End Winter Weight Gain With Healthy Snacking
Kathryn Martyn, M.NLP

It’s that time of year we all start thinking about putting on a healthy layer of fat, just like the hibernating bears. From a nip in the air to a massive snow and ice storm, there is a palpable difference in the air. We’ve generally accepted that it is nature’s way of helping us provide a little extra winter fat, storing up for the winter, just in case. But how long since you last had a food shortage or had to wait out the winter for your next meal?

This year can be different.

Today consider making one small change. When you make a small change, it is easier to handle, you are more likely to incorporate it into your daily life and you are more likely to succeed, than if you try to make a global change to your whole way of being.

Instead of taking something away, start by adding more fresh fruit and vegetables to your diet. Just for today, throw out your rules, if you typically follow a diet that forbids fruit or fresh vegetables because fresh foods are too important to miss. Fresh foods are sweet, satisfying and full of vitamins, minerals, bioflavonoids, and other things that your body requires for optimum health.

Choose a few you particularly enjoy. This time of year apples are great, citrus fruits, bananas are available year-round. Get some fresh fruits you like and start carrying a food sack everywhere you go. Try little packages of baby carrots, or cut up cauliflower and broccoli. A fellow I know always has a bagful of chopped cauliflower, carrots, and others vegis he munches on. That’s smart.

The idea with healthy snacking is that when hunger strikes (or what you think is hunger), no matter where you are you’ll now have healthy snacks handy. No more having to buy a candy bar because you’re famished. My choices for healthy snacks won’t suit everyone, but that’s fine. Choose other things that would work better for you. I enjoy things such as jerky, whole grain rolls or bagels, yogurts, and fresh fruits as I mentioned earlier. I almost always have an apple nearby.

The idea is that it’s not that you couldn’t wait, but what has forestalling your hunger done for you so far? It tends to set you up for later binging and out-of-control snacking. Eating a few healthy snacks during the day can end that pattern once and for all.

Here’s a plan: Think of one or two fresh foods you could carry in a big or small cooler and then do it. As I’m writing this I’m a little hungry and I’m starting to think about having a snack. I might eat an apple, a banana or some jerky because they are all within my immediate reach. That’s far better than not eating anything now, but instead deciding to “wait it out,” while I start thinking about cookies and cake and pizza and other fast foods I can grab on the way home.

Going all day in a hungry or denied state sets you up for late night binging and out-of-control snacking. You’ll never be able to make up for the earlier deprivation. Why bother. I’ve never met anyone yet who got fat from eating too much fruit, so be brave and give this idea a chance.

About the Author

Kathryn Martyn, Master NLP Practitioner, author of the free
e-book: Changing Beliefs, Your First Step to Permanent Weight
Loss, and owner of http://www.OneMoreBite-Weightloss.com

Get The Daily Bites: Inspirational Mini Lessons Using EFT and
NLP for Ending the Struggle with Weight Loss and Tackling any
Obstacles http://www.onemorebite-weightloss.com/getnews.html

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Eating Healthy Myths Destroyed
Dr. Jamie Fettig

All Refined Carbohydrates are Hazardous to Your Health. The average American eats over 300 pounds of sugars each year. Most of this is because of all the sugar that is added to the everyday foods most people eat. Sugars are refined carbohydrates include anything that ends in ose. Sucrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, dextrose, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and sugar all count as sugar. An easy way to remember this is anything that rhymes with gross.

I am not talking about sugar naturally found in fruits and other such sources. If nature put it there, it is usually fine. And again, how it affects you will depend more on you individually than the type of fruit itself. Yes, sugar is natural, but it is not fresh. And when you add it to another food, the other food is not pure either.

Refined carbohydrates also come in the form of grains and flours. Most pasta, bread, flour, and other grain-based products are refined, almost to the point of sugar, and to the point where the refined carbohydrates respond in the body the same way sugar does.

There are two big reasons why refined carbs and sugar are so bad, as well as hundreds of smaller reasons. The two big reasons are these:

1.Refined carbs and sugar have no vitamins, minerals, or anything else that is needed to operate and run a healthy body
2.Refined carbs and sugar cause blood sugar levels to be artificially raised and lead to all the problems that come with high blood sugar levels.

