Nothing can be done about your age, so don’t worry about it. You simply are the age you are, and yes, your metabolism slows down accordingly. But all is not lost. You can rev up your metabolism in spite of your age, no matter what age you are. Here’s what to do beyond eating the low-dieting way.

Avoid Overeating

Low-dieting weight loss only works to the extent that you don’t overeat. When you overeat, your body’s insulin levels become elevated and your body starts storing fat. Read the rest of this entry »

Birthdays Party

Birthdays are really let-loose days because it’s your day and nobody else’s. Even those who harp about our fat will take us out, pile it high, and egg us on. Well, this year, you have something to celebrate—being a “born-again skinny.”

To reinforce my own life choice of being a skinny, because that 170-pound whale that I once was is always lurking, I choose to make my birthday one of the most austere days of my year. Almost like a day of worship and reverence for myself, my health, and my skinny being. Read the rest of this entry »

My patients are astounded when I encourage them to eat frozen vegetables. But research has conclusively shown that frozen vegetables in a packet are more often than not more nutrient-rich than their `fresh’ counterparts on the supermarket shelves, whose vitamin and mineral content has been damaged by exposure to light, heat and air.

Consider an average bunch of carrots. These carrots will be plucked from the earth on a Monday morning. They will be stored in a shed for some time, then the farmer will, load them onto a truck for transport to the city. For several hours they will travel in a warm truck. Read the rest of this entry »

Fats make you fatter Fats, as mentioned before, can very quickly increase your body fat stores. What is of concern here is not so much the aesthetic disadvantages of being fatter (although nobody wants to look obese!) but the secondary problems associated with fatness. If you gain excess body fat, your risk of developing the lifestyle diseases mentioned above increases. Elevated cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, kidney problems, infertility and diabetes can all be caused or exacerbated by a marked increase in body fat. Read the rest of this entry »

To save me having to make endless lists of other foods that contain fats, I’m going to show you how to become a ‘fat sleuth’ — in other words, to empower yourself as a consumer so that you are easily able to detect hidden fat. And how do you do this? By reading the label of everything — and I mean everything — you buy. Here are some important steps:

Analyze the list of ingredients

Recently, it’s become law that manufacturers of food products have to list ingredients on the label. These should be listed in descending order from the largest ingredient to the smallest (although, at present, only some manufacturers and two large supermarket chains fully comply with this requirement). Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine that your stomach is empty. You have not eaten during the night, and you are ready for breakfast. Your blood already has a certain concentration of sugar (glucose) flowing through it. This has an approximate value of 5. To simplify matters drastically, this means there are five ‘bits’ of sugar in each sample of blood, and that this concentration is constant throughout the body. Read the rest of this entry »

The ‘detoxifying’ diets and fasts so popular these days can actually harm your metabolism. Let me introduce you now to a food that truly earns its status as the ultimate `detoxifies’ — water!

Very few of us drink enough water. ‘I never get thirsty,’ some of my patients tell me. ‘I just don’t seem to need very much water.’ This is nothing to be proud of. Not drinking enough is a bad habit that many people drift into — and it’s exactly that, a habit. Read the rest of this entry »

What to drink when you’re not drinking

Instead of reaching for a second glass of wine, a beer or a brandy when you get home from work, try one of these tempting alternatives. All the following drinks are freely permitted on the  Diet:

• Iced cola poured over crushed ice with a twist of lemon and a dash of bitters.
• Indian tonic water with a tot of lime cordial.
• Ginger ale with lemonade and a dash of bitters.
• Appletiser with soda and ice.
• Passion fruit cordial and lemonade.
• Chilled tomato juice with Tabasco sauce, Worcester sauce and lemon.
• Non-alcoholic daiquiri made by blending crushed ice, fresh strawberries and grenadine.
• Chilled iced tea with a twist of lemon and a sprig of lemon balm.
• Lemonade made by mixing together fresh lemon juice, crushed ice, lots of fructose and a dash of grenadine.
• Non-alcoholic sparkling wines (for a delicious fizzy drink, try Woolworths’ new Elderflower champagne’).

A more efficient body

The real way to ‘cleanse’

I do not hold with fasts or ‘detoxifying’ diets. If you are feeling sluggish, run-down or ‘clogged up’, then the only way to remedy these sensations is to make your body work more quickly and more efficiently. Here are some tips:

• Try to empty your bowels at least twice a day. To do this, you need to eat large quantities of fresh fruit and vegetables. If you follow the X Diet to the letter, you will not have any difficulty achieving this goal! Read the rest of this entry »

Alcohol increases your sex hormones

A complication of this upset liver function is the production of more cholesterol-related triglycerides and sex hormones. In men, the levels of the sex hormone testosterone can begin to rise. Apart from many other important functions, testosterone controls the distribution of fat on the male body. Any extra fat that a drinker consumes (and it’s usually a lot) will be directed straight to the gut area, rather than spread evenly over the body, as would happen in a man with normal testosterone levels. Another function of excess testosterone is to speed up hair loss. This may give you a large fright, but the more alcohol you drink, the higher the risk of losing your hair more quickly! Read the rest of this entry »