Happy Halloween

Just wanted to say happy Halloween where ever you are in the world and have a great one ;-)

Fibre Why It's Important To Eat Twenty Five Grams a Day

Fibre is one of those things that is an important part of any weight loss plan namely your weight-loss plan, the great thing about fibre is it is very calorie dense so you can eat a lot of it not gain any weight, it stops hunger cravings and makes you feel full so the tendency to overeat is minimised.

If you have suffered with constipation at all than switching to a high fibre diet will make things a lot better for you.

Good sources of fibre are:

• Vegetables
• Dried and fresh fruit
• Whole meal breads and wholegrain breads, wholemeal pitta bread
• Nuts & Seeds
• Brown Rice and wholemeal pasta
• Baked Beans

If you are on a low fibre diet some problems may or may not occur these being

• Cancer
• Heart disease
• IBS ( Irritable Bowel Syndrome
• Constipation

Other benefits are:

• Helps with digestion
• Helps to lower blood cholesterol
• Takes quite a while to be broken down in the stomach, hence you feel fuller longer
• Ideal for people with diabetes

So an all-round good food for good health.

How a Man Went On a OxO Diet and lost 16 stone

The Sun newspaper writes an interesting article today about how a man lost sixteen stone by going on a diet which consisted of having oxo cubes he stopped eating all the usual things like pies, pastry and beer and swapped it for daily bowls, of oxo instead. His start weight was thirty one stones to begin with he says that he dreamed up his own diet, which as well as having the oxo he also consumed fruit and vegetables.

This enabled him to lose roughly five pounds a week and within a period of a year managed to get down to fifteen stone. “ he says the weight just dropped off me”

And has three broths a day with two oxo cubes and pepper to supplement it.

"Source Sun newspaper"

Health News "Healthy diet does more to promote weight loss than exercise"

"Exercise alone won't help you lose weight if you continue eating an unhealthy diet. That's the conclusion of an Australian review of 43 weight-loss studies dating back to 1985. "Exercise by itself is not going to be an effective weight-loss strategy for an individual, you really need to combine exercise with better nutrition," review lead author Dr. Kelly Shaw, a public health doctor with the department of health and human services in Tasmania, said in a prepared statement."

Full Article Here: Healthy diet does more to promote weight loss than exercise

Five Reasons To Eat Onions

The onion is something that you may or may not pay much attention to what once you have read this article, it may make you see it in a different light, sometimes when you read things it tends to make you think about them more, as in what you're actually eating rather than just eating the food and not knowing the potential benefits of said food, after all good food can be considered to be nature's medicine so without further ado here are the five reasons to eat onions.

1. The number one reason heart health, onions are known to boost HDL cholesterol and lower LDL cholesterol which means you're less likely to get blood clots, may help to lower blood pressure also.

2. If you suffer with diabetes onions can help to stabilise blood sugar, which in turn could stop the onset of it.

3. Onions contain sulphides, which can provide protection against cancer’s namely stomach cancer and bowel cancer, in countries such as China where they eat a lot of onions, they have less incidences of stomach cancer in their country compared to others, in the Netherlands a cross-section of men and women were studied with those who ate onions and those who didn't the ones who ate onions were far less likely to get stomach cancer than those who didn't eat them.

4. Onions are rich in minerals, they contain good amounts of vitamin C. also contain fibre, vitamin B6, manganese, potassium, copper.

5. Very low in calories another good reason to eat them as an aid to weight loss, also known to help kill bacteria that may cause colds and other nasties during the winter months.

There are many recipes that you can incorporate onions into one of my favourites is as mentioned in a previous post are onion bhajis, which are quite easy to make and a great snack to eat in between meals, but there are numerous other recipes that you could incorporate onions into, spring onions are very nice with a salad in the summer sky's the limit really, as far as onions are concerned.

