Posts Tagged ‘lose weight’

Why Now Is a Great Time to Be Vegan

Monday, May 30th, 2011

Galia and David Myron enjoy drinks out of fresh coconuts. Plant-based can be so enjoyable!

Galia Myron Tracks Generations As Whole Food, Plant-Based Diets Flourish

Want to know more about the health, food habits, values, preferences, or sex lives of Generations X, Y, or Z? How about Baby Boomers or Matures, women vs. men, or green trends? Galia Myron, publisher of the richly comprehensive site demodirt.com, reports on every aspect of demographics as she both follows and observes a vegan path. She especially enjoys covering trends on plant-based diets, animal rights, environmental issues, and health.

Galia observes that, a few years ago, the fastest growing vegan group was boomer men who were motivated by health considerations. Now she finds more young people choosing animal-free diets for ethical reasons. Marketers are also (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

Six Reasons Portion Control Will Make You Overweight

Sunday, May 15th, 2011

Why Serving Sizes Undercut Health and Weight Loss

Meals limited by portion control can feel so skimpy.

Run-of-the-mill diets focus on controlling the amount you eat by limiting portions. This is an attempt to fit a manmade, arbitrary concept (“serving size”) into a natural biological system (your body). While this strategy may work for some people for a short time, the long-term outcome is often counter to health and weight goals.

The USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 is typical. Some of the serving sizes this report lists include:

• Bread: one slice

• Cooked rice: half a cup

• Cut up vegetables: half a cup

• Fruit: one medium piece

• Cooked beans: half a cup

• Milk: one cup

• Cooked meat, poultry, or fish: one ounce

• Soft margarine: one teaspoon

• Sugar: one tablespoon

Here are six reasons that portion control ultimately will not succeed in getting you to a trim weight and (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

2,068 Vegans Tell All

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

New Survey Shows Vegans are Happy and Thriving

In our over-stressed and rushed world, is there a simple secret to inner peace? Amid the wasteland of fast food and supermarkets crammed with thousands of processed choices, is there a straight line to health? Surrounded by pavement and parking lots, how can you feel a direct connection to the majesty of nature?

2,068 vegans took a moment to share the answers in the survey Vegan From the Inside. Respondents completed questions on what it’s like for them to be (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

Five Actions You Must Take Now for Healthy Eating Success

Friday, December 31st, 2010

Learning to eat the healthiest diet is like learning to read. It's a process that takes time and patience. If you keep moving forward, you will succeed.

The Secret to This Journey Is One Step At a Time

Change is a learning process, not unlike mastering reading. You may remember developing your own reading skills, or maybe you’ve watched a child enjoy their increasing proficiency as they moved from one grade to another.

Generally, the student starts with learning the alphabet, reciting all the letters from A to Z. Then the child is taught the sound each letter makes. From there, he or she can start sounding out or recognizing simple words.

The child advances from kindergarten picture books to Shakespeare, but the process takes time, patience, and motivation. Certainly some ultra-gifted students can read difficult literature right after learning their ABC’s, but the vast majority of us can’t. We need to learn one step at a time.

Just as you became skilled at reading, you can master an eating plan that supports your health and a trim figure. Understanding and moving through five successive actions (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

A Food That Makes a Difference With Only a Handful

Friday, November 26th, 2010

Nuts for Nutrition and Health: It’s All In How Much You Eat

Few foods are as simple, delicious, and filling as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Be sure to enjoy yours on whole wheat bread. Peanuts are not really tree nuts, but have very similar nutritional properties.

Are you looking for a tasty snack that won’t boost your weight? How about a recipe ingredient that will add crunch and flavor? What if only a handful of this food could diminish your risk of having a heart attack?

Nuts were once thought to be fattening and unhealthy due to their high fat content. In 1992, researchers were intrigued when a large-scale study found that adults who regularly ate small amounts of nuts actually had lower risk of coronary heart disease than those who did not eat this food.

Since then, dozens of additional studies strongly support the conclusion that nuts boost heart health. The research is consistent. Nuts lower total and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and this is (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

The Road Map to Healthy Food Choices

Sunday, October 10th, 2010

Dr. Neal Barnard Shares a Winning Weight Loss Strategy

The range of delicious, healthy foods to enjoy while losing weight is motivating. Try all these whole foods and many more.

Dr. Neal Barnard, President of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), noticed his conversations on airplanes have taken a new direction recently. In the days when airlines routinely served meals, he would get his vegetarian choice before the other dinners were brought out. When other passengers found out he was vegetarian, they questioned his health and motives. Not eating meat was a strange concept to them.

