Sunday 26 February 2012

About The Mediterranean Diet

It's not at all profound but the Mediterranean Diet is now recognized as one of the healthiest in the world consisting as it does of large amounts of fresh fruit and vegetables, salads,nuts,seeds, omega-3 rich oily fish, olives and olive oil and being comparitively low in dairy products and red meats.
The people of the Mediterranean region, particuarly Greece and Spain, are very fortunate to live in an area where naturally healthy food is readily and cheaply available. The incidence of heart disease and cancer are lower here than anywhere else in the western world and experts now believe this is due in great part to what has become known as the Mediterranean diet.
Modern farming techniques and world wide transport has changed most peoples diets dramatically in the past centuary and it is now widely believed that such changes have had an exteremely detrimental effect on our health. Fortunately the impact of these developments has not had such a catastrophic effect in Mediterranean regions where to a large extent traditional diets are still followed. Of course with the advent of Globalization and MacDonalds! this is sadly changing. However, we can all learn a lot from what has become known as the Mediterranean diet and by adopting it, vastly improve our health and longevity.
The foods that grow natuarlly and abundantly in that region and have always formed a part of the local diet are as follows:- Olives, avocados, oranges, lemons, garlic, wild asparagus, walnuts, almonds, tomatoes, artichokes, figs, pomegranates, cherries, strawberries, grapes, plums, spinach, broad beans, peppers along with many other of the more common fruits and vegetables. These provide large amounts of vitamins, minerals and fibre along with a wide variety of antioxidants and phytochemicals, the importance of which scientists are only now beginning to recognize as they discover more and more healthful benefits of including these elements in our diet.
Historically alot of the milk was produced from goats and cheese made from goats and ewes milk. Very little red meat is eaten and a large majority of the protein is supplied by oily fish such as sardines, mackerel, tuna, sword fish, boquerones and anchovies.
The main oil used is olive, traditionally cold pressed virgin, and this is used not only for cooking and in salads but also for putting on bread in place of butter.
All these foods provide a wide variety of nutriments which have an astonishing array of claims for improving our health such as lowering cholesterol, improving our immune system which thus not only fights infections but also helps to prevent cancer, increasing our metabolism, improving insulin sensitivity and thus lessening the risk of diabetes. It really has never been so true that you are what you eat. Certainly since moving to Andalucia and adopting the Mediteranean diet myself I have never been so healthy or managed to maintain my ideal weight so easily.
Of coures, in addition to all the healthy components of this diet there is the added fact that honey is often used in place of sugar and little refined carbohydrates are eaten.
All in all most experts now agree that the Mediterranean diet is the optimum diet
Here's were you can see download my eBook and several free bonuses.

My New Challenge: The Get Lean Program by Belinda Benn

I bought Belinda Benn’s Get Lean Program in January while I was doing my 5-week-detox challenge with USANA programme RESET. I felt inspired by Belinda’s story and felt it was the right workout program for me.

I took a few weeks to study and plan how I was going to complete this new challenge. RESET for 5 weeks gave me an excellent base to lose weight and now I am ready not just to lose weight but to also to shape the body I want.

Get Lean Program takes 12 weeks, Belinda says it takes 21 days to stick to a new habit and she recommends 110% effort and full commitment particularly for the first 3 weeks. So for me it made sense to have a break between RESET and Get Lean Program during the school February half-term.

When I came back from my holiday, although I had a great time...I indulged too much & didn’t do much exercise: the result I picked up some weight!! This is something I need to deal with and not beat myself up for it...each time I will go on holiday and unless it is one of my favourite Thalassotherapy Holidays I am bound to come back with a few kilos as extra luggage! It actually makes me more determined to re-focus.

My weight goal is still to be down to 60 kg by the end of June 2012. Although this new challenge is no longer just about losing weight, I am using 60 kg because that’s what I weighed when I was 25, fit & healthy. It is symbolic for me because I was not really living a healthy lifestyle at that time except working out 2 hours a day, but what strike me is that it is the only time in my life I didn’t care if someone took a picture of me! If I manage to regain this attitude, I will have achieved my overall goal that is feeling good about myself inside and outside... 