Marvellous Mushrooms

There is one particular vegetable I've been eating quite a lot of over the past nine or ten months, and that is mushrooms I tend to eat white button mushrooms, which are quite readily available at most supermarkets in punnets, where mine come from you get quite a lot and they can go quite far when you eat them with something else, what I have done in the past is added them to other dishes, I tend to add them to baked beans, which may sound a bit strange but together with the tomato sauce they taste quite nice once cooked and also add a bit of bulk to the meal.

As far as mushrooms go there are a great way to get essential minerals, they have protein in iron, niacin and have reasonable amounts of selenium, copper, zinc and also contain fibre and here is another great thing about mushrooms as well they have water in them as well as being very low in calories which is another great benefit especially if you are trying to lose weight.

One of the great benefits of zinc which mushrooms do contain is its ability to boost immune system function so during the winter months this might be aid in warding off winter colds and other nasty viruses that appear during winter, zinc also can be a key factor in maintaining blood sugar levels and also helping maintain the body's metabolic rate. So there you have it mushrooms in a nutshell and I must say this is one particular vegetable that I never used to pay attention to or eat for that matter but glad I do now.

Weekly Weigh In

Hi there well it's Friday again time to jump on the scales and here them groan a little less, I wonder what they would say if they could speak perhaps "lost a bit more this week eh fatty". Well things are ok it would seem this week hovering around the 96kg mark so thats good enough for me.

So here's how it looks

Slow Food Eating Experiment

Hello there it's been a about two to three weeks since I started this experiment and something that has come to light about this way of eating, does hold water in fact quite a lot, sometimes when eating you tend to notice yourself getting fuller but the intention is there to eat more even though you can start to feel as though you are getting fuller, since hearing about this way of eating, it's become more of a habit now to me it's not until you read or hear something that you realise that in fact you maybe yourself doing this very thing.

Perhaps sometimes when we where younger it's said to finish our plates so there is nothing left, clearly there isn't any reason to eat like your in a race or could it be just because we are in such a hurry these days, surely having half digested foods in your insides isn't going to do much for nutrition uptake, seeing some people who have had colonic irrigation, and when the undigested food comes down that water pipe it does make you think. So it does seem we do eat with our eyes and not our stomach's.

Creative Visualisation

If you have never the heard term before it might be something worth trying as an aid to weight loss that doesn't mean to say that it is some sort of magic bullet but merely something you can try after all as the saying goes nothing ventured nothing gained.

The best way to do this is when you're on your own in a quiet place with no distractions at all call it creative visualisation with a bit of meditation thrown in, so the thing to do is think of the way that you would like to be and look in the future say have a timeline of about six months to a year and then imagine yourself in six months and then again in twelve months, see yourself in certain positions or places say for instance walking through a park with a T-shirt on and pair of shorts, it's a nice warm day and you're walking along having lost quite a bit of weight and feeling very confident.

Or you could imagine yourself being at the swimming baths this would be quite a good technique to use because you're more likely to feel more vulnerable with less on, or to go one stage further you can imagine yourself being on the beach surrounded by people feeling confident due to the fact of how much weight you've lost.

This is something well worth trying because you have nothing to lose, quite a few months ago now I read a book called Psycho cybernetics by someone called Maxwell Maltz, they did quite a interesting experiment in that book, they took two basketball teams and one team did ordinary practice as usual and the other team just used visualisation techniques and imagined, themselves doing practice instead of actually physically doing it, when the two teams came to play game of basketball, the visualisation team were as good as the team who practised in reality.

Fear Of Thin: Is It Keeping You Fat?

Article about how your subconcious may keep you fat.

"Here are some tough but highly useful comments on why you may be having a terrible time losing weight. This information has helped many of my clients make great progress on their weight loss journey.

If you are fat then you want to be that way. Well at least a part of you wants you to be fat. I know your Conscious Mind tells you to lose weight every moment of every day. But there is another part of you that truly wants and maybe even needs you to stay fat, and it has quite a bit of control over your eating behavior. That powerful, but usually hidden part is called the Unconscious Mind. Your Unconscious Mind wants you to keep the weight on and it clearly has more power over your life than you realize. And in addition to that, your Unconscious Mind has very good reasons for wanting you to stay fat.

