Nutritionist's Tips
Water: Adequate water can actually
reverse athrosclerosis (hardening
of the arteries due to plaque build-up). It seems that water can actually flush the arteries of
plaque. It also expands blood vessels and makes
arteries more elastic, which is essential for
healthy hearts. Most importantly, I believe, is that adequate
hydration raises the metabolism and allows
for stored fat to be burned more
efficiently as well as slowing heart rate, reducing blood pressures and reducing fluid retention.
Drink enough water to make your urine clear and colourless all day. Limit coffee, tea and pop to three cups a day. Breakfast: Breakfast should include at least four grams of fibre, which in turn reduces cholesterol and fat in the blood. Every 10 grams. of cereal fibre reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes by 30 per cent.
It also reduces cancer and diabetes risk. Good sources of fibre are cereals, dried beans and lentiles. It is suggested that adding nuts and seeds to breakfast cereal and to have a whole piece of fruit as well. Whole wheat toast, a bagel or a bran muff is not a good source of fibre. It's important that one eats breakfast within 30 minutes of waking.
It also reduces the risk of cancers by preventing absorption of carcinogens and reduces cholesterol by preventing its absorption.
It is suggested that breakfast should be the heaviest, while lunch should be a little less, and supper even less than that.
It is told that the body adjusts
and hunger won't be an issue at the end of the day.
So, in other words, our bodies become more efficient and burn those calories when we eat a good breakfast.
Vegetables: Choose at least two
different vegetables at lunch and at supper. Eat a minimum of one cup of
vegetables at each meal then eat the rest of your meal. Rice, potato and corn are starches and are not counted as
vegetables.
Meat: Eat a maximum of 100 gm. of meat, pork, chicken or fish a day.
Walking: Walk for 25 minutes every night after supper. The benefits of walking after supper compared to walking before supper are many.
It can lower your blood sugar by 50 per cent, but best of all when one exercises as described above, your body is burning calories the whole time you sleep.
Most people eat little through the day relative to their large meals and evening snacks. This raises the blood sugar really high before sleeping. Higher bedtime sugars directly create extra weight and extra cholesterol and lower antioxidants which help prevent cancer.
Walking for 25 minutes after supper raises your metabolism, releases growth hormones which suppress appetite for late night snacks and act as a natural fat burner overnight.
It is said that one can change diet overnight, but allow an average of 3-5 weeks for these changes, as listed above, to impact your metabolism.
Regular Weigh-Ins: He suggests that if one follows the above, they don't need to weigh in weekly. It has been found, that the stress of weigh-ins create a chemical in our brains which actually retains the fat and thus we reach those dreaded plateaus. It is heard in many stories that people who only had five or 10 pounds to lose, but just couldn't do it. Weigh-ins become so stressful that they create these fat-holding chemicals. Now that was an interesting thing for me to hear!
It is suggested, that we should take monthly body measurements as a true picture of how we are doing.
These
suggestions are based on certain statistics People with cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol heart
disease, bowel problems, and those who are overweight,
generally have five things in common!
They are:
* Small
or no breakfast with adequate fibre.
* Inadequate water consumption.
* Inadequate activity after supper.
* Inadequate
daily fibre intake.
* Inadequate
daily vegetable intake.
What You Should Know to Design a Safe and
Effective Exercise Programme
A complete fitness programme must include aerobic exercise, muscular strength and endurance conditioning, and flexibility exercise. Aerobic exercise does good things for your cardiovascular system and is an important part of weight management. Muscular conditioning can improve strength and posture, reduce the risk of lower back injury, and is also an important component of a weight management programme. Flexibility exercise is needed to maintain joint range of motion and reduce the risk of injury and muscle soreness.
Aerobic Exercise Can be as Simple
as Walking Walking is a weight-bearing aerobic exercise. So are jogging, rope skipping and dance-exercise.
Aerobic exercise is an activity that uses large muscle
groups in a continuous, rhythmic
fashion for sustained periods of time. There are also non-weight-bearing aerobic exercises, such as
bicycling, stationary cycling, swimming and
rowing.