I am feeling very confident because in fact I only need to lose approximately 1.5 kg each month which is not a lot, but my fitness & physical goals are the most challenging & exciting!! I have 4 specific goals: dramatically improve the shape of my triceps and abdominals, reduce the appearance of cellulite. Finally, I want to be able to do more (FULL) press-ups than my husband... considering I am currently able to do only 2 or 3 full press-ups before collapsing!!

Today is Sunday and I am on Day 5 of this 12-week program and it should take me until the middle of May 2012.  Today’s workout tested my ability to do tricep bench dips and push-ups...perfect for my goals:
68kg (I am 2 kg behind, I need to be approximately 64.5kg by the end of March 2012)
Measurements: Waist 33”, chest 36”, hips 39”, Thighs 24” right & 23.5” left, bicep 13”
2/3 full press-ups maximum and a total of 34 knee press-ups within 3 sets
33 tricep bench dips
30 second lasting plank

For my abdominal goal, I am combining the normal 6 weeks Get Lean Workout Program with Belinda’s free bonus Breakthrough Abs 12-week-program.

After starting Belinda’s Get Lean Program for now a few 5 days, these would be my recommendations:
1.       1. Get organised and make sure you nutrition program is manageable, so you can easily have your food weekly shopping ready the day you start (my food weekly shopping and deliveries fall on a Tuesday, hence why I decided to start Get Lean Program on a Wednesday)

2.       2. I made lots of mistake at first on the correct portion of the recipes... I sometimes forgot to divide between 4 & 6: as a result I probably eat too much... no wonder why I didn’t feel hungry at all: now I make sure that I note the portion for 1 person on each recipe.

3.       3. I have tried many diet plans before that failed because I had to cook 2 different meals in the evening and at the weekend and it was too much for me to stick with. I have tested some of the evening meals on my husband & kids and I had fantastic feedback: they all said the meals were tasty which is great for me, easier to cook for all!! So from now on, all family meals are from Belinda’s Benn Get Lean Nutrition Program. I just make sure my portions are the right ones. So, if you also have to cook for others do test the reactions: at the end of the day, you will help others to eat a more balanced and nutritious (low glycemic) diet!

4.      4. I have exercised before at a gym and in specific exercise workout sessions, so it is easy for me to follow the instructions of the Get Lean Workout Program e-books. If you haven’t, it is worth investing joining a gym for the first month at least or paying a few personal training sessions with someone who can go through the exercises and make sure you are doing them correctly.

Saturday 25 February 2012

Using NLP To Help You Lose Weight

Losing weight is as much of a mental battle as it is a physical challenge. Lack of belief or lack of motivation can often be what stops people from being successful with dieting. Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) is a technique of re-framing negative thought patterns and programming the subconscious mind to empower you to take positive actions.
To successfully apply NLP for weight loss, you firstly need to identify the negative thought patterns you have that are preventing your weight loss quest from being successful. Perhaps you have thoughts like “I’ve always been fat, therefore I always will be”, or “losing weight is hard”.
When you have identified the negative thought patterns that are holding you back, you can use NLP to reprogramme them. If you have been thinking in this way for a long time, your beliefs will have become ingrained in your subconscious mind. If this happens, your subconscious will ensure that the way you act is in alignment with these negative beliefs.
When you re-train the subconscious to believe that you are losing weight successfully, it will do everything it can to make sure your actions reflect this.
Here is a brief summary of the benefits of using NLP for weight loss:
  • Re-trains your subconscious and changes your beliefs about food and exercise
  • Changes the way you think about yourself
  • Identifies and eliminates the fears that are holding you back
  • Can help you change your habits and eliminate problem foods from your diet
  • Triggers long-term lifestyle changes rather than a short-term fix
NLP Techniques

