HEALTH AND FITNESS - Five tips to avoid holiday weight gain - MALAYSIA

  

According to research, most people gain around one kilo a year in midlife, and the added bulk tends to arrive around holiday time.

 

Heftier people tend to gain even more -- 2.2 kilos -- and as most anyone knows, weight loss doesn't come easy. Your best approach: keep it off in the first place, and here's how.

 

 

1. Don't eat seconds, and keep the serving dish off the table.

According to Dr. Mache Seibel of the Huffington Post, keeping the serving trays in the kitchen can reduce your food intake by up to 29 percent.

 

 

2. Sleep

Research has linked sleep-deprived people with increased belly fat, compared to those who slumber for seven hours. But Dr. Seibel says don't overdo it: too much sleep, more than seven hours a night, can increased belly fat as well.

 

 

3. Skip the eggnog

While drinking alcohol is part of the merriment for a lot of us, avoid drinking your calories. Opt for red or mulled wine over white wine, beer, or spirits, advise British fitness trainers Shaun Petafi and Dean Connor, in a statement from Rippedtoshreds.co.uk. Red wine is packed with fewer empty calories and higher in flavonoids, polyphenols, and heart-protecting reservatrol. Frozen creamy drinks can have as many as 800 calories, while eggnog with a jigger of rum comes at more than 400 calories a glass.

 

 

4. Control your snacking

Avoid racking up extra calories with snacks, but if you must, opt for meat or cheese rather than cakes or biscuits, say Petafi and Connor. Also monitor your appetizers, which can add 1,000 extra calories to your meal, writes Seibel.

 

 

5. Go easy on the starches

Starchy foods such as breads, rice, pasta, cakes, potatoes and yams can cause insulin levels to spike, resulting in more fat storage, say Petafi and Connor. Opt for a second slice of turkey, but leave the stuffing alone. Or pile on the non-starchy vegetables, such as cabbage, kale, spinach, leeks, and broccoli.

HEALTH / DIET - Good foods to diet - ROMANIA

 What would you do to fit into the pattern of a star? Unfortunately, your body structure can not dictate it at birth. But in addition to the extra pounds you can fight. Here's what to include in the diet in order to reach the desired shapes! Diet can help you lose weight, but not neglecting exerciseit physically. Recent scientific studies have shown that the intake of calories is not necessarily higher in obese than persons of normal. What differs are energy losses and saith that fats are much lower in overweight.

Grapes give you energy
In place to kill time munching a packet of biscuitswhich definitely do yourself are doing well, eating grapes. They shall not be submitted as hard as pastry products and, in addition, give you energy as compared with activities you do during the day. The grapes are sweet, but as long as you don't exaggerate their consumption, they do offer a good tonus and successful hunger kidding. One hundred grams of grapes contain only 70 calories.

Weaken with potatoes
Potatoes are very good if you want to weaken. You capture this news? Well,No problem are potatoes, but the manner in which they are prepared. And just maybe, Without fries they are rich in fatand you see when getting on the scales. But if you do it in the oven or boiling anger, they are very good for your diet. Also, try not to combini with meat and bread. Potatoes contain only 97 calories.

For dessert, a chocolate pătrăţică
If you lust for sweet and not one can master with vegetables and fruit, 20 grams of black chocolate are a great way to pamper yourself generous. She will bring fewer calories than a serving of ice cream, cake or pudding. And to be complete, you tacâmul asezona with a natural fruit juice made in house.

Curds, source of protein
If it is made from skimmed cow's milk, fresh cheese is a good source of vitamins, calcium and protein. A serving of 100 grams contains 56 calories. You want to give a special flavor and taste delicious? When is it okay to a combini with fruits and vegetables, such as grapes, walnuts, roşia, cucumbers and peppers. Also, don't forget to expend two liters of water.

LIFE / FOOD - CANADA

The caveman diet: Meat-eaters love it, critics call it ‘a craze’

 

By Randy Shore, Vancouver SunJuly 13, 2012

 

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors thrived on a daily menu of whatever was at hand until the development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago.