Now, when he tells fellow passengers – or just about anyone else – that he is vegan, people respond (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

Why Apples Really Are Your Best Medicine

Sunday, October 3rd, 2010

Nutrition and Health Thrive with An Apple a Day

Apples are beautiful, healthy, filling, and yummy. The US Apple Association proudly shows off its product.

So many nutrition myths are untrue, even downright harmful. Yet the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” has important clues to staying healthy and thin. This popular fruit earns its place as a health symbol. When you understand why, you have the information to maximize the benefits to you.

All whole plant foods are rich in beneficial, nutritionally active substances called phytochemicals. Plants make up to 100,000 kinds of these substances to protect themselves from insects, infections, the strong energy in sunlight, and other threats.

Phytochemicals include the substances that determine the appealing colors, delightful aromas, and delicious flavors of whole plant foods. In apples, over 250 kinds of phytochemicals determine the fragrance alone. Vitamins are not the same thing as phytochemicals. While apples are a good source of vitamin C, in whole apples this vitamin accounts for only .4% of the fruit’s antioxidant activity. The vast majority of the health-promoting effects are from phytochemicals.

These protective substances are densest in the skin of the apple. This makes sense when you remember (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

Stopping Arthritis Without Drugs

Saturday, September 18th, 2010

Judi Menzel Revels in a Pain-Free Life

After 22 years of arthritis torment, Judi Menzel now enjoys her active life free of pain and medication

The excruciating pain of severe arthritis dominated Judi Menzel’s life. Her suffering began in 1985, when she was in a sedentary, mega-stress job managing millions of dollars held in trust for her clients. At first, Judi treated the emerging pain in her hips and hands with over-the-counter drugs such as ibuprofen.

The torment migrated to her lower back and her doctors began prescribing stronger and stronger drugs, until she was up to using potentially addictive oxycodone. Still, the pain refused to leave, and continued to imprison her activities. Judi notes “I couldn’t sit without pain in my hip joints. I couldn’t write without pain in my finger joints and working on the computer was the worst.”

The turning point in Judi’s health came in 2007, after 22 years of arthritis agony. Her physical therapist at her HMO suggested she stop eating dairy products, read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, and try eating only plant foods one day a week.

Ready to try anything to mitigate the pain, Judi checked herself into a vegan holistic health center in San Diego area for two weeks of detox from (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

Nutrition and Health: Dull No More

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

Discover the Excitement in Nutrition

Nutrition can be this exciting when you discover how many myths you have been saddled with and how much the truth will change your life

Nutrition’s dull reputation may keep you from delving into one of the most exciting topics you could study. Part of nutrition’s mundane image likely springs from high school classes that indoctrinated you on the standard disease-causing diet while at the same time putting you to sleep.

I still remember my last high school nutrition class. The lesson plan was based on the same four “food groups” I had memorized in elementary school: meat, dairy, vegetables and fruits (combined), and grains (whole vs. refined never mentioned). The instructor was our gym teacher. I had no clue about why this diet was supposed to be good, only that it was what everyone ate. The main concern was about “getting enough protein.” Sound familiar?

From the ages of 16 through 43, I avoided the topic of nutrition whenever I could. This did not mean I regarded food as humdrum. In fact, food was one of my favorite obsessions. Not surprisingly, I was (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0

Ten Strategies To Diet and Exercise Success

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

The American Heart Association Analyzes Which Lifestyle Programs Work

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes over one third of deaths in the US, killing an American every 37 seconds. Want to live an extra seven years? That would be the average increase in life expectancy if CVD was totally vanquished.

The American Heart Association wants physicians to be able to recognize and recommend effective ways to lose weight and exercise more.

To combat CVD, the American Heart Association (AHA) put dozens of researchers to work reviewing hundreds of studies on lifestyle change programs. The goal of this project was to identify the interventions that help people exercise more, lose weight, and eat healthier. The AHA summarized their findings in a 37 page scientific statement published July 12, 2010.

The AHA reinforced the role of activity, weight, and eating in preventing CVD. Their statement points out that black and Hispanic immigrants are initially at lower risk for this condition than US-born citizens in the same ethnic groups. However, as the immigrants adopt an American diet and sedentary lifestyle, CVD becomes a harsh reality for them. Since cardiovascular disease is so closely related to lifestyle and obesity, better habits could help prevent illness and death for everyone.

The AHA statement distilled ten strategies that can effectively change the way people think, act, and (more…)

Share and Enjoy !

0Shares
0 0