Healthy Eating For Weight Loss

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Nutritional Supplements Can Be Harmful

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Nutritional supplements are becoming increasingly popular. And for very good reasons. But supplements vary widely in quality. And you don’t just have to worry about the nutritional content of the supplement you are taking. Some nutritional supplements can be harmful to your health.

Nutritional supplements are a great idea in theory. Few people eat well enough to supply all the nutrients needed for health and vitality. Even those people who do eat very well, may still be deficient in nutrients. The modern food production system tends to produce food that looks great, but is nutrient poor.

Food producers tend to chase after the maximum return for their investment. Food retailers tend to buy the cheapest food they can. Fresh food is easily spoiled, so is often picked well before ripe and then kept in cold storage until needed. Nutrients are depleted in storage.

These common, modern practices do nothing to encourage the production of nutrient dense food.

A lack of essential nutrition leads to all manner of illnesses. It also leads to a constant hunger, frequently resulting in weight gain. Few GPs are aware of the importance of good, nutritious food. It just is not part of their training. Yet most illness can be reversed with proper nutrition.

The most common nutritional supplements on the market are made in a laboratory. They are synthetic. This is the cheapest method of production. But, your body has no idea what to do with a synthetic ‘food’.

Synthetic ‘nutrients’ are always in isolation. Vitamin B and magnesium are the common ones, but there are few that escape this process.

Food is complex and science still understands little of its complexity. But that doesn’t stop unscrupulous marketeers from cashing in on your vulnerability. The reality is that all nutrients interdepend on each other. You cannot take one on its own and get any benefit. Your body is simply not wired to deal with them.

At best, the supplement will be excreted, resulting to expensive bowel movements. At worse, and this is far more common, the ‘nutrients’ hang up in parts of the body, where they have no business to be, doing mischief.

Ann, one of my patients, also sees a naturopath. Ann suffers with fatigue and memory loss. Her naturopath had prescribed vitamin B and magnesium for her. I asked her to check the label of the supplements, to see where they came from. It is quite easy. A synthetic and isolated supplement will list the ingredients for what they are – vitamin Bs and a magnesium salt.

When Ann discovered this is exactly what she was taking, I suggested to her that this may be part of her problem. To find out if this was true, I suggested that she stops taking them for a few weeks and see what happens.

In a little over a week, Ann contacted me to say how much better she felt. Both her energy and her memory had significantly improved.

Supplements should always be in the form of wholefood supplements. Those that come from superfoods. Only then can you be sure that you are getting the nutrition that your body knows what to do with. Perhaps the richest source is blue green algae. But here too, there are various qualities.

In my opinion, the best wholefood supplement,in terms of the quality of the source of the product, the ethical harvesting, the least harmful processing and the packaging, is this particular blue green algae.

When you check the ingredients on this supplement, it simply states blue green algae.

NB. Most naturopaths are aware of the problem with isolated and synthetic supplements. But it’s always a good idea to check what you have been given.

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Healthy Eating For Weight Loss – Make Your Own Healthy Easter Eggs

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Easter eggs seem to have become so commercialised they have lost any of their real significance. This, by the way, predates any Christian connection. Before examining what they are made from, and why you should consider making your own healthy easter eggs, let’s just have a quick look at the origin, the real significance of them.

Easter eggs first appeared in the Pagan times. The Pagan times started around 10,000 BC. In the northern hemisphere, the timing of Easter is in the spring, when the significance is of new growth, new life, renewal. The egg is the start of new life. The celebrations were that winter was over, spring is here. And Easter tends to fall in April, the month of the spring equinox.

People exchanged eggs as a symbol of new creation, of nature’s rebirthing a new year, new life, new harvests.

The word Easter comes from the words Eostur, Eostre, Eastar, Ostara or Ostar.

Ancient civilisations, such as the Egyptians, the Persians, the Phoenicians and the Hindus also have a common thread with eggs and the start of life on Earth.

Christianity adopted this ancient festival, claiming it as their own, with various adaptations down through the ages.

It does leave one wondering about the significance of the easter eggs and Easter in the southern hemisphere. Why are we celebrating winter is over, when it is just beginning? Something to do with the illogicality of the human? The dominance of the northern hemisphere? Pure commercialism? Tradition? Who knows. People don’t always look for the reason behind a day or two off work!

But getting into the nitty gritty of how easter eggs are made is another matter entirely.

Chocolate is considered to be one of the few superfoods. It is nutritionally superior to many common foods. BUT, only in its raw state.

The main chocolate producers process the raw chocolate so much, the resulting chocolate has little nutritional value. But that’s not the end of the story.

