Moving to Wordpress

It seemed silly of me to be maintaining a website in one place, and having a blog on Blogspot. So I decided to move operations over to my main domain.

I will keep this blog in place so that you can take advantage of the articles I've already written for you.

Click here to read newer articles over at Your New Body Shape

Eat Your Veggies

Are you eating enough vegetables? Probably not. And more importantly, are you eating the right vegetables?

Did you know, for example, that an onion contains high amounts of sugar? As do carrots. So as you sip onion soup or crunch on carrots at lunch time, you may not be doing yourself a big favor.

The veggies you should be eating in high quantity are broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and spinach.

Spinach is my fave, eaten raw in a salad with a splash of lemon juice to help my body absorb the nutrients packed into the leaves. I'll make a salad with almost half a pound of baby spinach, some grape tomatoes, olive oil and lemon juice.

Did you know: Though you shouldn't be drinking sodas, if you do, spinach eaten about 30 minutes before drinking a soda can help protect tooth enamel.

Broccoli possesses indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that rids your body of excess estrogen that may be contributing to belly fat. Eat it raw or lightly steamed for full nutritional benefit.

Cabbage also possesses I3C to help cut down belly fat, and works as a diuretic. Steamed spinach with a splash of olive oil, sea salt and pepper is a tasty addition to any meal, and will remove excess bloat from the body.

For diet plans and tasty recipes, check out The Diet Solution Program by Isabel De Los Rios. Try it for just $1!

What are antioxidants?

Antioxidants have been all the rage for quite some time now, but many people don't know exactly what they are. Antioxidants are substances or nutrients in our foods which can prevent or slow the oxidative damage to our body. When our body cells use oxygen (in almost everything we do each day), they naturally produce free radicals (by-products) which can cause damage. (Exercise is a good example of a healthy activity that naturally produces free radicals.) Antioxidants act as "free radical scavengers" and help prevent and repair damage done by these free radicals. Health problems such as heart disease, macular degeneration, diabetes, and cancer are all contributed by oxidative damage.

You can see how it's important for us to get these "free radical scavengers" into our bodies each day, especially if we have made exercise a part of our daily routine.

About Cholesterol

From Isabel De Los Rios, the creator of The Diet Solution Program, a healthy way to lose weight:

Just a few months ago, 2 good friends of mine called me with quite the concern:

"Isabel. Our daughter has just been diagnosed with high cholesterol. She's only 10. We stay away from whole eggs and she doesn't eat much red meat. How is that possible? "

Wow, 10 and high cholesterol already. That's pretty scary. Remember when the term "high cholesterol" was only used to describe your grandma and other old folk? (No offense granny). Well not anymore. Kids are being diagnosed with all sorts of things we once only considered "adult" conditions including high cholesterol, high triglycerides and diabetes.

So, first things first. How does anyone get high cholesterol? And how was I going to explain this to a 10 year old? Follow my little analogy....

Imagine we lived in a high crime city where criminals could be found on every street corner. In order to resolve the problem, the mayor decides to put a police officer on every street corner. Now, imagine that your friend comes to visit your city and says "Oh, I know why there is so much crime here. It is because there are police officers on each corner." Silly right? The reason why the officers were put there was because of the criminals, not the other way around!

Well, here is the mass cholesterol confusion.

The criminals are sugar and processed foods. The police officers are cholesterol.

If you eliminate the officers (cholesterol), the criminals (sugar and processed foods) continue to create damage, in this case, they are damaging your arteries. Cholesterol (police officer) is only there to help. It is coming to the rescue. So isn't it silly that people who need cholesterol to save them from more harm to their arteries are being put on cholesterol lowering drugs?

I know this is a lot to take in. So read the little story again if it still does not seem clear. The truth is, you need to wipe out the criminals, not reduce the police officers!

So now the question is, how can you keep the criminals at bay?

Stop eating an excessive amount of sugar and processed foods and adopt a healthy eating regimen that includes natural foods.

1. Include organic eggs, natural meat and poultry, veggies, fruits, raw nuts, coconut oil and olive oil into your daily eating regimen. Natural, natural, natural is the name of the game.

2. Reduce sugar drinks and drink water, water, water. Amazing things will happen once your body is hydrated (including regulating cholesterol).

3. Move it or lose it. Or in this case, move it to lose it. Exercise is one of the best ways to regulate your cholesterol levels. Even if it didn't affect your cholesterol, would there be anything to lose by trying? Oh yeah, FAT, I forgot.

Commit today to taking one step towards taking control of your cholesterol, your weight or your health and finally shoot down the criminals once and for all!

How Artificial Sweeteners are Making You FAT

In my practice as a nutritionist and personal trainer, new clients are always coming to me telling me they are doing everything they are “supposed” to be doing, but still, do not lose weight. Of course, this is frustrating. Losing weight is hard enough, and to change your eating habits and still see no results, that’s even more frustrating.

Why do these people not lose weight? If I had to pick the most common reason why most people’s efforts have proved no results, I would say it is the deception of artificial sweeteners and processed diet foods. Yes, you heard right. It is the diet coke, diet snacks, processed foods and artificial sweetener in your coffee that is keeping you fat.

