Healthy Lifestyle

There is so much information flying around the Internet these days, it gets difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. This is especially so when trying to find info that relates to dieting or weight loss. One of the questions that gets asked a lot is “What are zone diets?” so this post will do its best to explain them.

Zone diets are derived from a system of dieting and healthy lifestyle created by Barry Sears PhD and packaged as The Zone Diet. It works on the fairly simple principle that as long as you eat a well balanced and healthy diet and combine that with regular daily exercise, you should be able to maintain a healthy weight without needing to resort to artificial or unnatural means to lose weight and keep that excess weight off.

The diet itself comprises a variable set of daily meals that are shipped out to customers in batches of seven day’s supply, covering three meals a day plus snacks that can be eaten in between meals. The meals are balanced out to contain 40% proteins with 30% of low GI carbohydrates and a further 30% fats, the majority of which are unsaturated or good fats.

When people see this relatively high level of fats included in a diet, they initially worry that is too high and it will make then gain and not lose weight. This is not so, as it is not the fats themselves that generally cause weight gain, unless you eat them is extremely high quantities, but, the overall levels of calories you consume that are in excess of what your body can burn through exercise.

So that’s what zone diets are, in a nutshell and in their most simplistic terms. They work where other fad diets may fail simply because our bodies need a balanced diet where no major food group is excluded. As long as we balance the food we eat with sufficient exercise to burn off the calories that food contains, we will not gain weight. Pure and simple.

So you could actually save yourself a lot of money by avoiding expensive diet plans and get back to basics. Eat well and healthily, cut right down on junk foods, high sugar foods, fizzy soda drinks and alcohol and for heaven’s sake do some exercise and you’ll be healthy!

This is an interesting concept that I thought I’d bring up here about the actual forthrightness of all the Nutrisystem reviews that exist. This is mainly because there are so many of them published in a multitude of blogs and ezine sites that its almost impossible to see the wood for the trees! But for all the apparent wealth of information that’s out there on the subject, just how unbiased and honest are the vast majority of them?

Well, to be honest I have to say that the vast majority of these articles that are splattered all over the web are nothing more than in your face sales pitches that are designed to get you to buy the product with little thought to providing any substance in the truth department! Its far too easy these days to provide a few paragraphs of pure hype to get a visitor to your site to click a link or a banner and be transported to the company site where you are tempted to part with your cash to buy into the dream without first knowing half of what you’re buying into.

Some of the better reviews actually provide a more balanced view and talk about the disadvantages and downsides to this diet food delivery system as well as its good points. If you’re going to pay for something, you should at least know if there may be issues that can be detrimental to your chances of success, after all.

So it pays, if you’re searching for information on a diet food plan like Nutrisystem to find the reviews that actually mention its bad points as well as the good so you know exactly what to expect and what not to expect from the product. After all, you are trying to lose weight by using their diet system, you should at least know if it will even work for you with respect to your own lifestyle and needs. To make informed decisions before parting with your hard earned cash at least means that you are going in with both eyes wide open and knowing what you should expect to get out of it.

Gluten is a substance found in wheat and also in barley and rye and is a good source of protein. It is added to many processed foods to boost their protein levels and is added to the flour for bread making as it helps the bread rise evenly and produces a better structure in the final loaf. The downside to gluten is that for those who suffer with a condition called coeliac disease, it triggers a bad immune system response and causes sufferers many disagreeable symptoms.

For this reason, the gluten free diet plan has been formulated to help sufferers of coeliac disease to lead a fairly problem free life by completely eliminating all products that contain gluten from the diet.

From a weight loss viewpoint, this type of diet is an excellent way of losing weight as it eliminates nearly all the foods that cause weight gain. There are so many products made from wheat that are on the “bad” list, such as cakes, pastries, biscuits, bread, pasta and a whole host of junk foods that are derived from wheat based products, such as pizza, burgers (they contain breadcrumbs as do hot dogs, sausages, stuffings etc), anything coated in breadcrumbs, many candy bars that contain biscuit or wafer and it also includes most processed foods you buy in the supermarkets.

So by cutting out all these foods and replacing them with healthy fresh produce, fruit, vegetables, berries and nuts as well as rice products, dieters can lose weight quite easily and sufferers of coeliac disease can get on with living a more normal and also healthier life.