Here are some examples of the Unconscious Mind and why it may want to keep you fat." Full Story Here

Are Salads Just For Summer

Salads tend to be something we associate with summer nothing like some iceberg lettuce on a hot day or some cool cucumber, but no reason why we can't eat them in winter, it's nice having some hot food when it's cold but salad is great no preparation whatsoever and very low in calories the one's I tend to eat have egg,cherry tomatoes, sliced new potatoes,lettuce,sliced cucumber.

A typical bought salad might be 250g in weight but about 90 calories which is nothing really when you compare it to some foods that you can buy look at the calorie content of some of the ready meals you can buy you might be surprised at what you read.

What I tend to do with salad is make salad kebabs using wholemeal pitta bread high in fibre and with the salad very filling so a great low fat low sugar lunch or tea which ever you prefer.

"I'm on a Diet"

How many times have we ourselves or have other people said that phrase, nothing wrong with saying it of course but lets look a little deeper look behind it's meaning, in the dictionary It means to lose weight, cut down the amount of calories we are eating, starve ones-self , and so on but is that really what we should be doing. My way of thinking about losing weight has shifted to more of I am eating healthier in order to maintain a constant more healthier weight over a long period of time, now how I eat has to be for the rest of my life, main reason being is it's far to easy to slip back into old eating habits once you feel your diet is over to me that more or less implies a temporary state of being it's as if your self talking this scenario " I am on diet now but will be able to eat other things as I wish later on"

Think about this the just one rule one sweet, one packet of crisps, one tube of pringles, one pint of lager that list goes on. The moral of the story is this think about how your eating now because it may affect the rest of your life.

Eat healthily for ever not for just one day.

Interactive Poll

Do you eat your five a day made up from fruit and vegetables

Most Days On Somedays On the odd day Not at all

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Smoothie's

Smoothies are a great aid in any weight loss program as are making your own juices from vegetables but that's another post so back to smoothie's, the skys really is the limit when making these great in the summer when it's hot, but that doesn't mean you can't still enjoy them at any time of the year really, one combination I tried was fresh orange juice, with ice cubes and apple sliced, I can't eat apples they make me go all cold so this was a great way to have the goodness of apples without eating them. Have a go at making one there lovely, from time to time I'll post some recipes here as I find them.

Social stresses, environment lead to overeating, expert says

"People unknowingly "booby-trap'' their own homes in a way that can lead to overeating, a nutritional expert who has conducted hundreds of food studies said yesterday.

Some people blame obesity on fast food, the government and food companies, but the food fight really begins at home, Brian Wansink told a joint meeting in Toronto of the Canadian Diabetes Association and the Canadian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism.The solution isn't concentration and willpower, he told more than 3,000 delegates".

Read More On Social stresses, environment lead to overeating, expert says

Weekly Weigh In

Hi there today is weigh in day something I look forward to in a kind of funny way, not knowing which way things will go at one time I used to be hopping on and off the scales every day at one one time,but now it's just going to be once a week.

What I tended to find was that my weight could be up one day then down the next, which is quite normal so now it's just once a week from now on besides it's more of a suprise not knowing how much you weigh if you lose some it's more of a buzz and keeps the momentum going, ok if you don't lose any one week just put it behind you and see what you can do, to try and correct it, one thing I have learned is find out as much as you can about how your mind and body work as regards food, I can say it's quite a education

Anyway here are the results of my weigh in 96.5kg which is real good as far as Im concerned.

Here is how it looks

Which Fruit Do You Eat ?

To get some interactivity going between the readers of this blog and myself, I would be interested to know what fruit people eat, I tend to eat quite a variety of fruit, only the other day someone mentioned that they ate star fruit which was a new one on me.