How?

Artificial sweeteners overwhelm your liver

Your liver is your largest internal organ, and it’s responsible for an astonishing variety of life-sustaining and health-promoting tasks, including those that make healthy weight loss and weight management possible. Integral to countless metabolic processes, the liver supports the digestive system, controls blood sugar and regulates fat storage. One of your liver’s most important functions, and the most crucial to your weight loss, is chemically breaking down everything that enters your body, from healthy vegetables, to not so healthy fast food, from healthy water to not so healthy soda.

It’s your liver’s job to distinguish between the nutrients you need to absorb and the dangerous or unnecessary substances that must be filtered out of your bloodstream. But when the liver is clogged and overwhelmed with toxins, like artificial sweeteners, it can’t do a very effective job of processing nutrients and fats. If it can not process the nutrients and fats that your body needs, this will cause you to gain weight or will prevent you from losing weight.

Your liver also produces bile, a crucial substance for detoxifying our bodies. It is the job of bile to help our bodies break down the fats we need and to assimilate fat-soluble vitamins. But when our bile becomes overly congested with the toxins it’s trying to filter out, it simply can’t function properly. It becomes thick, viscous and highly inefficient in breaking down fats. The result: You are more likely to gain weight and to have a greater difficulty losing it. So the more toxic your body becomes, the more difficulty you’ll have losing weight and keeping it off because your liver just can not work properly to break down fat.

Are artificial sweeteners considered a toxin?

What qualifies something as a “toxin”? A toxin is anything that your body does not recognize as a natural food source. The reason why artificial sweeteners have “zero” calories is because your body does not recognize them as a food source. For example, the chemical process to make Splenda (sucralose) alters the chemical composition of the sugar so much that it is somehow converted to a completely different molecule than sugar. This type of “fake” sugar molecule does not occur in nature and therefore your body does not possess the ability to properly metabolize it. This is how the makers of Splenda claim that it has zero calories, because in theory it should not be digested or metabolized by the body (Although it has been shown that some people’s body do absorb up to 15% of the artificial sweeteners they ingest). So the more artificial sweeteners that you consume in one day, the more you are overwhelming your liver with toxins and the less able it is to do its job of processing fat. And what happens if the liver can’t do its job? You can’t lose weight or worse yet, you gain weight.

What if you don’t use artificial sweeteners? Don’t be fooled. Almost every diet product on the market has some kind of artificial sweetener added to it. Even some children’s snacks are now being made with sucralose (Splenda) and most flavored waters contain sucralose or aspartame.

Now add up how many things you eat in one day that contain some form of artificial sweetener. The list may be very long. How overwhelmed do you think your liver is? Does it have the ability to work properly? Even if you keep your calories at bay and only drink Diet Coke with your meals, will you truly get down to the weight that you want, and stay there? It has been in my experience that the answer is “no” and until you are ready to commit yourself to a healthy way of eating, weight loss will always be a constant struggle.

What else do sweeteners do?

Artificial Sweeteners increase appetite

Artificial sweeteners tell your taste buds that, “sweet stuff has arrived,” which to the brain means, “nutrition has arrived.” When artificial sweetened drink or food reaches the small intestine, the receptors find no nutrition. A message is then sent back to the brain saying, “We’ve been tricked-there’s no nutrition here.” The appestat (the part of your brain that triggers satiety) sends the message to “keep eating because we need nutrition to help process all this fake food and run your body.” So even after you eat a good portioned healthy meal (along with your diet coke) you still feel like your starving all day, or you become very hungry soon after. Your healthy eating efforts may be sabotaged if you continue to feel hungry all day. No one likes to feel hungry so you continue to eat more food until you feel satisfied, which in your effort to lose weight, may just be too much.

Sweeteners Increase our Sweet Tooth

Saccharin (Sweet n Low) is 300 times sweeter than sugar, aspartame (Equal) is 200 times sweeter than sugar and sucralose (splenda) is 600 times sweeter than sugar. Such sweeteners can only increase our sweet tooth and increase our taste of sweet things. If you can never get rid of your sugar cravings, any healthy eating plan will be difficult because you will constantly be craving “sweet”. Artificial sweeteners have also shown to promote the same blood sugar fluctuations as regular sugar, which, again will bring on “sugar lows” which will increase appetite and cravings. This is not to say, that something sweet now and again is not ok, but it is those people who can not control their sugar cravings that are being sabotaged by these artificial sweeteners.

What are some alternatives to sweeteners?

Giving up sugar and artificial sweeteners may be difficult, especially if you are accustomed to everything having such a sweet taste. A wonderful alternative to sugar and artificial sweeteners is an herb called Stevia. Stevia is an extraordinarily sweet herb, 200-300 times sweeter than sugar. Stevia is almost calorie-free, so it is perfect for people who are watching their weight. Unlike sugar, it does not trigger a rise in blood sugar so you will not get a sudden burst of energy followed by fatigue and a need for another “fix”. It increases energy and aids digestion by stimulating the pancreas. Stevia also presents great advantages over saccharine and other artificial sweeteners in that it is not toxic. Stevia is a plant that is found in nature and is not man-made in a laboratory. Stevia can be found at almost all health food stores such as Whole Foods, and is listed under the “supplement” section. Stevia can be used exactly like sugar and artificial sweeteners to sweeten drinks and it can even be used in baking.