Chocolate is expensive. So sugar is used as the main ingredient. This makes the cocoa go further. Cocoa butter is also expensive. So the common chocolate makers use cheaper oils instead.

Around the world, these cheap vegetable oils come from cotton, soy and canola. All of these have been genetically modified. It is estimated that 90% of the cotton grown in Australia is GM. This will be the same across the world, unless there is a government policy to ban its growth.

Any oil in the supermarket, or listed in ingredients in processed foods (including chocolate and easter eggs) as ‘vegetable oil’, rather than a specific oil, is likely to be from these sources.

Easter eggs are favourites with children. You might like to reflect on the potential harm you are inflicting on their growing bodies, not just from the excess sugar, but from the GM oils.

True Food, from Greenpeace, do keep an updated list of those products which contain GM ingredients. Check them out for your country.

Making your own chocolate, and then moulding them into easter eggs, may not be that difficult. And they are a lot more healthy.

To make the chocolate, combine 2 parts raw cacao with one part honey (or other healthy sweetener) and one part coconut oil or cacao butter. Add any further ingredients of your choice, such as fruit or nuts. Adjust to your taste.

This is truly decadent and out performs any chocolate on the market on health grounds. You can create your own variations as you see fit.

Have healthy easter eggs this year and celebrate the start of new life. Here in Western Australia, the wet winter is a welcome relief from the hot, dry summer, so many plants do ‘spring’ into new growth, even if the animals wait until spring.

For more information about healthy foods and recipes, click here.

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Healthy Eating For Weight Loss – Improve Your Bowel Flora

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Healthy eating for weight loss has a primary target of eating healthy food, with a spin off of balancing your weight. Mostly this comes down to weight loss, as most people tend to be overweight rather than under weight. But it can significantly improve weight gain, too. The target is to obtain balance. And one of the ways to achieve this is to ensure your bowel flora is healthy.

The modern medical world has a war on bacteria and other pathogens, mistakenly targeting them as the creators of ill health. This is very far from the truth. Every body is teeming with bacteria. It is essential to life. Without bacteria, there would be no life.

The proliferation of bacteria during an infection are only opportunistic scavengers, clearing up a mess created by your lack of a healthy immune response. The bacteria are, in effect, the messengers. And they are being shot. But they are not the cause of ill health.

The gut is teeming with bacteria. There are a variety of complex and diverse bacteria essential to effective digestion. Your mouth contains millions of bacteria. Your stomach and small intestines contain very little bacteria, comparatively, because of the high acid environment.

The lower intestines, also known as the large intestines or colon, contains over a trillion organisms per gram of faeces. Bacteria makes up about 60% of your stool.

There are a variety of ways of upsetting this delicate balance of essential bacteria. They include:

  • eating the wrong foods
  • the use of antibiotics and other medication
  • which often goes hand in hand with ill health
  • a strong and/or recurring unbalancing emotion such as fear or anger

It is essential to keep all the bacteria in your body in optimum working order, especially your gut flora. You will know if they are in balance because they ensure you:

  • retain natural immunity to infections
  • never suffer with diarrhoea or constipation
  • limit gas production
  • don’t suffer from inflammatory diseases such as arthritis
  • don’t suffer with cancerous growths

The importance of having healthy gut flora cannot be over emphasised. But, judging by how common digestive problems are today, how much antibiotics are used and how cancer is exploding at an exponential rate, there are very few people who have this.

You can achieve this simply by making some drastic changes to your diet. Healthy eating for weight loss guides you through why some common foods are unhealthy and what you can replace them with.

Keep your gut flora healthy!

You can find out more about healthy eating here.

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Healthy Eating For Weight Loss Looks At The Protein Myth

It can sometimes be difficult to know where or when myths start, but one thing for sure, is that they abound. In reality, society is run on myths. Which might explain the global mess we are in. In this article I want to bust the protein myth.

Protein seems to be on everyone’s lips. How much protein do you need? What are the best sources of protein?

Let’s look at a typical western diet.

Breakfast – cereal with milk and/or toast with margarine and a sweet conserve
Lunch – fast food or a white sandwich with meat or cheese
Evening meal – fast food, frozen food or home prepared food typically of animal protein and vegetables

This provides you with an animal source of protein three times a day. Maybe more, if you have snacks.

Animal protein makes humans very acidic. If you are acidic, disease abounds.

Cooking alters protein, making it less easily utilised by your body. It can also release chemicals, such as acrylamide, which are hazardous to your health.

How much protein do humans actually need? You may be surprised at the answer, but it is only 10% of your diet. You only need one tenth of your food to be protein to have a healthy body.