One of my favourite fruits is the banana bursting full of goodness 108 calories per banana, rich in potassium which is known to lower blood pressure,bananas also contain something called pectin which may help if your constipated. Why not have a banana sandwich I do use wholemeal bread with low fat spread voila one healthy sandwich.

How Your Brain Makes You Fat

"The students in the combined grades 4, 5 and 6 cooking class at Ste Odile may not know it, but they're part of a grand experiment. They're participating in a pilot project, Les ateliers cinq épices, that sends dietitians to eight Montreal elementary schools. Their job: to teach kids how to cook foods that are lower in salt, fat and sugar than the highly processed snacks they're used to eating. Just as important is making sure that, as these youngsters bake yummy cookies and cut fruits and veggies into weird shapes, they enjoy their break from the regular classroom routine. As program director Manon Paquette puts it, "We're hoping to make healthy eating fun." The kids are, in effect, learning nutrition through stealth. And there's new evidence that they may even be rewiring their brains in the process.

Thanks to advances in neural imaging techniques, we can see the brain at work in a way that was not possible even a decade ago. And in light of mounting concerns about the increasing prevalence of obesity, this is good news".

How Your Brain Makes You Fat

Track Your Results

It would seem that the old fashioned way of doing things can have the desired effect, when I was younger and attended a training course, one trainer that comes to mind always kept saying this "write it down" it seems quite obvious at first, but recently a study was done on some obese subjects which involved 40 subjects and those people who made notes about how much exercise they did and calories consumed, lost 20 pounds which was more than there note taking counterparts, (source)
Here this end I created a table in word to track my results it is quite rewarding seeing how your progressing.

Sales of kale double as healthy eating soars

"Kale, a curly green-leafed relative of the cabbage, is being heralded as the latest superfood addition to the British diet, after a 122 per cent rise in sales over the past two years.As well as being a good natural source of folic acid for pregnant women, kale is a good source of lutein - a carotenoid with powerful antioxidant properties important for maintaining healthy vision". more on kale

Chew Some Raw Garlic

Do you want to keep people at bay ones who irritate you then chew some garlic but seriously, if you do it could lower your cholesterol levels, according to a study done not to recently in Australia eating between between one and a half cloves of garlic makes a improvement of up to 9%, was there anything in those old vampire movies I wonder

Rhubarb and Health Benefits

A health reports says that rhubarb is good for cancer prevention, it would appear to have certain compounds within this plant called anthraquinones which work against the tumour depriving them of nourishment. Rhubarb is a good source of fibre, calcium, potassium and has cholesterol lowering benefits low in calories a hundred grams of rhubarb has only 7 calories. I would say best eaten without custard because of the sugar content plus you maybe diabetic

No breakfast, no problem

"Whatever you do, don't skip breakfast.Breakfast: "It's the most important meal of the day".Breakfast may not be the most important meal of the day after all, say researchers Such pronouncements carry the aura of nutritional religion: carved in stone, not to be questioned. But a few nutritionists and scientists are challenging this conventional wisdom"

more no breakfast no problem

E mail Subscriptions

As stated in a previous post e-mail subscriptions are now available to use for free no marketing etc, just new updates when I blog something new it does work,I have used one of my own e-mail addresses to try it and had a mail arrive today so its all ready to go.

Can AIDS help you lose weight ?

These people seem to think so :)

Funny Advert

Saw this and thought some people would like to see it made me laugh anyway

Weekly Weigh In

Hello readers and new readers well just done my weekly measurements and things are still changing and for the better it would seem, my stomach or tyre as I call it has shrunk a bit again this week and my weight has moved, a bit also now weighing in at 97.5kg so down another 0.5kg from last week. Things are still going in the right direction so far so good.

Here is how it looks

Foods and moods demystified

It has to be said sometimes that we often very rarely think about the connection between foods and our moods it doesn't really matter, whether you're feeling happy depressed, anxious, you may tend to think that you are just this way and think nothing else of it.

