These seven rules are simple enough that most can follow them:

1. Avoid “Dieting”: By dieting, you’re setting yourself up to gain more weight than ever.
2. Avoid “Fat-Free”: Fat doesn’t make you fat; you need fat in your diet to help you process certain nutrients.
3. Sit Down to Eat: Eating more slowly and savoring your meal boosts levels of two hormones that make you feel fuller.
4. Plan Your Meals and Snacks: Planning your responses to hunger helps you shed pounds faster.
5. Eat Protein: Those who eat moderately high levels of protein (including organic animal protein) are twice as likely to lose weight and keep it off as those who don’t eat much protein.
6. Move Around: “Fit people stay fit by having fun.”
7. Watch Less TV: Nearly 30 percent of people who watch more than four hours of TV a day have a BMI of 30 or higher.

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• The 8 essential sugars we need for our immune system, joints, tissue repair, and neurological health.
• The unique polysaccharides that contain immunological intelligence and how to get them into your diet!
• How to nourish the crucial part of your cell that helps the body fight off infection, disease, and unwanted mutations.

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You do need a certain amount of healthy fat, while at the same time you’ll want to avoid the unhealthy varieties. The easiest way to accomplish this is to simply eliminate processed foods, which are high in all things detrimental to your health: sugar, carbs, and dangerous types of fats.

After that, these tips can help ensure you’re eating the right fats for your health:

Use organic butter made from raw grass-fed milk instead of margarines and vegetable oil spreads. Butter is a healthy whole food that has received an unwarranted bad rap.
Use coconut oil for cooking. It is far superior to any other cooking oil and is loaded with health benefits. (Remember that olive oil should be used COLD, drizzled over salad or fish, for example, not to cook with.)

To round out your healthy fat intake, be sure to eat raw fats, such as those from avocados, raw dairy products, and olive oil, and also take a high-quality source of animal-based omega-3 fat, such as krill oil.

Sources of healthy fats include:

Olives and Olive oil
Raw Nuts, such as, almonds or pecans
Grass fed meats
Coconuts and coconut oil
Organic pastured egg yolks
Palm oil
Butter made from raw grass-fed organic milk
Avocados
Unheated organic nut oils

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Dr. Joseph Mercola, a leading expert in natural health, explains what Nutritional Typing is and how it can help you achieve optimal health.

Our body responds uniquely to food — your fuel — based on your genetics, biochemical makeup, family history, and your own interaction with your environment. That’s why you will advance your health (and looks) by discerning your Nutritional Type .

The science of Nutritional Typing is the only system that customizes nutrition based on the way your body reacts to food. Your Nutritional Type determines your individual nutritional requirements and dictates your individual responses to what you eat and drink.

Foods and individual nutrients do not behave the same way in two people with different Nutritional Types.

That certainly explains why some healthy foods that make other people energetic (and slim) might make you unhealthy, sluggish, bloated, and heavier. And why, no matter how much you try to stick to foods you’ve been told are ‘healthy’, or even organic, you may still not feel as good as you’d like to.

There is a reason for this. It’s the result of a giant factor outside your control — your metabolism.

Then, when you factor in environmental stresses that can cause changes in your metabolism and temporarily override your genetics, your personal ‘Mission Control’ loses control — unless you know your Nutritional Type .

However, once you discern your  Nutritional Type , and understand your own unique characteristics, you will start choosing foods that move you away from weight  issues, disease, accelerated aging… and towards optimal health and your naturally ideal weight.

Nutritional Typing will teach you which foods you are designed to eat and the ideal proportions of the types of nutrients you require, whether you are a ‘Carb’, a ‘Protein’, or a ‘Mixed’ type.

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Seems like when we were kids, we were constantly reminded that we should all remember to take our  daily vitamins , eat the right nutritious food, avoid junk foods and fatty foods, make sure that we drink at least eight glasses of water each and everyday  and make sure that we get some form of physical exercise .  Following all of these principles constitutes to what is considered as proper nutrition, but how can you really be healthy?  How can you be assured that your daily food intake is meeting your daily nutritional needs?

