March 2011 Newsletter - Eating Right to Extend Your Life

Hello Again – how time seems to fly! It feels like yesterday I was sitting down and righting my last newsletter!

We all want to look our optimal best but this month I am looking at the benefits of living a healthy lifestyle that go way beyond just dropping in our clothing sizes.

To get some perspective on what proper nutrition and diet can mean for your health, think of your body as an engine — a machine like your car. If you stopped putting oil in your car, or never serviced it, the less efficiently it would run. In time, it would break down with clogged and broken engine parts, and at some point the damage would be irreversible.

Now consider what might happen to your body’s internal machinery after years of fuelling up on double burgers, chips, fizzy drinks and milkshakes, with little or no exercise – the result: painfully slow blood flow, and hardened arteries, perhaps also strokes, diabetes and heart disease. Not pretty!

A sad statistic is that 50% of South African adults are now overweight. The long term impact of obesity goes way beyond the unhappiness is causes the individual – it effects families, decreases productivity (when obesity related diseases/injuries set in) and puts a burden on both the private and state run health care systems.

By changing your diet to a healthy balanced eating plan, you will not only lose any excess weight but you can increase your chances for enjoying a longer healthier life. Here's how to start:

• Load up on super foods
  Leave those obvious culprits of heart disease and obesity for an odd occasion (like steak with béarnaise sauce, buttery mashed potatoes, sugary soft drinks, chips, and full-fat ice cream) and start loading up on healthier foods. According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, eating seven "super" foods daily (red wine (or cold pressed grape juice), dark chocolate, fruits, vegetables, garlic, fish, and nuts), in the appropriate portion sizes can reduce your heart disease risk by 75 percent and add an average of six years to your life.
  The dark chocolate, fruits and vegetables - lowers your blood pressure.
• Garlic and nuts - lowers LDL cholesterol.
• Fish helps protect against cardiac arrhythmias, blood clotting, and inflammation.
• Together, these foods help protect the endothelium [the Teflon-like coating around your blood vessels] and reduce the risk of heart disease.

• Cut back on Calories
  A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that two markers of longevity (fasting insulin level and body temperature) were lowered in humans through prolonged calorie restriction.
  It has long been known that keeping excess weight off can stave off disease as well as add years to your life. A study of more than 20,000 male health professionals found stroke risk to be 30 percent higher in those considered to be overweight — and twice as high in those considered obese — as compared with men whose weight was in the normal range. The study categorised these individuals by body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height. A BMI of 25 to 29 classifies an individual as "overweight," a BMI of 30 to 39 signifies "obesity," and a BMI of 40 or more signifies "morbid obesity."

• Even if you're at a healthy weight, preliminary research shows that slashing your daily caloric intake by one-third can add years to your life.
• "The trick isn't just to eat less [of your old diet] but to make sure that what you do eat is loaded with nutrients," says Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., author of The Healthiest Meals on Earth. "If most of your diet is plant foods, you can eat a phenomenally healthy (and filling) diet on 1,400 to 1,500 calories a day." Eat seven cups of spinach, for example, and you've consumed only 100 calories.

• Try the Mediterranean Diet
  Nutritionists consistently report that a Mediterranean-style diet — including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, and a daily glass of red wine (or cold pressed grape juice) — promotes longevity. In fact, studies show that this type of diet lowers blood pressure, reduces inflammation, and protects against serious health conditions ranging from cancer to stroke. In two separate studies, researchers found that "going Mediterranean" not only protects against Alzheimer's disease but also enables people who have the disease to live an average of four years longer. The more closely participants adhered to the diet, the greater the benefit they saw.

• Eat Plants!
  You'd be hard pressed to find a nutrition expert who would argue against eating more fruits and vegetables. Plant foods are loaded with antioxidants, powerful disease-fighting chemicals that help counteract damage from free radicals, oxidation, stress, pollution, and other environmental toxins. People who live a long time tend to eat a lot of plant foods. These are the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. They're loaded with flavonoids, phenols, polyphenols, and thousands of other chemicals we haven't even discovered yet — and all of them help prevent disease.

• And increase these benefits even more with exercise:
   

• Exercise increases muscle mass, which speeds up our resting metabolism, balances blood sugar, decreases body fat, increases aerobic fitness and increases bone mineral density as well as balancing blood pressure and strengthening your heart. People that exercise regularly are also less like to get depressed, and generally have more energy than those that do not exercise.

I hope this month’s newsletter has given you extra reasons to embark on a healthy lifestyle plan, or created greater momentum for sticking to the balanced lifestyle plan that you are on!

Remember – even baby steps help!!

Warm regards

Lesley Wood

021-4182843

082 3 782 782

www.weight-masters.com

All feedback appreciated!! I love hearing from you whether it’s receiving your news, questions, recipes or queries! Email me at info@weight-masters.com. I will endeavour to return your mail within 48 hours.