But what if all along you could have been eating the wrong foods which were in actual fact making you feel the way you are feeling or not as the case maybe.

The problem is these days that food is available in such abundance and packaged in so many different ways, we may or may not even realise what we are actually eating, such is the power of marketing these days everyone likes to tell you what you are eating is healthy, when nothing could be further from the truth let's take for instance ready meals the ones you can either cook in the oven or the microwave, these are a great time savers for busy people but the packaging tends to sell the product and sometimes the consumer may be misled as to what they are actually buying, it may say on it low-fat for instance but may have large quantities of salt and sugar to compensate for this so in actual fact you're not buying anything that is healthy at all far from it.

A study was done recently on television whereby two families swapped eating habits for a month, to see how it would affect them one family ate freshly prepared food while the other family ate supermarket ready meals, after the trial was over they were asked how they felt and also various medical tests were done to see how their health had changed during the trial period, the family that ate the ready meals whose health was checked before and after the experiment their health improved due to switching to fresh food, while the other family who switched to eating ready meals now had the problems of high blood pressure, raised levels of cholesterol slight liver damage due to the amount of fat in the diet, said they had no energy didn't feel like doing much at all, one of their sons wasn't able to do as much running as he could before and didn't feel too good at all.

So there is a direct link between how you're feeling and what you're eating hence the saying you are what you eat. Eating foods that contain refined sugar in them as well as, carbohydrates will tend to make you feel quite relaxed.

Here is a list of foods that will make you feel more up beat if you're feeling down Chicken, veal, low-fat cottage cheese, low-fat yoghurts, and beans, if however you're feeling quite a bit stressed eat some of the following ice cream, cake, bread, rice and potatoes. Its it's not a good idea to get into the habit of eating ice cream cake etc when you're trying to lose weight, but by reading this you will get a insight how certain foods can and do make you feel which in itself can lead to comfort eating at times which is something we want to avoid really if we are trying to lose weight.

Eat your Veggies

One of the main reasons for eating vegetables in your diet is they contain such a lot of goodness, what I am going to talk about in this post is the tomato, tomatoes contain something called lycopene there have been various studies around the world on this particular ingredient of the tomato and its properties for lowering risks of cancers is well documented this particular ingredient of the tomato works best for prostate, lung, and stomach cancers.

But there are other parts of the body where it can work as well lycopene also appears to protect both hearts and lungs against oxidative damage also, in one study, at a university in Toronto found that a couple of servings of tomato juice once every day for a week would itself stop some damage to certain proteins within the body, some other studies in Europe, tends to lend itself that it may stop the onset of a heart attack, so as you can see sometimes it pays to think about food that you're actually eating and putting in your body.

Vegetables have something in them known as the phytochemicals, these chemicals have brilliant antioxidant properties and prevent your body from getting various diseases this is also why it important to have plenty of vegetables in your diet because of the mineral content and also the properties within the food.

Today there has been a facility added so people can subscribe by email to new posts on the blog feel free to subscribe it's free no marketing no fluff just a mail telling you what's what on the blog.

Well another Friday comes and it's time to spill the beans on my weekly weigh in or have or haven't I lost any of my excess tyre hence the title, quite by coincidence it's my birthday today, odd how things fall sometimes but, none the less things are on the up no weight gain which is good and about 98kg now which is a improvement on last weeks weigh in. So things are moving slowly but steadily, here for the long road ahead and hoping to get where one is going in the end, have a nice day see you soon keep at it you will get there.

More exercise does nothing to stop obesity in youngsters, study finds

Extra play and less TV are not enough, results show

read more | digg story

How to think yourself Thin

This rather bold statement, might seem odd at first but really all I am stating, is the obvious and easiest route to lose weight, we all know that is not possible to lose weight by the power of thought, but we can harness the energy of our minds in order to make this task more easier when we are trying to lose weight.