NLP for weight loss can be used to help you control your food intake. Many people have unhelpful unconscious thought patterns that cause them to eat irresponsibly.
Without knowing, many people associate eating fatty foods with pleasure, or as a way to escape stress. Being as these thought patterns operate almost on auto-pilot, many people do not stop to think about whether eating what they are about to eat is really a good idea.
NLP can change these associations so that the thought of eating unhealthy foods would fill you with negative feelings, while the thought of eating healthy foods would make you feel good.
Here is an example of an NLP technique that can change the associations you have with unhealthy food:
Firstly, visualize in your mind some of your favourite fatty snacks. Picture the image clearly in your mind. Next, relate this food to a disgusting image. Add a horrible image into your visualization such as you vomiting. To make the image worse, add a horrible smell and and a terrible taste to your visualization.
Visualize and imagine the nasty image, and the terrible taste and smell as intensely as you can. Do this a few times. Really experience how sick the image makes you feel.
After doing this a few times you will start to notice how that food is no longer attractive to you, and the thought of eating it makes you feel disgusted. This will compel you to avoid this food.
NLP is an indefensible tool to anybody who is trying to lose weight. Use it effectively and you can train yourself to exercise and eat healthily with ease.
There’s a fantastic FREE Video with sneaky mind tricks to help you lose weight using NLP by visiting

Thursday 23 February 2012

The Diet Solution Recipes: How to Make Your Own

Some people are intimidated by the idea of preparing healthy meals; so they either eat grilled chicken everyday, or they stick to theDiet Solution recipes listed on this site. Newsflash! These are not your only options for nutritious meals. Making your own healthy recipes is easier than you think. Simply start with the right ingredients and learn to channel your inner chef.

Choose Natural Ingredients

When you’re preparing your recipes, always use wholesome ingredients. With all of the different foods on the market, trying to determine what’s healthy and what’s not is kind of difficult. I have one rule that I follow – keep everything as natural as possible.
Natural foods include fresh produce, whole eggs, free-range poultry and lean meats. These foods are not processed and they do not contain trans-fats, preservatives or any of the other chemical additives that make them dangerous for human consumption.

Use Organic Fruits, Veggies and Meats Whenever Possible

Those of you who read my blog or follow the DSP program know where I stand with regard to organic foods. I choose organic meat, poultry and produce for my family because these foods don’t contain synthetic chemicals, sewer sludge or genetically engineered materials.
Besides, when I think about feeding my little one food that can potentially cause or contribute to life-altering conditions, it motivates me to buy organic every chance I get.
Despite what manufacturers say, your body was not designed to handle the toxins in processed foods.

Prepare Food Using the Right Kind of Oil

You’ll find a lot of recipes that require food to be sautéed, baked, fried or grilled. If you want to make your Diet Solution recipes as healthy as possible, forget about using shortening and vegetable oil. Instead, use olive oil, real butter or coconut oil–all organic of course. All of these oils are healthy and can add nutritional value to your meals.
Coconut oil is great for deep frying foods. Olive oil and real butter can be used for sautéing. If you try to deep fry your foods in olive oil or butter, you may set your kitchen on fire, so please, don’t do it! You can also use olive oil to coat your meats and vegetables before grilling or baking them.

Don’t Be Afraid to Experiment in the Kitchen

Recipes are not etched in concrete. You have every right to modify them by swapping out unhealthy ingredients for ingredients that are more nutritious. For instance, if you come across a recipe that calls for milk, you can make it healthier by replacing it with raw milk, almond milk, or coconut milk.
If you don’t like a particular food, or you want to give a recipe a different flavor, simply replace or eliminate the ingredients of your choice.  Also, don’t be afraid to get in the kitchen and use healthy ingredients to whip up a few original concoctions of your own. Chefs do it all the time. I’m definitely not a chef and I do it too.
Sometimes my self-created mixtures are a big hit and others times – not so much. The point is there are a lot of delicious, healthy recipes to be made; so get in that kitchen and start mixing! I’m always itching to try new foods. If you come up with a dish that you absolutely love, send me the recipe so I can taste test it.
You don’t have to deprive yourself of delicious meals to slim down with our Diet Solution recipes. Watch the video to find out some simple and basic ideas that are delicious and creative.  The Diet Solution Program will teach you how to eat hearty and still lose weight.

Monday 20 February 2012

Is Your Microwave Meddling With Your Hormones?

