artificial sweeteners, MSG and a whole range of additives and colorants. These are the things that many manufacturers have to put into their food in order to put back the flavour and vitamin content that their processing has processed out.
Try as much as you can to use organically sourced and grown produce. By sticking to
organic (from a reputable producer), you know that you are not going to be eating and digesting pesticides, phosphates, all kinds of hormones and all the other things that commercial food producers use in order to overcome the problems that their fast-food production line cause.

It’s making those healthy choices, the small ones, that all add up to a much healthier lifestyle.

And it’s not just what you eat!

A small choice you can make every day is just to take the elevator to get up two floors, or take the stairs. Taking two flights of stairs briskly will do far more for your heart than taking the elevator, that’s for sure.

Doing that five or six times a day, is just like jogging to the top of a ten-storey building!

It’s those type of small changes that I’m talking about, those small changes can make a really big difference.

The reason for making those choices is clear.

In Europe, the U.S.. Australia and in fact most of what would be considered the western world, its poor lifestyle choices that (e.g. what we choose to eat, to exercise, etc) account for the leading causes of death. Things like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and the rest.

In fact, the WHO (World Health Organization), in it’s recent World Cancer Report, have said that the rates of cancer would increase by 50 percent over the next 15 years. Statistics like that are cause for concern.

However, all is not doom and gloom as WHO also intimates that at least a third of the cases could be prevented by folk making better lifestyle choices.

Some folk think that in order to make these changes they have to make a lot of sacrifices. But in reality, this is just not so.

If you think about it, it won’t cost you much at all to take the stairs (often times it’s quicker than taking the lift). In fact just 20 or so miniutes of
exercise a day can make the difference .

And to eat organic may cost you a few more
dollars a month, but these are all a small price to pay in exchange for a long, healthy, active and
sickness free life.

Protein is More Satisfying.

by | May 25, 2012 | Cravings, High Protein Diet, Sensible Eating, Snacks | 0 comments

Low carbers have known the simple truth for many years that a meal rich in protein will help you last between meals without getting an attack of the munchies.

Why have the scientists taken so long to catch up?

I’ve long maintained that higher protein foods are always going to be the most filling. Mainly because they take longer for the body to digest, therefore remain in the stomach and intestines that little bit longer, meaning our bodies aren’t signalling us saying “hey, we’re hungry – give us more food!”

And to a certain extent – now- science is starting to back that up.

I’ve long maintained that higher protein foods are always going to be the most filling. Mainly because they take longer for the body to digest, therefore remain in the stomach and intestines that little bit longer, meaning our bodies aren’t signalling us saying “hey, we’re hungry – give us more food!”

And to a certain extent, science does back that up.

If you look over the research papers that have been carried out, certainly over the last ten years, they clearly show that 8 out of 10 people ate less after a protein-rich meal than they did after a meal that was low in protein.

Some time ago, the BBC  carried out a test to prove whether this was so or not. What they did was to take 3 volunteers who worked long hours, and were used to snacking on the job.

What they wanted to do was to see if they could give them a meal that would set them up for the long day ahead, so that they wouldn’t need to snack whilst working on their shifts. They fed each of the volunteers a meal that had the same calorific value but whose contents varied in the proportion of fat, protein and carbohydrates – one being high in fat, one high in protein and one high in carbohydrates.

After the meal, they were kept under close observation, to make sure that they couldn’t sneak any crafty snacks. After a four hour period, they were each given pizza slices to eat, and carefully observed as they tucked into the richly-deserved reward.

The one who ate the most was the one who had the initial meal that was high in carbohydrates. The quantity he ate was closely matched by the one whose diet was high in fat. The person who ate the smallest amount during the lunch-break was the one who had had the protein rich meal.

It was a very simple test, but it did rather prove the fact that if you don’t want to get hunger pains between meals, then make sure your meals are high in protein.

It’s as simple as that.