Eat when you only need to eat, this statement may seem quite obvious at first and it is, the thing is this could you be one of these people that eats when they're watching television, how many of us have sat there with some snack that is loaded with sugar, or saturated fat such as crisps for example or Pringles, we tend to behave the same as if was at the cinema when were not really, and we might throw in a small tub of ice cream and or a bar of chocolate, this is what I tend to call not conscious eating but habitual eating this is just one example of how we eat in certain situations.

Forget eating a meal times this may sound crazy at first but in times gone past people would eat throughout the day rather than set mealtimes, now I don't know about you but sometimes I can get hungry before dinnertime or sometimes I go over the dinnertime threshold, listen to what your body tells you, because the thing is if you don't eat when you're hungry your metabolism will slow down and so will your weight loss, so the general advice is eat little often than you won't starve yourself and probably find you won't need to eat such a big evening meal.

If you find you have cravings for certain foods try this technique to knock them on the head what you have to do is think about the food that you're craving see in front of your face about 3 foot away, then whilst seeing the picture of the food in front of you, see a revolving wheel also at the same time imposed over it a bit like a tom bola, or spinning cylinder make it red in colour, then spin it backwards then make it blue in colour, then imagine that cylinder in your stomach spinning backwards, this should neutralise the craving for the food, try it on yourself.

If you're lacking motivation in your exercise regime think about this, when you're doing it is there is no excitement whilst doing it does it seem like a normal mundane task that you have to do in order to lose weight, well if it does think of it like this think of a time when you were doing something really enjoyable feel those feelings and get the picture in your mind of doing exercise at the same time, imagine you're really there doing the exercise and really enjoying it and knowing your going to be a lot healthier for it, in fact it might be best if you close your eyes when doing this, what this will do is attach that feeling when you do the exercise, and make it more enjoyable.

Are you getting enough iron

Having in iron in your diet is important, sometimes some of the reasons we tend to eat food is when things go wrong say for instance we might feel tired or lethargic, we know something is wrong but we don't quite know what it is say so in sheer desperation we may or may not eat some food after all this is what gives us energy in the first place.

As well as exercise and even though sometimes even after we have eaten the food we can still feel the same, and feel quite puzzled as to why this is it could be the food we are eating, that is causing the problem when you don't eat certain types of food your vitamins and minerals can become unbalanced in your body and this can cause cravings which will cause you to eat other foods which may or may not lead to weight gain, so now we can see why it's important that the food you eat contains the right minerals as well as vitamins also.

Iron in itself is a very important mineral if you don't have enough of it can lead to all sorts of problems, these being feeling tired, headaches, breathlessness, insomnia it plays a very important role in the body its main job is to transport oxygen around the body which goes to the vital organs and tissues, so if during your workout or general if you're feeling tired and lethargic and can't understand why this may be one of the things that you're lacking in your diet, so might be worthwhile checking to see if you eating enough of it.

Good sources of iron are chickpeas, branflakes, spinach, muesli, dried figs, vitamin C is very beneficial for the uptake of iron in your body so that these foods in order to get more benefit from this essential mineral vitamin C. sources are orange juice, green and red Peppers, tomatoes, broccoli and spinach.

As new research published reveals a link between poor diet and mental ill health,

There appears to be no respite in the pace or impact of the growing burden of mental ill health on individuals and the nation as a whole. One in four people is likely to experience a mental illness at some point in their life, and the costs of mental ill health to the UK economy are now approaching £100bn a year. read more.

The slow food eating experiment

A few posts back now I wrote a post about how we eat with our eyes, and not our stomachs so what I have decided to do is try eating this way and see what happens

I will report back in about roughly 2 weeks from now and let you know what has happened during this experimental time.

The Link Between Sugar and Obesity Is Getting More Attention

Obesity in the United States is a chronic health problem. According to the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) and The National Center For Health Statistics (NCHS) approximately 30% of the US population are obese. Read more...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Oslo teens who drank the most sugary soft drinks also had more mental health problems such as hyperactivity and distress, Norwegian researchers reported on Thursday.
Click to read more.......