Learning a Healthy Lifestyle

Balancing omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids in your diet is crucial. Too much omega 6 can lead to irregular heart beats, blood clots, and it can even promote certain types of cancer.

Ain't a pretty picture, is it? Just when you tought you had the whole healthy and bad fatty acid mumbo jumbo down, you read this. Even more discomforting might be the fact that omega 6 is extremely overabundant in the Western diet. The primary contributors of omega 6 to our diet are corn, sunflower oil and sesame oil, and as you may know, corn is king in the United States.

An excellent post further explaining the omega 6 issue was written by Lisa Nelson, registered dietitian, at eNutritionServices.

“You are what you eat." We hear this over and over again, but it doesn’t really register with most of us because it is so cliché. If this old adage is true, you might be thinking to yourself, “Hmmmm… Well, if I am what I eat, then today I am a bowl of cereal, some Rice-A-Roni, some chicken, and a sugar-free ice-cream sandwich!” This all sounds very cute, until you take a closer look at the back of the cereal box, or the Rice-a-Roni box, or the ice-cream sandwich package.

While reading the labels, you might discover that you are actually made of a lot of things that you might not expect, or may not even be able to pronounce. Now you might be saying something like, “Today I am high-fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, monosodium glutamate and aspartame!” Not so cute-sounding anymore, is it.

Not only are the ingredients we find in many foods unappetizing and hard to pronounce, but some of these things are the leading causes of obesity and disease today. Food industry leaders are always trying to find ways to sell more products, and make it more cheaply in order to raise profits, as all large companies are. While these ingredients might have been deemed “safe” by the FDA, they are not necessarily the healthiest, nor are they necessarily harmless.

Thankfully, these companies are required to list all the ingredients on the labels. If you take the time to make yourself aware of what’s in your food, you might find out that you are made of things that are a little less scary-sounding, not to mention your pants might start to fit a little better.

In understanding the power of tea, we must first start with green tea.

Many historians believe that green tea was first cultivated in China and India before spreading to other Asian countries like Thailand and Japan.

Dried and cured leaves Camellia sinensis are used to make green tea beverages and although there are so many ways to include green tea in your diet, it is historically used by letting the unique healing properties seep out into the boiling water. These healing properties are widely known and some scientific studies are helping to get green tea to be used in medical treatments.

Metroknow from AlmostFit made a blog post called Did Cereal Make Me Fat?. While reading this excellent article I immediately felt like saying something about the miracle food called oatmeal. Here's what I commented:

(...) For as far as my knowledge goes the ultimate breakfast cereal is … oatmeal. Really. It’s unbelievable stuff. Every day one bowl of oatmeal and you’re set for the day.
What I do is take one cup of oats and 2 cups of water and mix them in a pan. I cook it until it starts boiling a bit and then I quickly add some raisins while stirring a bit. Done! Of course there are many different ways to prepare oatmeal,... and some preparation methods take a bit more time. But if you want quality vs effort, this 2 minute preparation time is the way to go for a delicious bowl of healthy breakfast.

I started eating oatmeal about 2 years ago and still have them every morning. This grain is absolutely brilliant. Oatmeal has several health benefits. Most notable are it's positive effects on cholesterol, but it also helps fight cancer, diabetes and weight loss. Now here's the really cool part. When you read the oatmeal ingredients label, there's only one: Oatmeal! No added sugars, preservatives, coloratives and more-crap-atives. Just quality unprocessed and natural food --  which is the way I like it.

Kellie at Busymamas.com recently made a post saying raisins are bad for your teeth. This really surprised me. I always thought raisins were good for my teeth and I definitely did not think they were doing damage. I often eat a small bowl of natural yoghurt, mixed with raisins and sprinkled with almonds. Sweet, yet healthy... or so I thought?

I just saw the last episode of a 6 episode documentary about nutrition. I'm so mad for missing out on the first 5 episodes. However, nothing to worry about. These days you can find just about anything on the internet that's been on TV... and oh, look, here it is! I could also find some of the documentary's clips at YouTube.

The episode I saw was called "How to be the best". The purpose of this episode was to test the effects of nutrition on our daily performances, both mental and physical. There were 5 experiments with all kinds of test subjects and environments.

What is it that makes water so important? You have an idea? I'll tell you what I think. The most important thing about water is that we need it badly. So badly that if we don't drink it, we die. Long before you would die from starvation, you'd die from dehydration.

Now what does that tell us? It tells us only one thing. Water consumption is one of the most important parts of our diet. Our body needs, no craves water badly. When you don't drink enough water, your body will suffer. You probably already know that 70 % of our body is made of water. Sweating, breathing, living,... you lose water all the time!

Let's take a look at some of the main bodily functions in which water plays an important role and water's role in weight loss.

In an earlier post I talked about the importance of dietary fats in any (weight loss) diet plan. Not only do they supply energy to our body, they also play an important part in our nerve system, cell membranes, hormones and many other bodily functions.

In this article I’m going to talk about the 4 different kinds of dietary fats: saturated fat, polyunsaturated fat, monounsaturated fat and trans fatty acids. Some fats are good for you, while others are dangerous and should be avoided at all cost.

One interesting fact often overlooked is that fat in food always comes in a mixture. Some foods have more of the good fats while others have more of the bad fats. But there will always be a combination of the two. It's your task to learn which food products have more of the healthy dietary fat and consequently, avoid the bad foods.

In the last few decades the general opinion about dietary fats has been very negative. Food industry spends billions annually to make our food products low fat. As a result we now have light products, dangerous fat substitutes such as Olestra (Made by Proctor & Gamble, often to be found in potato chips), low fat diet books and diet pills making sure our body doesn’t absorb the essential fatty acids.