Do you store your food in plastic containers? Do you ever put plastic in the microwave? If so, think twice about it.
In the Your Plate, Your Fate series, you’ll learn about the dozens of chemicals found in our foods that mimic the hormone estrogen. These gender benders cause early sexual development in children, reproductive difficulties for adults, and they promote the growth and spread of cancer. And they’re quite common in plastic.
Researchers at Tufts Medical School were using plastic test tubes to store a line of estrogen sensitive breast cancer cells. That is, until they noticed the cells were multiplying wildly. Turns out the supposedly “inert” plastic test tubes were leaching a chemical that behaves just like estrogen.
When researchers at Dartmouth heated plastic wrap and vegetable oil in a microwave, they found the oil had “500,000 times the minimum amount of xenoestrogens needed to stimulate breast cancer cells…” Read that again if it didn’t sink in the first time.
The solution is simple. Use glass or ceramic to store your food. Never eat or drink anything that came into contact with hot plastic. Stay away from plastic water bottles (remember – they could have been heated in transit!). And avoid canned food, if possible. The inside of the cans are coated with plastic and the acid in the food breaks it down.
In the Your Plate, Your Fate series you’ll learn about the many other uninvited dinner guests that could be making you sick including:
  • The cookware that leaches known cancer-causers into your meals – and it’s found in more than 80% of all cookware sold!
  • The household staple that sucks up to 97% of the nutrients out of your food and a safe, time-saving alternative to choose
  • The only two brands of canned foods that don’t contain BPA – a powerful xenoestrogen associated with prostate cancer, breast cancer and even fertility problems
  • The family heirlooms that could be exposing you to dangerous levels of lead – a deadly metal that is high enough in 40% of Americans to significantly increase stroke and heart attack risk.

Sunday 19 February 2012

What is this Mysterious Mediterranean Diet?

There isn't really any one Mediterranean Diet! However, there's a whole swag of countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. The basic Mediterranean Diet has common characteristics even if the sourrounding countries differ in culture, language and recipes to some extent.
Predominately, the diet is made up of:
  • An extensive intake of fruits, vegetables, bread and cereals, potatoes, beans, nuts and seeds
  • olive oil is a source of mono-unsaturated fat - common to the Mediterranean area
  • some dairy products, fish and even poultry are consumed in sparing to moderate amounts, and some red meat(not much)
  • eggs are consumed in low to moderate amount say 1 to 4 eggs a week
  • fortunately wine is acceptable but in low quantities ie. 1 - 3 glasses per day
A good question to ask is - Does a Mediterranean-style diet follow American Heart Association dietary guidelines?
Mediterranean-style diets are often close to US dietary guidelines, but not exactly.
People who follow the average Mediterranean diet eat less saturated fat than those who eat the average American diet. In fact, saturated fat consumption is well within US dietary guidelines. More than half the fat calories in a Mediterranean diet come from mono-unsaturated fats (mainly from olive oil). Mono-unsaturated fat doesnt raise blood cholesterol levels the way saturated fat doe
The incidence of heart disease in Mediterranean countries is lower than in the United States. Death rates are lower, too. However, there are some who feel this may not be entirely due to the diet. Lifestyle factors (ie. more physical activity and extended social family support structures) may also play a part. At this stage this is just a theory. However the research tells all - the diet has existed for umpteen years.
If you would like further proof of the mediterranean diet benefits resulting from research and qualified researchers you could try visiting http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/348/26/2599 or http://my.webmd.com/content/article/67/80070.htm. Both of these sites give good food for thought(excuse the pun).
'Olive oil plays a central role, but it is not alone,' says Dimitrios Trichopoulos, MD, PhD, of Harvard School of Public Health.
'Its among the divine mix of several factors that, when used in combination, help provide strong evidence of something that is very important - eating the proper diet can significantly reduce your risk of early death.'
He and researchers from Greece studied some 22,000 adults, aged 20 to 86, from all regions of that country; most previous studies tracked only older people who were more likely to die during the study. The participants answered detailed questionnaires about their eating habits throughout the four-year study. Then they were rated on how closely they followed the key principles of the Mediterranean diet.
Sticking to the Mediterranean diet cut the risk of death from both heart disease and cancer. For every two points higher on this 0-to-9 scale - with top numbers going to those most closely following the Mediterranean diet - the death rate dropped by 25%.
The findings by Trichopoulos may also help explain why Asians, who typically use these other cooking oils, also have lower disease and death rates. Although they rarely use olive oil, they traditionally follow other principles of the Mediterranean diet - lots of produce, legumes, nuts, and minimally processed grains, with little saturated fat.
'The message remains the same, and is consistent with other findings: A diet lower in saturated fats and higher in monounsaturated fats, and potentially, polyunsaturates, will result in better health outcomes,' says Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, of Tufts University and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association.
'If the main message that Americans get is to just increase their olive or canola oil consumption, thats unfortunate because they will increase their caloric intake and they are already getting too many calories. What they need to do is eat more fruits, vegetables, and legumes and fewer foods rich in saturated fats.'
Some of this information has been referenced from The New England Journal of Medicine, June 26, 2003. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, MD, PhD, professor of epidemiology, Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, senior scientist and director, Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory, Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Researcher Center on Aging, Tufts University, Boston; spokeswoman, American Heart Association.
So in a nutshell, there is sound evidence that the Mediterranean Diet can help reduce heart disease, cancer, weight gain and of course reduce the risk of early death. However, it would be a mistake to think this outcome is based on the use of Olive Oil alone. The diet is diverse and allows for taste and creativity which is often lacking in most other diets. This alone warrants further investigation from those who seek a healthy, easy diet that has flavour and is fullfilling. Remember too that just as in all worthwhile diets, moderate level exercise should not be overlooked.
Publisher & author: Ray Darken. Ray has an indepth and long established background with the vitamins, minerals and health industry and has researched and experimented with many diets over a thirty year period. Ray is also the author of Safe and Easy Weightloss, a downloadable e-book based on the popular Mediterranean Diet. Here's were you can see download my eBook and several free bonuses.

