There have been conflicting reports on how Alcohol can help you or hinder you when it comes to losing weight. The age old concern is that beer makes you put on weight and creates the legendary “beer belly” appearance.  Well recent research shows that beer does in fact, have no direct effect on your stomach fat and enjoying a pint in the evening will not lead to the middle age bulge commonly associated with drinking. However, it has been shown that drinking does “numb” the stomach so that you have more difficulty determining how full you are. This leads to over indulgence when it comes to food whilst drinking and many people will consume a great deal of snacks and fatty foods while drinking as a result.

It has also been reported that some drinks including red wine can help you to lose weight so how can you avoid over indulgence and the alcohol bulge and actually lose weight with alcohol instead? As with all things the key is moderation, a daily drink will promote a healthy weight loss whereas binge drinking and constant alcohol abuse will lead to fatty stomachs and severely ill livers.

Okay, so we don’t all have the time or the funds to buy low fat produce or eat fresh and lets face it, some of us out there love meat and just don’t want to let it go. You don’t need to cut out the things you love to get your diet into shape. it’s all about moderation, not saying goodbye to cream and candy entirely. They say you can have takeout and fast food as a part of your healthy diet. Of course you can, once in a while. Just don’t have it too frequently and make sure your system has time to recover!

If you are enjoying your favorite foods you can do some small things to help cut the fat from your diet a little bit more in addition to alternative cooking methods.

1. Buy back bacon and trim the fatty edge from the bacon before cooking. If you buy streaky bacon it can be a little cheaper but you are buying mostly fat, not meat.

2. Switch whole milk for skimmed milk. If you can’t make that jump right away, try semi skimmed first.

3. Use sweeteners instead of sugar in teas and coffees. Cut it out altogether if you can. many people find coffee and tea tastes too bitter at first but when you get used to it, adding sugar starts to taste too sweet instead.

If you are having trouble getting enough fruit in your daily diet but you are still managing to squeeze in that all important breakfast meal then try adding fruit to your cereal. Adding freshly chopped chunks of banana to your cornflakes, sultanas to your Weetabix, or fresh chopped strawberries to your bran flakes. Almost any fruit can be added to your favourite breakfast cereal in the morning to get an extra portion of fruit into your day and help you on your way to the five a day target.

Make sure your cereal is a healthy cereal and not a sugar loaded one and then top it off with freshly chopped fruit to sweeten it up and help your healthy diet. If you don’t feel like cereal today, try fruit with natural yogurt instead as a sweet and delicious substitute to mix things up a little.

Doctors in the US and UK have stated that energy drinks should come with warnings. Energy drinks are becoming increasingly popular especially with young teens and students and can contain as much as14 times the amount of caffeine as a can of cola (that’s the equivalent of 7 cups of strong coffee).  The lack of regulations mean that while some drinks in the UK that contain more than 150mg of caffeine come with a label “high caffeine content” they do nothing in the US or UK to advise on the health dangers of a caffeine overdose or regular caffeine abuse.

Apparently, US researchers have nothing better to do than use hot cups of coffee to chat up girls and then record the results. Recent studies have shown (interestingly enough), that holding a nice hot cup of coffee or hot chocolate will make you much more friendly and trusting to strangers. In the study scientists tricked people into holding drinks and rating a fictional character’s “warmth” as well as comparing hot sensations against cold sensations to find out how selfish a person is. It was shown that people who held hot drinks liked the characters more and people who held hot pads accepted a gift for their friend instead of the people who held frozen pads who wanted a hot drink.

To be honest, if I was holding a frozen pad, I’d really want a hot drink too. Not because I’m selfish, but because my hands are really mighty cold!

Guava is another health food term that is thrown around a lot these days without us realizing

what it even looks like.

The main health benefits of eating plenty of fresh Guava in our diets include the treatment of Diarrhea, constipation, coughs, high blood pressure, scurvy (naturally) and it’s even good for the skin too. Apparently, Guava fruit contains more vitamin C in it than an orange does.

Guava fruit are green skinned, they are roundish (but a bit wobbly not a perfect round) and sometimes resemble a pear shape. The good stuff inside is a fleshy white to pink colour. You can now get many herbal teas and other health drinks that contain Guava but obviously, the best way to enjoy it’s health benefits is to nip over to a green grocers and get some fresh Guava fruit!

If you love the taste of a hot savoury cup of coffee in the morning but need to seriously cut down on your caffeine you can try out “No-Caff”, one of a large range of caffeine free savoury drinks designed to fill the coffee gap in our lives. Another great alternative is “Barley-Cup”.

These drinks are different from decaffeinated beverages because they are made entirely of alternative substances. That means they have no coffee in them whatsoever and are therefore completely 100% caffeine free. They do contain Chicory which is famous for it’s ability to enhance the flavour of coffee and as a result they still taste great in the morning as a coffee substitute and are perfect for people who cannot tolerate caffeine.

If you just can’t get enough Bacon and other fatty fried food in your diet and don’t want to give it up there is still a way you can cut down on the fat content. Throw away your old frying pan because you really don’t need it and doing so can help you cut down on fat in your food. Many food stuffs can be cooked in an alternative method that reduces the need for oil in cooking.

Bacon – Grill it instead, no need for extra oil and the excess fat will drain away to the grill. You can use a press grill too if you like that literally squeezes out yet more fat content.

Eggs – Poach them instead. You don’t need a special poachng pan, just get a pan of boiling water at least 2 inches deep and add a small touch of salt to stop the eggs sticking to the bottom. It works just as well and creates tastey eggs without the oil.

Burgers – Again, you can grill these instead using an oven grill or a press grill.

Scrambled Egg – Use the microwave, mix the eggs up and add milk according to your tastes. then place in a microwaveable bowl and zap it for 10 seconds (850W). Then fluff it up a bit with a fork and put it bak in for another 10 seconds. Keep doing that until it’s done. If you keep on fluffing it as it cooks you will get nice fluffy scrambled egg without the oil.

The Master Cleanse diet is something we hear a lot about with celebrities who cite their “secret” to a great body. What is the Master Cleanse diet? Well, the Master Cleanse diet is a type of intense detox diet that completely rids the body of harmful toxins by removing all contaminants.

The diet consists of only a homemade lemonade with added cayenne pepper and salt water to aid digestive movement at night. Because the diet removes solids you will find a dramatic weight loss also occurs during the diet but it is not permanent and the diet should not be used to lose weight. It is also a very dangerous diet so if you are considering using the Master Cleanse diet program make sure you talk to your doctor about it first.

Detox is short for detoxification and detox diets are becoming increasingly popular as our busy and hectic lives are causing us to be more careless with the pollutants in our bodies.

Many of the chemicals and toxins we ingest as a part of  our  daily lifestyle such as through junk food, water and polluted air can become deposited in the fat cells around our bodies. If your current diet is also lacking some nutrients it can hinder the process our body undergoes to naturally detoxify itself.

It is therefore a growing occurrence for some people to undergo an annual detox diet to clean up their body of these harmful toxins and refresh themselves. These detox diets can range in intensity and there are other methods as well such as detox pills. If you have been on a detox diet before please let us know why, how it felt during and after wards and what method you used.

« Older Posts — Newer Posts »