If weight loss or staying away from sweets has always been a problem for you, take notice of how much artificial sweetener you have been ingesting. That just may be the culprit. Make a resolution this year to give up the “fake” stuff and stick to natural alternatives like Stevia. You will not only be helping your weight loss efforts but you will also be benefiting your health.

Learn more about the Diet Solution Program and the healthy way to lose weight.

What is: The Dukan Diet?

Long a secret of the French, the Dukan Diet is like many other diets, strong on protein and low in processed sugars.

At long last an English language guide to this popular French diet is being put together, giving some insight into how French women stay so thin while seemingly eating anything they desire.

Britain's Daily Mail has an ongoing series about this diet, which gives some idea about how it works.

The first phase, called Attack, is where the weight comes off quickly.

Anything NOT on this list is forbidden during Attack:

1 Lean beef and veal or rabbit, not pork or lamb (trim all fat and avoid ribs as too fatty). Eat meat grilled, roasted or boiled and without using butter, oil or cream (not even low-fat versions).

You could also 'dry fry' it - rub the surface of a frying pan with a few drops of oil on kitchen paper. Lean minced beef can be prepared as burgers or meatballs (mixed with an egg, spices, capers or gherkins) or enjoy frozen beefburgers (if less than 10 per cent fat).

2 All chicken and turkey (not goose or farmed duck) but remove skin before eating and avoid the outside part of the wings (too fatty).

3 Ham if low-fat and lean, also cut rind off. Avoid deli, cured, and smoked hams (too fatty).

4 Beef, veal or chicken liver.

5 All fish white or oily, fresh, frozen, dried, smoked or canned (but not in oil or in any sauce containing fat), even crab sticks.

6 All crustaceans and shellfish.

7 Up to two eggs a day. Stick to 3 to 4 yolks per week if you have high cholesterol, but the white can be eaten without restriction.

8 Non-fat dairy products such as 0per cent yoghurt, fromage frais, quark, cottage cheese, and skimmed milk. Natural ( plain) and flavoured yoghurts (coconut, vanilla, lemon) are allowed without restriction, but non-fat fruit yoghurts (containing fruit puree) should be limited to two a day (or avoided if you want a lightning start to your attack phase).

9 Sweeteners (Canderel, Silverspoon Sweetener) or Stevia (a natural sweetener available from health food stores), vinegar, spices, herbs, garlic, onion, gherkins, pickled onions (as condiments, but not in large quantities), lemon juice (on food, but not to drink), mustard and salt (in moderation), sugar-free natural ketchup in moderation, sugar-free chewing gum (can slow down the mechanical swing towards eating whenever you feel under pressure).

Drink 1.5litres of water per day (plain or carbonated) particularly at mealtimes to help you feel full. Tea, coffee and diet drinks (no more than 1 calorie per glass) can be included in this total.

Eat 1.5 tablespoons of oat bran per day (as porridge, sprinkled on yoghurt, or made into a pancake).

Walk briskly for 20 minutes every day. This is a non-negotiable doctor's prescription.

Avoid all butter and oil.

I disagree with a lot of this.

• 1.5 liters is NOT enough water
• Too much meat and not enough fiber causes constipation (like Atkins)
• So-called low-fat food products are rife with chemical additives
• Ditto for sweeteners
• No spinach on this list? No broccoli?

In later phases of the diet, you eat whatever you want, except on Thursdays, when you eat only protein.

Bizarre.

Are you ready for bathing suit season?

It's already mid-April, and bathing suit season is almost upon us. Are you ready to get out there and show off your body, or will you be hiding under layers of clothing?

I've been there. I know what it's like to cover up under bulky jeans and layers of tops, just because I was unhappy with the extra weight I was carrying.

Everyone knows that the healthy way to lose weight is slow, and requires dedication. That's why so many of us procrastinate, until yet another summer has passed.

Perhaps you're reading this right now and thinking "Dammit, it's too late for this year - I'll just wait."

Don't wait. Set a small goal - going down one or two sizes by Memorial Day. If you are currently wearing a size 20 (as I was a few years back, after the birth of my daughter), slimming down to a size 16 by Memorial Day is totally possible - and will make a world of difference in the way you see yourself.

In fact, it's possible to drop a size in less than a month. The Diet Solution Program offers a 14 Day guide to dropping fat fast.

By sticking to a 2-week meal plan, you can shed pounds fast - without being hungry, and without feeling cut off from your favorite foods. The 14 Days to a Sexy Body in 2010 manual is one of the NINE guides that are included as part of the Diet Solution Program.

Get started now with Lose 5 lbs in 5 Days from the Diet Solution Program.

Or click here to order all nine manuals and drop two sizes before Memorial Day.