Saturday 18 February 2012

Put An End To Comfort Eating With Hypnosis

If you’re reading this then you probably have a problem with comfort eating. Comfort eating is a short-term way of distracting ourselves from other stresses in life. Unfortunately though, comfort eating can become a dangerous behaviour pattern that can have bad effects on our health and cause us to pile on weight. Hypnosis is a form of therapy that has helped many people with comfort eating problems.
Comfort eating is perfectly normal. There’s nothing wrong with eating some of your favourite foods to feel better. But when you make this a regular occurrence, it can be very destructive.
Why Do We Comfort Eat?

The reason you may comfort eat is because it has become a long-term habit. You may well have developed a comfort eating habit as a means of taking attention away from other stresses in your life. In some cases, comfort eating can arise simple from boredom.
Regardless of why you started comfort eating, the reason why it is so difficult to stop is because it has become a deep habit. The more and more you repeat this type of behaviour, the more it becomes a natural way for you to act.
Why Comfort Eating Is Bad for You

Comfort eating usually involves the intake of high levels of sugar and carbohydrates. An overdose in these nutrients does not get you into a good state of mind.
With huge fluctuations in blood sugar levels and the guilt that comes with overeating, you’re most likely to experience negative emotions and mood swings. When you feel bad, it is much harder to make positive changes in your life.
To be able to make positive changes, you need to have a positive focus, which is hard to possess if you are filling your body with junk.
Hypnosis

Hypnosis deals with the mental side of making positive life changes. It can help to reduce the noise of the negative voice inside your head and replace it with a more positive voice that virtually forces you to make positive changes.
Contrary to what you may have been made to believe through television and movies, hypnosis is perfectly safe and cannot make you act against your will. It cannot implant new ideas into your head; it can simply enhance the positive values you already have that may have been suppressed.
How it Works:
Hypnosis works by feeding positive hypnotic suggestions into your subconscious mind. These messages are designed to supplement your desirable values to empower you to improve your judgement.
It can help your subconscious to distinguish between what is good for you and what is bad for you. While this may be obvious to your conscious mind, when your subconscious believes otherwise, it can be very hard to break bad habits as the subconscious will resist your attempts to make changes.
This is why hypnosis has been so effective for so many people, because it makes changes on such a deep level. By re-programming your subconscious to believe that comfort eating is destructive, your natural urge to binge eat will subside.
Then as your eating habits gradually change, the thought of eating comfort food will make you feel bad. The old feelings of comfort you got from eating junk food will be replaced with negative feelings which propel you to avoid them.
Summary:
  • We comfort eat to avoid negative feelings like stress and boredom
  • Repeated comfort eating turns into a natural habit
  • The more you comfort eat, the more the subconscious accepts it as regular behaviour
  • The more resistance to change you get from your subconscious, the harder it is to make positive changes
  • Hypnosis can teach the subconscious to associate comfort eating with negativity rather than pleasure
  • When the subconscious has been reprogrammed, there will be no resistance to making positive changes
There’s a fantastic FREE Video with sneaky mind tricks to help you lose weight using NLP / Hypnosis

