Articles

The festive season is upon us and with it comes the challenge of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It’s a time of lots of eating opportunities with delicious meals, desserts and drinks and a time of less exercise. So how can you continue the healthy habits you have established and not let the bad habits creep in? For me, the holidays are no different than any other time of the year! It can be this easy for you too.

As we all know, good nutrition is an important component of a balanced healthy life, but we sometimes get lost as to what good nutrition is! The basics are easy, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, choose mostly low fat dairy and lean meat, don’t eat junk food excessively, but is that getting you where you want to go with your weight goals?

We are all aware that our modern Western diets and lifestyles are contributing to many diseases. The Western diet is typically high in animal fats and preservatives (specifically salt) and low fruit and vegetables and it is this food combination that has been shown to be responsible (in part) for the cause of chronic diseases and cancers.

‘Weight loss’ New Year’s resolutions are all too common, and unfortunately are often also broken by the first week of January! I think that it is great that people are trying to be healthier but I believe how many try to do it is what is causing the high ‘failure’ rate. When people go ‘on’ a (quick fix) diet they have often not made effective goals for their journey. Goals are the groundwork for the journey to health and often I find that when it is just based on a number it is easy for life to take over and old habits to creep back.

What is better than sitting in front of a blazing fire drinking a glass of red wine or whiskey? These seem to be common habits that start as the nights get colder. But are you aware of what you are doing to your body? Are you paying attention to how much you are drinking and how you are feeling in the morning? Let’s take a look at how we can enjoy some alcohol but not undo our health and wellness goals.

Do you love food, but also want to lose weight? You CAN eat delicious, satisfying food AND lose weight. Your meals do not need to be boring and you certainly can eat a decent amount of food. Most people will lose weight on a 1500kcal diet. Do you know how much food that is? Let’s take a look at a simple sample meal plan:

Climate change is the overall changes that are happening in our climate over a long period of time. This includes changes in temperature and the level of carbon dioxide (CO2), the changes in temperature and acidity of the oceans, the rising of the sea level and extreme weather conditions such as drought or flooding.

The human brain likes easy categorization, and in terms of health and specifically weight loss, we like knowing, ‘what is the best diet to follow?’ What did you do to lose weight?

What do you do when you are under stress? Most people find it difficult to continue with their healthy eating habits. They either eat to fill their emotional void or grab some fast food just because there is no time to prepare something healthy. But that’s not the only reason why weight gain is so prevalent during stressful times. The hormone that may be making life difficult for you is cortisol.

Humans have evolved to digest and utilize carbohydrates (or foods that convert into sugar in the body) as a form of energy. I believe that most people can eat carbohydrates, but the important point is which ones you eat as well as how much of them that you eat. Added sugar (or sucrose) is the form that you should take in the least. Although carbohydrates do convert into sugar, they bring a lot of other goodness to your diet such as vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, phytochemicals, and fiber, and this is not the case with added sugar.

Focussing on food quality is such an important part of health and healthy weight. Are you trying to lose weight by counting calories? Has this become your main focus? By moving away from calories and rather focusing on good quality food you will naturally eat less as this food will give your body exactly what it needs. Read here for more tips and ideas on how to make quality choices.

We’ve all heard it before: ‘You need to chew your food 20 times before you swallow’. Is this actually true, and if yes, why should we be chewing so much? If you look at some articles on the internet, the number of chews ranges from 20-50 per bite of food. Sounds great, but is it realistic?