Protein abounds in vegetables. And most vegetables have way more than 10%. The potato is the vegetable which has the lowest protein (and most other nutrients, too), at 10%. So even the humble spud, which is comparatively nutrient poor when compared with other vegetables, have as much protein as you need on a daily basis.

If you have a healthy diet with an abundant variety of fresh vegetables, you will consume all the protein you need to be active and healthy.

Body builders and top performing athletes are particularly susceptible to the protein myth and consume higher than average quantities of animal protein in the mistaken idea they will perform better. In fact, they don’t perform as well as those athletes who consume little or no animal protein. And they are increasing their risk on contracting any and every illness.

Protein must abound in plants. How else do the herbivorous animals, such as horses and cows, grow to full maturity in a single year? Growing young need higher amounts of protein, than do adults. Yet these large animals grow to their non inconsiderable size in a fraction of the time it takes a human child to mature.

Douglas Graham has written an excellent book on the best diet to get to peak performance for athletes.

Consuming animal protein three times a day is hazardous to your health. At most, you should consume it two to three times a week, preferably less.

Healthy Eating For Weight Loss shows you how to be healthy and slim, without any restriction on the amount of food you can consume, and with the best sources of protein.

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Dangers of Microwave Ovens – Distorting Your Health and Your Weight

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Few modern kitchens are without a microwave oven. But over the years, the dangers of microwave ovens and cooking have been verified. However, the relentless sales of these unhealthy appliances continues unabated. Governments are turning a blind eye and people ignore the dangers in preference for quick results.

This comes at a price, both for your health and your weight. Let’s look at some of the problems associated with their use.

Microwaves work at a much faster speed than do conventional cooking. Everyone knows that, which is probably the main reason for their use. But lets look at this a little deeper. The rapid speed of the wave bombardment on the water in the food molecules creates the friction which creates the heat. This friction causes damage to the surrounding molecules, tearing them apart or deforming them.

This cell deformation is used in the GM industry, to forcibly allow the implantation of genes alien to them. Broken cell walls also allow the admission of pathogens. There is now no natural repair mechanisms of the cell. So now they cells resort to an emergency back up system – they change from a healthy aerobic (with oxygen) respiration, to anaerobic (without oxygen).

Microwaves alter and destroy essential nutrients. All cooking does this to a certain extend, but this is much greater in microwave cooking. Research discovered a decreased food value of between 60 – 90% in all foods tested.

The ingestion of these altered food molecules are known to be toxic in nature. These changes to the recipient are measured by a change in their blood – a decrease in the haemglobin and lymphocytes and an increase in the white blood cells (leucocytes) and cholesterol.

Anaerobic conditions allow cancer growth to thrive. Carcinogens are formed in all microwaved foods. This happens when thawing frozen food, when heating anything such as baby formula, when cooking raw food.

There is a new disease called ‘microwave sickness’, which few doctors know about. It starts out with low blood pressure and a slow pulse. This quickly leads on to high blood pressure and a chronic excitation of the sympathetic nervous system.

This can include symptoms such as headache, dizziness, insomnia, eye pain, stomach pain, loss of hair, appendicitis, cataracts, infertility, anxiety, nervous tension and an inability to concentrate (ADD?).

This then lead on to lymphatic disorders, digestive disorders and cancer.

Microwave ovens are really radiation ovens, as the food becomes irradiated. Irradiated foods has had a change in its molecular structure – losing or gaining an electron. Radiolytic compounds are unnatural substances created as a direct result of radiation. They occur in all microwaved food.

The Nazis invented the microwave ovens, to allow the cooking of food on a mass scale during their invasion of Russia. After the war, America seized the documents, and remained mute on the evidence.

However, Russia did her own research and then banned the sale of the appliances. They also issued an international health warning of the dangers of microwave ovens.

A Swiss study, pioneered by Dr. Hans ulrich Hertel and Dr. Bernard H. Blanc, discovered the proven dangers of microwave ovens. But as soon as they published their results, a “gag order” was issue, for “interfering with commerce” Apparently, the interests of commerce come before your health.

The effect of ingesting microwaved food on your health, should be obvious to you by now. But what about your weight? When you do not eat enough quality food to satisfy your nutrient requirements, you will always be hungry. And fast food is an easy and quick way to satisfy that hunger, temporarily.

Healthy eating for weight loss is primarily concerned about your health, so does not suggest ANY ingestion of microwaved food. The spin off is a natural balancing of your weight, whether you are overweight or underweight.

Please note that many restaurants, in all categories, use microwave ovens. It is in your interest to check these out before frequenting them.

It’s curious that the installation of cell phone towers, which use microwave signals, is of great concern to local residents. Probably the same people use microwave ovens at home, but the dangers are no less significant.

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