Thursday 16 February 2012

Try a Wheat-Free Diet for Better Health

The gluten contained in wheat products can cause or contribute to digestive disorders and joint problems. If you suffer with these conditions, a wheat-free diet may be just what you need to relieve your uncomfortable symptoms. Need another reason to consider going wheatless? Kicking this food out of your eating plan can also help you drop those unwanted pounds (I thought that might get your attention).
Millet is commonly used as a wheat substitute for both gluten free and wheat free diets, as well as quinoa, brown rice, and sprouted grains.
A wheat-free diet is often confused with a gluten-free diet. Although wheat products contain gluten, these two types of diets are not the same thing. When you’re on a wheat-free diet, you simply eliminate all foods that contain wheat. When you follow a gluten-free diet, you not only give up wheat, you also eliminate barley and rye.

Digestive Problems and Wheat

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) can cause abdominal pain, bloating, gas, changes in bowel movements and cramping. People with IBS may be constipated one minute and have diarrhea the next. The urge to have a bowel movement can get so intense sometimes that it’s hard to control. Can you imagine being stuck in traffic feeling like this?
The symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome vary from person to person, and they can come and go. Gluten intolerance has been shown to produce or pronounce IBS symptoms. Since gluten is found in wheat, eliminating it from your diet can help reduce the symptoms.
You don’t have to have irritable bowel syndrome for wheat to cause digestive problems. When you eat wheat, it can clog up the intestines and make digestion difficult. A wheat-free diet can promote a healthy digestive tract by allowing food to flow through easier.

Go Wheatless and Drop a Few Pounds

Wheat is found in bread, pasta, baked goods, cereal, ice cream, gravies and other processed foods. These types of foods have no nutritional value and they make it hard for you to lose weight. On top of the empty calories you get when you load up on processed wheat products, you ingest all kinds of unhealthy chemical additives.
When you boot wheat out of your diet, there’s nothing left to eat but lean meats, fish, poultry, fruits, beans, nuts, legumes and vegetables. These foods are nutrient-dense and lower in calories than processed foods. When you opt for healthier foods, you automatically reduce your caloric intake, so you have an easier time slimming down.

Lose the Wheat to Reduce Joint Pain

Gluten can hinder your body’s natural defenses against joint pain caused by osteoporosis or osteoarthritis. If you have either of these conditions, a wheat-free diet may help reduce discomfort. Also, when you suffer from joint conditions, being overweight will amplify the pain. The weight loss you experience from a wheat-free diet will take some of the pressure off of your joints and help ease pain.
When you’ve been eating wheat all of your life, the thought of eliminating it from your diet can be scary. If going wheat-free is difficult for you, take small steps. Start off by cutting your intake by half. After you do this for a while, continue to reduce the amount of wheat you eat. Before you know it, you’ll be wheat-free and on the path to better health.
Want to get healthy, but don’t know where to begin? The Diet Solution Program can get you on the right path and keep you there. Our recipes are all friendly to a wheat-free diet, too.