Photograph by: Vancouver Sun , Handout

Fruits, nuts, grass and whatever grubs, insects or game you can kill with your hands or a rock.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors thrived on a daily menu of whatever was at hand until the development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, and a surprising number of dieters and fitness buffs are turning back their dietary clocks.

In a nutshell, the paleodiet is an attempt to approximate the caloric and nutritional intake that human beings evolved to eat, before we started to plant grain and legumes for their easy, abundant, but largely empty, calories. Or so the theory goes.

PHOTOS: CAVEMAN DIET--THE GOOD AND THE BAD

The modern menu includes grass-fed meats, fruits, cooked and raw vegetables, wild fish and unprocessed oils such as olive or avocado. Wheat, dairy and legumes, such as beans and peanuts, are not allowed because they are relatively recent additions to the human menu. Some versions forbid added salt. Most people limit or eliminate alcohol.

“It’s really popular, at least half the people at my gym are eating something like the caveman diet,” said Cassandra Kruger, a trainer at Momentum Fitness in Vancouver. “It’s in the same vein as the South Beach and Atkins diet in that they don’t include any refined carbohydrates, so no grains, no sugar, no flour and no processed foods.”

Some nutritionists warn that low-carb diets carry potential health hazards from kidney stones and low blood pressure to calcium deficiency and osteoporosis.

Ultralow carb diets induce ketosis, a state in which the body burns fat for energy. You will lose weight, but it is not without risk.

Warehouse manager Rahim Khan of Langley started on the paleodiet just before his 27th birthday. He weighed 250 pounds, heavy for his 5-foot-11 frame.

“Less than a year later I hit my optimal weight of 173 pounds,”said Khan, who lost weight even as he cut back on his workouts. “I used to be in the gym three or four days a week and sometimes for two hours, now it’s 30 minutes and I’m out.”

Khan, his wife Liz and their three children all follow the paleodiet at home. Exceptions have to be made when the kids visit their grandparents, Khan laughed.

“I was skeptical at first,” said Liz, who admits feeling sick and lethargic for the first two weeks after the change. “But I feel so much better now, I didn’t even know how lousy I felt before.”
The Khans eat grass-fed beef, pork and chicken, usually the fattiest cuts they can find. Wheat in all its forms has disappeared, along with soy and corn. Dairy is confined to butter and small amounts of aged cheese.

Fruits and vegetables make up the balance of the plate, which Rahim says he usually fills twice at supper time. When their personal workload gets heavy, the Khans will add a sweet potato with butter for extra energy.

“I like to just call it my lifestyle, it’s the most logical way to eat,” Rahim said. “What I do is based on the feedback my body gives. When I feel good I know I’m doing the right things.”

The cavemen diet is an attractive weight-management program, because it is naturally low in calories and you are generally encouraged to eat whenever you are hungry. But the paleolithic menu probably has the most traction with people who have gluten sensitivity or celiac disease.

“Just look at how many people are eliminating gluten from their diet,” Kruger said.
Indeed, gluten-free foods are among the fastest growing product classes at the grocery store. And theceliacscene.com lists dozens of restaurants across Metro Vancouver that offer gluten-free meals.
Chilliwack mom Lori Wedel made some paleolithic adjustments to her entire family’s diet to address her and her daughter Eva’s gluten sensitivity.

“When Eva was three or four we started noticing that she was having trouble with her digestion,” said Wedel, a community support worker.

Gluten sensitivity can cause symptoms including constipation, diarrhea and abdominal pain.
“We decided we needed to investigate what might be the problem and we started to do an elimination diet,” she recalled.
Eva showed no change when dairy was removed from the menu. “But when we got to gluten it was completely different and rapidly different,” she said. “Within a week we noticed big changes, some we didn’t expect.”

“We thought she was a typical four-year-old until we started changing her diet,” Wedel said. “She was a terror with concentration problems and aggression, but once we started removing gluten it changed altogether.”