Proper nutrition is a key factor when people are attempting to lose body fats, firm up their bodies or to improve their physique. Aside from water, protein is the most prevalent material in the body. Good sources of protein include fish, poultry, shellfish and cuts of lean meat.  Carbohydrates provide the body with the fuel that it needs for physical activity and they play an important part in a healthy diet.  Sweet potatoes, yams, brown rice and whole wheat pasta are all excellent sources of carbohydrates.  You must make sure that you get the proper balance between the different food groups if you really want to be healthy and physically strong.

Dieting has been the most popular choice for people to attain proper nutrition.  The reason for this is that people get to choose the right different combinations of foods, fruits and vegetables that works best for them.  Being on a diet not only controls your food intake, it makes you aware of the nutritional contents of the food that you are eating and that can help to keep you from gaining weight.  This awareness makes you more particular about your diet and the foods that you choose to eat.

By choosing to moderately take in healthy foods and not going on fad diets, you will not only be on the path to losing weight, you will also be on your way to a healthier mental and physical state of health. You must also use caution when beginning a healthy diet because it may not be an easy thing for you and it can sometimes cause more harm than good. In some cases, we acquire unexpected diseases associated with our diets because we dwell too much on them.  There are people who have developed anorexia from over -dieting and this is why we have to be careful.  It does not always prove to be a good idea to be so meticulous about what we eat or drink.

It is also very important to combine some sort of daily exercise routine with your healthy food intake program. But you must remember that it is not necessarily the only exercise program that works or is appropriate for you and your lifestyle. By now, I hope that you can see how important it is to have a balance in all these aspects because it is not always proper food intake or proper exercise by themselves that will help you to lose weight because they are dependent on each other to get the job done.

I hope that you enjoyed this article and if you would like some more great information on eating healthy, than please visit my eating healthy web site where you will find some great tips to help you live a long and healthy life.

source:here

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Dr. McDougall discusses the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other autoimmune diseases with a low-fat diet.

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Conventional advice has focused on low-fat diets for weight loss and heart disease prevention, but again and again, researchers are now confirming that refined carbohydrates from sugars and grains is the primary culprit behind skyrocketing obesity rates, along with related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Historical data also clearly shows that when indigenous cultures abandon their traditional diets for a Western style diet high in sugar and flour, they inevitably begin to suffer these health problems, even though they have been virtually nonexistent in their culture before.

In a recent study, researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Heart and Vascular Institute again confirmed this theory, when they compared the effects of two diets on vascular health; one low in fat, the other low in carbs. The study in question was presented at this year’s meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine in Denver, on June 3.

The study included a total of 46 men and women weighing on average 218 pounds. The six-month long weight loss program consisted of moderate aerobic exercise and strength training, and one of two diets, either:

Low-carb, high-fat: Less than 30 percent of calories from carbs (pastas, breads and sugary fruits), and up to 40 percent from fats (meat, dairy products, and nuts)
Low-fat, high-carb diet: Less than 30 percent of calories from fat, and 55 percent from carbs

The low-carb group on average shed 10 pounds in 45 days, while the low-fat group took 70 days to lose the same amount of weight. In terms of vascular health, the low-carb, high-fat dieters showed no harmful vascular changes, which is the primary reason for why so many are afraid of high-fat diets.

If you want to shed excess pounds or maintain an ideal weight, you need to:

+Severely restrict carbohydrates (sugars, fructose, and grains), and
+Increase healthy fat consumption

One of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to shift your diet away from processed foods toward a diet of whole (preferably organic) foods. By doing this, you automatically avoid VAST amounts of fructose, which is one of the top four sources of calories in the US. If you develop the habit of reading labels, you’ll find that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is in just about everything—including food items you’d never expect, such as diet foods, ‘enhanced’ water products, and even infant formulas!

You’ll also want to radically reduce the amount of refined grains in your diet, such as breakfast cereals, breads, bagels, waffles and so-forth, as these quickly break down to sugar, which will raise your insulin levels and cause insulin resistance. It’s important to remember that insulin resistance is the number one underlying factor of nearly every chronic disease known to man, including heart disease. Avoiding all types of grain-based processed goods will also automatically help you avoid health-harming trans fats, which commercially baked goods of all kinds are notoriously high in.