First, the refining process takes away all the vitamins and minerals that are naturally found in whatever plant is being refined. There is nothing left but pure carbohydrates.

Why are vitamins and minerals so important for you anyway? Let me give you a little example of why vitamins and minerals are so important. If you want to build a brick house, what do you need? Well, you need bricks and mortar, and wood, and windows and doors. You need some basic stuff to build that house. What if you dont have bricks, or mortar or windows or doors? How well do you think the house will function after you are done trying to build it? Not very well.

Vitamins, minerals and nutrients are like the bricks, mortar, windows, doors, wood, etc. of the house. They are the parts that your body uses to build you. If you dont give your body those key building blocks, things in your body are not going to work very well.

If you try to substitute cheap, not so good imitations, if you tried to build a brick house with a bunch of rocks, the house would not be as good. If you tried to use old, warped windows, the house would not function very well. If you used wood that had holes in it and was not complete, your house would not be very functional. For your body to continue to function at its best and do everything it used to, your body needs to continually be replacing the broken down worn out parts with new parts. And if the new parts, if the vitamins and minerals you give it are not whole, or not enough, your body is going to break down. If you give your body less wood than it needs, so you cannot finish the roof, you might be able to keep the wind out, but when it rains, you get wet.

The second reason refined carbohydrates are not good for you is that refined carbs drastically alter your blood sugar levels. What is the big deal with this? The easiest to show you is what happens to you after you eat. You get really tired and lethargic. You have trouble staying awake and you want to go to sleep. Guess what? The rest of your body is doing the same thing. Your cells are going into a sugar coma. Your mind, which controls everything, is also going to sleep on the job. Your brain is not doing everything it needs to do to keep you functioning properly. And if your brain is not doing its job properly, anything could be going wrong with your body, and often is.

Refined carbs/sugars also are one of the main contributing factors to heart disease and high cholesterol levels, as I showed you earlier.

About the Author

Go to http://www.HealthyEatingDiet.com to get the full e-course. Dr. Jamie wants to help give you Permanent Results with his “non-diet.” He is also giving you dozens of valuable free gifts to “ethically bribe” you into helping him make his new book, “The Ultimate Non-Diet” a #1 best seller. For details on the book go to: http://www.TheUltimateNonDiet.com/free

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Balanced Diet: Know More on Healthy and Nutritional Balanced Diet!
Jasdeep Singh

In this fast paced world, good nutrition may sound very simple but it is indeed really difficult to practice it. We eat too many processed foods or we tend to miss some meals. Some of us even smoke or drink alcohol. We also choose food on the basis of the taste. This not only make us overeat but also we ignore rich nutrient food items which we feel have bad taste. Foods lose substantial nutritional value during storage. There are many such factors which rob us of the nutrients we need for the maintenance of general well being.

We all talk of balanced diet, but how many of us really know the actual meaning of the balanced diet? Balanced Diet is a diet which has adequate amount of all nutrients required for healthy growth and activity. Sounds simple!

We have divided food into five groups on the basis of their nutrient content which are the most integral part of balanced diet.

Group One :

Wheat, Rice and Cereals. They are major sources of starch, carbohydrates, B-Vitamins and fibre.

Recommended Servings : 6-8 servings daily.

Group Two :

Dairy products. They are major sources of calcium , protein and vitamins (A,B2, B6, B12 and D).

Recommended Servings : 2-4 daily.

Group Three :

Fruits and Vegetables. They are major sources of vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates and fibre.

Recommended Servings : 4-6 daily.

Group Four :

Meat, Fish, Poultry and Pulses. They are major sources od protein, Vitamin B12 , zinc and iron.

Recommended Servings : 2-3 daily

Group Five :

Fats, Oils and Sugar. They are major source of energy in our body.

Recommended Servings: Should be barely adequate.

