Healthy Dieting

Your menus will be made up exclusively of foods and drinks chosen from good-quality protein sources and low glycaemic index, low- density carbohydrates, plus the very best fats. Let’s look at protein first.

Fish – all kinds of fresh and canned fish including bass, trout, sole, sardines, herring, mackerel, salmon, tuna, terakihi, dory.

Shellfish – mussels (the green-lipped variety are best), calamari, oysters, clams, crayfish, lobster, crabs. Read the rest of this entry »

Chocolate is derived from the cocoa bean, which was used by the early peoples of Mexico and Central America as the basis of a celebrated but hitter drink. Spanish conquerors added cane sugar to the beverage and the sweet version became popular as an aphrodisiac among European aristocrats. However, it wasn’t until the 19th century, when cocoa butter was separated from the bean, that chocolate became the rich food familiar to us. Read the rest of this entry »

Isn’t fresh or frozen food better for you than canned? Not necessarily. In many cases canned foods are every bit as nutritious—or even more so. Consider these pantry staples:

• Canned apricots in fruit juice and canned mangoes have more vitamin A than fresh varieties. Why? They’re picked at their peak and processed immediately.
• Canned tomatoes contain less lycopene than fresh ones, but this cancer-protective carotenoid seems to be more readily available in the cooked tomatoes.
• Canned pilchards and sardines have edible bones that are rich in calcium.
• Foods stored in cans do have drawbacks. Read the rest of this entry »

Carbohydrates, or “carbs,” are the fuels your body runs on. Whether you eat whole-wheat bread or sweets, your body turns the carbohydrates in those foods into blood sugar or glucose. Does that mean both foods are equally good sources of energy? Hardly. The bread is the better value, supplying fuel to your body over a longer period of time. The sweets short-change your body, providing energy only for a short time. Read the rest of this entry »

What you drink is important, too. You may be in the habit of drinking fruit juice, but it doesn’t fit well into an insulin-balanced way of life. If you feel you must have a glass of apple juice or orange juice every now and then, try diluting it – one-third juice to two-thirds water – and treat it as a serving of fruit when calculating your carbohydrates for meals and snacks. Fruit juices are very high on the glycaemic index. Your body soaks them up like pure sugar and absorbs them very rapidly. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a technique frequently used by doctors, nutritionists and other practitioners trained in functional medicine. Once you grasp the general idea, the answer to how much protein you have to eat literally lies in the palm of your hand. And the method can be used for both Insulin Balance and Ketogenics. Read the rest of this entry »

Where aerobic exercise strengthens the heart and lungs, weight training goes far beyond. In the past five years an enormous number of studies have been carried out where the health of people in all age groups has been assessed before and after weight training. The results are amazing. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you ever find yourself resenting the ability of young people to eat whatever they want, apparently lounge around all the time and never gain weight? This is because their lean-body-mass-to-fat ratio is much higher than it is with older, sedentary people. Read the rest of this entry »

The most important things to consider when planning programmes of physical activity for yourself are the following. Do something that you enjoy. Explore new forms of exercise that you may never have experienced before, to find out what they can do for you. For many years exercise psychologists believed that the only form of exercise any of us ever needed was aerobic exercise. When you go aerobic, exercise for a period lasting 15 minutes to an hour or more. Read the rest of this entry »