Keep in mind that you should NOT cut vegetable carbs from your diet.
On the contrary, you actually need to radically increase the amount of vegetables you eat since, by volume, the grains you need to trade out are denser than vegetables.

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Five diet mistakes that could interfere with getting the most out of your training time:

1. Drinking a Protein Shake Before a Workout: Protein is digested more slowly than carbs, so too much pre-workout can give you stomach cramps. Have them afterward instead.
2. Exercising on an Empty Stomach: This forces your body to break down its own muscle mass and convert it into blood sugar.
3. Overusing Energy Bars: Too many of these and you might “eat back” the calories you burned exercising.
4. Not Eating Enough “Good” Fat: The right kinds of fats are needed for your cells to heal and repair post workout.
5. Buying Into the Afterburn Myth: You will indeed burn more calories in the hours after a workout — but for most it amounts to just 50 additional calories burned, not enough for a calorie splurge.

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Eat at the magic hour: Have a snack that contains protein between 3 PM and 4 PM. It will boost your metabolism and balance your blood sugar.

Beef up on a belly-zapping hormone: Eat as close to zero grams of sugar as possible. This will keep your insulin levels low, and also keep your glucagon levels high. Glucagon, a hormone, helps keep your belly flat

Chew on this: Chewing prevents bloating. Chew food until it is like applesauce in your mouth. Digestion begins in the mouth, and better-digested food means less gas and bloating.

Size matters: Eating portion-controlled meals will reduce your abdominal flab

• Limit your fructose to less than 25 grams per day. Ideally, you’ll also want to limit the amount of fructose from fruit to 15 grams per day, as you’re likely consuming ‘hidden’ fructose if you eat even small amounts of processed foods or sweetened beverages
• Limit or eliminate all processed foods
• Eliminate all gluten, and highly allergenic foods from your diet
• Eat organic foods whenever possible, preferably locally-grown
• Eat at least one-third of your food uncooked (raw), or as much as you can manage
• Increase the amount of fresh vegetables in your diet
• Avoid artificial sweeteners of all kinds
• Swap all trans fats (vegetable oils, margarine etc.) for healthful fats like raw grass-fed organic butter or coconut oil
• To re-balance your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, take a high-quality omega-3 supplement, such as krill oil, and reduce your consumption of processed omega-6 fats from vegetable oils (trans fats)
• Drink plenty of pure water
• Optimize your vitamin D levels, either through appropriate sun exposure, a safe tanning bed, or a vitamin D3 supplement

 

 

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You can put your body in an undereating state by minimizing your food intake during the day to small, low glycemic, fast assimilating protein meals such as quality whey (every 3-5 hours), which could be served with (or substituted with) small servings of fruits and vegetables. Have your main meal at night.

Undereating has some notable advantages over complete fasting. It challenges your body similar to fasting – yielding a negative energy balance which increases your adaptability to hunger while promoting fat burning and tissue recycling. However unlike fasting, it allows you to nourish your body with protein and antioxidants, and you won’t feel the desire to eat as intensely as when you completely avoid food.

But whether you fast or undereat, do not chronically restrict your calories. Your hunger must be acute, not chronic. Treat yourself with sufficient food in your main evening meal to compensate for the energy and nutrients you spend during the day.

Probably the most intense way to improve your hunger durability is by exercising while fasting. This presents a double challenge to your body and it yields a stronger signal to adapt than fasting or exercise alone. Though exercise while fasting may initially affect your maximum performance, it will nevertheless come with an additional bonus.

A study published in the Journal of Physchology/November 2010 indicated that exercising while fasting increases the body’s metabolic adaptation efficiency to utilize energy, burn fat and deposit protein in the muscle – substantially more than when exercising after a meal. The researchers reported that the increased capacity to deposit protein in the muscle as observed in people who were exercising while fasting and then eating a post-exercise meal, is a result of increased insulin sensitivity and activation of the muscle mTOR (the mechanism that increases muscle protein synthesis).

Your body is inherently programmed to benefit from acute hunger (via periodic fasting or undereating) and even more so when exercising while fasting. This probably has to do with an early adaptation mechanism to hunger and hardship which evolved to support human survival during primordial times of food scarcity and intense hardship. Apparently, this primal evolutionary trait is still pertinent today and it potentially affects your physical shape.

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