Welcome back to this healthy lifestyle blog with a post that will shock plenty of people who don’t know that white bread is bad for you! Well sure it is, when you think about it and what it is made from.

White bread, especially the innocent looking sliced loaf that you buy at the store, is packed full of zero nutrition and empty calories that will make you gain weight and store it on your belly. It’ll also set you up for a whole host of health problems if you eat too much of it. The worrying fact is that most people in the West eat too much white bread and they are damaging their health without even realizing it.

I’m sure you want to know why white bread is bad for you so here’s the scoop! White bread is made from refined white flour, just like our friend white pasta that we visited in the last post. Refined white flour as you will have gleaned from that post contains no useful nutrient, having had them all removed in the refining process, which includes bleaching the flour with chlorine based bleaching agents. Gluten is added to help the loaf rise and achieve a more uniform shape, which fits in with our increasing need to have perfect looking food from supermarkets. You know, like tomatoes that are all big and red and uniform in shape. Just like they grow naturally… NOT!

Well, that gluten is the cause for allergies in a huge number of people. Many know about it but far more don’t, then wonder why this or that allergy shows up all the time.

But the worst part of eating too much white bread is that it destabilizes your blood sugar levels, which can lead to type II diabetes and loads it up with bad LDL cholesterol which narrows arteries, increases blood pressure and can lead to strokes and heart disease. It slows down your metabolism too, meaning you set yourself up for weight gain. Just look at all the slim healthy people around you and chance are they don’t eat much (or any) white bread. Then look at all the seriously overweight people munching on sandwiches made from white bread…

As an extra health minus point, white bread is extremely unkind to your digestive system and especially your colon because it contains absolutely zero dietary fiber and clogs up your intestines, leading to all sorts of knock-on health problems such as IBS, Crohne’s disease, constipation etc.

Naturally, the industry that makes $billions from the sale of white bread is not going to come out and admit how unhealthy their product is. Why would they? It would cost them money to do that. Far better to keep it swept under the carpet and just let a few annoying bloggers write about it because few people will actually take a blind bit of notice.

Don’t expect government health officials to shout about it from the rooftops either. They don’t want this particular boat being rocked any more than the tobacco industry wants anyone to believe that smokingis bad for you. Which of course it patently cannot be, if you look around at all the smokers there are still…

But that’s a topic for whole bunch of posts later on down the line!

If you want to eat bread and still be healthy, switch to wholemeal and toast your good health. Wholemeal bread contains all the goodness of the whole wheat including the bran, which is high in dietary fiber and good for your digestive system and kind to your colon. It tastes good too!

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The title of this post is pretty self explanatory in the sense that it is a completely self contained statement of fact that has been born out by countless scientific studies into the health effects of various food items that have found their way into our modern diets in the West.

So why should you exclude white pasta from your diet to stay healthy?

The main reason to avoid white pasta in your diet is because it is made from refined white flour, which in itself contains absolutely no goodness whatsoever. It’s like eating cardboard, but tastes marginally better. But white its lack of nutrients wouldn’t normally make it a bad thing to eat, white pasta when used as the main staple bulking ingredient of a meal, which is generally is, then the reasons for cutting it out become evident.

First, like white bread, it contains a lot of high GI (glycemic index) carbohydrates. These are the type of carbs that release sugars quickly into the bloodstream, causing a rush of sugar and a reactive rush of insulin release to counter it. Bad for diabetics and bad for weight gain in the rest of us. What this does is make us feel full quickly, but then makes us feel hungry again soon after, which is a leading cause of weight gain.

It also raises levels of bad LDL cholesterol and because it is not digested efficiently, it slows the metabolism and results in more fat storage, with the emphasis on belly fat. Nice.

So there are plenty of reasons to exclude white pasta from your diet. You can replace it with brown pasta, which is made from wholegrain flour which is much better for you and a subject for a post all of its own later.

Healthy Lifestyle

To follow on from my last post Healthy Foods: Broccoli, the natural progression is to more health giving foods and one of the great all rounders is that smelly little bulb adored by most people in the world apart from Brits, Americans and a even few Aussies known as garlic.

Garlic, which contains both allicin and diallyl sulphides is a member of the onion family and as such possesses similar blood cleansing properties, but it is much more than just a cholesterol busting flavoursome addition to food.

