Eating Fast Foods Makes You Fat

Article taken from Sydney Morning Herald :

A new study provides the best evidence to date that eating fast food makes you fat.

Among nearly 3400 young adults participating in a long-term study, every additional fast food meal they consumed each week correlated with a substantial increase in body mass index (BMI), Dr. Barry M. Popkin of the University of North Carolina.

"It's a large effect," Popkin said. "That's enough of an effect to take you from being non-diabetic to diabetic."

Food eaten away from home now accounts for up to 42 percent of Americans' calorie intake.

While the increase in restaurant and fast food consumption has occurred at the same time as the rise in obesity, they add, it's not clear if it's a contributing factor.

To separate out the effects of fast food meals and meals eaten in traditional restaurants, the researchers looked at 3394 young adults participating in a heart disease study.

The investigators compared the study participants' consumption of fast foods and restaurant foods during year 7 and year 10 of the study with their BMIs at both time points. BMI is a ratio of weight to height commonly used to determine if a person is underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese or morbidly obese.

The more fast food the subjects ate, the higher was their BMI, Popkin and colleagues found. For each additional fast food meal eaten per week during year 7, BMI increased by 0.13 points, while each additional fast food meal per week at year 10 was tied to a 0.24 rise in BMI. This translates to 0.9 pounds and 1.7 pounds, respectively, for a person 5 foot 10 inches tall.
People whose fast food intake rose between year 7 and year 10 showed a 0.20 increase in BMI.
However, the researchers found no association between meals eaten at traditional restaurants and increases in BMI; in fact, some analyses linked eating more often in restaurants to a slightly lower BMI.

The study confirms, Popkin said, that people who eat more fast food pack on more pounds.

"People have been trying to say that, but they didn't have the kind of evidence that we have now."

Reuters

Which Detox is Right For You?

Detoxing is no longer practiced by only the healthy few. With today's increase in toxins, more patients are waking up to the realization that we need to rid the body of heavy metals, chemicals and parasites to prevent illness. However, with options that include water fasts and colon cleanses, the hard part is figuring out which detox is right for you.

To begin, it is important to note that a general detox is usually done through fasting (either water or juice). In this type of detox, cells throughout the body are cleansed, but no particular organ or system is targeted. Combining a general detox with an organ/system-specific detox makes use of specific herbs/supplements or protocols to target specific areas of the body such as the liver, kidneys, and colon.

General cleansing is usually done through a type of water or juice fast. The distilled water fast is probably the touchstone for all detoxing protocols used in alternative health. The principles behind it are simple. First, when you deprive your body of food, your body begins to consume itself to survive. Being geared to self-survival, your body chooses to consume damaged cells and toxic cells first, saving the healthiest for later. Second, it takes a tremendous amount of energy, and puts a tremendous strain on your body's organs, to process food. (Check your heart rate after eating a large meal and observe how exhausted you feel.) When you fast, your body diverts that energy to repair and rebuilding.

There are three levels of fasting worth considering. The pure water fast is the most powerful form of fasting, but also produces the most toxic side effects. The other downfall is that when you go too long without sufficient calories, your body slows down its metabolism to prevent starvation. Then when you begin to eat again, even normally, your body treats anything beyond the barest minimum as excess calories, causing your body to gain weight at an accelerated rate.

Some add honey and maple syrup with lemon, which helps balance out the blood sugar swings, reduce fatigue, and prevent headaches. Lemon is also antimicrobial and tends to kill bad bacteria in the intestinal tract and works as an alkalinizing agent, raising general body pH.

However, juice fasting is preferrable since it provides basic nutrients while being so easy to digest that it offers 90 percent of the benefits of a water fast. Even better, add chlorella to a juice fast to further help detox and get protein in a form that requires almost no effort to digest. In other words, you still get all of the benefits of fasting, but can easily fast for that much longer.

Article, with thanks, from NutritionalWellness.com

Chlorella - Superfood

I take chlorella to make sure I am getting every nutrient I need. Particularly as I am vegetarian, and have been for many many years. While juicing gives me most of my nutrients,
I highly recommend chlorella, in case.

Chlorella is nature's richest source of Chlorophyll, 60% protein and packed with enzymes, antioxidants, essential amino acids and other micronutrients. Chlorella will help you detoxify from heavy metal build-up, build your immune system, and improve your ability to focus. Aids the liver in ridding the body of toxins, cleans and flushes out stored pollutants in the body and acts as an internal deodorant, helping to refresh the bowel and breath and reduce body odour.

Chlorella available in tablet or powder form, although the powder is pretty strong in flavour and won't be to everyone's taste.

Click here for Chlorella in Australia
Click here for Chlorella in the USA

The Futility of Taking Supplements

A lot of people are taking supplements to help build their immune system, but they are still getting sick. How come??

The immune system is only as strong as the weakest link in your body. That means, for example, that you can be taking all the Echinacea or colloidal silver or mangosteen juice in the world or getting a flu shot for that matter, but you won’t have a strong immune system if your colon is filled with stagnant fecal matter which is slowly poisoning your body. Or if your diet is filled with foods that keep your digestive system working full time to digest, leaving little energy to combat any viruses/infections you come into contact with.

So many of us are after a quick fix to our problems, and taking supplements seems like a good, quick way to increase our health. However, rather than take expensive supplements that aren’t helping you, you are much better off eliminating the toxins in your system, and eating a better diet to boost your immune system to its maximum efficiency.

Due to the seasonal availability of fruits and vegetables, and my lifestyle, I do take supplements - spirulina or chlorella. This is just in case I have missed out on something, not as a replacement.

I'm Laughing!

I just read this in a Natural Weight Loss article, and I’m laughing! The writer has never been on my diet, that’s for sure!

“Remember, if you want to lose weight naturally, you have to keep track of every food you eat and of every activity that you do. When you say natural weight loss means that you do not have to use some accessories or helpful aids just to lose weight.

Losing weight naturally is a process and not a fad. Hence, it would take a lot of dogged determination, self-control, and discipline just to achieve your ideal weight.”

Well, the writer is right, actually, for most people. Including myself when I was dieting.

Determination, self control and discipline are the 3 things I didn’t have when I started to follow my own diet (later called the Amazing Diet after I started receiving all its benefits).

I discovered the secret, however to an easy diet – a detox diet will rid your body of the addictive chemicals found in many ‘yummy’ foods, that keep you enslaved to them. Once these have been eliminated, all cravings for these foods disappear! I just didn’t have the taste for them anymore, and not only did I not crave them anymore, I did not even want them.

(This from a girl who used to eat chips and chocolate for lunch!)

I never could have lost 35 lbs otherwise – I have no self control over food whatsoever.

You can read my weight loss story at :
http://www.juice-detox.com/weight_loss_success_story.html

Time to Get Healthy and Lose Weight

I've had a break from posting on my blogs - my son came to stay for Christmas and I had difficlulty getting near my computer!

OK, the Silly Season is over for another year and now it's time to get serious about your health and your weight.

After trying out many diets over the years, unsuccessfully, I devised my own.

One where I don't need any willpower( I have no self control over food).
No pills. No products. No motivation.

It started out as a way to get healthy, and the weight loss I effortlessly achieved was a wonderful by-product.

Do yourself a favour. This changed my life dramatically for the better - I hope it will change yours too.

More info at www.juice-detox.com.