Wedel’s own allergies to nuts and to seafood meant there were few processed foods in the house anyway, but even fewer when the family began to eliminate sugar, artificial colourings and gluten.
“The difference in Eva made it impossible to go back,” Wedel said. “We can’t eat another way.”
Rather than keeping abundant carbohydrates in their diet with gluten-free breads and pasta, the Wedels just eliminated bread and grain-based foods such as pasta. At $7 a loaf for gluten-free bread, it just didn’t make sense.

“We eat meat every day and a whack of vegetables, usually in a stir-fry,” she said. “We don’t follow the strict paleodiet, if we have sushi we eat the rice and sometimes we have quinoa.”

Even though the Wedels don’t consider themselves paleodieters, Eva likes to joke that she is a caveman child. Lori’s husband Will, an engineer with the City of Chilliwack, is a big fan of the hefty portions of meat, usually chicken, pork and grass-fed beef.

“For me the biggest change was just deciding that not every meal had to be like my mom taught me, meat, potatoes, grain, you don’t need those to live,” she said.

Wedel’s sister Brittany Eidsness, a registered holistic nutritionist, helped tweak the family’s menus.
When calories from wheat, rice, potatoes and refined sugar are eliminated from the diet, the ratio of fibre, vitamins, minerals and important nutrients per calorie consumed goes way up.

The exception is vitamin D, which hunter gatherers produced in great abundance because they lived outdoors and spent long hours walking and foraging.

“People have a hard time figuring out what to eat and this diet is healthy and very clear,” she said. “It removes all of the foods that cause us problems.”

Proponents of the caveman diet point out that so-called “diseases of civilization” — heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes — were not a problem to people who lived in the Paleolithic period, which ran from about 2.5 million years ago until farming took hold about 8,000 BCE.

“The paleodiet is naturally low-carb and focuses on clean protein sources like grass-fed beef, wild fish, naturally raised chicken and eggs,” said Eidsness. “Then you are going to have as many vegetables as you can possibly eat, with the possible exception of nightshade vegetables for people who are sensitive to them.”

Stricter paleodieters avoid eating members of the nightshade family, which includes peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and potatoes, in the belief that they cause loss of calcium and may trigger arthritis or autoimmune disease.
People transitioning to the caveman diet can expect a minor rebellion by their body. Many people experience lethargy, headaches and flu-like symptoms that Eidsness attributes to a withdrawal from the body’s addiction to sugar and carbohydrates.

Critics of the paleodiet trend point to a long list of incongruities, knowledge gaps about the true nature of man’s diet during the Paleolithic period.

A true paleolithic diet would probably include some wild game, tart berries, insects, roots and wild tubers, shellfish, rodents and the occasional cache of honey. But it would also vary enormously from north to south, coast to inland and continent to continent, ranging from a chimpanzee-like diet of fruits to a very fatty meat-based diet of seal and caribou consumed by Arctic peoples.
The truth is that defining a true paleolithic diet is next to impossible.

What we do know is that the abundant calories of cultivated grain gave rise to a massive human population boom and gave birth to permanent sedentary civilization, both of which roil unabated to this day.

In addition to the potential for health impacts from eating an ultra low-carb diet, a leading Canadian nutritionist warns that paleodieters often eat more meat than is healthy for them and the planet.

The environmental cost of a largely meat-based diet is probably the strongest argument against eating like a modern caveman, said David Jenkins, a professor of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Nutrition and Metabolism.

“We just can’t produce enough calories in meat protein and fat to feed the world’s human population, it’s not sustainable,” Jenkins said.

Widely accepted estimates suggest it takes 16 kilos of grain to produce one kilo of beef and at least 441 gallons of water.

“The [caveman diet] craze is interesting in that it focuses on increased fibre foods, but people get bored of fibre if you can’t have it as bread or pasta or rice,” Jenkins said. “These are the starchy staples that allowed us to multiply on the face of the planet.”