In its raw state, garlic is at its most potent and all of its health giving properties are at their best. It should be used as soon as possible after peeling the papery skin from the bulb. As soon as you cook it, you destroy most of its goodness, so the best way to enjoy this power-packed little bulb is raw, chopped finely and sprinkled over cooked food just before you eat it, or into salads where it adds a lot of flavour and zing!

So to the health-giving properties of garlic. It is antibacterial, antiviral and anti-fungal, making it a great all rounder for fighting most illnesses from the common cold (viral) and flu, to bacterial attacks inside (eg food poisoning) and outside the body (eg infected cuts) as well as fungal attacks (eg athlete’s foot).

Garlic also helps boost the immune system, further helping the body to naturally fight off disease and infection and is also an antioxidant, helping to mop up dangerous free radicals and prevent cancer cells from forming.

As a food, it contains essential minerals and vitamins including all the B vitamins, vitamin C, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus potassium and zinc.

Many people avoid garlic as they are concerned about the bad breath it gives you. Well, you can cut this drastically by taking garlic capsules, but you have to consider your own health above all else. If you are more concerned with what other people think of you, then you are not concerned enough with your own well-being and that is a situation which cannot be.

When you eat garlic yourself, you cannot smell it on another person’s breath. So if someone wrinkles up their nose at you next time you have eaten garlic, just remind yourself that your are healthier inside than they are and to hell with what they think!

On that note, I think it best to leave you there to ponder your own social dilemmas and will return soon with another healthy foods article!

Well, my last post Now For The Healthy Part, signaled a slight change in direction in the subjects of my future posts, so this one will start off by taking a look at a healthy item of food and dissecting it into its component parts. Ok, maybe not so scientific and boring, but I’ll try to get across the importance of a particular item of food and why its healthy for us.

My first victim has to be the superfood broccoli.

Broccoli as sold and seen in many supermarkets and greengrocer’s is actually not true broccoli, but a closely related plant called calibrese. True broccoli is the smaller purple coloured immature flower head of Purple Sprouting Broccoli. Calibrese is a member of the Brassica family and is related to cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kale, turnips, radishes and a whole host of others. But as everyone knows this vegetable as broccoli, I’ll stick to that name.

So why is broccoli so healthy and the number one most popular vegetable in the USA?

Amongst its many health giving properties, broccoli is rich in vitamin C, for boosting the immune system and aiding the body’s ability to absorb iron from other foods.

It contains folic acid, which is beneficial to women as it aids the building of healthy tissue.

It also contains potassium which helps lower blood pressure.

Its large calcium content helps combat osteoporosis.

Also it contains high levels of the cancer busting indole-3-carbinol, which has recently been shown to help reduce the size of certain types of tumor, notably in cases of breast and prostate cancers.

The sulforaphane contained in broccoli helps to increase level of certain enzymes that block cancer.

Beta-carotene in broccoli transforms in the body into vitamin A, which has been found to be another antioxidant (as is vitamin c) which helps in mopping up harmful free radicals in the body.

So overall, broccoli richly deserves its label as a superfood and is one that should be a regular part of any good healthy diet.

Ok, that’s it for today’s post. I’ll cover another healthy food item in my next, so don’t be a stranger…

Well, that last post The Road To Health, certainly got the ball rolling with regards to how the theme of this blog is going to unfold before your very eyes! So now, without further ado, lets move onto the first topic of discussion proper with regards to a living a healthy lifestyle.

Healthy Food

We all have a pretty good idea about what foods are healthy and which ones are not, so I may be going over old ground here by pointing out these good or bad foods, so I’ll save that chore for a later post. What I actually want to go into right here is the topic not of healthy food, but what makes healthy food unhealthy. By this I mean what goes into that apparently good, wholesome food that alters its characteristics at a level not readily apparent to the human senses.

By this I mean the external or environmental processes brought to bear upon the food we eat.

I can start with what might sound obvious but it is still generally overlooked when choosing some nice healthy looking fresh vegetables. They might look fresh and clean in their supermarket shelf compartments, but are those carrots, or those courgettes really as wholesome as they look? Chances are they are not, especially if they’ve come from what is known as an intensive farm, which is pretty much most of the farms that are in any western country.

There are many hidden dangers in food from these types of farms and these I’ll go into in more detail in my next post.