Recommended servings of each group daily comprises a balanced. Now does it still look simple? To make it worse, our hectic life schedules make it more difficult for us to achieve this goal. Hence it has become a challenge now. We cant ignore this vital part of our life too. So we should better gear up for it!

Random Tip: Eating fruits increases your immunity against the development of age-related maculopathy and eye diseases.

About the Author

About the Author: Jasdeep Singh

For http://weightloss-health.com/ your complete and most comprehensive family guide on Health.

Also get free sample low carb recipes at http://weightloss-health.com/low_carb_recipes.htm

Tags: Author, B Vitamins, Bad Taste, Balanced Diet, dairy products;, Diet Group, Drink Alcohol, energy;, Fast Paced World, Fats Oils, Food Items, food;, Fruits And Vegetables, Fruits Vegetables, Good Nutrition, Hectic Life, Nutrient Content, nutrient food items, Nutritional Value, Processed Foods, Source Of Energy, Sources Of Calcium, Sources Of Starch, Vitamin B12, Vitamins Minerals —

Achieving Youthful Healthy Skin with Vitamins A, C and E
Charlene J. Nuble

We all want healthy skin. While the main reasons for pursuing healthy skin tend to be purely shallow and cosmetic in nature, healthy skin is beautiful and keeps us looking younger than our years and there are actually some practical health benefits to maintaining the good health for our skin. The purpose of the skin is to act as a barrier. It serves to prevent bacteria, viruses and other contaminants from entering the body and causing infection, illness and disease. There are many vitamins and minerals that help to keep skin healthy and thus be able to serve its vital role in the protection of the body.

Antioxidant vitamins such as Vitamin A, Vitamin C and Vitamin E are very important to healthy skin because it is these vitamins that share in the responsibility of controlling the damage that free radicals byproducts of energy production within the body and of environmental contaminants such as air pollution produce. Among the several types of damage done by free radicals is the destruction of collagen and elastin which are fibers that support the skin and keeps it looking supple. As these are damaged wrinkles and a lack of that youthful firmness can occur. Vitamin C also plays a part in the production of collagen making it essential to the function and look of the skin. Recent studies have found that Vitamin C and E used together may help to repair sun-damaged skin.

Vitamin A has its own important role in skin health and beauty in addition to its anti-oxidant properties. In terms of diet even small deficiencies can negatively affect the skin causing flakiness and dryness. Dryness can make lines and wrinkles that are much more apparent. Its primary use however, is as a topical solution for the treatment of severe acne and the reduction of lines and wrinkles themselves. Recent research has showed that a topical solution that contains both Vitamin A and Vitamin C can in some cases reverse the damage done by the aging process and by sun-damage.

Deficiencies in the Vitamin B complex can leave the skin prone to cracking, bleeding and dangerous skin lesions that allow all kinds of bacteria, viruses and other contaminants to easily enter the body. But in terms of strictly cosmetic concerns even a little shortage of the Vitamin B complex can result in scaly and poorly textured skin. Topical preparations have been found to play an important role in the hydrating of skin cells leading to noticeably firmer and healthier looking skin.

Vitamin K has been found to relieve those awful dark circles under the eyes. Some research has found that creams made up of both Vitamin K and Vitamin A are more effective than those that just contain Vitamin K but researchers are still following up on these results.

Minerals important to the look and to the health of the skin include selenium, copper and zinc. Selenium whether used as a topical solution or taken in the form of a dietary supplement is thought to play a big role in the prevention of skin cancer. Copper, zinc and Vitamin C work together to form elastin which helps to support skin keeping it firm and healthy.

Topical solutions and dietary supplements can help to keep the skin healthy and youthful in appearance. However, it is important to recognize that these are powerful substances and using them within the standard guidelines of dosage is essential to good health. There is such a thing as too much of abusing such natural healing powers which could then result to a not so pretty sight. But when used correctly however, your skin can look better than ever.

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About the Author

Charlene J. Nuble 2005. For up to date links and information about Vitamins, please go to: http://vitamins.besthealthlink.net/ or for updated links and information on all health related topics, go to: http://www.besthealthlink.net/

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