Monday 13 February 2012

The One Food Babies Should Never Eat

Earlier this week, I let you in on one of the dirty secrets of the soy industry – the use of the dangerous chemical hexane in the extraction process. And if you think you’re not eating soy, you might be surprised. This cheap protein is packed into everything from “health food” bars, burritos and smoothies, to sauces, pizzas and other packaged foods.
And while these foods may send us to an early grave, where we really should be looking is the cradle.
In fact, baby food formulas made from soy (and most of them are) may be one of the worst things we can do for the long-term health of our babies and children.
And even if you do not have a baby, surely you have grandchildren, nieces, nephews or friends who need the information in this letter. We hope you’ll pass this along to those you care about.
Here are eight reasons why you should NEVER put a baby on soy infant formula:
1. Caustic Chemicals: Soy protein isolate is the primary ingredient in soy formulas. Unless it is listed as organic, this ingredient is treated with caustic hexane.
2. Exposure to GMOs: Almost all soy is genetically modified. But even if you choose organic soy formula (like Earth’s Best), the issues below still remain as health concerns.
3. Estrogen Exposure: It is estimated that infants fed exclusively soy-based formula receive an estrogen dose equivalent to five birth control pills, daily.
4. Proper Growth & Development: Soy is high anti-nutrients, known as phytates. These molecules actually block the uptake of essential minerals. For this reason, soy formulas have been known to cause a zinc deficiency in infants. Zinc is essential for normal growth and development.
5. Lower IQ: Soy formulas do not have lactose, which is broken down into glucose and galactose. Galactose is valuable for brain development. Anthropologists have demonstrated that the more intelligent species of mammals have greater amounts of lactose in their milk, and human milk contains one of the highest concentrations of lactose. Soy-based formulas contain table sugar and corn syrup instead.
6. Brain Function: Soy formulas lack cholesterol. This is a required ingredient for making myelin – the fatty sheath surrounding nerve fibers. Myelin makes it possible for nerves to carry information from one part of the brain or body to another.
7. Thyroid Function: Soy contains goitrogens. These are chemicals that can impair thyroid function. The thyroid affects weight, metabolism, mood and the functioning of other endocrine organs.
8. Exposure to Heavy Metals: The aluminum content of soy formula is 10 times greater than milk-based formula and 100 times greater than unprocessed milk. The toxic effects of aluminum range from kidney failure in infants to Alzheimer’s in adults.
When it comes to baby food, the breast is always the best (so long as mom is consuming a healthy diet).
If someone you love is feeding their baby soy formula, please pass this important information on. You just might save a life.
And speaking of the health of our little ones, in the Your Plate, Your Fate health transformation series you’ll learn:
  • Which toxic chemical increases a girl’s risk of developing breast cancer later in life by five times compared to girls with lower exposure
  • The common food preservative, when consumed during pregnancy can increase a child’s risk of brain tumor by two to three times, compared to children whose mothers ate none.
  • Why women getting just three grams of this fat each day reduced the risk of premature delivery by 33%
  • How children born to mothers who ate two grams of this fat every day during pregnancy and lactation, scored higher on IQ tests at age four than children whose mother’s ate none.
  • The type of baby food in which just one jar can expose a child to 100 times the EPA’s daily limit of dioxins – dangerous endocrine disrupting chemicals.
We hope you’ll pick up your copy of Your Plate, Your Fate today. This one-of-a-kind health transformation system will show you how to optimize your nutrient levels using the right cooking techniques… protect your DNA from the damage that speeds aging and encourages cancer… balance your blood sugar, while still enjoying decadent desserts… and even release fat stores and renew your vitality with the most powerful (and delicious!) detoxifying foods on the planet.

What is the RESET Maintain Phase:



Well done if you have finally reached you ideal weight. If you are like me and would rather not having to do it all again, the Maintain Phase is for you:

You continue to replace 1 out of 3 meals with a Nutrimeal shake and the 2 other meals need to be low-glycemic ones.



Continue to replace 1 snack with a USANA nutrition bar and the 2nd snack needs to be low-glycemic to.

Continue your workout program to a moderate level. Continue to drink a lot of still water and take USANA Essential or HealthPak supplements.

Transform Phase Week 5

Monday morning is weigh in: lost another 600grs... I was nervous as I thought I didn't do enough exercise during the week, but it was ok because I stuck with my healthy diet!

We are still snowed it today, so I am varying my workout: 40 minutes clearing the snow out of my drive!





Tuesday: It was still icy and too dangerous to jog outside, so reverted to the living and did 45 mins of Super Circuits by Winston Squire. This is perfect for beginners!



Wednesday: Again, no jogging possible today... I miss it a lot, I enjoyed working out outside! Back in my living room and did 45 minutes of ‘Danni- Sexy Legs Now’ by Danni Levy. Quite enjoyed it (but was not prepared you need a Swiss ball –which I did have- but could do similar exercise on the floor on the sofa)