There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination, and wonder.                                                     Ronald Reagan

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And to finish off: DRINK MORE WATER, LOSE MORE WEIGHT

One of the paths to successful weight loss is to drink sufficient water, which is also important for a host of other health reasons. When you’re not properly hydrated—and many people are borderline dehydrated much of the time—your body releases a hormone that makes your kidneys retain salt and water. However, it does this at the expense of wasting your body’s stores of potassium. This essential mineral is vital to keeping your muscles and heart happy. People often misread the body’s signal for more fluid as hunger, so staying well hydrated also helps you not overeat. Drinking enough water also aids digestion by helping break down foods and deliver nutrients to your body.

How Much Is Enough?

• To determine if you’re drinking enough fluids, simply check the colour of your urine, which should be clear or pale yellow. Also make sure that you’re passing urine at least every four to six hours. Thirst is clearly a sign as well, but you need to rehydrate long before you actually feel thirsty. Despite the old saying that everyone should drink eight 250ml glasses of water a day, individual needs vary. Larger, more active people need more than small, sedentary folks. Vigorous exercise or airplane travel (thanks to the dry air) increases your needs as well. Most of your fluids should come from water, clear broth and herb teas. However, one or two cups of coffee and/or caffeinated tea are fine in your daily tally (regard any more as supplementary, rather than counting toward your water intake). Spread out your consumption of liquids over the day, although you may want to stop a couple of hours before bedtime for obvious reasons.
• Research has shown that drinking water is associated with weight loss independent of activity level and diet. There are several ways that drinking plenty of H20 helps you lose kilograms and later maintain a healthy weight. Here’s why:

1. Water fills you up. In basic terms, water helps you feel full, so you’re apt to eat less. (Clear broth will do the same thing, so having a cup of hot broth before lunch or dinner may reduce your intake of higher-carb foods.) Research actually links water consumption to improved weight loss. For example, in a study published in Obesity in 2009, researchers compared two groups of overweight subjects aged 55 to 75. All were put on the same diet for 12 weeks—the men in both groups consumed 1,500 calories a day, the women, 1,200—but one group also drank 2 cups of water right before each meal. The water drinkers were found to have consumed between 75 and 90 fewer calories at each meal than individuals who didn’t consume water before the meal. And their results showed it: the water drinkers lost an average of 7kgs over the 12 weeks, compared to the control group’s average weight loss of only 5.5kgs.
2. Another reason that drinking water helps in weight loss is a no-brainer! On average, more than 20 percent of the calories the average person consumes in a day come from beverages. A single sugary beverage can be as much as 140 calories and 40 grams of sugar—the equivalent of 10 teaspoons of sugar. Obviously, if you swap those sweetened beverages for pure water or herb tea, you’re eliminating a huge source of carbs and calories from your diet.
3. Water optimises the effects of activity. If you’re dehydrated, you’re clearly not operating at peak performance, meaning that the idea of exercise, much less the reality of it, may be a turn-off. By drinking plenty of water, you won’t get fatigued as easily and can work out longer. But the benefits go far beyond that. The less water you drink, the more sluggish your blood, and blood carries water and nutrients to the muscles. If your muscles are dehydrated, they can’t contract as well as they should, making your workout less effective and less able to burn calories. But drink enough water, which actually improves muscle tone, and even when you’re not in motion you’ll maximize fat burning.
4. Drinking water reduces bloating. Although it may seem odd, the more water you drink, the less your body holds on to it, so you won’t feel bloated, as you may if you aren’t adequately hydrated. This means that even before you start to lose body fat, drinking up will help you shed any excess water weight. Just make sure to have enough salt in your diet so that water weight loss doesn’t leave you with an electrolyte imbalance.
5. Water speeds fat metabolism. One of the liver’s main roles is to convert stored fat to energy, but when the kidneys aren’t well hydrated, the liver may have to pick up the slack. This means it can't metabolize fat as quickly or efficiently as it does when the kidneys are operating in peak condition. So by not drinking enough water, you set yourself up to store fat. On the other hand, when you stay hydrated throughout the day, your kidneys will thank you and you’ll be helping metabolize fat faster.

Once you’ve lost weight, continuing to drink plenty of water has yet another benefit. Skin that’s saggy from weight loss plumps well when skin cells are hydrated, making your skin—and you—look younger. So drink up!

References:

1.     Dennis, E.A., et al., “Water Consumption Increases Weight Loss During a Hypocaloric Diet Intervention in Middle-aged and Older Adults,” Obesity, 18, 2010, pages 300-307.

2.     Stookey, J.D., Constant, F., Gardner, C.D., Popkin, B.M., “Replacing Sweetened Caloric Beverages with Drinking Water is Associated with Lower Energy Intake,” Obesity, 15, 2007, pages 3013-3022.

3.     Stookey, J.D., Constant, F., Popkin, B.M., Gardner, C.D., “Drinking Water is Associated with Weight Loss in Overweight Dieting Women Independent of Diet and Activity,” Obesity, 16, 2008, pages 2481-2488.

4.      www.Atkins.com

5.      www.everydayhealth.com