Caveman diet proponents claim that eating what they believe to be the human ancestral diet will reduce their risk of disease, pointing out that Paleolithic era people were not afflicted with today’s most common ailments, many of which are associated with obesity and old age.

That idea might just hold water.

Pre-agricultural humans did live long enough to suffer from diseases of age and there is evidence arthritis was common, though obesity, heart disease and diabetes were rare or entirely absent.
Jenkins is skeptical that such dramatic alterations in our modern diet are key to better health.
“The first step in adopting a paleolithic lifestyle would be to throw away your car keys and walk everywhere,” he said. “The diet we have adopted over the past 10,000 years suits our physiology just fine if we are exercising. The problem is we put all these starchy calories in our body and then try to burn them driving everywhere in our cars.”

rshore@vancouversun.com

HEALTHY DIETS - MALAYSIA

The Green way

By GAYATHRI NAIR

IT'S EASY: Green believes you can make a scrumptious meal that is healthy for you.

TO SOME of us, healthy eating is really just a myth.
Certain foodies don’t believe that cutting out fat, sweets, oil, butter, cheese, milk, cream will make a satisfying meal. And if it is not deep-fried with an amazing dipping sauce, it's just not food, right?
Well, think again. Chef Daniel Green believes you can make a scrumptious meal that is healthy for you. And he is an authority on this matter as the handsome chef has transformed himself from an overweight teenager to a model by changing his eating habits.
Unhappy with his weight as a teenager, Green started creating his own recipes by experimenting with food, flavours and spices. He decided to come up with a healthier way of preparing food using healthier ingredients without compromising its natural flavours and taste. And Green also believed in greens.
Green's philosophy is simple. You can still maintain the natural flavours of your favourite types of food by simply omitting ingredients that contain the most calories, thus leaving you with a much healthier alternative.
And obviously, he hit the right formula as he lost 65lbs adopting his new diet and has now kept it off for over 20 years.
So successful was his transformation, he modeled for about four years and worked with companies such as Gucci, Martini, British Airways, Hilton Hotels, Raddison Hotels, Vodaphone, Pizza Hut and Barclayard. He was also featured in two television commercials, one of them alongside Claudia Schiffer.
Green has written several books that have been sold worldwide: Green’s Cuisine, Green’s Green, Healthy Eating for Lower Cholesterol, World Dining for Life, Modern Dining for Life, and Healthy Dining for Life.

OIL-FREE: Green cooking the eggplant during his demo.

Green was present in Malaysia for a cooking demonstration, Kuali's Healthy Dining Workshop with Daniel Green, organised by Kuali recently.
He charmed the crowd and shared tips on creating some hearty and delicious meals using authentic, healthy ingredients.
Later the chef, who is quite the sight for sore eyes, sat down with Kuali for a quick chat.

Kuali: How and where did you first make your breakthrough as a celebrity chef?
Green: It didn't just happen overnight, of course. I had this passion for cooking food without fat and I lost weight from it. So I wanted to share it with the rest of the world. It happened very slowly, I had an opportunity to appear on the Food Network and later Good Food Magazine picked up my story. I really wanted to share and show people that food containing high percentage of fat doesn't necessarily make it tasty and flavourful.
What do you mean by taking out the fat?
To me if you eliminate butter, cream, cheese and deep-frying you got a really simple way of making anything healthier. But don't forget to indulge once in awhile. So what you can do is, stick to a healthier menu between Monday to Friday or Saturday, then take a day off and just go for it. It makes it a lot easier on your body and mind.
In your opinion, what would a healthy fast food restaurant serve (aside from Subway's menu)?
I've actually been trying to do that for about a decade now and I don't think people have gotten to doing something like that. Like, coming up with a wrap and go concept. Because you see every cuisine has something that tastes marvelous. There's Japanese, Thai, Indian etc. It's just a matter of extracting the bad, fatty bits and turning it into something wholesome. Maybe remove the mayonnaise and omit the deep-fried stuff. Something along those lines.

Green: 'To me if you eliminate butter, cream, cheese and deep-frying you got a really simple way of making anything healthier.'

Can you share a couple of alternative ingredients to make any meal healthier?
Well sure, for example, instead of full cream milk, you can opt for skim milk. And instead of Parmesan cheese, try mozzarella or feta cheese. These are the least fat containing cheese. And where you can use soy sauce, use that instead of salt. Oh and yes, sesame oil, use that. It brings out an amazing taste in some dishes.
What's the ideal healthy breakfast, lunch, dinner combo?
I must always have breakfast. It's a great form of energy to start the day off. I like to eat. So I make sure I have every meal, I never skip meals. They have to include lots of protein, such as fish and other types of seafood. If I want to have any type of poultry or meat, I make sure it comes from the healthier part of the animal. Just pick the right parts and you've got a great-tasting fillet mignon for example.
What do you eat when you travel?
Loads of stuff, really. Like in Hong Kong, there are these pancakes wrapped with duck skin and they are incredibly delicious. So, there's no way I'm not going to have that. If there's something authentic that looks delicious, I'm definitely going to try it. I don't deprive myself, of course. When I want to be bad, I am really bad!
What have you had while here in Malaysia?
Oh, the chili crab here is fantastic, even though its deep-fried, I had to have a taste of that! And I've had Nasi Goreng. But me being me, I'm constantly thinking of ways to make these stuff lighter and a little healthier but still keeping their flavours, of course. But there are some dishes you just can't change or you're going take out the authenticity from it.

HEALTHY COOKING: Green was present in Malaysia for a cooking demonstration organised by Kuali recently.

God forbid, what would you do if you ever gained back the pounds you've lost?
Ouch. No, I don't think I'll let myself get to that level. When I'm on holiday, I will let myself go and indulge. I make sure I don't go too far though and constantly have this thought in my head and stick to moderate amounts of everything. I've been able to keep the weight off for 20 years, so I'm pretty confident I'll be alright (chuckles).
Without the chef’s hat, who is Daniel Green?
Oh, someone who loves being in the plane, actually. So basically it is traveling and I'm glad they come hand in hand. Of course, I also love being with the family. It's always wonderful.

SALUD - IRLANDA

Dieting 'safe' for pregnant women

A study published in the British Medical Journal has found that dieting while pregnant can be beneficial. Photograph: PA Wire.

 

The common belief that pregnant women can eat for two has been scotched by research suggesting dieting during pregnancy can be beneficial.
Experts found that weight management was not only safe but could also reduce complications for pregnant women and be advantageous to the baby.

The risk of pre-eclampsia - which causes high blood pressure - diabetes and premature birth can all be reduced if the mother-to-be sticks to a healthy, calorie-controlled diet, the British Medical Journal study found.

In contrast, excessive weight gain during pregnancy was linked to a number of serious health problems.

In the UK, more than half of women of reproductive age are said to be overweight or obese, and across Europe and the US up to 40 per cent of women gain more than the recommended weight in pregnancy.

But the team of researchers from Queen Mary, University of London, who carried out the study found weight management interventions in pregnancy were effective in reducing weight gain in the mother.

Dietary intervention resulted in the largest average reduction in weight gain (almost 4kg) compared with 0.7kg for exercise and 1kg for a combination of the two.

Diet also offered the most benefit in preventing pregnancy complications, the study found.

Researchers concluded: “Dietary intervention is effective, safe and potentially cost effective and dominates physical activity-based intervention.” But experts at St Thomas’ Hospital in London suggested there was not yet sufficient evidence to support any particular intervention.

Lucilla Poston, director of the maternal and fetal research unit, and Lucy Chappell, clinical senior lecturer in maternal and fetal medicine, said it would be “premature” for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to reassess its guidelines, which do not advise regular weighing of pregnant women.

The researchers analysed the results of 44 randomised controlled trials involving more than 7,000 women.